Were F%$#ed

Today in anthropogenic climate change, we have the Hoover Dam on the verge of being unable to generate power, and methane emissions are jumping in Siberia.

Not good.

From the rim of Lake Powell, you can’t see the danger line. There isn’t a flashing gauge or a chart on the canyon wall that warns visitors when one of the most important machines in America begins to fail. There’s only an invisible number: 3,490 feet above sea level.

Engineers call it “minimum power pool.” Above that elevation, Lake Powell can still push water through Glen Canyon Dam’s massive penstocks, spin its turbines, and send electricity across the Southwest with no trouble. Below it, the dam loses the function that helped justify its existence. The river still wants to move, but the machine starts running out of ways to move it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the international date line:

Methane emissions from Siberia have more than doubled over the past decade, according to new research co-led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

The study, initiated as a collaborative project with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences during their stay at the University of Edinburgh, reveals that rapid warming, alongside increasing wildfires and shifting wetland activity, is driving a sharp rise in methane emissions from the vast permafrost regions of northern Russia. The findings raise concerns that these accelerating emissions could undermine effects to meet global climate targets.

Major rise in potent greenhouse gas

The international research team, including NCEO scientists based at the University of Edinburgh, analysed satellite and atmospheric data spanning 2010 to 2023. They found that methane emissions across Siberia have been rising by around 5% per year, with emissions during the summer growing season now more than twice as high as in 2010.

Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, trapping significantly more heat than carbon dioxide over short timescales, and is a major contributor to global warming.

 Things are going to hell even faster than the most pessimistic climate experts have predicted.

Oh, Canada!

Smoke and Haze 

This picture was taken at about 6 pm Eastern Daylight Time today.

I can only imagine just how hellish this is north of the border. 

Just so you know, these fires are driven by anthropogenic climate change. 

If you need to outside, wear a mask. 

Meanwhile, in the Empire State

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has issued an order pausing data center projects.

I do not think that this will be permanent, Hochul is a corporate Dem, and she wants those campaign donations, but she is a pretty reliable political weather vane, which makes this a sort of, "Flaming Datum" of the current political climate.

Everyone hates data centers with a passion.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday paused incomplete state environmental permit applications for large datacenters while officials work out new rules, a process expected to take up to a year.

The order makes New York the first state to enact such a moratorium amid growing concerns over AI datacenters' impact on utility rates and public health.

“New York has always been at the forefront of innovation and change but we’ve also always guaranteed that New Yorkers benefit. As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul said in a canned statement.

The order specifically targets large hyperscale datacenters capable of consuming at least 50 MW, subject to exemptions for manufacturing, research, education, and medical facilities. Prior to the AI boom, 50 megawatts would have been considered a large cloud campus.

Finally, Some Good News from the UK

Unfortunately fro British subjects, the https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30yrqem5l6o, and not one of the myriad of problems in the island nation.

A yellow eel spotted for the second time in Coventry is "rare and exciting", says an expert, who is appealing for help from the public to track further local sightings.

Alexander Jones, ecology and biodiversity officer at Coventry City Council, saw one in the River Sherbourne in 2024 but was shocked to see a second this year, since the fish used to be one of the most common species locally, but is now one of the rarest.

The second sighting in the river suggests it is making a slow comeback, Jones said.

"We've lost over 90% of our eels in the last few decades, so they are critically endangered," he explained. "The fact we're starting to see them in Coventry is really... positive."

The European eel is a critically endangered species of fish, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

 The British are not yet ready to start serving jellied eel again, but that is a good thing too.

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

So, the Pentagon has been refusing to review new wind power projects, and now a group of renewable energy organizations have filed a lawsuit to end this mishugas.

About f%^$#ing time.

A coalition of renewable energy groups asked a federal court on Friday to order the Pentagon to resume reviews of onshore wind projects, in an attempt to end delays by the Trump administration that have brought the U.S. wind power industry to a standstill.

Since April, the Pentagon has stopped all military reviews of proposed wind farms, which are meant to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with local radar or flight paths. Virtually every new wind project in the country needs to undergo these reviews, which until recently were considered routine and often completed within months.

………

The delays have led to a “total halt of all wind development in the United States,” the groups told the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in a lawsuit filed against the Defense Department last week. At least 106 planned wind projects in 21 states have been stalled indefinitely, representing an estimated $47 billion in potential investment.

