BeanStem video transcripts https://wip.beanstem.org/ BeanStem creates fun, thoughtful videos on science and nature. The BeanStem videos feed includes the transcript, resources, and citations for every video. Mon, 22 Jun 2026 02:33:41 GMT en Lume v3.0.4 (Short) How to Build a Coral Skeleton https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-gbr-history/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-gbr-history/ Video

https://youtube.com/shorts/zNcwfF3wXOQ

Transcript

  • The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure in the world, spanning 1,400 miles of Australian coast and roughly the equivalent area of Japan. But how did it come to be that way?

  • Coral are an ancient animal, they've played a role in shaping coastal seabeds for about 500 million years (Zuravlev, 2001; Lee et al., 2015) -- they're older than trees and they're older than sharks!

  • Coral are really a collection of a bunch of individual coral polyps that each help build up the reef.

  • SHANE: Basically, coral will suck water into their stomachs, push out all the water and the things in that water that they don't need… except for… calcium and carbonate…and when the ions are squeezed together under their tissue, and all the water squeezed out, it creates a really thin layer of rock underneath it

  • Over time, that rock base builds into the reef structures that we see today.

  • Going back in time, just before we see apes evolve, the continent that Australia is on finally shifts northward enough to have a tropical climate that can support coral reefs. Thus, the Great Barrier Reef begins about 20 million years ago (Hamylton et al. 2022, pp. 104-107).

  • But, it wasn't until about 600,000 years ago that we start to see the reef structures that form the Great Barrier Reef today.

  • You see, it's not actually all one reef. Today, the Great Barrier reef is a system made up of over 2,900 individual reefs (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2006). It's not just one huge neighborhood, it's more like a city made up of a bunch of different neighborhoods.

  • As sea levels changed during the Ice Age, the Great Barrier Reef tried to keep up and follow the coastline as it moved, but it wasn't always able to and so the reef died out (Hamylton et al., 2022, pp. 124-130).

  • The reef we see today started growing around 8,500-9,000 years ago. It was able to build on top of the old structures made by the ancient reefs that were there thousands of years earlier (Hamylton et al., 2022, pp. 124-130; Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2006).

  • Together, they build a layered cake of chalk that's thousands of years old and still being built today!

  • That's the story of why --

References

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. (2006). Reef Facts for Tour Guides. Australian Government.

Hamylton, S. M., Hutchings, P., & Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. (2022). Coral Reefs of Australia. CSIRO PUBLISHING.

Lee, J.-H., Chen, J., & Chough, S. K. (2015). The middle–late Cambrian reef transition and related geological events: A review and new view. Earth-Science Reviews, 145, 66–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2015.03.002

Strauss, B. (2025, May 14). Prehistoric Life During the Miocene Epoch. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-miocene-epoch-1091366

ŽuravlevA. J. (2001). The ecology of the Cambrian radiation. Columbia Univ. Press.

]]> Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT (Short) IVF for coral works! https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ivf-for-coral/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ivf-for-coral/ Short

https://youtube.com/shorts/UHB-Kv4LFiY

Transcript

I have some great news! IVF for coral works!

Coral spawning season occurs in late summer, around August, and usually happens a few days after the full moon, but since 2016 coral have had some help from scientists during spawning season!

IVF stands for "in vitro fertilization," and for coral that means taking coral spawn and either fertilizing them in a lab or putting them in pools like these to promote reproduction. Once the offspring are released and attached to the reef, these younger IVF-bred coral are far more resilient to climate change!

There was a huge marine heat wave in the Caribbean in 2023, and the bad news is that about three-quarters of the native colonies of coral were bleached or paled. You see, coral is a symbiotic organism and it gets most of its nutrients (and its color) from algae that live within it, called "zooxanthellae." When a coral is stressed -- say by extreme temperatures -- it might get rid of that algae. And that's what bleaching and paling is.

But 90% of these younger, IVF-bred coral were totally fine! We don't know why yet, but one of the theories is that these younger coral are more exploratory, and they'll try different types of algae, some of which are more heat resistant.

Not only that, but we know that these IVF coral can reproduce in the wild -- because they did for the first time in 2021 in the Great Barrier Reef!

IVF is just one of several ways that scientists have found to help protect and repopulate our threatened coral populations, and it's great to hear that it's working just swimmingly!

If you'd like to learn more about coral restoration, check out my full length video on YouTube, and follow for more cool science!

]]> Wed, 14 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT (Video) This is what saving coral looks like https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-coralrestoration/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-coralrestoration/ Video

https://youtu.be/J4mePLG67qs

Transcript

Intro

I'm gonna get the bad news out of the way first so the rest of this video can be fun. I'll be quick, I swear, put 30 seconds on the clock!

Coral are bleaching and dying at an alarming rate due to pollution, warming oceans, and ocean acidification. We've lost about 50% of coral by area since the 1950s, and species extinctions are happening far faster than the natural rate.

While it's a complicated subject, let me be clear: there is no doubt that human activity is largely to blame for these trends.
But that's not news, and that's not what I want to talk about today. I'm going to talk with some of the people who are actually doing something about it, and I want to share some of the cool science that's going into their work to make it happen. So let's get started.

Definitions

Coral are neat little guys because they're not really 1 thing? They look like some weird cross between an animal, a rock, and a plant. And that's 'cause that's exactly what they are!

Coral is made of 3 parts: an animal, a rock, and a plant. The coral animal is a cnidarian, meaning it's related to sea anemones and jellyfish. The animal part is just the jelly-y bit on the outside.

The coral animal builds up mineral and rock to form a skeleton for itself, and that ultimately forms the solid foundation of the entire reef.

For the last part, tiny photosynthetic algae called "zooxanthellae" live inside the coral animal.

They're only… kind of? plants? But what's important is that they photosynthesize, and that ends up providing energy to the coral animal. The zooxanthellae are what give coral their color, and they could give you 32 points in Scrabble even without a double word square wink.

Sexual reproduction

Coral can reproduce in a bunch of different ways, which gives restoration scientists a lot to work with. But most importantly they can reproduce asexually or they can reproduce… sexually. Follow me ;)

Asexual reproduction is awesome! It means that coral can reproduce without sex! There are several ways they can do this, but the most useful to restoration scientists is fragmentation. I talked with Shane Wever from Reef Renewal USA about what that means.

SHANE: So fragmentation is an asexual reproduction methodology used by corals. You can think of it a lot like propagating a plant. When you cut off a small chunk of the plant, and you create that propable that you'll stick into potting mix. We do the same thing with corals except we cut off a little piece and we can stick it back on the reef.

BEN: Shane is the restoration program director for the upper keys. Reef Renewal has been building out coral nurseries and replanting coral for about 5 years now.

SHANE: Reef Renewal USA was started in 2019. Its focus is to make resilient corals for the future. Our goal is to outplant 100,000 corals a year.

BEN: But what does that work look like?

Well a lot of it is diving! They'll carefully break or saw off pieces of coral and then bring those to the nurseries. The nurseries are where the fragmented coral are grown, and Reef Renewal USA's workers or community volunteers will keep a close eye on them.

Shane told me about 2 different types of nurseries that they use

SHANE: When we propagate our corals, we grow them on a couple different structures. We have PVC trees, and we have VERNs, which are Vertical Rope Nurseries.

BEN: The PVC trees are exactly what they sound like -- they're tree-shaped structures made of PVC piping. There are two types of these.

SHANE: One is going to be hanging corals from these branches with fishing line. The other is going to have trays that are modular units that we can actually stick corals on where we can organize corals on these little frag plugs.

BEN: But that's a more traditional approach. The Vertical Rope Nurseries, or VERNs are being used more commonly these days

SHANE: Vertical Rope Nurseries have become our standard for growing branching corals. Basically, you put some buoys on the top of a rope, and the bottom of the rope is going to be secured to the sea floor. That rope is kinda spun up, and when you unspin that rope, you can stick a fragment of coral inside of it.

BEN: What's really cool about these VERNs is that they're able to move with the tides and waves! That's also why they're often preferred over the trees: The PVC trees might break during a storm or rough waters, but the VERNs will move with the water and help buffer out that stress

SHANE: When hurricanes or storms come through, it doesn't smash them around, and it makes these VERNs a lot more resilient. And it also gives them a thinner profile, so they take up less space in our nursery, which means- which means we can have more structures.

BEN: Coral restoration isn't easy work -- there are lots of early mornings, long days of diving, and you're kind of fighting against the environment

SHANE: You have to rely on good weather, you have to rely on the ocean having good conditions -- not just for the divers, but for the corals.

BEN: On top of the weather, there's also diseases, parasites, and…

SHANE: Unfortunately in 2023, we had one of the worst bleaching events that the Caribbean has ever seen

BEN: Wait, what's a bleaching event?

Remember the zooxanthellae? The algae that give coral its color? When coral get stressed, they'll get rid of their zooxanthellae. And that's. Bad.

SHANE: So without it, they would look white. And so when you see coral bleaching, that is a coral that has, from some stress event, lost all of its symbiotic algae, and it's starving itself.

BEN: Yeah, not good. Coral bleaching won't immediately kill the coral, but it will kill them pretty quickly if the stress continues.

The 2023 marine heat wave in the Caribbean was really bad -- some coastal temperature sensors reported water temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

SHANE: I think it was the worst that we've ever seen. And so years of restoration work was wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of coral that were stored in nurseries were gone.

BEN: It can be a tough job, with climate change seemingly working against you. But these guys don't give up.

SHANE: But, that didn't stop us. We, ya know, we pivoted, we made adjustments, we made changes. We were able to salvage some of those corals. In doing this, we have also been able to revolutionize some of our techniques to make our propagation more successful

We have a facility that used to create live rock and they're now creating a gene bank of all of the corals that we can salvage out on the reef, but also turning it into a propagation pipeline where they're generating hundreds and thousands of corals to then send down here to practitioners so we can really boost the effort and the capacity that we have to restore the reef at scale.

Sexual reproduction

BEN: Part of the problem with fragmentation is that the offspring don't have any genetic diversity. The new coral are clones of the old ones. You can expect them to perform about as well as the parent coral! The problem is, with the changing climate, the parent coral might not be doing so well.

HANNAH: The problem with this asexual reproduction method is, all of the new individuals that are created are genetically identical.

BEN: That's Hannah Ditzler. She's on the research team for SECORE international.

HANNAH: Corals are quite fragile, so if a disease comes through, a stress event, etc, all of those corals can get wiped out because they're genetically the exact same.

BEN: SECORE is an organization that's taking a different approach. SECORE literally stands for "sexual coral reproduction," and that's exactly what they're doing.

HANNAH: This is a different approach because we're creating a lot more genetic diversity, um, and it has the potential to basically breed in qualities that we want the corals to have.

