Data Centers, Icy Moons And Chameleons

It’s another news roundup! This time, we cover how, using data analytics – and ironically, some AI – a team at Cornell University has mapped the environmental impact of AI by state. They determined that, by 2030, the rate of AI growth in the U. S. would put an additional 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The team further calculated that by 2030, AI could use as much water as 6 to 10 millions Americans do every year. All of this, they conclude, would put the tech industry’s climate goals out of reach. This episode, we also get into the potential for life on one of Saturn’s moons and a new discovery about why chameleons’ eyes are so special. Interested in reporting on the environmental impact of AI? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for dirty air and water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, because it's not political, it's fundamental. Learn more at S E L C dot org.

• 0:17Emily Kwong?

  Hello, my lovely wavers. It is me, your fearless co-host Emily Kwong, here with a quick free ask. Right now, on the app or platform where you're listening, can you leave us a rating or a review? Like this one from Tristan, who says, howdy from Texas. I love y'all's show. It is always a way for me to learn more about the world, especially as a student. I learn more than I would at school, listening to y'all. But also listen to your teacher. Tristan says, thanks, y'all, so much for being an excellent source of knowledge. Oh, listeners like Tristan, we appreciate you so much. You help people find our show. So keep it coming. Write a few bars, drop it into the review section, give us some stars and spread the short wave word.

• 1:02Emily Kwong?

  All right, on to the news roundup. You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 1:09Regina Barber?

  Hey, short wavers. Regina Barber here.

• 1:11Emily Kwong?

  And Emily Kwong with our bi-weekly Science News Roundup, featuring the hosts of All Things Considered.

• 1:16Regina Barber?

  And today, we have one of our favorites, the amazing space nerd, Scott Detrow.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  I'm back. I'm here. I'm thrilled. I assume we're going to talk space, otherwise I'm leaving. But what other stories?

• 1:26Emily Kwong?

  First, we're going to talk about AI and the kind of the energy crisis therein broken out by state.

• 1:31Regina Barber?

  Then we're going to talk about how scientists are learning more about an ocean moon of Saturn.

• 1:37Emily Kwong?

  And finally, after going to space, we're going to come back to Earth to talk about chameleons and what makes them so weird and cool.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  OK, these are two joyous, interesting things and one existential downery thing. So I can, I'll take that ratio.

• 1:48Emily Kwong?

  Sounds about right.

• 1:49Regina Barber?

  Excellent. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Edward Jones, where they believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, or wherever life takes you, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  The day's top headlines, local stories from your community, your next podcast binge listen. You can have it all in one place, your pocket. Download the NPR app today.

• 3:30Emily Kwong?

  Okay, Scott, we're gonna get to space, but before that one, where do you want to start?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Let's, since it seems the least joyous, let's start with AI computing. We talk a lot about AI these days, and there's a lot of concern about the power it's sucking up.

• 3:45Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, it truly. A lot of AI computing relies on data centers. Data centers are these big buildings which gobble up gigawatts of energy, sometimes millions of gallons of water for cooling. And as tech companies try to make good on AI's potential, there is an energy crisis in the making.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  How so?

• 4:00Emily Kwong?

  Well, because the majority of these data centers are powered by fossil fuels. Tianqi Xiao is a PhD candidate at Cornell University, and he says that if the tech industry and policymakers are not careful, the boom in AI will jeopardize our climate progress.

• 4:14Speaker 06

  Monitoring will be much important in the next few years because before we know the whole picture, and we may already do something very bad for our environment.

• 4:24Emily Kwong?

  So this week in the journal Nature Sustainability, Tianqi's team at Cornell published a state-by-state portrait of the environmental impact of AI, and this map took three years to make.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  Three years. What did it tell us? Was it worth the wait?

• 4:37Emily Kwong?

  Well, using data analytics and ironically some AI, the team determined that by 2030, at the rate of AI growth in the US would put an additional 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And the team said it could use as much water as 6 to 10 million Americans do every year. All of this, the paper concludes, would put the tech industry's climate goals out of reach.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Can you remind me what those initial goals were or are?

• 5:07Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, so Google, Microsoft, and Meta have all pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions and to be water positive by 2030. Amazon has set their net zero carbon deadline for 2040, but according to this paper, AI is putting all of those climate goals in peril. We reached out to these companies, Google didn't reply, and the others declined to comment.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm hearing this, and I'm feeling sad and discouraged.

• 5:30Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, me too. Never.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Is that the right feeling?

• 5:33Emily Kwong?

  Never despair, Scott, ever. Because a big part of this study is about solutions. The biggest takeaway is location. Study author Fengqi Yu says where you build a data center matters.

• 5:46Speaker 07

  If we build AI in the right place, on a clean power grid and with efficient cooling technology, it could really grow without blowing past climate and water limits.

• 5:55Emily Kwong?

  Fengqi wants data centers built in places with low water stress that are already transitioning to clean energy. So spots in the Midwest and windbelt states like Texas, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota are good candidates. And big tech has been scouting future data centers in some of these states.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  This still makes me anxious and worried.

• 6:13Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  And I think it's time to change the topic to an ocean moon.

• 6:16Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Which I would much rather talk about.

• 6:18Regina Barber?

  What a pivot. Well, me too. Me too, Scott.

• 6:20Emily Kwong?

  Off Earth.

• 6:21Regina Barber?

  I know you love space.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  I do.

• 6:22Regina Barber?

  And you might remember that Saturn has 274 confirmed moons, right?

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Confirmed moons.

