Dennis Argall: Water as an issue, intersecting even with the most advanced technology

This is from an email I wrote recently.
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This water subject has been much on my mind, X.....

Not only in the usual benevolent western sense of concern for example about my friend Vince who seeks to maintain his IT business and his farm in a Uganda town near the DRC border, not only more abstractly with the Uganda government with a wave of South Sudanese refugees being allocated land, while rains have failed in the last couple of seasons, but also in the heartland of new tech. Thus it's a problem reaching into advanced-world heartlands. Associated with all the forest fires. A vicious circle: see this from Nature yesterday on the impact of Australian fires on global CO2 and the ozone hole: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02782-w Expect more such assessments from more recent northern hemisphere fires.

The long historical record is of civilisations being battered to death mainly by climate changes. It's not really just a new normal. Except in grand disastrous cycle. We diddle with the periphery: compare thinking of Boris haha going to Ukraine when in a pickle... with the reality of Boris going to Ukraine as the sharp end of AUKUS discouragement of Ukraine from concluding a peace with Russia, stamped on when peace was possible in early April, Boris's first visit.

At the centre of American dreams of recovery of omnipotence is the trade war with China and at the centre of that is the American desire to hustle-muscle Japan, ROK, and Taiwan into CHIP4,

https://techwireasia.com/2022/07/chip-4-alliance-will-south-korea-pick-the-us-or-remain-an-ally-to-china/

a subsidiary of

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/

There are four constraining factors: knowledge, production equipment, people... and water. A friend was telling us a story the other day (binding all these things together in about 1960) of how his mate's dad gave his son a transistor radio for his birthday, in its leather case, perhaps ten transistors... and showing it to his mates in the backyard, the dog grabbed it by the leather strap and ran into a pond with it and it never worked again.

The current generation iPhone has an A15 processor, with 15 billion transistors at something like 150 million transistors per square millimeter. The single small chip has a 'system on a chip' that does everything in the device. We are approaching limits of "Moore's law" but not the limits of absurd human demand for 'more'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

It takes artificial intelligence to do the design of these top chips/microprocessors. Enter EDA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation

No one country or corporation has all the EDA software skills.: the people-ability to write the software to get the AI to do the jobs.

Now the US has moved to apply sanctions to anyone who wants to share EDA with China:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1058116/eda-software-us-china-chip-war/

This post-Trump pro-Biden absurdism is as modern as punishment by chopping hand off.

The world's leading chip 'fab' (manufacturing facility/fabrication plant, contrast 'fabless' a company such as Apple that designs chips but does not manufacture them), is TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Parents in Taiwan dream of their children working for TSMC.

Fabs require the world's cleanest water in large quantity. In moist-tropics Taiwan, drought has had TSMC trucking in water for some time.

In August 2020, in response to Trump pressure on Taiwan, TSMC announced that it would build a fab in Arizona. The next day, the Trump Administration chopped off a leg of TSMC by imposing sanctions on a lot of the trade in semiconductors etc with the PRC. Over 40% of Taiwan's exports go the PRC, some fresh produce but mainly advanced tech things.

In post-Pelosi August 2022, the Governor of Arizona visited Taiwan and announced that all was fine with the Arizona TSMC project. TSMC then said the governor hadn't visited them but they had talked on the phone (just a bit better than Pelosi going to Taiwan to tout democracy and not meeting the national assembly opposition... which favours reunification).

In the past week, the US government, in response to years-long drought in the American southwest, has chopped Arizona's allocation of water from the Colorado river by 20%. (California's allocation unchanged—reduced water for Los Angeles and hinterland would destroy numbers for the Democratic Party.). Since the 1970s there has been a dramatic internal migration to the American Sunbelt, including Arizona.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt

The great, disastrous destroyer of water resources, suburban grass, increased there exponentially, but we don't talk about that, don't frighten the voters. In August 2022 the capital of one sunbelt state, Jackson Mississippi, ran out of drinking water.

Intel, in response to TSMC's Arizona plans, announced that it too would build a new fab in Arizona. (I suppose of the people one might say, with metaphorical resonance, "let them drink Coke".)

There is a spike, inspired by all the Taiwan-TSMC news, in discussion of the cultural/lifestyle issues for Americans working for TSMC. There are relatively-OK US law provisions for high level professionals (perhaps) to be stolen out of CHIP4 and China. However, an estimated 3500 production-level staff may need to be imported, with no law to cover that.

So... abundant shouting, print the money (necessary given the current bucket approach to US federal spending, also as Japan and China are reducing their holdings of US Treasury paper), grab-the-fab simple-mindedness, howl about China.

But shortages of wisdom, people.... and water.

ADDENDUM 11 SEPTEMBER. Screenshot of part of today's chatty weekly roundup email from the South China Morning Post... a newspaper Murdoch bought, could not command, dumped. Note particularly the last little para.

Hello Turbulence, we'd better make ourselves comfortable... I hope you brought the lunch.

