ON THE PERILS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 AI IS DANGEROUS

It is now well established that AI data centers are unpopular nationally and especially in the communities where they are sited. They are noisy, overly illuminated. They generate pollution from back up generators, use local water sources for cooling, take over farm land and cut down forests for expansion. But most egregiously they jack up cost of local electric bills by their outsized use of electrical power. Perhaps a better description of their electrical use is “unsustainable” amounts of electricity.   

A simple query on AI uses only three tenths of one watt hour in electricity to provide a n answer for that query. ( That amount is 0.3 Wh* or in kilowatts: 0.0003 kWh). That amount of electrical power is equivalent to running a 60 W light bulb for about 17 seconds.  More complex requests,  such as AI drafting or generating  a student’s 1000 word report may use about 2.5 kWh. That amount is equivalent to the electricity needed to power a standard 10-watt LED bulb for 15 minutes or a kitchen microwave for 8 to 10 seconds, or enough electricity to charge a smartphone up to 13% of its total charge. This all seems relatively innocuous and non-threatening.

But: AI companies receive huge numbers of queries.   For example, Google  processes about 10 billion (10,000,000,000) queries per day.  

Even if we were to look at only simple AI queries, like the example above, using only 0.0003kWh each, when one examines the daily demand, the electrical power drain even for simple queries becomes huge. So let’s multiply that by typical Google usage per day—by the amount of electrical power for a simple query—“Who won the 2026 Triple Crown Race?” Usage for that form of query if it were the only type for one Google day would be: 

0.0003 kWh x 10,000,000,000 queries =  3,000,000 kWh of electrical energy per day.  (Note 3,000,000 kWh equals 3,000MW)

How might 3,000 megawatts (3,000 MW)  of electrical power per day be used other than for AI?  

That amount of electrical power would power up @ 300 average US homes for about a year, or small town or city of 100,000 people for a year, or a medium to large manufacturing plant. 

That is the energy cost for using AI for simple basic (let’s say “trivial”) purposes. In the past prior to addiction to iPhones and AI access, to get that answer we might have simply opened a dictionary on our desk, used a set of encyclopedia, our home library, or perhaps visited our local library. 

But in queries where AI needs to use advanced “reasoning” electrical power demand can jump the load up to 33-40 Wh per query. Under those circumstances usage would skyrocket to 45,000MW per day vs the 3,000MW figure.  

We use AI so innocently and carelessly, and almost all are unaware of the electrical costs of AI and the longer term impact of such massive consumption of electrical energy will have on our economy, society and environment. This in the face of the evidence of the expanding use in industry, medicine, academia and most egregiously in military applications.

What is frightening is that AI is not only a plaything for the curious and carefree but has huge potential demand in industry and in the military industrial complex.  For example, recent reports indicate that a major Japanese shipbuilding company is seeking contracts with Nvidia to develop robotic systems to be incorporated into its shipbuilding plants in Japan. Japan is a =nation where industry is facing decline based on shrinking tiger population due to Japanese immigration restrictions and an aging worker population. But even more insideous is its military applications. Such uses have essentiually unlimited financial support based on so called “defense” expenditures. Major militarised nations such as China, USA and Russia (and highly militarized tiny Israel too). These are demands for services that will not be modulated by normal democratic government processes since they come with the claim—its for “national defense”.  

Said in another way…The US and China are locked into a deadly competition over advanced chips and AI development for military purposes. Even if domestic use were to stabilize —these business and military uses are related to existential elements in geopolitics and business that will not be denied. 

That means that whether we like it or not…there is today a desperate military and business demand for this product that will expand exponentially and will commandeer vast amounts of electrical power, water, natural resources and fossil fuels. 

As a result of its heavy demand for energy the environmental impact of AI could be staggering.  Diversion of energy reserves to this one sphere of activity,-particularly those which claim to be for national defense would cause runaway global warming. 

Plans are already afoot, as a sop to those who object to this source of threat—to serve needed your to data centers by  expanding  use of dangerous nuclear power, as well as installation of micro, on-site nuclear power units, which would simply expand the potential for nuclear accidents. In addition these demands would engender wider use of all fossil fuels to power these data centers. China with its massive coal resources would certainly use coal if it would be necessary. Other plans call for siting massive data centers in the Middle East where fossil fuels are cheap and readily extracted. But whether we burn fossil fuels in USA or Saudi Arabia we get the same impact from CO2 gas in our atmosphere….increased adsorption of infrared radiation from the Sun-warmed Earth surface and higher air temperatures.   All of these  impacts  could have drastic effects on the environment and on the need to modulate fossil uses to save the  planet from the “Venusian CO2” anthropogenic global warming. 