The delayed reviews are the latest in a series of extraordinary actions by the Trump administration to halt the expansion of wind power in the United States. On his first day in office, President Trump issued a moratorium on all approvals for wind farms on federal lands, and the Interior Department last year issued stop-work orders for five wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean that were already under construction. More recently, the administration agreed to pay several companies $1.8 billion to abandon their offshore wind plans.

Mr. Trump has called wind turbines ugly and expensive, and has instead pushed to meet rising power demand with fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

“My goal,” he said in January, “is to not let any windmill be built.”

One does hope that whatever judge gets assigned to the case makes it clear to the government that there is no presumption of regularity, and so they will have to provide evidence supporting every "and" and "the".

Good News on the Renewables Front

Arizona's extra fees to solar power users has been struck down in state court.

After years in the courts, the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Vote Solar, striking down the Arizona Corporation Commission’s (ACC) approval of discriminatory charges for customers of Arizona Public Service (APS) who have rooftop solar. In its decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated the solar fees, ruling that they were imposed in an unfair manner that violated due process requirements.

APS, a regulated utility powering 1.4 million households and businesses in Arizona, first created the solar fees in its 2022 rate case, and they currently amount to roughly $2 to $3 in additional monthly charges for households with rooftop solar. Vote Solar filed an appeal in 2025 against the “grid access charge.”

APS has proposed to increase the fees to roughly $6 per month in its current rate case, which is under consideration at the ACC. Vote Solar, the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest (ACLPI) and Earthjustice are opposing the fee in that case as well.

This ruling is about not notifying the public, and not following their own rules, and not about the underlying merits of this fee.

I don't think that the fee will be reinstated, because the ruling requires proper procedure and advance public notice, and if they cannot sneak it in, public outrage would likely force the utility and the regulators to back down. 

Never Underestimate the Power of a Little Beaver

America's largest rodent:

Would You Like Some Brain Damage With Your Stove?

A new study has shown that increased levels of wood burning have resulted in increased lead emissions.

Wood heating is reintroducing lead into the air of local communities and homes, a systematic investigation by academics has found.

Overwhelming evidence of lead’s neurotoxicity meant the metal was banned as an additive in petrol more than 25 years ago. The research by academics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst began by analysing samples of particle pollution from five suburban and rural towns in the north-east US. They looked for tiny particles of potassium that are given off when wood is burned and also particles containing lead.

Samples from seven winters revealed associations between potassium and lead. When there were more wood burning particles in a daily sample, there was more lead in the air, with clear straight-line relationships in four of the five towns.

Prof Richard Peltier, the senior author of the research, said: “For the most part, wood burning produces significant amounts of particle air pollution, and a small but measurable fraction of this is a powerful neurotoxicant.”

The association with potassium means that the issue is NOT people burning painted lumber, it is coming from the wood itself.

Elections Matter

Zorhan Mamdani has recovered more than $9 million from Amazon for violating environmental regulations.

Before this, Amazon ignored the fines for leaving their trucks idling.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, New York City Department of Finance (DOF) Commissioner Richard Lee, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia today announced that the City has successfully recovered more than $9 million from Amazon after the company’s delivery vehicles accrued fines due to idling violations.

“Amazon is worth $2 trillion. Yet, it did not deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its’ trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust. We are going to collect every dollar they owe the people of this city,” said Mayor Mamdani. “These laws exist for a reason: cleaner air, healthier communities, and a city where corporations are held to the same standard as everyone else. Today we are making clear that no company – no matter how large or powerful – is above the law.”

“As part of the Mayor’s directive to ensure fairness, collaboration, and accountability in our agency’s service to New Yorkers, the Department of Finance is committed to collecting debts owed to the City and supporting enforcement efforts that protect New Yorkers’ quality of life,” said DOF Commissioner Richard Lee. “The successful collection effort led by DOF Deputy Commissioner Annette Hill and her team, demonstrates the effectiveness of this administration working collaboratively with companies to ensure compliance, holding entities accountable for meeting their financial obligations to the City, and assisting companies like Amazon to prevent accumulating debt.”

“I applaud Mayor Mamdani and the Department of Finance for securing more than $9 million in illegal idling fines from Amazon, which has long been among the top worst idling offenders in the city,” said DEP Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia. “Through the Citizens Air Complaint Program, New Yorkers can report idling with a video upload — helping us cut air pollution and improve quality of life.”