BEN: This method allows for genetic diversity, and that might give these young coral a better chance at surviving different stressful events.

As a matter of fact, SECORE published a study just last year showing that their IVF-bred coral were far more resilient in the 2023 Caribbean marine heat wave!

BEN: I asked Hannah to tell me the story of coming to these findings

HANNAH: I think a lot of us during the 2023 mass bleaching event were really, really impacted by the state of the reefs. I know people were literally crying underwater watching these, ya know, giant [Acropora] palmata that have been around for tens to hundreds of years bleaching and reproducing. So we saw corals that were literally completely bleached actually reproducing and then pretty much dying. So, it was really, like, an emotional experience for a lot of us. And it was really hard to see, it was really hard to see. But, at the same time, we were seeing that basically corals right next to juvenile outplants that we had created were completely bleached and dying and recruits that we had outplanted were actually fine. We kind of started seeing this data in Mexico and Curacao, which are our 2 other main office locations, and so we decided to investigate with our partners that are all over the Caribbean. We had people go out and collect as much data as they could on the different recruits that were out there and try and get good comparisons of adult colonies, parent colonies, or other close corals that were in the area. We essentially found that the recruits were bleaching at a much lower rate than the adult colonies were, even, ya know, within meters of each other. So, colonies that were right next to each other that were juveniles were totally fine and these adult colonies were bleached and hit really hard by the warm waters.

BEN: So how does this technique differ from using fragmentation?

Well, fragmentation is pretty simple -- you break off a piece, plant it, and wait for it to grow. Assisted sexual reproduction is a lot more complex, but let's break it down into 4 main phases: Collection, Larvae, Attachment, and Planting -- or CLAP!

applause

FANCY BEN: Oh, thank you so much! Thank you!

BEN: In the collection phase, scientists are monitoring the reefs and can predict roughly when the coral will reproduce.

HANNAH: They basically release their gametes in a synchronous event based on full moon cycles and sunset times. So, all corals of one species will essentially time their reproduction so that it happens at the same time. We are basically able to predict when certain species of coral are going to reproduce within an hour or two on a specific set of days.

BEN: These scientists will go out on the water in the middle of the night to monitor for the synchronous spawning event, and when it finally happens, they'll be out there with nets and other equipment to collect the gametes

HANNAH: We will bring collectors and basically place them over the coral. They look like a little tent made out of mesh, and they have weights on the bottom so they sit on top of the coral, and then they have a little floating tube that sits on the top of them.

BEN: Once that's collected, we move onto the Larvae phase. The gametes are mixed together to allow them to fertilize, and then when the eggs hatch, the larvae are put back out in the ocean in what are called CRIBs

HANNAH: SECORE uses CRIBs, which are coral-rearing in-situ basins. They are essentially these big, blue, floating pools that go in the ocean, and they allow for half a million larvae to be settled at a time.

BEN: After that, it's more waiting and monitoring development. Part of what they're looking at is the fertilization rate.

HANNAH: Sometimes we can actually get fertilization rates of near 100%, which is great, and that's not something that would necessarily happen in the wild.

BEN: When the larvae get old enough, they turn into planulae. During this phase of their development, they start looking for a place to settle, bringing us to the Attachment phase.

HANNAH: They basically start swimming around in circles on the surface of the water, and then right when they're ready to settle, they will swim down to the bottom of whatever container they're in.

BEN: The planulae are looking for a hard surface to attach to. At this point, they're still in captivity, but they'll settle on a substrate and start growing into the animal/rock/plant combo we all know and love!

After more waiting and monitoring, these new recruits will be ready to outplant

HANNAH: Once they settle, we're able to check their development and their growth, and then either outplant them or keep them in captivity to rear until we decide to outplant them.

BEN: This technique does come with its own unique challenges and drawbacks

HANNAH: I mean, asexual propagation is much simpler. You're taking a coral, you're cutting it up, and you have 2 corals. And it produces a lot more biomass a lot more quickly than sexual reproduction ever will. So that's super important, ya know. Fish won't hang out on a reef that doesn't have any biomass.

HANNAH: Sexual reproduction, it's definitely not an easy way of doing things, um, but it is kind of the only option especially when we're, you know, losing genetic diversity on reefs at such an alarming rate. It's a much more lengthy process, it's a lot more technical, and a lot more difficult and requires huge amounts of man-hours and a lot of technical knowledge on how to do it. And so, while we are able to produce a lot of corals, they take a long time to grow to reproductive capacity and to have any real impact on a reef.

BEN: So in summary: Asexual reproduction is simple and well-proven. It can be done at-scale and it restores biomass quickly, BUT all the new coral are clones. Sexual reproduction is complicated and it takes a long time, but it can also be done at-scale and it's able to restore genetic diversity.

Looking forward

So what does the future look like? Well, there is a lot to be concerned about, but there is a lot of hope.

We're still losing coral, but the rate has slowed down a lot in the last 20 years.

We also got some really good news in 2021, when we saw these IVF-bred coral reproduce on for the first time on their own in the wild.

HANNAH: Curacao was actually able to see their- one of their earliest rounds of recruits reproduce. This basically shows that we're able to close the loop of sexual reproduction with the work that we're doing. That's hugely important, that's really the goal of all of this work is to restore reefs to a point where they are able to do it themselves, and we don't really need to be involved.

BEN: With all the good and the bad, how do our experts feel about the fate of coral?

SHANE: I think they have seen so much devastation in the last 50 years, um, but we don't know much devastation they've faced in the 100 or 200 years before that.

HANNAH: Yeah, that's, ya know, that's a tough question. Um. I think that it kind of depends on what's going on. We are doing the work that we're doing now because the reefs are so degraded that in some places, there are not enough parent colonies to successfully reproduce.

SHANE: The coral reefs of tomorrow aren't going to look like the coral reefs of today or the coral reefs of, ya know, my grandparents. As a community, locally, we need to look ourselves in the face and figure out how we can make our marine environments healthier. And as an entire country -- and even farther as an entire world -- we need to really look in the mirror and say "do we really want to be doing this to the food that we're eating? To the places that we're swimming? To, ya know, the- to the place that regulates our climate, honestly?"
HANNAH: But, I do have hope that we can do it, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this. And there are reefs out there still that are incredibly beautiful and healthy.

SHANE: I can't be helpless, right? I have to be hopeful because hope is all I got right now, and as long as there's still one coral out on the reef, I'm gonna keep on working as hard as I can to keep that coral healthy.

HANNAH: So I think there is a lot of hope, um, out there as well, and we're really learning a lot. So I have hope that, ya know, we can figure this out. It's not gonna be easy, and, you know, we need to continue to get funding, we need to continue having people dedicated to doing this, and we need to address the concerns of climate change. Ultimately, coral reefs are not going to continue to exist if we don't get a handle on climate change and… make sure that our oceans don't warm to 100 degrees like they did here in the Florida keys last- or 2 years ago.

SHANE: Community engagement is gonna be the most important thing. We have partnerships throughout the community, working with dive shops, recreational divers, and volunteers in so many capacities to really get the community as a whole to be a steward for the ocean. But more awareness and more engagement, and teaching the people that you love and the people around you about coral reefs is- is free, and is one of the most impactful things. Letting them fall in love with coral reefs is gonna be my best bet to making everybody else care about coral reefs the same way I do.

SHANE: You know, I can't help but have hope for coral reefs.

HANNAH: It's, you know. You gotta keep going. You gotta keep going…

BEN: So the future depends on us, it depends on you. We need to be funding science -- if governments won't do it, we need to be helping with volunteering and fundraising. Shane talked about community-building, getting your local community to care about the local environment and to care for it.

But also… governments do need to be doing it -- contact your representatives and make sure they support funding science foundations. I'm gonna leave a link to 5calls.org in the description below. They make it really easy to contact your representative about about specific issues.

There's so much work being done, and like Shane and Hannah said, we really need to keep it going. I'm really excited to see what we can do together moving forward!

If you'd like to learn more or get involved, there are plenty of organizations in the US to donate to or volunteer with. YOU can be the one to go out on the reefs, dive, and plant new coral, that's so freaking cool! I'll link a few of these organizations in the description below.

Outro

Thank you so much for watching! I had a blast working on this video getting to talk with these experts who are clearly so passionate about what they do. Huge thank you to the teams at SECORE, Reef Renewal USA, and the Tennessee Aquarium for being so generous with their time.

If you'd like to see more of this, you can support me in all the usual ways - like, comment, subscribe - OR you can join my brand new Patreon! I'm launching my Patreon with this video, which can get you early access to videos, a look behind the scenes, and occasionally blog posts about just my video creation process and what I'm working on at the time. Contributions start at $1 a month, and every little bit really does help.

But that's enough of a sales pitch! The link for that is below, along with links to the full transcript and bibliography. Thank you again so much for watching, and I'll see ya in the next one!

Attributions

B-roll

Music

  • Russian River: Dan Henic/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Gonna be gone: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • chill background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • Simple step: Slenderbeats/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Half Past Murder Time: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • High noon: TrackTribe/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • Mysterious Things: kjartan_abel/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • April Showers music: kjartan_abel/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • Mood ring: National Sweetheart/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Candy Apple Town: National Sweetheart/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

Video credits

  • Ben Rankin (Host, research, writing, editing, graphics)

  • Amanda Dyar (Camera, script review, video review, special thanks)

  • David Crompton (Fact checking)

  • Shane Wever (Interviewee, Reef Renewal USA)

  • Hannah Ditzler (Interviewee, SECORE International)

  • Caden McGee (Video review)

  • Austin Lord (Video review)

References

Coral Diseases & Health Consortium. (n.d.). Coral Reproduction. Coral Disease & Health Consortium. https://cdhc.noaa.gov/coral-biology/coral-reproduction/

Eddy, T. D., Lam, V. W. Y., Reygondeau, G., Cisneros-Montemayor, A. M., Greer, K., Palomares, M. L. D., Bruno, J. F., Ota, Y., & Cheung, W. W. L. (2021). Global decline in capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services. One Earth, 4(9), 1278–1285.