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On Sat, 3 Sept 2022 at 03:10, ....gmail.com> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: OECD What’s New <OECDwhatisnew@newsletter.oecd.org>
Date: Fri, 2 Sept 2022, 17:15
Subject: Are water crises the new normal?
To: <d....>

Latest facts on water: quantity - quality - risks and disasters - valuation and pricing - governance View this email online
Building a water-smart society
Water-related disasters – floods, droughts, storms – account for the majority of disasters taking lives, and are estimated to cost more than USD 500 billion in damages annually.

Over the next 30 years, the number of people at risk from water-related disasters is projected to rise to 20% of the world’s population as the climate changes.

But managing the rise of water-related disasters is only the tip of the iceberg.
Explore the toolkit for water policies
Pressures on freshwater resources are mounting
Water stress levels, 2020 or latest available year
Freshwater abstractions as percentage of total renewable resources
The OECD projects that by 2050, global water demand will rise by 55% and 40% of the world’s population will likely be living in severely water-stressed river basins. Many areas of the world are already experiencing moderate to high levels of water stress, meaning demand for good quality water is exceeding supply.

Among other things, freshwater availability is affected by water abstractions (from lakes, rivers and underground sources), with over-abstraction leading to low river flows, depleted groundwater, and desertification. In the coming decades, groundwater depletion in particular may become the greatest threat to agriculture and urban water supplies in several regions.

While agriculture is expected to be impacted by future water stress, it is also a major contributor to water stress, accounting for more than 70% of freshwater abstractions. The sector therefore has a major role to play in mitigating future risks, notably though improving the efficiency of resource management and reducing negative impacts on water quality.

But well-designed allocation regimes are needed across sectors to ensure water is allocated where it can create the most value economically, socially and environmentally.
See our work on water
Listen to the podcast
Aquatic pollution is a pervasive environmental issue
From plastics to agricultural run-off, OECD countries still face important water quality challenges – despite decades of regulation and investment to reduce water pollution.

Plastics have been accumulating in the aquatic environment since the 1950s, and it is estimated that some 140 Mt of plastics have found their way into the aquatic environment globally, of which 78% in freshwater systems.
Globally, agriculture’s impact on water quality – from nutrients, soil sediments and pesticides – has either not improved or has deteriorated over the past decade, notably linked to large irrigation schemes.

And micro-pollutants – such as medicines, cosmetics, cleaning agents, biocide residues and micro-plastics from textile products and vehicle tyres – have become an emerging concern in many countries. They have been detected at concentrations significantly higher than expected, with extremely uncertain risks to human and environmental health.
Read more on pharmaceutical residues
See our work on plastics
Water disasters and risks threaten food production
Crop and livestock production loss per disaster type, 2008-18
Least developed countries (LDCs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMDCs)
Agriculture is the sector most affected by droughts, and droughts are the single greatest cause of agricultural production losses. Over 34% of crop and livestock production losses in LDCs and LMDCs are due to drought, costing the sector USD 37 billion overall between 2008 and 2018.

During this period, drought caused the largest crop and livestock production losses in Africa (over USD 14 billion), and in Latin American and the Caribbean (USD 13 billion), which also suffered from severe storms (USD 6 billion). Asia also suffered equally huge losses due to floods (USD 11 billion) and storms (USD 10 billion).

Agriculture is expected to face increasing water risks in the future which will undermine the productivity of rain-fed and irrigated crops, as well as livestock activities in certain countries and regions.

Known as water risk hotspots, Northeast China, Northwest India and the Southwest United States are projected to be among the most severely affected regions, with the potential to further impact markets, trade and broader food security.
Read more about building agriculture resilience
The world is not on track to meet its water goals

Country progress on SDG 6
2021, selected countries
With 2.1 billion people lacking access to safe water services and over 4.4 billion without access to safe sanitation, the world is not on track to meet its global commitments on water. And the situation will likely worsen due to rapid population growth, urbanisation and increasing pressure from agriculture, industry, the energy sector, and climate change.

Most OECD countries already provide access to drinking water and sanitation services to virtually all their residents (targets 6.1 and 6.2) but 1 in 10 is far from reaching water quality and waste management targets (targets 6.3).
Some OECD countries have lost over 10% of their surface water since the mid-1980s due to drought and wasteful irrigation methods. While water-use efficiency (target 6.4) has seen significant improvements in the past two decades, the pace of progress is only sufficient to reach 2030 targets in a few countries. Finally, 7 in 10 OECD countries are far from achieving target 6.6 on the protection of aquatic ecosystems.
Learn more about SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Valuing water is key to solving water challenges
Valuing water is one tool that can be used to protect the human right to water while acknowledging that water provides an economic benefit that should have a cost. But it is also a politically charged issue with numerous economic implications.

Pricing mechanisms provide important signals and incentives for water-wise decisions, as well as a vital means for providing revenue streams.
Yet tariffs are still too often fixed at a level well below what is needed to recover the costs of operations and maintenance.

Moreover, to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, current investment will need to increase threefold to about USD 1.7 trillion in order to cope with emerging challenges.

Since pricing instruments may disproportionately affect vulnerable people, mechanisms will need to be established such that affordability constraints are taken into account through redistribution and prioritisation of water uses.
Read more about financing a water secure future
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