The sources of energy are finite, we have only so much to serve our expanding 9+billion population…excessive use inn only one part of the system would limit that available to the would have its impact on the globe as a whole. This is known as the zero sum resource  allocation rule.  If AI consumes more energy for its use there is correspondingly less energy available for other essential human processes everyday human needs. But their answer is to claim efficiency increases as they invest in larger sources of energy production such as nukes, solar, etc. which by rapidly growing the power grid may tend  to avoid canabalizing of power neded for human needs. But the laws of Nature can not be altered, Conservation of Mass and Energy do not change even for AI 

The future does not look promising. What to expect from a future with expanded militarized AI are circumstances with humans out of work while robots take up jobs, and with all forms of energy scarce and expensive. Expect water sources to be limited and polluted. Citizens out of work, often cold in winter and too warm in summer are not content with their lot or with their government.  Angry citizens (as in France and other parts of Europe today) readily join in violent riots. These uprisings become more common as conditions deteriorate. Powerful modern governments with AI and robots will establish a modern police state first to deal with uprisings and violence and then will simply accept the AI rationalized staus quo.

Not a future I would hope for…. 

  *A watt is a measure of energy . A watt hour measures the amount of energy consumed over the period of one hour. A100 watt light bulb in use for an hour consumes 100 watt hours (100Wh, or 0.1 kilowatt hours (0.1kWh)  of energy.   

A amps x V voltage = W watts 

HOW THINGS GET MORE COMPLEX BUT MAYBE NOT BETTER

When I was a youngster I recall a pleasant breakfast I had at the home of my paternal  grandmother in the last century.  It was a simple bowl of oatmeal. Grandma spread a tablespoon of brown sugar over the steaming oatmeal and then a dash of milk from a thick, scratched glass milk bottle which looked like it had been recycled many times. I watched a thick drop of creamy milk slide over the rounded bottle lip then dribbled  down the neck of the bottle. It got no further…grandma’s dishcloth caught it and swept it away.

Over the steaming  porridge I watched as my grandma prepared coffee for grandpa.  A kettle boiling on the stove whistled, and she took the tall ceramic carafe from its place of honor in the center of the oilcloth covered kitchen table. Into this ten inch high vessel she heaped four big teaspoons full of  ground coffee (from her own coffee grinder), then simply poured almost boiling  steamy water from the kettle into the carafe.  She stirred up the brew with the same spoon then  set the carafe back on the table right back from where it came.. 

That was it. When grandpa arrived he sat down at the head of the table, he was silently presented with an empty  large Blue Willow cup which when brought to table rattled a bit in its matching saucer. He poured his steaming coffee into the cup, added a dollop of the rich creamy milk from the bottle, and very contentedly enjoyed his morning brew. Before I finished my porridge, he had several refills to boot.

Let’s go ahead one-half century or more, to the present time, at my daughter’s home and that of granpa’s great granddaughter. She has no kettle, no tall ceramic carafe.  Though she has a ceramic pitcher, now unused for liquids, which has been repurposed to store and display a collection of unused silver plate serving spoons and forks which sat in center shelf in a big, glass-fronted piece of furniture she called a “breakfront”.

She does have a coffee maker. It is an expensive and complex, electrically operated machine. It has a black plastic water reservoir in the rear and a silver metallic top.  

She does have a coffee maker. It is an expensive and complex, electrically operated machine. It has a black plastic water reservoir in the rear and a silver metallic top.  

To operate it for a  single cup of coffee one must first choose a small aluminum container or “pod” housed among many others arranged  in a sliding wood drawer below the mechanical coffee maker. 

One must shuffle among the choices, or pods, read each one regarding contents: such as: decaffeinated,  pumpkin-spice, cinnamon flavored, chocolate honey, and many others. I looked long and hard for, plain unadulterated good coffee or  a pod labeled just  “coffee”,…but there was none fitting that description. 