Goreau, T. J. F., & Hayes, R. L. (2024). 2023 Record marine heat waves: coral reef bleaching HotSpot maps reveal global sea surface temperature extremes, coral mortality, and ocean circulation changes. Oxford Open Climate Change, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgae005

Harrison, P. L., dela Cruz, D. W., Cameron, K. A., & Cabaitan, P. C. (2021). Increased Coral Larval Supply Enhances Recruitment for Coral and Fish Habitat Restoration. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.750210

Miller, M. W., Mendoza Quiroz, S., Lachs, L., Banaszak, A. T., Chamberland, V. F., Guest, J. R., Gutting, A. N., Latijnhouwers, K. R. W., Sellares-Blasco, R. I., Virdis, F., Villalpando, M. F., & Petersen, D. (2024). Assisted sexual coral recruits show high thermal tolerance to the 2023 Caribbean mass bleaching event. PLOS ONE, 19(9), e0309719. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309719

NOAA NESDIS. (2023, August 18). Extreme Ocean Temperatures Are Affecting Florida’s Coral Reef. National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/extreme-ocean-temperatures-are-affecting-floridas-coral-reef

Thirukanthan, C. S., Azra, M. N., Lananan, F., Sara’, G., Grinfelde, I., Rudovica, V., Vincevica-Gaile, Z., & Burlakovs, J. (2023). The Evolution of Coral Reef under Changing Climate: A Scientometric Review. Animals, 13(5), 949. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13050949

]]> Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT (Video) A salad full of glitter | Microplastics https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-microplastics/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-microplastics/ Video

https://youtu.be/neR4ZuuCywE

Transcript

Intro

It's been said that every piece of plastic that's ever been produced still exists. In your home. In an office. On the side of a highway. Neighborhood streets. In rivers that lead to the ocean.

And while it's basically impossible to really verify that claim, scientists estimate that of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic that we've produced, 6.3 billion metric tons have ended up as waste. About 9% of that has been recycled, but the rest has been incinerated or just discarded (Geyer et al., 2017)

We've known that this is a problem for a while now, but we're only just starting to realize how much of a problem it is. See, because you and I, we're thinking of straws in turtles' noses and seagulls choking on plastic rings, but there's a more alarming side to the plastic pollution epidemic, and it's reached every corner of the earth.

From your home to remote forests, from the top of mount Everest to the bottom of the Mariana trench, we're finding them everywhere: microplastics

What are microplastics?

To know what we're up against, we first have to define them. So what are microplastics?

Microplastics are any piece of plastic that are between 5 millimeters and 1 micrometer in size. So we're talking on the scale of anything from a pencil eraser down to smaller than a human hair.

Technically, any piece of plastic smaller than 1 micrometer is a nanoplastic, but for the sake of this video, we'll just consider anything less than 5 millimeters a microplastic.

And that's kind of a whole thing -- because we've known about microplastics for a while now, but a lot of research and studies are still pretty new, so a lot of standards and definitions haven't been defined yet.

There is, however, a broad distinction between "primary" and "secondary" microplastics.

Primary microplastics are made to be microplastics. Most commonly, this is used in industrial air blasting. A bunch of tiny microbeads are added to the air to increase scrubbing power. But until the mid 2010s, microplastics were added to your toothpaste as well for the same reason -- mixing in a bunch of microbeads into toothpaste makes it more abrasive and helps scrub your teeth clean.

As a matter of fact, 9 out of 10 cosmetic products have microplastics in them -- shaving cream, hair care, lotions, facial scrubs -- you name it! They don't just increase scrubbing power: small, round, squishy microplastics are mixed in with gels and lotions to make them feel smoother (Plastic Soup Foundation, 2022; Simon, 2022).

Secondary microplastics aren't intentionally small, they're just pieces of larger plastic products that have broken down. Plastic bags, bottles, and packaging shed pieces of themselves as flakes or strands, and then they just… don't go away.

An odyssey of microplastics

And that's the problem. Plastics are bioresistent and biopersistent, meaning there are very few natural processes that degrade plastics

When you try to break it apart, it's like a Minecraft slime: it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces of itself.

And as they break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, they're tumbling through their environment and they're collecting whatever pathogens and pollutants are there. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, the longer a piece of microplastic tumbles through its environment, the more crap it collects (Enyoh et al., 2019; Simon, 2022).

Scientists have found that microplastic pollution accumulates a wide variety of things: pharmaceuticals like ibuprofen, heavy metals like lead and mercury, and forever chemicals like PFASs. It's such a thriving little cocktail of bad chemicals and microbes that scientists have coined the term "plastisphere" to describe the microbiome that builds on plastic (Picó et al., 2020; Simon, 2022).

A salad full of glitter and plastic

After tumbling through the environment and collecting a bunch of pollutants, microplastic pollution most commonly ends up in our waterways and the ocean, where it then infiltrates the food chain.

In the ocean, phytoplankton form the base of the food chain. Phytoplankton are tiny organisms that photosynthesize like plants to get their energy. Primary consumers like small fish and crustaceans eat the phytoplankton and then predators like larger fish eat the smaller fish and crustaceans.

The problem is that the primary consumers will confuse microplastics for phytoplankton and eat those instead

The first problem with that is that the plastic obviously doesn't have any nutritional value, but it makes them feel full. It's like eating a salad that's partially glitter and plastic beads. It may fill you up quicker, but the plastic will just go right through you. We see fish that eat plastic don't end up growing as large as they should (Simon, 2022)

The second problem is that they're eating a salad full of glitter and plastic beads. It may look pretty, but it's certainly not good for you, especially after those microplastics have accumulated all those chemicals and pollutants that we talked about earlier.

And the third problem is that microplastics entering the lowest point in the food chain work their way up to the highest point. Not only have scientists found plastic in baby fish (Gove et al., 2019) -- which can stunt their growth or flat out kill them -- but we've found them in the excrement and digestive tracts of larger predators, including whales and walruses in the arctic (Carlsson et al., 2021; Lusher et al., 2015).

A concerning picture

But you might be eating your own glitter and plastic bead salad. So much food, including produce from grocery stores and supermarkets, is wrapped in plastic. We know that microplastics get into food through plastic packaging. That is, if it hasn't already been contaminated during its production (Kosuth et al., 2018). This "clean" plastic hasn't had the time to accumulate a plastisphere like plastic pollution, but it can still be problematic because of the chemicals they're made from.

I want to give a disclaimer here: we don't really know the full effects that plastics and microplastics have on our health yet. But there is a lot that we do know, and it paints a concerning picture.

We know that some of the most common chemicals added to plastics -- phtalates and bisphenols especially -- are known as "endocrine disrupting chemicals," or EDCs. These EDCs throw off the hormone balance in humans, and can cause problems with your heart, brain, immune system, reproductive system -- it's a mess (Ong et al., 2020; Simon, 2022; Williams & Rangel-Buitrago, 2022).

We know that we're eating plastics, either because they were in the animals we consumed or because it leeched in through the packaging and production process. (Kosuth et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2021)

We know that we're drinking plastics, from a 2017 report that found plastic in 83% of tap water samples around the world (Kosuth et al., 2017). That report indicated that plastic contamination was worst in North America.

We know that we're inhaling microplastics in the very air around us. Indoor environments can have up to 1,000 microplastic per gram of dust in the air, and one study estimates that adults inhale about 20 microplastics per day (Zhu et al., 2022).

Whether by inhaling or eating or something else, we know that plastics get into our blood, where they may be leaching chemicals and heavy metals straight into our bloodstream (Simon, 2022; Song et al., 2024; Zuo et al., 2024)

Some scientists have speculated that microplastics could be contributing to the rises we're seeing in cardiac and neurological health issues, although there's no direct link for that right now (Simon, 2022).

The majority of these microplastics in the air come from our clothing -- a significant portion of clothing is made from polyester and nylon, which are plastics.

Doing just a single load of laundry releases tons of microplastic fibers into the air and our sewage systems (Kacprzak & tijing, 2022; Simon, 2022).

But think of how many other things in your home are made of plastic. Even things like flooring, upholstery, and paints are made from plastics, and they shed particles every time you use them.

Outdoors is a lot better, but it's still not perfect. Urban environments tend to have less than 100 microplastics per gram of [dust in the] air, compared to the over 1,000 of indoor air (Zhu et al., 2022). Microplastics in the atmosphere come from countless sources. Wear and tear from our clothing is part of it, but a huge source is tires. As your tire tread wears down, it's flinging millions of tiny particles of rubber into the atmosphere, contributing to the almost 4 billion pounds of rubber microplastics that the US generates per year from driving (Kole et al., 2017).

We also know that a common thread seems to be that exposure is higher for children and babies. Plastic baby bottles are a huge source of this, but children are also just lower to the ground, where dust is being stirred up and settling (Zhu et al., 2022). Not even to mention that microplastics are being passed on to newborn babies from their mothers (Sun et al., 2024; Simon, 2022).

This is getting out of hand, these microplastics are coming from everywhere, we don't know how they affect us yet, how can we stop this?

A way out

So how can we stop this?

The truth is, on a personal level, you just can't avoid exposure to microplastics. But the good news is there are things you can do to reduce your personal exposure.

Cut out single-use plastics as best you can, replace plastic tools in your home with ones made from natural materials like wood, wear long-lasting clothes made from natural materials like wool and cotton, vacuum and clean regularly (Kacprzak & Tijing, 2022). You can get a HEPA air filter to help keep the air in your home clean, or getting an aftermarket filter for your washing machine can help keep pollution out of our waterways.

But all of this is just picking glitter out of the salad, we should really just… stop putting glitter and plastic beads in the salad.

This is going to take global collaboration and policy to really fix.

A geological indicator

Plastic is so ubiquitous in the environment that it's been suggested as a geological indicator of human activity. Plastic production is only set to increase unless something changes, and about half of that new plastic production will end up in landfills or in the environment. That's only going to make our microplastics problem exponentially worse (Williams & Rangel-Buitrago, 2022).

So what policy should we be enacting?

We can incentivize the development of technology as part of the solution. There are already some really cool technologies being developed.

Bioplastics currently make up a tiny portion of global plastic production, but it is a growing sector. Bioplastics are plastics that are made from carbon sources other than fossil fuels, or that are biodegradable (Williams & Rangel-Buitrago, 2022). Of those two, biodegradable is obviously preferred, but even that has its caveats, so it's only really a small part of the total solution.

Another solution is barriers to help filter litter and pollution out of waterways before they reach a larger body of water. A great solution here comes from a Dutch company by the name of The Great Bubble Barrier. They have deployed an incredibly simple solution to pollution filtering. They run a PVC pipe with holes in it under a waterway and then just pump air through the pipes. The bubbles allow fish and ships to pass through, but they catch and redirect floating pollution into collection bins (Williams & Rangel-Buitrago, 2022; https://thegreatbubblebarrier.com).

Another thing would be improving the treatment technology for wastewater and drinking water plants around the world. That could help filter out microplastics from laundry and drinking water. We actually already have the technology to significantly improve treatment in these sectors, but we're just not investing in making it happen, partially because of larger, systemic issues of inequity (Simon, 2022).

But one of the coolest solutions that you may of heard of is "plastic-eating microbes." That's not quite accurate, though -- scientists are genetically engineering microbes to produce an enzyme that breaks down plastic into its parts (Fohler et al., 2024). There are a lot of issues facing this before it can be deployed at scale, but this is one of the most promising options for the future, in my opinion, because the enzyme breaks plastic down so cleanly that it can be recycled with almost no loss in quality.