Earlier this year, at Mayor Mamdani’s direction, DOF’s Collections Unit launched a targeted effort to address the huge number of unpaid idling summonses connected to vehicles operating within Amazon’s delivery network. Since then, the Collections Unit has worked collaboratively with Amazon.com, Inc. and its contracted transportation vendors to recover the outstanding debt.

The enforcement effort focused on idling violations associated with vehicles operating through Amazon Logistics, which relies on a network of third-party transportation contractors. As a result of these efforts, DOF collected $6.88 million in ECB judgment violations and an additional $2.15 million in pre-judgment ECB violations.

New York City’s anti-idling laws are designed to reduce harmful air pollution, improve public health and combat climate change. Under City law, most vehicles may not idle for longer than three minutes while parked, standing, or stopped.

New Yorkers can report idling vehicles anonymously through 311, by filing a complaint online, or by participating in DEP’s Citizens Air Complaint Program. The Citizens Air Complaint Program has seen a 1,700 percent increase in submissions since it launched in 2009. So far in 2026, it has received 62,680 complaints — putting the program on track for its biggest year yet. Idling violations may also be issued directly by DEP inspectors. For more information about New York City’s idling laws and enforcement is available through NYC Department of Environmental Protection.

This may not be a big thing, but it is a significant thing.

Making rich lawbreakers pay is important. 

Least Surprising News of the Day

Elon Musk is poisoning Texas.

I guess some people do get to mess with Texas.

After Texas regulators said Tesla’s lithium refinery near Corpus Christi wasn’t violating its permits by discharging what local officials reported as black wastewater into a drainage ditch, independent water testing there this month found two toxic metals and other contaminants.

Eurofins Environment Testing, an accredited lab with locations across the globe, reported traces of hexavalent chromium, a well-known carcinogen, and arsenic, an environmental poison. Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, which manages the ditch, commissioned the test.

Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic is included as an allowable discharge pollutant in Tesla’s wastewater permit.

If you are rich in Texas, you do not have to follow the law, I guess.

………

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sampled and tested Tesla’s wastewater discharge in February and confirmed that the company is in compliance with its permit, Bevan said.

But the state environmental regulator, known as TCEQ, didn’t look for heavy metals in February. Its water sample tested for dissolved solids, oil and grease, chlorides, sulfates, temperature and oxygen—all of which were within the bounds of Tesla’s permit.

TCEQ didn't test for heavy metals because they did not want to find heavy metals.

Can we give them back to Texas? 

There Has Already Been the Bear Movie

And now we have to deal with cocaine sharks.

I hate remakes.

The expression “coked to the gills” has never been more apt.

Scientists from Brazil have discovered that sharks swimming in the Bahamas are testing positive for a potpourri of substances, ranging from caffeine to cocaine and painkillers — as if they, too, are ready for a party in an island paradise.

The implications of the findings, detailed in a study in the journal Environmental Pollution, make for quite the comedown. That the substances are turning up in detectable quantities in sharks points to an “urgent need to address marine pollution in ecosystems often perceived as pristine,” the authors warned in the study, with divers in the area being the most likely culprit.

The first urgent need is to keep cocaine sharks from completely losing their sh%$.

It will make Sharknado look like a trip to the kiddie pool. 

Today in Democratic Party Psychopaths

I am referring, of course to Washington State Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. (Ecch/Twitter link here, the comments are ……… interesting.)

To be fair Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, in addition to being a psychopath, she is also a f%$#ing moron.

Even a cursory study of of the state of the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest show where the problems are, agricultural runoff, real estate development driven pollution, pollution and genetic contamination from aquaculture in Puget Sound, hydro-power, and (of course) over-fishing.

For Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, all that matters is that power companies, big agriculture, real estate developers, and other polluters can write a campaign donation check, and sea lions cannot.

For the love of God, someone primary her. 

Now We Know Why Rudolph’s Nose Was So Bright

It turns out that because of their proclivity for eating lichen, and lichen's proclivity for absorbing radioactive fallout, reindeer are among the most radioactive creatures on earth, which must be a bummer for the Sámi,  Inuit, and Yupik peoples, for whom reindeer herding remains a cultural and dietary touchstone.