I finally settled on one labeled “magic brew” uncertain what to expect. Removing it from its molded  pod bed,  I placed the little aluminum packet in the receiver at the top, closed the top down until I heard a “click” and then pressed the pulsing “brew” button. 

The mechanism emitted a whirring and gurgling sound  then finally a thin brown foamy liquid emanated brom an aperture I had not expected any liquid to ejaculate from. I had to quickly slide my empty cup to intercept the stream, and watched as the cup slowly filled with this steaming brown, foamy liquid. The machine turned off when the cup was filled three fourths of the way up. (Norte: I like my cup hot and full to the lip).  As I reached for the cup, the silver colored cap on the machine popped up and the glistening aluminum, still steaming pod popped out.

“What do I do with these little coffee pods?”, I asked, adding, “Do you refill them?”

“No, just put them in that big plastic container-under the coffee cabinet, I collect them and when the bag is full I send them back to the company to be recycled,” she added.

As I sipped the “magic brew” (it wasn’t that bad).  Feeling a bit reflective as the warm brew had its effects, II began a mental calculation of how much expended energy went into granma’s coffee cup versus the carbon footprint of each cup of my daughter’s cups expend.

When I got to the point of calculating the mailman’s caloric and fossil fuel i usage, as he picked up and carried  the now packaged pods to the the mail office….I gave up. 

No contest!

LEARJET 60 TRAGICALLY PLUNGES OUT OF SKY IN FLORIDA

 ON SUPERCOOLED CLOUD DROPS AND TRAGIC AIR CRASHES

A few days ago (November 1, 2026) a sleek business class jet, on a flight from Austin Texas to the Bahamas arrived over Florida just in time to encounter an intense thunderstorm driven by warm moist rising air was forming over central Florida.  

The Learjet 60 crew contacted Miami Air Control and was alerted to dangerous storm clouds and threats to flying ahead. The crew altered their route but could not avoid encountering a zone of rapidly rising and descending air currents (turbulence) in the center of the storm. The plane entered an area of heavy rain, turbulence, and hail. They reported moderate icing and turbulence, and asked for and received permission to rise to higher elevations above the towering storm. 

A few short minutes later the Learjet crew called in a “MayDay” as the plane began an uncontrolled loss of altitude.  Only a few minutes later the plane was observed descending vertically at high speed over an urban area in Greenacres, Palm Beach County, Florida. Witnesses filmed the frightful scene of the streaking out of the sky, nose down, like a lawn dart. Tragically the plane slammed into the earth at 20,000 ft per minute (or 227 miles per hour) and instantly exploded into a massive fire cloud killing nine passengers and crew. The explosion created a massive crater in an urban street surrounded by upturned burning and smoldering road asphalt.

What happened up there that can disable a high powered airplane? 

 At these altitudes far from the warming influence of the Earth’s surface, the air is very cold. Freezing temperatures usually occur above 10,000 ft to 15,000 feet (10k ft) above ground.  But at  30,000 to 40,000 feet where these planes fly temperatures may fall very much below freezing. (Often as cold as: -47ºC or 47 degrees below zero).  

The air is thin, there are few particles like dust or pollen grains up there.  Winds are strong, (the Jets Streams) and flow smoothly from west to east, moving horizontal to the earth surface.  The Jet Streams make flying at these altitudes….very pleasant. There are no birds to be struck and gobbled up in the jet’s air intake, few clouds, and most often little turbulence to annoy or theaten air passengers.  

What is occurring in these thunderheads? 

When warm moist air rises from ground level it encounters cooler air aloft, being warmer than its surroundings it continues  to rise in this cooler air and as it does so it expands under lower pressure and. cools.  Water vapor in the air condenses into cloud drops to form white puffy clouds. The process of condensation (from gas to liquid) releases heat warming the air and intensifying the lofting effect. 

In this rising air water droplets may freeze into ice crystals when they rise above the freezing (OºC or 32ºF) level. Ice crystals can grow rapidly in moist air where water vapor deposits directly from gas into ice.  Growth is very rapid.  At some point the rising and growing ice crystals grow large enough and heavy enough to overcome the updraft lofting them upward—-at this point they begin to fall.  

Falling ice crystals have considerable surface area…which, as the crystals fall, drags  surrounding air (or entrains air ) to fall and  create strong down drafts in the cloud. 