A call to action

But all of these solutions are at best flex taping together a boat that was sawed in half. What we really need to do is take the saw away from the maniac who's cutting boats in half. We need to decide as a society to hold corporations accountable. In 2022, the US alone just flat-out gave the plastic and oil industry $3 billion in subsidies, but they also undercharged them for environmental costs to the tune of $757 billion (Black, 2023).

And that trend extends globally, resulting in $7 trillion in total subsidies for oil and plastic in 2022 (Black, 2023).

We're at least keeping glitter out of the salad now, but let's stop the people who keep spilling it in.

So we need to be banning single-use plastics, placing restrictions on plastic packaging, hold the plastic industry responsible for the entire lifecycle of their product. The plastic companies aren't just gonna fix the problem on their own, they're too busy making money. So we need to be coming up with solutions or, even better, forcing these plastic companies to solve the problem they've created. They can't just get away with filling up our rivers, ourforests, and our own bodies with plastic.

In a more and more divided world, this is not a partisan issue, so we need to be getting involved in our local and federal politics and pressuring our representatives to pass policies that help everyone out.

Outro

At this point, it's hard to imagine a life without plastic. Even though we got by just fine without plastic 100 years ago, I don't see us going back to that. And after all, plastic has plenty of merits -- plastics have saved countless lives in its various uses in the medical industry, and it's made access to technology more equitable.

But we can't keep doing this. Sustainability isn't about going back to the 1900s, it's about finding a compromise between modern convenience, and not destroying our own health and the planet. We can find a middle ground, but it's going to be a world that doesn't maximize convenience.

Another big barrier to plastic policy that we've found is just lack of public awareness of the issue (Kacprzak & Tijing, 2022). So share this video, talk about microplastics with your friends. If this video made you uncomfortable at just much we're surrounded by plastic, take that and use it to help us change, help us build a more sustainable world.

A lot of this video was based on the book A Poison Like No Other by Matt Simon, so if you're interested in learning more, I highly recommend checking it out. It goes way more into detail than I was able to here. The link for that will be available in the description below

Thank you very much for watching. As always, all references and a full transcript will be available at beanstem.org, linked in the description below. And thank you very much, have a great day!

Attributions

B-roll

Music

  • Russian River: Dan Henic/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Gonna be gone: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • chill background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • Simple step: Slenderbeats/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Half Past Murder Time: Kjartan Abel/freesound (CC BY 4.0)

  • High noon: TrackTribe/YouTube Audio Library (YouTube Audio Library License)

  • Background music: ZHRØ/Freesound (CC BY 4.0)

Video credits

  • Ben Rankin (Host, research, writing, editing, graphics)

  • Amanda Dyar (Script review, video review, special thanks)

  • Sarah Buckberry (Camera)

  • Austin Lord (Camera)

  • Laura Eye (Video review, special thanks)

  • Nick Bolles (Video review)

  • Megan P (Camera)

  • Brent Wilson (Script review)

  • David Crompton (Special thanks)

  • Simone Schuster (Script review, fact checking)

  • Caden McGee (Script review, video review)

References

Black, S. (2023). IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update. IMF Working Papers, 2023(169), 1. https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400249006.001

Carlsson, P., Singdahl-Larsen, C., & Lusher, A. L. (2021). Understanding the occurrence and fate of microplastics in coastal Arctic ecosystems: The case of surface waters, sediments and walrus (Odobenus rosmarus). Science of the Total Environment, 792, 148308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148308

Enyoh, C. E., Verla, A. W., Verla, E. N., Ibe, F. C., & Amaobi, C. E. (2019). Airborne microplastics: a review study on method for analysis, occurrence, movement and risks. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 191(11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7842-0

Fohler, L., Lukas Leibetseder, Cserjan-Puschmann, M., & Striedner, G. (2024). Manufacturing of the highly active thermophile PETases PHL7 and PHL7mut3 using Escherichia coli. Microbial Cell Factories, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-024-02551-6

Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). Production, Use, and Fate of All Plastics Ever Made. Science Advances, 3(7). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700782

Gove, J. M., Whitney, J. L., McManus, M. A., Lecky, J., Carvalho, F. C., Lynch, J. M., Li, J., Neubauer, P., Smith, K. A., Phipps, J. E., Kobayashi, D. R., Balagso, K. B., Contreras, E. A., Manuel, M. E., Merrifield, M. A., Polovina, J. J., Asner, G. P., Maynard, J. A., & Williams, G. J. (2019). Prey-size plastics are invading larval fish nurseries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(48), 24143–24149. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1907496116

Kacprzak, S., & Tijing, L. D. (2022). Microplastics in indoor environment: Sources, mitigation and fate. Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, 10(2), 107359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jece.2022.107359

Kole, P. J., Löhr, A. J., Van Belleghem, F., & Ragas, A. (2017). Wear and Tear of Tyres: A Stealthy Source of Microplastics in the Environment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(10), 1265. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101265

Kosuth, M., Mason, S. A., & Wattenberg, E. V. (2018). Anthropogenic contamination of tap water, beer, and sea salt. PLOS ONE, 13(4), e0194970. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194970

Kosuth, M., Wattenberg, E., Mason, S., Tyree, C., & Morrison, D. (2017). Synthetic Polymer Contamination in Global Drinking Water. In Orbmedia.org. Orb Media. https://orbmedia.org/stories/Invisibles_final_report

Lusher, A. L., Hernandez-Milian, G., O’Brien, J., Berrow, S., O’Connor, I., & Officer, R. (2015). Microplastic and macroplastic ingestion by a deep diving, oceanic cetacean: The True’s beaked whale Mesoplodon mirus. Environmental Pollution, 199, 185–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2015.01.023

Maurya, A., Bhattacharya, A., & Khare, S. K. (2020). Enzymatic Remediation of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)–Based Polymers for Effective Management of Plastic Wastes: An Overview. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2020.602325

OECD. (2024). Policy Scenarios for Eliminating Plastic Pollution by 2040. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/76400890-en

Ong, H.-T., Samsudin, H., & Soto-Valdez, H. (2020). Migration of endocrine-disrupting chemicals into food from plastic packaging materials: an overview of chemical risk assessment, techniques to monitor migration, and international regulations. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2020.1830747

Picó, Y., Alvarez-Ruiz, R., Alfarhan, A. H., El-Sheikh, M. A., Alshahrani, H. O., & Barceló, D. (2020). Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, personal care products and microplastics contamination assessment of Al-Hassa irrigation network (Saudi Arabia) and its shallow lakes. Science of the Total Environment, 701, 135021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135021

Plastic Soup Foundation. (2022). Plastic: The hidden beauty ingredient. Beat the Microbead. https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Plastic-TheHiddenBeautyIngredients.pdf

Prabhakar, M. (2020, August 20). Myth Buster: Toothpaste still contains microplastics! Beat the Microbead. https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/myth-buster-toothpaste-still-contains-plastic-ingredients/

Simon, M. (2022). A Poison Like No Other. Island Press.

Song, S., Fransien van Dijk, Vasse, G. F., Liu, Q., Gosselink, I. F., Weltjens, E., Alex, Marina, Bos, S., Li, C., Stoeger, T., Rehberg, M., Kutschke, D., Gail, Wu, X., Willems, S. H., Devin, Kooter, I. M., Spierings, D., & René Wardenaar. (2024). Inhalable Textile Microplastic Fibers Impair Airway Epithelial Differentiation. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 209(4), 427–443. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202211-2099oc

Sun, H., Su, X., Mao, J., Liu, Y., Li, G., & Du, Q. (2024). Microplastics in maternal blood, fetal appendages, and umbilical vein blood. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 287, 117300–117300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.117300

Thompson, R. C., Courtene-Jones, W., Boucher, J., Pahl, S., Raubenheimer, K., & Koelmans, A. A. (2024). Twenty years of microplastics pollution research—what have we learned? Science, 386(6720). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2746

Williams, A. T., & Rangel-Buitrago, N. (2022). The past, present, and future of plastic pollution. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 176(113429), 113429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.113429

Zhang, J., Wang, L., Trasande, L., & Kannan, K. (2021). Occurrence of Polyethylene Terephthalate and Polycarbonate Microplastics in Infant and Adult Feces. Environmental Science & Technology Letters, 8(11), 989–994. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00559

Zhu, J., Zhang, X., Liao, K., Wu, P., & Jin, H. (2022). Microplastics in dust from different indoor environments. Science of the Total Environment, 833, 155256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155256

Zuo, C., Li, Y., Chen, Y., Jiang, J., Qiu, W., & Chen, Q. (2024). Leaching of heavy metals from polyester microplastic fibers and the potential risks in simulated real-world scenarios. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 461, 132639–132639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.132639

]]> Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT (Short) AI water consumption https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ai-water-consumption/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ai-water-consumption/ Whoops, looks like ChatGPT got too thorsty and drank all the water in California

Watch the short here: https://youtube.com/shorts/0dUTFR-eCAA

Additional context

This is a very complex topic, and I didn't have the time to research nor write about all of it. If you're here, it means you're probably looking for extra context, so here are the main things I want to clarify:

  • The 12.3 billion litres for power generation is a rough estimate. A lot of these tech companies produce some of their own power, and almost all of them technically run on "100% renewable energy" (but that's mostly accomplished through Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) and other things that make it work on paper, but it's not literally true). It also uses some averages from Jin et al. (2019), some of which have broad data points (namely hydropower).

  • All power generation plants and all data centers are different. They all have different means of cooling, which means different rates of water consumption. But my point for this video isn't to get into the nuance, it's to point out that in the big picture, this is a problem and will continue to be for the foreseeable future unless we push back.

  • Funny enough, I'm not actually 100% on where I stand with AI. I don't like it under capitalism because it's hyper-exploitative of artists and the environment, but I'm not totally sure if I believe it's "plagiarism." What I do know is that most AI models (that get used) were trained on data without the artists' consent, and I am NOT a fan of that.

  • Minor thing, I accidentally referenced the same EPRI article as both 1 and 8 in the video. That's all.

Transcript

  • California is on fire again, and this time, part of the blame may be on AI and ChatGPT.

  • You may have heard some talk about how AI uses so much water, but how does it do that? Why is the computer so thirsty? I thought water was bad for computers?

  • The answer is that water is consumed at multiple steps in the process of plagiarizing the hard work of artists (Wang, 2024)!

  • But even before Chat GPT steals my juicy tumblr Supernatural fanfic, water is consumed in manufacturing all the GPUs and other hardware that AI servers need to function.

  • Then, once the servers are up and running, most large datacenters have water cooling towers on the roof that consume lots of water. These work by basically transferring the heat energy from the servers into the water and letting it evaporate off (Li et al., 2023; Mytton, 2021).