In 1986, after the Chernobyl disaster, the Earth Island Journal ran a story titled “Rudolph the Rad-Dosed Reindeer?” In the article, Gar Smith described fears that radioactive Cesium-137 had contaminated reindeer, threatening the health and livelihoods of the indigenous Sami people. Government officials tried to reassure people about the level of danger, but Smith remained skeptical.

In fact, scientists had been aware of fallout-contaminated reindeer for decades. In the 1960s, the discovery of contaminated caribou triggered a major public health investigation in Canada. Historian Jonathan Luedee describes how, in their efforts to unravel the mystery, scientists and politicians grappled with the reality of a nuclearized world.

“Between 1953 and 1958,” Luedee explains, “the US, UK, and the Soviet Union conducted more than 220 atmospheric nuclear tests,” leading to concerns about widespread ecological contamination. Caribou were already on scientists’ minds. Their population had been mysteriously declining, and Indigenous groups in northern Canada had long relied on caribou meat. Early radiation studies showed that caribou had “higher exposure levels than other grazing animals, including groups of animals located closer to nuclear testing sites,” Luedee writes. Then, in 1959, Canadian botanist Eville Gorham noted high levels of radioactive material in lichen.

After a brief testing pause, the Soviet Union resumed nuclear weapons tests in the Arctic skies in 1961. Fallout from years of testing gradually fell onto lichen. Animals grazed on the lichen, absorbing radioactive particles into their bones and their flesh.

……… 

After several more years, they determined that human exposure had peaked in 1965, then declined. But Luedee points out that “even at 1965 levels, the amount of Cesium-137 detected in caribou meat was more than 580 times greater than that found in Ottowa’s poultry sample.” 

On a personal note, I recall eating reindeer sausage when I was a child in Alaska, around 1967.

Sweet. 

The Best News So Far This Year (For Me)

Yes, I know, it's only January 2, and yes, I know that the article is from 6 months ago, but the fact that there large stands of mature American Chestnut trees producing offspring in multiple locations on the Eastern Searboard is news to me.

There has always been a scattered American Chestnut trees out there, but they were too far away from each other to pollinate, which meant that there was no future.

There are now (small) chestnut forests that one can hike through.

Hundreds of years ago, American chestnut trees dominated the Appalachian Mountain forest-scape. They stood an imposing 100 feet tall and eight feet wide at maturity, lived for up to 600 years, and covered an estimated 200 million acres of land from Mississippi to Maine. Carpenters prized their lumber. Farmers regaled their ability to produce cheap and nutritious feed for livestock. Gourmands crowned their nuts the world’s finest.

Then an invasive blight from East Asia arrived around 1904. The fungus attacked tree trunks and felled the giants by the tens of thousands. While lone trees survived here and there, their nuts were infertile without others to cross-pollinate them, and by 1950 American chestnuts became functionally extinct.

“The devastation represents one of the greatest recorded changes in natural plant population caused by an introduced organism in history,” says West Virginia University emeritus professor of plant pathology and former American Chestnut Foundation president William MacDonald. Had the tragedy been avoided, hikers on the iconic Appalachian Trail would not only experience a “radically different landscape” but enjoy “some very tasty treats around their fall campfires,” he says.

The ACF has spent the past seventy-five years working with various conservation agencies to crossbreed blight-resistent American chestnut trees using clippings from anomalous survivors and Chinese or Japanese varieties. 

The Asian trees “introduce a degree of immunity into the genome and produce a first-generation hybrid,” says John Scrivani, a forester and former president of the ACF Virginia chapter. The new trees are then back-bred with American progenitors across multiple generations until they produce blight-resistent offspring that are genetically indecipherable from those once found in the wild.        

A Meadowview, Virginia, research center spearheads the effort, and more than a dozen experimental, large-plot plantings on state public lands have not only survived but reached maturity. Lesesne State Forest in Nelson County, for instance, holds about thirty acres of natural, second-growth woods anchored by seventy-foot-tall American chestnut trees that are more than sixty years old—and produce delicious wild nuts that few living people beyond foresters and researchers have ever tasted.

………

Large stands of publicly accessible American chestnut forests are now found in more than a dozen locations spread across the Virginia mountains. Other smaller experimental plots exist in Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Maine, but the largest and oldest sit within ten miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Lesesne and Matthews State Forest in Galax. Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane and the Mountain Lake Wilderness near Blacksburg also hold destination-worthy groves.  

