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Climate Change Is Pushing Polar Bear Populations Into Conflict With Humans, Scientists Say

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26 Aug, 2024

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

Deep in Canada’s remote Brevoort Island, in the Nunavut territory, a radar technician was killed last week in a rare polar bear attack. Days earlier, a polar bear was spotted in Rankin Inlet, a remote, but fairly populated, Inuit settlement in the same territory. Experts warn that similar encounters with polar bears will likely become more common as climate change destroys their habitats and makes it more difficult to find food.

John Ussak, a resident of Rankin Inlet, said he was afraid the polar bear was stalking a popular summer fishing spot, and attempted to scare it with warning shots, according to The Guardian. “It took 20 shots before it thought about leaving,” he said. “I’ve never seen that before.” Days later, he reported another polar bear sighting.

“When I heard about what happened to that technician, I was shocked,” Ussak said. “We hardly used to see polar bears here in the past. But now we’ve had at least two in the last few weeks. It feels like there’s more bears up in that area – and they don’t seem afraid of people.”

A polar bear with a GPS tracker forages along the Svalbard coast in Spitsbergen, Norway on Aug. 23, 2022. Sven-Erik Arndt / Arterra / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Given the location and the fact that two bears were involved, Andrew Derocher, a professor of biology at the University of Alberta, told The Guardian that the attack on Brevoort Island was “unusual.” 

“The reality is, polar bears are unpredictable at the best of times,” Derocher said. “And with all of the environmental changes we’re seeing, they’re going to become more unpredictable.”

According to a 2017 study published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, polar bears are more likely to attack humans when they’re “nutritionally stressed” and are in “below-average body condition.” 

Nasittuq Corporation, which employed the technician who was killed, said “One of the animals was put down,” according to the The New York Times. The company added, “The safety and well-being of our employees is our highest priority, and we are deeply committed to ensuring a safe working environment.” The attack happened on an outpost of Nasittuq’s North Warning System, which protects North American airspace by detecting cruise missiles and aircraft, reported The New York Times.

According to Parks Canada, unlike other species, polar bears can see humans as a potential food source, making them extremely dangerous. In case of an encounter, it’s recommended to carry deterrents such as an air horn or bear spray, and playing dead is not effective. Instead, it’s recommended to back away slowly and prepare to stand your ground by making loud noises and prepare for a potential fight, aiming for the nose and head.

As climate change worsens, polar bear populations will decline as they need sea ice for habitation and for capturing seals, according to a 2020 research article published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“Back in the 1980s, polar bears would look like giant, fat sausages lying on the beach in the summer. But now, we’re seeing a population that is much leaner overall. And I suspect as food becomes more of a challenge… they’ll start entering [human] communities. Are those communities ready? Absolutely not. A handful have small polar bear patrol programs, but most have nothing” Derocher said.

The post Climate Change Is Pushing Polar Bear Populations Into Conflict With Humans, Scientists Say appeared first on EcoWatch.

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Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

As enterprises accelerate their AI investments, the energy demand of AI’s power-hungry systems is worrying both the organisations footing the power bills as well as those tasked with supplying reliable electricity. From large language models to digital twins crunching massive datasets to run accurate simulations on complex city systems, AI workloads require a tremendous amount of processing power.

Of course, at the heart of this demand are data centres, which are evolving at breakneck speed to support AI’s growing potential. The International Energy Agency’s AI and Energy Special Report recently predicted that data centre electricity consumption will double by 2030, identifying AI as the most significant driver of this increase.1

The IT leaders examining these staggering predictions are rightly zeroing in on improving the efficiency of these powerful systems. However, the lack of expertise in navigating these intricate systems, combined with the rapidity of innovative developments, is causing heads to spin. Although savvy organisations are baking efficiency considerations into IT projects at the outset, and are looking across the entire AI life cycle for opportunities to minimise impact, many don’t know where to start or are leaving efficiency gains on the table. Most are underutilising the multiple IT efficiency levers that could be pulled to reduce the environmental footprint of their IT, such as using energy-efficient software languages and optimising data use to ensure maximum data efficiency of AI workloads. Among the infrastructure innovations, one of the most exciting advancements we are seeing in data centres is direct liquid cooling (DLC). Because the systems that are running AI workloads are producing more heat, traditional air cooling simply is not enough to keep up with the demands of the superchips in the latest systems.

DLC technology pumps liquid coolants through tubes in direct contact with the processors to dissipate heat and has been proven to keep high-powered AI systems running safely. Switching to DLC has had measurable and transformative impact across multiple environments, showing reductions in cooling power consumption by nearly 90% compared to air cooling in supercomputing systems2.

Thankfully, the benefits of DLC are now also extending beyond supercomputers to reach a broader range of higher-performance servers that support both supercomputing and AI workloads. Shifting DLC from a niche offering to a more mainstream option available across more compute systems is enabling more organisations to tap into the efficiency gains made possible by DLC, which in some cases has been shown to deliver up to 65% in annual power savings3. Combining this kind of cooling innovation with new and improved power-use monitoring tools, able report highly accurate and timely insights, is becoming critical for IT teams wanting to optimise their energy use. All this is a welcome evolution for organisations grappling with rising energy costs and that are carefully considering total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT systems, and is an area of innovation to watch in the coming years.

In Australia, this kind of technical innovation is especially timely. In March 2024, the Australian Senate established the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence to examine the opportunities and impacts of AI technologies4. Among its findings and expert submissions was a clear concern about the energy intensity of AI infrastructure. The committee concluded that the Australian Government legislate for increased regulatory clarity, greater energy efficiency standards, and increased investment in renewable energy solutions. For AI sustainability to succeed, it must be driven by policy to set actionable standards, which then fuel innovative solutions.

Infrastructure solutions like DLC will play a critical role in making this possible — not just in reducing emissions and addressing the energy consumption challenge, but also in supporting the long-term viability of AI development across sectors. We’re already seeing this approach succeed in the real world. For example, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia has adopted DLC technology to support its demanding research workloads and, in doing so, has significantly reduced energy consumption while maintaining the high performance required for AI and scientific computing. It’s a powerful example of how AI data centres can scale sustainably — and telegraphs an actionable blueprint for others to follow.

Furthermore, industry leaders are shifting how they handle the heat generated by these large computing systems in order to drive further efficiency in AI. Successfully using heat from data centres for other uses will be a vital component to mitigating both overall energy security risks and the efficiency challenges that AI introduces. Data centres are being redesigned to capture by-product heat and use it as a valuable resource, rather than dispose of it as waste heat. Several industries are already benefiting from capturing data centre heat, such as in agriculture for greenhouses, or heating buildings in healthcare and residential facilities. This has been successfully implemented in the UK with the Isambard-AI supercomputer and in Finland with the LUMI supercomputer — setting the bar for AI sustainability best practice globally.

The message is clear: as AI becomes a bigger part of digital transformation projects, so too must the consideration for resource-efficient solutions grow. AI sustainability considerations must be factored into each stage of the AI life cycle, with solutions like DLC playing a part in in a multifaceted IT sustainability blueprint.

By working together with governments to set effective and actionable environmental frameworks and benchmarks, we can encourage the growth and evolution of the AI industry, spurring dynamic innovation in solutions and data centre design for the benefit of all.

1. AI is set to drive surging electricity demand from data centres while offering the potential to transform how the energy sector works – News – IEA
2. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/blog-post/2024/08/liquid-cooling-a-cool-approach-for-ai.html
3. HPE introduces next-generation ProLiant servers engineered for advanced security, AI automation and greater performance
4. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI

Image credit: iStock.com/Dragon Claws

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