  • Inside the datacenter, the computers turn electricity into plagiarism; and generating that electricity takes water too! Most electricity is generated by steam generators. Fossil fuels are burned to heat water and generate steam. The steam rises and spins turbines to generate power, but then the steam needs to be cooled down. So a lot of facilities use water to cool the water.

  • A lot of plants use "once-through" cooling systems, where they pull cool water from a river or lake, but then they release that water back after it's absorbed some of the heat. These systems have high water "withdraw," but they actually have very low water "consumption."

  • The steam that's in the loop is considered "consumed," but that's not much because it's in a closed loop, so it's recirculated. Most of the consumption comes from plants that use evaporative cooling-- that's like the cooling towers on the data centers (Jin et al., 2019; Rathi, 2018; Union of Concerned Scientists, 2010).

  • But that's just steam generators. Big picture, how much water and electricity does AI consume, and how might that have affected the California wildfires?

  • Well, per-request, AI uses about TEN TIMES as much electricity as a regular Google search, and that's only for LLMs like ChatGPT. AIs that generate /images, video, and music take WAY more than that (EPRI, 2024).

  • For every watt of electricity used, heat is generated that you need water to cool. That's why energy usage and water usage are so tightly correlated.

  • And both of them are growing pretty quickly at every major tech company, with Google leading the way, consistently growing their usage of water and electricity about 15-20% year-over-year (Apple, 2024; Google, 2024; Meta, 2024; Microsoft, 2024)

  • It's not hard to draw a line between the rise in AI and these growing numbers, but Google themselves even attribute a lot of this growth to expansion of AI services (Google, 2024).

  • Bringing it back to California, we can use math and numbers to estimate that data centers in California consumed about 12.3 BILLION liters of water from energy production alone, so that's not counting server cooling.

  • And this comes during a time when water scarcity is increasing and much of the western US is in moderate and severe drought conditions.

  • With all that dry air and soil, that's why [loop] California is on fire again…

Resources

Charts

Tech company water consumption per year

Tech company electricity consumption per year

Code

Here's my messy code that I used to calculate the water usage of California data centers

california_gwh = {
    # gwh
    "coal": 4981,
    "gas": 102774,
    "nuclear": 26272,
    "hydro": 32886+4988,
    "geothermal": 13567,
    "solar": 47869,
    "wind": 31399
}

water_per_mwh = {
    # litres per mwh
    "coal": 2220,
    "gas": 598,
    "nuclear": 2290,
    "hydro": 4961,
    "geothermal": 1022,
    "solar": 330,
    "wind": 43
}

def calc_water_consumption(energy_in_twh, state_power, water_rates):
    """
    Take in stats (state_power = power generation sources for a given state, water_rates = water consumption rate (litres per mwh) for each type of generation)
    and TWh and calculate how much water (litres) is consumed by producing that much energy
    """
    ret = {
        "twh": energy_in_twh,
        "total": 0
    }
    energy_in_mwh = energy_in_twh * 1000 * 1000
    
    state_power_sum = sum(state_power.values())
    state_power_prc = {}
    
    for name, value in state_power.items():
        state_power_prc[name] = value / state_power_sum

    wc_per_mwh = 0
    prc_accounted_for = 0
    for name, wc_rate in water_rates.items():
        this_prc = state_power_prc.get(name, 0)
        prc_accounted_for += this_prc * 100
        ret[name] = this_prc * wc_rate * energy_in_mwh
        
        wc_per_mwh += this_prc * wc_rate

    missing_types = (set(state_power.keys()) - set(water_rates.keys()))
    if len(missing_types) > 0:
        print(f"WARNING: {missing_types} are not fully accounted for")
    print(f"{prc_accounted_for:.2f}% of state energy accounted for")

    ret["total"] = (energy_in_mwh * wc_per_mwh)
    
    return ret

def pretty_wc(wc_from_energy):
    total = wc_from_energy.pop('total')
    twh = wc_from_energy.pop('twh')

    print()
    print(f"Calculated values for {twh} TWh")
    
    for name, value in wc_from_energy.items():
        print(f"Litres from {name}: \t\t{value / (1000**2):.2f} million")

    print(f"---------------\nLitres total: \t\t{total / (1000**2):.2f} million")
    
pretty_wc(calc_water_consumption(9.31, california_gwh, water_per_mwh))

Image credits

References

(3) Apple. (2024). Apple Environmental Progress Report. In Apple. Apple. https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Progress_Report_2024.pdf

(6) California Energy Commission. (2023). 2023 Total System Electric Generation. California Energy Commission. https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2023-total-system-electric-generation

(1, 8) EPRI. (2024). Powering Intelligence: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Energy Consumption. In EPRI. EPRI. https://www.epri.com/research/products/000000003002028905

(2) Google. (2024). Google 2024 Environmental Report. In Google Sustainability. Google Sustainability. https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2024-environmental-report.pdf

(7) Jin, Y., Behrens, P., Tukker, A., & Scherer, L. (2019). Water use of electricity technologies: A global meta-analysis. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 115, 109391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2019.109391

Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M., & Ren, S. (2023). Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271

(4) Meta. (2024). 2024 Sustainability Report. In atmeta.com. Meta. https://sustainability.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Meta-2024-Sustainability-Report.pdf

(5) Microsoft. (2024). 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report. In Microsoft. Microsoft. https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/microsoft/msc/documents/presentations/CSR/2024-Environmental-Sustainability-Report-Data-Fact.pdf

Mytton, D. (2021). Data centre water consumption. Npj Clean Water, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-021-00101-w

Rathi, A. (2018, August 8). You probably have no idea just how much water is needed to produce electricity. Quartz. https://qz.com/1351279/the-hidden-water-footprint-of-fossil-fuel-and-nuclear-power-plants

Union of Concerned Scientists. (2010, September 30). How it Works: Water for Electricity. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-it-works-water-electricity. Updated 9 Nov, 2017.

Wang, Z. (2024, January 22). How AI Consumes Water: The unspoken environmental footprint. Deepgram. https://deepgram.com/learn/how-ai-consumes-water

]]> Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT (Video) Ghost sharks. That's it, that's the title. https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-ghost-sharks/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-ghost-sharks/ Video

https://youtu.be/LhU6bJpF8Lw

Transcript

  • This is a chimera! The chimera is a Greek mythical beast with the body of a lion, a snake for a tail, and a goat's head on its back... for some reason. In Greek mythology, it's a sibling of Cerberus and the hydra. The word has come to mean, in modern times, any creature that's a combination of animals.

  • These are Chimaeras! They just... have an extra "a" in the name.

  • Chimaeras are a class of fish that live deep under water. They're related to rays and sharks, and they're perfect to learn about for spoopy month because they're also called SPOOKFISH and GHOST SHARKS!

  • Like sharks and rays, their skeletons are made completely out of cartilage, and like rays, they have a long, whip-like tail. That snake-like tail might be why they're called "chimeras" -- like the snake tail on the greek chimera.

  • There are 3 types of ghost sharks, and they're all distinguished by their snoot! There are long-nosed, plow-nosed, and short-nosed chimaeras (Finucci et al., 2020).

  • But all of their snoots are used for sensing electric signals in the water! Even with their massive eyes, there's not much light to see at about 1000 m below the ocean's surface where they live. To make up for that, they have electroreceptors in their snouts that help with navigation, finding food, and avoiding predators (Bottaro, 2022).

  • These electroreceptors are called Ampullae of Lorenzini, which... I think I fought that guy in DND once

  • DM: As you guys turn the corner, you see the back of a man wearing a large cloak. He slowly turns. His skin is pale and he bears his fangs -- you recognize him: Ampullae of Lorenzini, level 10 vampire wizard! Roll for initiative!

  • Players: Aw man! rolling dice

  • Player 1: Nat 20!

  • Their Ampullae of Lorenzini help them avoid predators, but most chimaeroids also have a venomous spine in their dorsal fin to protect themselves from predator attacks.

  • Dr. Didier: "I have probably touched and fondled more ghost sharks than anyone on the planet"

  • That's Dr. Dominique Didier. She's studied ghost sharks for just over 3 decades

  • She knows to watch for the spines. In fact, she has ahem "personally observed" them (Didier et al., 2012).

  • In undergrad, she became interested in ghost sharks when she saw that there wasn't a lot of research on them.

  • Dr. Didier: "To find current work, I was delving into work that was published in the early 1900s. And I realized 'wow, there's nothing known about these fish, no one is studying them!'"

  • And over the last 28 years, she's helped discover eleven different species of ghost sharks, which is pretty amazing when you consider it's actuALLY TWELVE SHE JUST FOUND ANOTHER ONE

  • Dr. Didier: "We're coming to the conclusion that what we thought was this one, global species, Harriotta raleighana, is probably not"

  • Hariotta avia, or the Australia narrow-nosed spookfish, used to be thought of as the same thing as Hariotta raleighana. Then this year, a paper that Dr. Didier worked on (Finucci et al., 2024) discovered that some of the populations near Australia and New Zealand are their own, unique species!

  • But how do you tell one species from another?

  • There are 2 main ways these researchers proved that this is a distinct species. The first one is taking detailed measurements known as morphometrics. For each specimen, the researchers took 64 different morphometric measurements (Finucci et al., 2024).

  • Dr. Didier: "I get just piles of fish. I'll go to a museum and just measure all day long measuring and measuring and measuring. We use different things like calipers and forceps, tape measures if it's really big because there's just no device that can capture that whole size. But yeah, that's what we do. And then write it down, put it in our spreadsheets and analyze it."

  • Genetic analysis also played a role in identifying the new species

  • Dr. Didier: "Now we have a lot more evidence, partly because we can do molecular studies to say, "this is probably something new""

  • This figure from the study maps some of the genetic mutations between individual specimens, and you can clearly see that the Harriotta avia specimens are very different from the rest of the Harriotta specimens collected.

  • Given the morphological and genetic data, the team was able to confidently declare the new species.

  • When a new species is declared, a few things generally happen. Most importantly, something needs to describe the species, pretty much always a scientific paper. In this case, that's obviously that Finucci et al. 2024 paper that provides morphometrics and a physical description. That provides documentation of the unique traits of this species.

  • Next, a holotype and paratypes need to be defined. The holotype is the definitive, "name-bearing representative of a new speices" (AMNH, 2015). In other words, this is what peak Harriotta avia performance looks like.

  • His name is NMNZ: P.061676. Isn't that cute??

  • That's a specimen identifier for the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, so other researchers can identify the actual physical thing in the museum's catalog.

  • The paratypes are basically alternates or supplemental to the holotype. They help provide a more complete picture of a species definition, and they might end up replacing the holotype if it ever gets lost or damaged.