These downdrafts plunge toward earth while, near-by, within the “active columnar-like storm-cell” inside the cloud, there are near-by rapid-rising updrafts. Collisions between the particles rising in the updraft air and those in near-by downdrafts cause electrons to strip off of the moving particles, dust, pollen as well as the forming ice crystals. These charges can build up in parts of the cloud to form charged areas within the cloud, which when they build up to high enough levels may discharge —as lightning strikes—from the negatively charged to the (positively charged) ground, or to other areas of the cloud which have been positively charged—-thunder and and lightning are the result.  

For water to freeze into ice it needs some solid particle or surface on which to attach. In the lower levels of the atmosphere, the troposphere (up to @30k feet) there are many sources of particulates: pollen, mineral dusts, organic particles, smoke particles from fires, soot, and droplets of hydrocarbon condensate, etc. Here ice crystals form readily.  

But higher up in the stratosphere and rising cloud tops there are few nuclei of condensation (like pollen, dust, etc.) ice can no form and water droplets remain as liquid even as the temperature falls well below freezing, even at air temperatures 10 to 40 degrees below freezing. Here supercooled droplets of water form.  They remain in the liquid state, just ready to freeze solid if they come in contact with some solid object like a plane wing. These droplet forms are very serious threats to air traffic. They cause plane icing.  

So beside the updrafts and downdrafts and turbulence in the top of a thunderhead cloud there are potentially damaging hailstones, strong up-and down drafts which cause wind-shear and most threatening of all, supercooled water drops..that can turn instantly into ice when the drops come in contact with any solid—like a plane’s outer skin surface.

Ice is heavy and adds weight to the plane, but more seriously, it interferes with air flow over the wing or tail-fin surfaces and can reduce the pilots ability to control or even more seriously— it reduces the lift the wings and the tail-fins generate. 

It is the smooth flow of air over the top of the wing surface which generates lift.  That is what keeps a plane aloft.  Looking out on a wing from a passenger seat—you might imagine that the top surface of the long wing has a low pressure surface all along its length—“sucking” the plane wing upward.  (There is no such thing as “sucking”) With loss of lift the plane begins to lose altitude. It falls like a heavy body falls through the air. 

Ice on the wings simply reduces lift and the plane loses altitude. But it is the tailplane that operates like and upside down wing to hold the nose of the plane up. If ice builds up on tail-wIng or the “tailplane”, the craft is forced into a nosedive. 

Early attempts to explain the tragedy of the Learjet 60 seems to suggest that icing was one of the main causes. In addition, evidence from filmed images of the crash and recovery of parts of the plane on the ground revealed that the left tailplane (horizontal stablizer a portion of tail assembly) had been recovered, according to recent reports, some 4 miles from the crash site.  

In most aircraft the wings provide the main source of “lift” as air passes over the wing upper surface. The wings are located slightly aft of the planes center of gravity, giving the craft a tendency to point its nose down. It is the horizontal tail fins, tailplane (or horizontal stabilizers) which provide “negative lift”, in other words counterbalance the nose down tendency by  “pushing”  the tail down, thus in normal flight the plane is balanced..the location of the wings force its nose down and its tailfins oppose that effect forcing the tail down.  Loss of control over the tailfin as a result of icing or damage, or in this case being detached from the fuselage itself, would immediatedly cause a nosedive. 

Without that part of the tail the plane could no longer be controlled. It would make a nosedive to the ground.  Perhaps the left tailplane could have been damaged and then detached as a result of the violent turbulence within the active storm cell. It was at that point that the Larjet must have begun its downward spiral

Icing and turbulence within clouds are both terrible threats to all planes in cold as well as tropical climates.  