For the first time in my life, I want to go on a hiking trip.

It's Not What You Think (OK, it's not what I think)

It turns out that Zurich, Switzerland has established a beaver hotline.

I'm sure that most of my reader(s) are thinking, "They have a problem with the tree-felling rodents?" because they are perceptive, intelligent, and very attractive people.

I though it was something completely different when I first came across the headline, though.

Most of my readers were right, and I was wrong:

“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.

The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.

To cope, the beaver-rich canton of Zurich came up with the hotline. The local Beaver Advisory Centre is staffed by ecologists who give advice, assess damages and evaluate potential compensation (the oak tree-bereft woman is advised to wrap wire around the base of the other trees to stop the rodents’ chewing).

………

Some argue that this proves large beaver populations are not compatible with large human populations. In Bavaria, about 2,500 are shot a year, which is 10% of the population, but the number continues to grow. Poland issues permits to cull about 6% of its beaver population each year (about 8,300 individuals).

But the effectiveness of culling is questioned in Switzerland. If a river section is favourable for one beaver, it is likely to be favourable for others. “It’s efficient to shoot a beaver – but only until the next beaver comes along,” says Nienhuis. “Then the same conflicts arise.”

I, for one, am supporting the beavers.

I really hope that Beaver Hats don't come back. 

Google Releases Study Showing Lower Water Consumption for AI

Spoiler, they are lying through their teeth.

Shorter version:  Google used an unreasonably narrow definition of water consumption. 

The longer version is at the link. 

We really need to break big tech up.  (Also, arrest big tech executives, but that's another rant)

Interesting Tech

A South African has initiated a program to make rhinoceros horns radioactive in an attempt to thwart poachers.

This is extremely low levels or radiation, but it's enough that it can be detected in a shipping container using already in place equipment designed to prevent nuclear weapon proliferation. 

A South African university has launched an anti-poaching campaign to inject the horns of rhinoceroses with radioactive isotopes that it says are harmless for the animals but can be detected by customs agents.

Under the collaborative project involving the University of the Witwatersrand, nuclear energy officials and conservationists, five rhinos were injected in what the university hopes will be the start of a mass injection of the declining rhino population, which they are calling the Rhisotope Project.

Last year, about 20 rhinos at a sanctuary were injected with isotopes in trials that paved the way for Thursday’s launch. The radioactive isotopes even at low levels can be recognised by radiation detectors at airports and borders, leading to the arrest of poachers and traffickers.

Researchers at Witwatersrand’s Radiation and Health Physics Unit said tests conducted in the pilot study confirmed that the radioactive material was not harmful to the rhinos.

 Kewl.

How About Some Good News?

It appears that hobbyist beekeepers are responsible for a net increase in colonies across the country.

These bees are better cared for, not trucked all over the country, and so are more resilient than their commercial counterparts, and this may prevent a shortage of pollinators:

There’s now a record number of honeybees humming in the U.S—and for many farmers, hobbyist beekeepers, and almond-milk lovers, the news is sweeter than honey.

Nearly a million bee colonies have been formed in the past five years, according to 2022 Census of Agriculture data from the USDA, boosting the total number of colonies to an all-time high of 3.8 million.

The record high has arrived after nearly 20 years of collapsing colonies, where bees died from exposure to poisonous pesticides, stress from cross-country transit to pollinate crops, invasive pests, and changes to habitat. While new colonies have formed, the threat of their collapse is still a very relevant danger.

One does wonder how anthropogenic climate change will factor into all of this.

 

They are Better Organized than You Think

Just over a year ago, I noted the phenomenon of Killer Whales sinking boats. 

Cetologists thought that this might be some sort of play, or some sort of fad, like the Killer Whale fish hats in the mid 1980s.

Well, they just sank another boat in the Mediterranean.

I'm thinking that this is not play, I think that we are dealing with a: bunch of 5 to 10 tonne extremely angry apex predators:

Robert Powell, the skipper of the Beneteau 393 Clipper, Bonhomme William, had researched details of any orca encounter in the Strait of Gibraltar before leaving Vilamoura in the Algarve bound for the Greek islands.

After checking the numerous orca Facebook groups, such as Orca Attack Reports, and believing the orcas were now heading north, following the migrating tuna, he felt now would be a good time to sail his yacht to the Greek islands with crew.