  • Me: Before I let you go, I have to ask one more question: what's your favorite thing about these weird little guys, about ghost sharks?

  • Dr. Didier: "Oh my gosh, there's so much to love about them! I just think they're, like, cool to look at! They're ancient, so looking at their anatomy can give us clues to the evolution of vertebrates, which some people are doing! They're weird-looking, they have these strange snouts and sensory systems. We still know very little about their reproduction, where the little guys are. So even now, after working with them for decades, there's still, like, tons of stuff to be done! So that's why I like them, I get excited about all this neat stuff"

  • Me: Is there anything else you want to share for the end of the video?

  • Dr. Didier: Coming up, on October 30th, is national ghost shark day! So break out your ghost shark juju and have a great day! ... And they should be on the lookout for "ghost sharks of the world," our upcoming book!

  • Thank you so much to Dr. Didier for helping out, check out the link in the description for references, and follow for more cool science!

Attributions

Images

B-roll

Music

Video credits

  • Amanda Dyar (Script review, video review)

  • Austin Lord (D&D Player)

  • Ben Rankin (Host, Research, Writing, Editing)

  • Caden Mcgee (Script review)

  • Dominique Didier (Interview, Fact checking)

  • Jacob Geiger (D&D Player)

  • Luke Amonett (Camera, D&D DM)

  • Zoe Mcgee (Script review)

References

  • AMNH. (2015, February 26). Type Specimens: An Overview | American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural History. https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/from-the-collections-posts/just-our-types-a-short-guide-to-type-specimens

  • Bottaro, M. (2022). Sixth sense in the deep-sea: the electrosensory system in ghost shark Chimaera monstrosa. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14076-2

  • Didier, D., Kemper, J., & Ebert, D. (2012). Phylogeny, Biology and Classification of Extant Holocephalans. Marine Biology/CRC Marine Biology Series, 97–122. https://doi.org/10.1201/b11867-6

  • Finucci, B., Cheok, J., Ebert, D. A., Herman, K., Kyne, P. M., & Dulvy, N. K. (2020). Ghosts of the deep – Biodiversity, fisheries, and extinction risk of ghost sharks. Fish and Fisheries, 22(2), 391–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12526

  • Finucci, B., Didier, D., Ebert, D. A., Green, M. E., & Kemper, J. M. (2024). Harriotta avia sp. nov. – a new rhinochimaerid (Chimaeriformes: Rhinochimaeridae) described from the Southwest Pacific. Environmental Biology of Fishes. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-024-01577-4

  • Halstead, B. W., & Bunker, N. C. (1952). The Venom Apparatus of the Ratfish, Hydrolagus colliei. Copeia, 1952(3), 128–128. https://doi.org/10.2307/1439692

]]> Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT (Short) A new species of GHOST SHARK was discovered! https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ghost-sharks/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-ghost-sharks/ Watch the short here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBuVtABvXcB/

Check out the full video

Transcript

  • Telemachus: If so then, give me chimeras!

  • Okay, here ya go!

  • These are Chimaeras! They just... have an extra "a" in the name

  • Chimaeras are a class of fish that live deep under water. They're related to rays and sharks, and they're perfect to learn about for spoopy month because they're also called SPOOKFISH and GHOST SHARKS!

  • Like rays, they have a long, whip-like tail. That snake-like tail might be why they're called "chimeras" -- like the snake tail on the greek chimera

  • Dr. Didier: "They're weird looking, they have these strange snouts and sensory systems"

  • That's Dr. Dominique Didier. She's studied ghost sharks for just over 3 decades.

  • And she helped discover a new species of ghost shark THIS YEAR in New Zealand and Australia!

  • Dr. Didier: "We're coming to the conclusion that what we thought was this one, global species, Harriotta raleighana, is probably not"

  • Hariotta avia, or the Australia narrow-nosed spookfish, used to be thought of as the same thing as Hariotta raleighana. Then this year, Dr. Didier and colleagues released a paper (Finucci et al., 2024) that discovered that some of the populations near Australia and New Zealand are their own, unique species!

  • H avia looks very similar to H. raleighana overall. But the skin color is distinct, as is some of the morphology -- that is, the shape and structure of the body and its parts.

  • Genetic analysis also played a role in identifying the new species.

  • Dr. Didier: Now we have a lot more evidence, partly because we can do molecular studies to say, "this is probably something new"

  • This figure from the study maps some of the genetic mutations between individuals. You can clearly see that the Harriotta avia specimens are very different from the rest of the Harriotta specimens collected.

  • Given the morphological and genetic data, the team was able to confidently declare the new species.

  • Before I let Dr. Didier go, I had to ask one more question:

  • Me: So what's your favorite thing about these weird little guys, about ghost sharks?

  • Dr. Didier: "Oh my gosh, there's so much to love about them! I just think they're, like, cool to look at! ... They're ancient, so looking at their anatomy can give us clues to the evolution of vertebrates... Even now, after working with them for these decades, there's still, like, tons of stuff to be done! So that's why I like them, I get excited about all this neat stuff"

  • Me: Anything else you want to share for the end of the video?

  • Dr. Didier: Coming up, on October 30th, is national ghost shark day! So break out your ghost shark juju and have a great day!

  • Thank you so much to Dr. Didier for helping out, check out the link in my bio for references, and follow for more cool science!

B-roll/image credits

References

  • AMNH. (2015, February 26). Type Specimens: An Overview | American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural History. https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/from-the-collections-posts/just-our-types-a-short-guide-to-type-specimens

  • Bottaro, M. (2022). Sixth sense in the deep-sea: the electrosensory system in ghost shark Chimaera monstrosa. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14076-2

  • Didier, D., Kemper, J., & Ebert, D. (2012). Phylogeny, Biology and Classification of Extant Holocephalans. Marine Biology/CRC Marine Biology Series, 97–122. https://doi.org/10.1201/b11867-6

  • Finucci, B., Cheok, J., Ebert, D. A., Herman, K., Kyne, P. M., & Dulvy, N. K. (2020). Ghosts of the deep – Biodiversity, fisheries, and extinction risk of ghost sharks. Fish and Fisheries, 22(2), 391–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12526

  • Finucci, B., Didier, D., Ebert, D. A., Green, M. E., & Kemper, J. M. (2024). Harriotta avia sp. nov. – a new rhinochimaerid (Chimaeriformes: Rhinochimaeridae) described from the Southwest Pacific. Environmental Biology of Fishes. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-024-01577-4

  • Halstead, B. W., & Bunker, N. C. (1952). The Venom Apparatus of the Ratfish, Hydrolagus colliei. Copeia, 1952(3), 128–128. https://doi.org/10.2307/1439692

]]> Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT (Short) Vernal pools are freaking awesome! https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-vernal-pools/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-vernal-pools/ Watch the short here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBeOuMtMZZm/

There was 1 topic that got cut from the main wetlands video, and that was vernal pools! Vernal pools are a seasonal wetland that are usually about the size of a pond. They dry up in the summer, but over the fall, winter, and spring, amphibians like salamanders, newts, and frogs use them as breeding grounds that are safely isolated from predatory fish. They're super weird and super cool!

Transcript

  • Wait, I almost forgot! There's actually a secret FIFTH option for wetlands, and they're really weird! It's like a shiny wetland!

  • Vernal pools are halfway between a bog and a seasonal pond. They form in shallow basins that collect rainwater, but they go through phases of being flooded, waterlogged, and dry (Keeley & Zedler, 1998).

  • One of the things that makes vernal pools so weird is that the temperature and pH of the water swing wildly throughout the course of the day. The layer of water is usually pretty thin, so conditions can change rapidly based on exposure to sunlight (Keeley & Zedler, 1998).

  • Vernal pools flood during the fall from rain and melting snow, and over the course of fall and winter, they play a vital role in the forests around them. You see, amphibians bridge an important gap in the food chain between invertebrates and larger animals (Liles, 2021).

  • And every year, all sorts of newts, salamanders, and frogs use vernal pools to lay their eggs for the next generation. Vernal pools provide a safe breeding grounds because they're temporary and they're isolated from freshwater sources that would have fish (Liles, 2021).

  • Over the summer, vernal pools dry up and just look like any ol' patch of land. It's then that they're the most vulnerable -- developers who either don't care or just don't know better will come along and build on top of them.

  • We're losing vernal pools rapidly: we've already lost over 90% of the vernal pools in California (US EPA, 2024), a state where they used to be incredibly abundant. After all, it's hard to put protections in place for an ecosystem that's only there some of the time.

  • Check out the video in my bio to learn more about the other types of wetlands, and follow for more cool science!

B-roll/image credits

References

  • Celebrezze, D. (2016, May 27). VernalPoolGuy. Vernalpoolguy.org. https://www.vernalpoolguy.org/archive.php

  • Holland, R. F. (2009). California’s great valley vernal pool habitat status and loss: rephotorevised 2005. Placer Land Trust Report, Auburn, California, 23pp

  • Keeley, J. E., & Zedler, P. H. (1998). Characterization and global distribution of vernal pools. In Ecology, conservation, and management of vernal pool ecosystems, proceedings from 1996 conference (Vol. 1, p. 14).

  • Liles, L. (2021, May 28). The Birth of a Salamander. The Nature Conservancy. https://www.nature.org/en-us/magazine/magazine-articles/vernal-pools/

  • Mooney, H. A., & Zavaleta, E. (2016). Ecosystems of California. University Of California Press.

  • US EPA. (2024, May 15). Vernal Pools. US EPA. https://www.epa.gov/wetlands/vernal-pools

See also

https://youtu.be/6f4mQb29C4A

]]> Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT (Short) How to tell the 4 main wetlands apart https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-wetland-definitions/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/short-wetland-definitions/ Watch here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBW13SSP2VG/

(Shrek voice) Get outta my swamp! But is it really a swamp? Learn how to tell the difference between the 4 main types of wetlands: swamps, marshes, fens, and bogs!

Transcript

Hi, I'm Ben, and I'm in a swamp right now! Right?
Or is this a marsh? Wait, what's a bog??

Hi, I'm Ben, and this is definitely a swamp, and let me tell you why!

Swamps are wetlands that are fed by surface water and dominated by woody plants. This here specifically is a mangrove forest because the environment is dominated by these mangrove trees, with their salt tolerant roots and knees.

So, what's a marsh? This! Marshes are also fed by surface water, but they're dominated by grassy, soft herbaceous plants like this.

But there's a secret third option for wetlands. Come closer, closer. Peatlands! Why are you so close?

Peatlands include fens and bogs which are pretty similar. They tend to form in basins that collect rainwater. Bogs only get rainwater and they're very acidic. They're mostly made of mosses and soft squishy ground made from dead plant matter known as peat.