A tragedy occurred sadly as the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…

ON MICKY D’S FILET OF FISH, TRAWLING, POLLOCK, SALMON, AND SUSTAINABILITY

As a boy on Long Island, I eagerly anticipated St Patrick’s Day—it was the harbinger of spring—but besides the religious holiday, it was the age-old, traditional Long Island “opening day“ of the winter flounder fishing season.  So each year on or near that date I would drag my 10 foot, cedar frame, canvas hull canoe from the barn loft and with a pail of clam bait and several coils of twisted linen (Cuttyhunk)  hand lines rigged with lead weights and Chestertown #9 flounder hooks, I would head to Great South Bay near Smith Point to fish for winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes  Americanus) .  There, among the waving reeds and smell of salt water  I would splash though the clear shallows and paddle out to the edge of the channel where I would drop my anchor ( half of a concrete-block) and tie it off  over the bow.  With four # 9 Chestertown hooks  baited with small chunks of fresh quahog i dropped the lines over the bulwark of the canoe and  I tied off two lines to my  bare toes and  two I held in hand.  In a short time,  I that long anticipated little tug on the line, that mystery of what is at my bait.  My lines were busy and  one after another I would land a flapping flatfish with a brown back and white belly  with the both eyes on the right side of its head, and a tiny mouth—at that point stuffed with the red-threaded stem of a Chestertown hook. In a short time I caught  a dozen fat fooot long winter flounder. That would be taken home for a special dinner. 

Last year, I revisited my old Great South Bay fishing haunt.  My old canoe was long gone and I had no hand lines or fishing gear, but curiosity and nostalgia led me  to seek out  my old boat launching site near Smith Point. Was it still there?   It was!  There was a lot more asphalt roadway than in the past, and instead of sandy path to a beach with waving phragmites reeds, there was  a formal launching site…But I found not one  fisherman in sight on this warm sunny day after St Patricks Day.  

The boat launching site was guarded by a town official, an old gentleman about my age.   

“Where is everybody?”  I asked. 

“I’m right here every day” responded, the oldster, somewhat annoyed to be interrupted from watching a film on his iPhone.. He raised his glasses to his forehead then warned me: “So if you think you could launch a boat over there—-you should know you  need a town permit first.”

“No, I have no boat.  I was expecting to see a crowd of flounder fishermen down here on this lovely opening  day.”

“Flounder?. Ain’t been a winter flounder caught here in decades. I guess about 1980 we seen the last of ‘em. Where you been?”

I was absent from the area I admitted to my self as I walked away astounded. Where had all those “inexhaustible” supply of flounders gone? 

Gone the same way that other “sustainable” fish stocks have gone…to smaller and smaller fish, younger and caught at younger age until they simply disappear.  

In the 1950s and 1960s winter flounder were thought to be inexhaustible. They were a popular food fish for the recreational and commercial fisherman. Their stocks were claimed to be inexhaustable. And for the fisherman young and old, there were no rules about, size, numbers to keep, or season of he year.  Millions of fish were taken both commercially and for recreation in the 1980s, this once “sustainable” species collapsed by over 99% by 1980.  What a loss?

Atlantic Salmon once spawned in our local streams, they are gone too, The common eel once a common “pest fish” which if caught made a tangle of you lines and hooks when landed, its slipper surface and wiggly snake like shape and was almost impossible to contain—and very difficult to remove it from the bottom tackle. They ae gone too. 

The Atlantic Cod once were caught in local waters but are now only a faint memory of old timers.  

In 2022 the population of river herring or alewife in Long Island sound collapsed to only a quarter of its former population.  The river herring (alewife)  are forage fish which are prey for other major game and commercial fish species,

Almost all of these population collapse stories are glibly related to climate warming or rising ocean temperatures, permitting  authorities to ignore overfishing and blame the demise of fish stocks on something no one can control and no one has to respond to. 

But a recent story about another “ inexhaustible”, “suststainably harvested” forage fish in the far off North Pacific  made me think again about that nice square of tasty white fish I so enjoy at our local McDonald eatery. .  

YAHOO NEWS in : “Fish in American Fishsticks is fueling a fight over trawling in Alaska”.(10-9-26) reports on a major fish controversy with a species we are all very familiar with. The fish is the speckled skinned Pacific pollock (Gaddus chalcogrammus),  a 1 to 3 pound semipelagic member of the codfish family.  The pollock is blessed (or cursed)  with a very nutritious and  tasty snow white flesh which makes it very desirable as human food. If you think you have never encountered one, you would be wrong,  Yes pollock is not a local fish. It is caught in nets in for off Alaskan waters, filleted, frozen, then squared up to a good sandwich size,  zapped with microwaves, stuffed into a soft bun, smeared with tartar sauce and sold to you in a small box. The Pacific Pollock is not just a common American food fish. It also feeds millions in the UK where it is made into the infamous and unappetizing  “fish sticks”. In Germany it is consumed as white fish, and in Asia as faux crab meat (surimi) or faux lobster. Yahoo authors claim the pollock fishery is “the second largest fishery on Earth”. 