• 6:27Regina Barber?

  Yeah. And one of those moons is Enceladus, and it's really intriguing to scientists looking for life elsewhere in the solar system because it has an ocean covering its entire surface that's locked under a thick layer of ice. And scientists say it could be a good potential spot for life.

• 6:42Speaker 08

  It looks like all the right ingredients are there for it. All it needs is time.

• 6:45Regina Barber?

  That's Georgina Miles with the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. And the ingredients for life she's talking about are liquid water, chemicals like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon.

• 6:55Emily Kwong?

  And in a new paper in the journal Science Advances, she and her colleagues write about another important ingredient: a heating source.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Which feels pretty important for life, huh?

• 7:04Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, turns out, because if the temperatures in the ocean fluctuate too much, or too hot or too cold, that's not good for life. You want a stable heat flow process. And overall, this study found that the heat flow seems to be pretty consistent on Enceladus.

• 7:19Regina Barber?

  And that means that the ocean on Enceladus is very stable. It is now and probably has been for most of the moon's existence.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Which I assume is another good ingredient for what we're talking about here.

• 7:29Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, it's promising because life takes a really long time to begin and develop. Here's Carly Howitt, another author of the study and fellow planetary scientist.

• 7:38Speaker 08

  We know that evolution is a slow process, but we're hopeful if it started on Enceladus, there might be something for us to see today.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Something for us to see today. Does that mean we're going there? Are we sending robots there? What's the situation?

• 7:49Emily Kwong?

  Not NASA, but the European Space Agency may. Carly and Georgina are based in the UK, and the European Space Agency is proposing a mission to Enceladus in the 2040s.

• 8:00Regina Barber?

  But there is a NASA mission going to another promising moon of Saturn, Titan. It's set to launch in 2028, which is really soon. This moon has mountains of ice and methane lakes. The lander on this mission, Dragonfly, will do close-up measurements of Titan's surface.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Okay, that's interesting.

• 8:17Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Can we also talk about chameleons? And can I make a request? My three-year-old daughter has recently started calling chameleons colorful lizards.

• 8:25Emily Kwong?

  They are.

• 8:26Regina Barber?

  It's true.

• 8:26Emily Kwong?

  They're part of a clade called Old World Lizards.

• 8:29Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Emily Kwong?

  And they are incredibly colorful and funky.

• 8:32Regina Barber?

  Yeah, and Scott, let me also start with this like stone cold, like this universal truth about these colorful lizards, these chameleons.

• 8:39Speaker 09

  Every aspect of them is weird.

• 8:43Regina Barber?

  This is Ed Stanley, an evolutionary biologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

• 8:48Speaker 09

  They have fused fingers for grasping on to branches. They have all the color chain stuff. They have a ballistic tongue. Their body shape is absolutely bizarre, right? Most lizards are short and wide. These ones are incredibly thin and tall.

• 9:02Emily Kwong?

  And there's another trait to add to the list. They've got really weird optic nerves. Okay, so optic nerves, that's the bundle of nerve fibers that send information between the eyes and the brain. In lizards, they're more straight, but in chameleons, those optic nerves are coiled.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  In shortwave and all things considered, we love weirdos.

• 9:21Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  It's very true.

• 9:22Emily Kwong?

  Three of them are in this room.

• 9:24Regina Barber?

  Yes.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  But in terms of our chameleon friends, why does all this weirdness matter?

• 9:28Regina Barber?

  Okay, so researchers suspect it could help chameleons move their eyes in those like strange, twisty ways. I'm sure you've seen this before, Scott, like when one eye of a chameleon is like moving independently from the other, like maybe one is looking at an insect for lunch and the other one's looking at another chameleon.

• 9:44Speaker 10

  Chameleons can even look backwards. So this is really bizarre for an animal.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  What?

• 9:50Emily Kwong?

  Right? Okay, this is Juan Daza. He's one of the study authors, and he compared the coils of their optic nerve to those old landline telephone cords.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 9:58Speaker 10

  We discovered at some point that if you made this cord twisted, you can have more range of movement.

• 10:04Emily Kwong?

  Like, remember the days when the phone would be in the kitchen and you could walk into the living room?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  So your mom couldn't hear you.

• 10:09Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, you didn't want that. Maybe the coil and the optic nerves of chameleons is what allows their eyes to go all catowampus like that.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm kind of surprised this is all new information. We've all been loving chameleons for a long time.

• 10:21Regina Barber?

  Yeah. Yeah. And scientists have dissected them. They've looked at chameleons, but that's probably why we didn't know this. So like dissections can damage the optic nerve.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:30Regina Barber?

  Researchers in this study used CT scans, which allowed them to get a 3D view of the chameleon's internal structures without destroying the optic nerve. They wrote about it this week in the journal Scientific Reports.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  I wish I could look backwards like a chameleon. I think that's my takeaway.

• 10:44Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  And I miss phone landlines.

• 10:47Regina Barber?

  I kind of do too.

• 10:47Emily Kwong?

  That's really what we wanted you to take away from this story.

• 10:50Regina Barber?

  Scott, we've had a great time with you. Please come back as much as you want.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Always happy to be here.

• 10:59Regina Barber?

  You can hear more of Scott on Consider This and NPR's Afternoon Podcast about what the news means for you. This episode was produced by Daniel Offman and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata.

• 11:11Emily Kwong?

  Tyler Jones checked the facts. Simon Laszlo Jansen and Kwesi Lee were the audio engineers. I'm Emily Kwong.

• 11:16Regina Barber?

  And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.