But fens are special. They get additional water from ground water or rivers and that water brings in nutrients that keeps the water from getting too acidic. Fens are dominated by mosses and soft plants like sedges. They're home to a ton of verve species and are better than rain forests at capturing carbon.

If you'd like to learn more, check out my channel for a full video on wetlands! And
follow for more cool science!

Credits

  • Amanda Dyar (writing, camera)

  • Ben Rankin (host, research, writing, editing)

Music

See also

https://youtu.be/6f4mQb29C4A

]]> Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT (Video) Wetlands Can Help Save the Planet https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-groundwork-wetlands/ https://wip.beanstem.org/transcripts/video-groundwork-wetlands/ Video

https://youtu.be/6f4mQb29C4A

Resources

Transcript

Introduction

  • Oh hi there! Welcome to GroundWork, a series about how each biome contributes in its own way to the stability, biodiversity, and beauty of the planet!

  • I'm Ben Rankin, and today I want to show you why wetlands like these are so important, how they can help stop climate change, and why they're just plain cool

  • Where I'm standing now is a wetland. And you can tell because there's land. And it's wet. But, wetland is an umbrella term, so let's break it down into the 4 main types of wetlands.

Part 1: Definitions

  • So there are swamps, marshes, fens, and bogs. And those are kind of categorized into subcategories, with "swamps and marshes" and "fens and bogs."

  • I live in Florida, so we're going to start with swamps and marshes because... boy do I have easy access to them!

  • Where I'm standing now is Weedon Island Preserve, and so these waters are fed by Tampa Bay, which is part of the Atlantic ocean (in a roundabout way)

  • And now I'm standing a couple hours north at Rainbow River, the water here is fed by a freshwater source-- it's fed by Rainbow springs.

  • Both of these are categorized as swamps and marshes because they're fed by surface water

  • Surface water is runoff, rivers, lakes, pretty much any water found on the surface, as opposed to water in the ground or rainwater

  • So! We have it narrowed down to swamps and marshes, but how do you tell the difference between the two? Well, swamps are dominated by woody plants, like trees and shrubs, whereas marshes are dominated by grasses and other soft plants -- the term for that is "herbaceous plants."

  • Cool! Before we move on, it's important to note that even within these sub-types, there are kind of sub-categories of both swamps and marshes. Down here at Weedon Island, the waters are fed by those salty, tidal waters that we talked about earlier. So, coastal ecosystems like this will often be categorized as mangrove forests (also just called "mangroves") or they'll be called salt marshes.

  • Back here at rainbow river, this is just gonna be a swamp or a marsh, though it could also be called a freshwater swamp or marsh.

  • Alright, now we can move on to bogs and fens. So bogs and fens are not defined by their source of water -- although that is important, and we'll get to that -- but they're defined by the fact that they are "peatlands."

  • Peat is basically all the partially decomposed organic matter (mostly from plants) that settles down at the bottom of these wetlands. You see, the soil and water conditions in peatlands really slow down the decomposition process, so when organic matter comes in and settles down, instead of getting broken down, it just builds on top of itself. And that results in meters-thick layers of peat that forms the base of bogs and fens.

  • Ok, so what's the difference between the two main types of peatlands?

  • Well, here we get back to the source of water being important. Bogs are primarily fed by rainwater, and why that's important is that rainwater has already been naturally filtered by the water cycle, so it's pretty lacking in nutrients. And bogs aren't getting their moisture from any other source -- at least not in any significant portion -- it's just that rainwater. So the soil in bogs ends up being pretty low in nutrients.

  • So the soil and water conditions in bogs are also very acidic, and that's because of the sphagnum mosses that grow on the bottom.

  • Between that, with the high acidity and the low nutrients, it's hard for a lot of plants to grow here. But when we get to the "biodiversity" section of the video, we're gonna talk just a bit about some of the cool adaptations plants have undergone to be able to grow here.

  • For now, we've gotta move onto our last type of wetlands: fens! Like bogs, fens are peatlands, and they are also fed by rainwater -- it's not like they're covered by a big 'ol roof -- but the key difference is that they're also fed by water from the ground.

  • And groundwater is really rich in minerals and nutrients, because it comes from... the ground where all the minerals are. So the main difference is that: even though fens have sphagnum mosses and peat, that minerals and nutrients brought in by groundwater significantly affects what types of plants and animals can live there.

  • Ok, quick recap!

  • Swamps: fed by surface water, dominated by woody plants

  • Marshes: fed by surface water, dominated by herbaceous plants like grasses

  • Bogs: Peatlands, fed by rainwater, high acidity and low nutrients

  • Fens: Peatlands, fed by groundwater, more nutrients, less acidity

  • If you get confused, you can always use this fancy chart I made!

  • Ok! Now we can talk about why they're so cool!

Part 2: Benefits

  • So there are several ways that wetlands are helpful to us silly little humans. For one thing, they provide food and other resources to local communities and economies.

  • Mangroves especially form a sort of underwater jungle, and that provides a safe habitat and breeding grounds for fish and all sorts of other wildlife. What that means for humans is that wetlands like mangroves make for really good fisheries (Balwan & Kour, 2021; Global Mangrove Alliance, 2022).

  • And that's especially useful for indigenous peoples who rely on their local wetlands to survive.

  • Second, wetlands kinda act like a sponge: they're really good at absorbing a lot of water. That's part of what makes them a great natural solution for anti-erosion-- they act as storm and flood buffers, and help protect against sea level rise (Grimm et al., 2024; Hawken, 2021; Macreadie et al., 2021)

  • Third, wetlands greatly improve water quality: Actually, a lot of studies have been done on using wetlands for water filtration because of the way they naturally create drinking water (Balwan & Kour, 2021)!

  • You see, as rivers and runoff flow through a wetland, some of that water is gonna filter down through the bottom, through the the roots, soil, and peat. And when that happens, the roots will absorb a lot of the nutrients and pollutants, and then the sand, soil, and peat at the bottom filter out a lot of the particulates.

  • Remember when I said about 30 seconds ago that wetlands act like a sponge? Well, that can be useful for drinking water as well! Wetlands will absorb a lot of water during wetter seasons and then release it back in the drier seasons to help stabilize the water table.

  • Hi, it's Ben from the future! We'll meet soon! I wanted to expand on this a little bit more before moving on, so I found this cool study from Louisiana State University in 2004; and it looked at how much money could be saved by using wetlands for water filtration as compared to traditional, man-made water filtration plants. And the results were really surprising!

  • So this study found that using the wetlands that are already there in Louisana for water filtration could save 1.8 MILLION dollars in up-front costs and then another 72,000 dollars per year (Ko et al., 2004).

  • Even better than that -- dumping wastewater into wetlands sounds like a terrible idea. It would pollute the wetlands and be bad for them, right? WRONG!

  • Scientists use a fancy term called "net primary productivity," or NPP, to describe basically how much plant growth an area produces in a given period of time -- and the crazy thing is that it turns out releasing this partially-treated wastewater into wetlands can actually BOOST NPP and help RESTORE the wetlands! Super cool!!

  • So what else to wetlands do? Well, they're a trove of biodiversity! A lot of the studies and resources I read in researching this video compared them to rain forests. And rain forests are, like, the poster child for biodiversity and rich ecosystems!

  • But wetlands are home to all sorts of different insects, amphibians, mammals, reptiles. Take a look at just what I found on my outings for shooting this video:

  • Welcome back! I plan to make a whole separate video on why biodiversity matters, but until then, just look at this! This is so beautiful! This is so cool! Look at all these guys!

  • Now, there's one specific class of organism that I want to call out. We mentioned that we'd talk about some of the cool adaptations that some plants have made to be able to live in the harsh soil conditions of bogs.

  • And what I was referring to there was carnivorous plants! Carnivorous plants are so cool! They're a great example of biodiversity and evolution filling in a niche. Because remember, the soil condition in bogs are really harsh: it's very acidic and there's very low nutrients. And that low nutrients thing is actually why carnivorous plants evolved! They evolved to eat insects to get their nutrients because they couldn't get it from the soil (Pain, 2022)!

  • Some of them literally create a vacuum to suck up their prey. That's so freaking cool!

Part 3: Carbon sequestration (aka how wetlands can help stop climate change)

  • Alright, now to get into the main point of the video: this is how wetlands can help stop climate change!

  • There's been a lot of talk in recent years, especially from the tech industry, about "carbon capture" -- using machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. But the problem is that natural ecosystems... already do that, and they do it better.

  • Plants grow by taking carbon out of the air. They do that, do some fancy biochemistry stuff, and then they use that carbon to build new organic material (Hawken, 2021; Macreadie et al., 2021).

  • Wetlands are especially good at that whole process, and that's for 2 reasons:

  • First off, wetlands are very productive ecosystems. There's a lot of plants growing, and they'regrowing fast

  • And second, because wetlands are

  • waterlogged, that water helps literally keep the carbon down just by keeping it trapped in there. But it also slows down the decomposition process that would normally be releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.

  • Ok, now let's get into some fun numbers to support my thesis

  • So we said that wetlands are both productive, and they store carbon, right? That maps perfectly onto the 2 key metrics we need to look at: carbon sequestration and carbon storage

  • Carbon sequestration is how much carbon a system removes from the atmosphere over time, and carbon storage is how much carbon is stored in a system in a given patch of land. Sequestration is the faucet, storage is the bucket

  • Now, I was doing research and writing for this video, and I know that this section, just by nature, is going to have a lot of numbers thrown at you. So I was thinking about to make it interesting and how to keep up with the numbers when I realized I can use a scientists favorite tool: A TIER LIST!

  • Alright, let's get started with our poor man's tier list!

  • Before we start, I want to point out this reference card here in the corner. These are fact sheets that are basically themed as trading cards! So this reference card will help you decode what these numbers actually mean. They are actually fact checked and... real numbers. But we're just gonna treat them as trading card "scores" so that we can compare them.

  • We'll start with tropical forests, start to give a frame of reference. We've got a solid starting area store of 20, that's 20 million sq km globally. That is... a lot. You can see, especially as compared to the other ones.

  • Their carbon storage score is 21.4 and the sequestrations core is 60. Those are really solid numbers, nothing to bat an eye at. You can see that the global scores, so 428 for carbon storage and 1200 for carbons sequestraion. These are really high, but a lot of that is boosted by that high area score. They take up a lot of area, so they have high global scores even regardless of their per-sq m scores.

  • Because that's a frame of reference -- it's really solid, but we're going to leave it at B because we're gonna see better, we're gonna see worse.

  • One more frame of reference thing, we're gonna look at cars real quick. Obviously these are headed to F-tier! Cars are the worst! We don't like cars here at beanstem.

  • They are located globally, and, yes I calculated the per-sq m emissions of cars to standardize the units here, and that is 334 kg of carbon per sq m, based on the average car size. And globally, cars emit 3.6 billion tons of carbon.