To exploit this excellent source of fish protein for human consumption about 3.3 billion pounds (1,500,000 metric tons) of  pollock are caught annually. Mc Donald’s uses tons of it for its Fish Filet, and other companies also exploit this fish stock as well. All of them claim the pollock fishery (worth about $500 million dollars annually) is sustainable.  (With that amount of money involved….it would be difficult to find someone to claim otherwise) . But perhaps some unbiased ecologists and marine scientists might.

But “sustainable”  is what was claimed about the Atlantic cod fisheries of the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia. It was sustainable until it collapsed in 1992 and fishing for cod was closed to all fishing with  the hope that the stocks will return.  But once a fish population has been decimated as a result of overfishing, other dynamics take over which make recovery less likely.. 

This author can state: catching 3.3 billion pounds of Alaskan Pollock (Gaddus chalcogrammus ) each year is very likely  NOT sustainable. The pollock is a major forage fish preyed upon by other species. Pollock live and die at the mid point of the oceanic food chain. They range in the water column from near the surface in the North Pacific to depths from 300 to1000 feet,

As fingerlings, pollock feed on algae and floating crustaceans (zooplankton) such as copepods and krill (euphausiids) and as they get larger they take shrimp, amphipods, squid, and small fish such as Asian smelt, herring, and even sand launces.  In turn, they are the major prey for for larger fish like  salmon, cod, halibut, and sea birds, as well as marine mammals such as toothed whales, seals, stellar sea lions and orcas.  

When pollock die, or are eaten by predators these wastes drift down to the sea bed where innumerable forms of benthic organisms consume them, benthic fish, detritus feeders, molluscs, sea bed invertebrates, and crustaceans (crabs).  When humans remove 3.3 billion pounds of pollock the other forms of life and fish species dependent upon pollock are  do not reproduce, and eventually expire as species. 

Removing billions of pounds of a forage fish— a foundation species like pollock—means less available  for species such as sea birds, salmon, crabs, halibut and orcas. Furthermore, such disruptions in the food chain place stress on the entire system. The entire ecology of the ocean is affected.  A harbinger of such distress is the fact that some very recent study of the population (biomass) of pollock in the eastern Bering Sea report a 30% drop in biomass. 

Although trawler fishing for pollock is less lethal than other forms of trawling—since pollock shoals swim at mid levels— trawlers drag their nets at these depths, not on the sea floor. U However pollock trawlers still catch millions of non target fish. Often these species are those which prey on pollock…salmon being one of the major species taken as “by-catch”. Once dragged up in a crowed net and spewed on the slimy deck the dead or dying salmon, halibut, etc.  are then dumped overboard as waste. In 2025 the Alaska pollock fishery is claimed to have caught and dumped 44,000 metric tons of by catch (or 100 fully loaded 747-8  jet planes worth of smelly fish) 

The salmon fisheries are declining each year in Alaska, in recent years the collapse has caused officials to close some regional fishing altogether. In 2024 Canada and USA instituted a seven year salmon fishing ban on the Yukon River.  Salmon fishermen complain that with fewer pollock available as prey the obvious reason is fewer prey species for them to feed on.  Government agencies (NOAA fisheries) which control how many fish can be harvested. These estimates are based on reports of fish landed (and the age and health of each species). These agencies often claim that the pollock population is stable and could sustain continued harvesting. In response to the declines in salmon NOAA biologists claim that it is climate warming is the cause of salmon decline ( but when there is no other palatable reason for anything bad these days anthropogenic warming gets the blame). But if that was so,,,pollock would be impacted by warmer water too. If that is true then both salmon fishing and pollock fishing should be limited.  

State and Federal government agencies are just that “agencies of the government”. They are sensitive to public opinion and government pressures.  They can not be trusted to make scientifically sound decisions. 

You can not take billions of pounds of food fish out of a system and not have a deleterious effect on the population of the fish in that system dependent upon that food. 

(Strange cases of dying sea mammals, orcas attacking sailboats, disappearing fish species all suggest environmental stress—though not related to the pollock fishery.)