………

By the following evening, the yacht was off Punta Camarinal in the Strait of Gibraltar.

” I went up on deck, and all of a sudden, I heard a crunch, and it sounded like I’d hit a rock. It was like a really loud scraping noise and there was a real big shudder on the boat. I thought I’d hit a container or a fishing net or something submerged. I was probably about five miles out so it was unlikely to be a rock and there was nothing on the charts.

I took the boat off auto and just took the wheel for a sec. And as I took the wheel, I felt the rudder go, and I heard the noise again. I thought, Geez, that’s not a rock. I thought maybe a rope had wrapped around the prop, but then I looked off the back of the boat, and there were two fairly young orcas, not quite fully grown.”

………

This was the start of a two-and-a-half hour orca encounter which resulted in the sinking of Bonhomme William.

Powell said he followed the orca encounter advice: he let go of the wheel, tried to outrun the orcas and put the boat in reverse, all to no avail.

This is not orca Parcheesi.

I don't know what is going on, but it's weird and pissed off.

It Will Also Kill You

It looks like Bitcoin is not just a way for people to defraud each other or collect ransoms, it also can make you very very sick, even if you have never worked with it.

A town in Texas (because, of course Texas) is experience multiple health complications from the noise created by Bitcoin mining, such as hearing loss, heart damage, vertigo, etc..

Seriously, just ban this sh%$:

On an evening in December 2023, 43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. “It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed,” she says. “That pain was worse than childbirth.”

Rosenkranz’s migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz’s 5-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a “red beam behind her eardrums.”

It didn’t occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. A mother said her 8-year-old daughter was losing her hearing and fluids were leaking from her ears. Several women said they experienced fainting spells, including while driving on the highway. Others said they were wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea, waking up in the middle of the night mid-vomit.

None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area—and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis.

………

Much of the American Bitcoin mining industry can now be found in Texas, [because, of course Texas] home to giant power plants, lax regulation, and crypto-friendly politicians. In October 2021, Governor Greg Abbott hosted the lobbying group Texas Blockchain Council at the governor’s mansion. The group insisted that their industry would help the state’s overtaxed energy grid; that during energy crises, miners would be one of the few energy customers able to shut off upon request, provided that they were paid in exchange. After meeting with the lobbyists, Abbott tweeted that Texas would soon be the “#1 [state] for blockchain & cryptocurrency.” The following month, the Commissioners Court of Hood County approved the development of a cryptocurrency operation at Wolf Hollow. The owners promised local jobs and said that they would mostly use “stranded energy” that would otherwise go unused. 

………

Some nearby residents say they haven’t been affected. But the number of strange medical emergencies in the area have piled up. In addition to Potts’ discharge papers, TIME reviewed medical records provided by several Granbury residents. Hospital notes from 72-year-old Geraldine Lathers’ three-day stay document new prescriptions for high blood pressure and vertigo. Jenna Hornbuckle, 38, lost hearing in her right ear and was diagnosed with heart failure; ear exams document her hearing loss along with that of her 8-year-old daughter Victoria, who contracted ear infections that forced doctors to place a tube in her ear. And Avari Burns, a 19-year-old cancer patient, says she suffered from crippling migraines at home—but whenever she went to a Fort Worth hospital for chemotherapy, the migraines subsided.

………

The level of noise is appalling to Dr. Thomas Münzel, a German cardiologist who is a leader in the growing field of scientific researchers measuring the impact of urban and industrial noise on humans. For the last 15 years, Münzel has studied how transportation and urban noise, especially at night, can be debilitating stressors on the heart, brain, and cardiovascular systems. In one study, he exposed young, healthy students to noise events up to 63 decibels, and found that their vascular function diminished after just a single night. In other studies, he’s found that nighttime noise pollution directly leads to heart failure and molecular changes in the brain, which may lead to impaired cognitive development of children and make some people more prone to developing dementia.

“The European Environmental Agency tells us that everything above 55 decibels is making us sick,” he says. The fact that the Granbury Bitcoin mine is emitting 70 or even 90 decibels on a nightly basis is “like torture,” he says. “The most spectacular cardiovascular diseases will develop. They have to stop the machines.”

Can we give Texas back to Mexico?

H/t Atrios