  • They're the worst! They're being banished over here (F-tier).

  • Moving on to your first actual wetland! So we're looking at salt marshes.

  • Again, that area score is a lot lower at only .18, 180,000 sq km. We can also see that the storage score is actually a lot lower than tropical forests at 5.5 and only 1 globally. That area score's not doing it any favors there.

  • The sequestration score, though, is almost 4 TIMES tropical forests.

  • Salt marshes are really good at sequestering carbon -- that's your takeaway here!

  • Because it's trading blows with tropical forests, I think we're gonna put it in the same category. It's got that lower storage score but that way higher sequestration score. So kinda trading blows there.

  • Moving onto mangrove forests: again, very similar area score, .14, but if we pull up tropical forests, we can see that both the storage and sequestration score are WAY higher than tropical forests!

  • Storage score is 71.4, that's almost 3x as dense as tropical forests for storing carbon, and it is also almost 3x as good at sequestering carbon. At least, per sq m.

  • If we compare that to salt marshes, we can see that it's way better at storing carbon, but not quite as good at sequestering carbon.

  • So your takeaway here is that mangrove forests are really good at storing carbon. Mangrove forests are well-renowned as being very vital carbon sinks because they store a lot of carbon in the ground.

  • We're going to put those up at A tier, because the sequestration score is pretty similar to the salt marshes, but their storage score is so much better.

  • Last one to look at here is peatlands. That area score is a lot higher than the other ones we've seen for the wetlands -- that is 2 million sq km globally. And the storage and sequestration scores are also higher. So if we compare that to our first one, to tropical forests here, we can see that it is 10 times better at storing carbon and about 5 times better at sequestering carbon

  • So tropical forests (rain forests) are well-renowned, and they are very vital, important ecosystems, but just looking at these flat numbers, peatlands are incredibly important as ecosystems that sequester and store carbon.

  • Even compared to our mangrove forests up in A, we can see that the storage score is way higher, the sequestration score is way higher.

  • Compared to salt marshes (which are the ones that are good at sequestering), they're still really good at sequestering compared to peatlands, but peatlands still beat them out.

  • The last thing that I really want to point out about peatlands to sing their praise even more. We see that their area score is only a tenth that of tropical forests. And despite taking up a tenth of the land, they actually store more carbon globally. That global score for peatlands is 469, and for tropical forests it's 428.

  • Similarly, the sequestration score globally for peatlands is really admirable compared to tropical forests. It's about half that of tropical forests, but again: they take up a tenth of the land.

  • So that really helps drive home the point about how important peatlands are as ecosystems for carbon sequestration and storage.

  • Because of those incredibly high numbers, I think we have to put that up at S tier where they reign supreme.

  • To kinda drive this point home: It's hard to find studies that would provide any numbers as broad as "carbon sequestered by all wetlands globally," but these 3 types do account for a lot of it. And combined, these end up sequestering about 81 million tons of Carbon per year.

  • And even combined, that number doesn't really compare to the one I brought up earlier for cars at 3.6 BILLION tons of carbon per year.

  • So to give you a better frame of reference, 81 million tons is about equivalent to the yearly emissions of 5.5 million Americans. OR 12.8 million Irish people, which is about 2 and a half Irelands (IEA, 2022)!

  • Wait, which Ireland...

Part 4: Threats

  • Ok! Moving on!

  • Unfortunately, despite the economic, biodiversity, and carbon capture benefits that wetlands provide, there are some things that are threatening these ecosystems.

  • We've seen an overall decline in mangroves over the last 20 years (Global Mangrove Alliance, 2022), and this could have some serious consequences for the climate crisis. But what would be causing this?

  • Well, one of the main things is deforestation from logging and development. Actually the main cause of mangrove deforestation is aquaculture development (Friess et al., 2019), which -- I don't get that, because we already talked about how mangroves are great fisheries because of the habitat they provide. So tearing down rich, diverse wetlands and building monoculture, man-made fishing facilities is just nonsensical to me.

  • Aside from causing deforestation, development can also mean building roads and dams that cut through wetlands. Human infrastructure can change the flow of water to cut off part of a wetland and dry it out.

  • Another big threat is eutrophication, caused by fertilizer from the agriculture industry (Hao et al., 2024). A quick rundown on what eutrophication is -- when agriculture uses too much fertilizer, it ends up running off into nearby ecosystems like wetlands, lakes, and beaches. The influx of nutrients causes certain algae to have a FIELD day and they grow like crazy, which ends up taking all the oxygen out of the water and suffocating all the fish, frogs, and plants.

  • Yet another threat is invasive species (Hao et al., 2024): plants and animals get introduced and don't have enough natural predation, so their populations grow like crazy, out-compete native species, and can turn the ecosystem on its head.

  • BUT the main thing threatening wetlands is climate change.

  • THAT'S RIGHT WE'RE GOING BACK TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS BABYYYY!

  • I mean it's right there in the title. Unless I changed it. I dunno, I don't know which title will perform the best.

  • So! Climate change! We're talkin 3 main things here: rising sea levels, natural disasters, and global warming.

  • Rising sea levels can inundate wetlands with salt water (Hao et al., 2024). All that salt coming in can tear through a wetland. Even coastal ecosystems like mangroves and salt marshes can be overwhelmed with more salt than it can handle.

  • Next, natural disasters. Another figure from that same study showed that, quote
    "Approximately 70% of mangrove loss has occurred because of low-frequency, high-intensity weather events, such as tropical cyclones" (Hao et al., 2024).

  • Now, I don't have time to get into it because this video is already longer than I want, but it is well-documented that human activity and global warming contribute to natural disasters like these and make them more intense (IPCC, 2023).

  • Which leads us to global warming. There's a few things global warming does to wetlands: For one thing, it speeds up the decomposition process. If you'll remember, one of the main reasons that wetlands are such great carbon sinks is that the conditions slow down the release of carbon through decomposition. So when the temperature rises and decomposition accelerates again, wetlands can start to release more carbon than they're capturing (Lolu et al., 2019).

  • Another thing global warming does is it can melt permafrost in tundra wetlands, and that permafrost keeps carbon sealed away, so again we end up releasing more carbon back into the atmosphere (Lolu et al., 2019).

  • But, another thing that I found is that global warming and sea level rise can actually temporarily make wetlands more productive (Cheng et al., 2020; Hao et al., 2024).

  • Salt marshes and mangroves, most of them can actually keep up with some amount of sea level rise. But there's only so much they can do. And we are seeing places where sea level rise is just too drastic for them to keep up

  • And it's important to note that these gains are only temporary -- there's only so long we can abuse these ecosystems before they just can't fight back.

  • And the problem is that when we lose wetlands, we don't just lose them as natural habitats and storm buffers and all -- we also feed into a positive feedback loop of ecosystem collapse.

  • What I mean is, we know that wetlands are a great carbon store, they keep a lot of carbon in the soil and under the water. But when that ecosystem starts to collapse, they'll start to release that carbon back into the atmosphere, causing even more warming, killing more environments, causing more warming.

  • This principle is why scientists from all around the world are so concerned and why the UN is sounding the alarms. A quote from the International Panel on Climate Change said that:

  • "With further warming, climate change risks will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage" (IPCC, 2023).

Part 5: Preservation and restoration

  • Ok, that was a lot, let's take a deep breath and move onto some of the positive stuff and how we can fix it.

  • To start off, the most important thing to take away here is that preserving and restoring existing wetlands is overwhelmingly our best option. It's the most cost-effective, it provides the most immediate benefits, and it keeps humans and animals from being displaced (Hao et al., 2024).

  • But outside of that, just removing human infrastructure like roads can effectively help restore or even create marshes!

  • Another solution, which addresses increased salinity, is literally just flooding the area with more freshwater (Valach et al., 2021)! In a similar vein, irrigation and dredging can also help stabilize the ecosystem's water flow.

  • I watched a super cool video recently from the excellent channel Mossy Earth here on YouTube that actually showed this in action. They've worked with local organizations and government to flood a huge patch of wetlands in Slovakia, and they've shown the difference in the environment and wildlife over the last 2 years of the project, it's incredibly inspiring. go check it out!

  • Wetlands can be incredibly resilient. Like we mentioned, some wetlands can already keep up with some level of global warming and sea level rise.

  • And like that Mossy Earth project showed, they also bounce back quickly: This study I found showed that, after restoration efforts, all the observed wetlands showed rapid growth, some of them doubling in vegetation cover in only 2 years (Valach et al., 2021)!

  • And there's a lot of potential: The potential restoration area of marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses is estimated to contribute an additional 229 million tons of carbon per year by 2030 (Hao et al., 2024). That figure does include seagrasses which we didn't talk about in this video, BUT that's almost triple the current annual number that we calculated earlier for mangroves, salt marshes, and peatlands!

  • The thing is, from my research, the consensus among scientists is that governments need to be on board. Regulations and policy from governments are vital to encourage restoration and preservation and to keep companies and municipalities from developing these areas

  • To wrap this up, I just want to summarize and reiterate: Wetlands are very resilient ecosystems, and they can bounce back quickly from damage done by humans. But again, the best solution by far is to have governments issuing and enforcing policy to protect and preserve these wetlands and leave them to their natural beauty.

Outro

  • And that's it! That's the video! That is how wetlands can help solve the climate crisis!

  • If you're still around watching, genuinely thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it.

  • This was a very ambitious first project for me -- a 30 minute video with multiple locations. It took me… about 4 months to make, between research, shooting, and editing. And I could not have done this without basically ALL of my friends. So anyone who helped me work on this, thank you so much! I appreciate it!

  • You can check out the description below will be a link to the beanstem.org post about this. That'll include all of the citations, references, uh, b-roll footage credits. As well as a full transcript! And just any information that could be useful for nerds who want to learn a little bit more.

  • Speaking of, if you're a nerd who wants to learn a little bit more and you have very similar friends, it would mean a lot to me if you were to share this with your friends. Yeah!

  • I guess that's pretty much it! Thank you again so much for watching, and hope you have a great day!

B-roll/image/sound credits

B-roll//images

Sounds/music

Video credits

  • Alan Rivero (special thanks)

  • Amanda Dyar (video review)

  • Austin Lord (video review, special thanks)

  • Ben Rankin (host, research, writing, editing)

  • Brent Wilson (camera, script review, fact checking)

  • Caden McGee (video review)

  • David Crompton (script review, fact checking, video review)

  • Jacob Geiger (camera, special thanks)

  • Lizz Childress (special thanks)

  • Margo Leavy (special thanks)

  • May Friem (special thanks)

  • Simone Schuster (script review, fact checking, video review)

  • Sonny Chacon (camera)

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