Techno-delusion and Mendenhall’s Meltdown

For more than twenty years, I’ve followed events in the Middle East and Russia, China. But in the past four years, something shifted. My focus became more centered, more committed and I believe that was driven by a sense of moral clarity I hadn’t known before.

I’m fully retired now, and for the first time, truly comfortable in my own skin. I carry a lifetime of experiences, good, bad, and everything in between. They’ve shaped not only what I see, but how deeply I feel it.

I’ve come to believe that the greatest threats to humanity are not found in geopolitical rivalries or distant battlefields, but in two interconnected crises: the accelerating breakdown of our climate and the unchecked trajectory of technology that too often serves power, not people. This is what we must confront in earnest. This is at the heart of what I am writing today.

There is no backup planet for humanity.

The information I gathered will be condensed into a bullet point list. The reason for this is whenever climate change is mention, people from both sides of the political argument tune out because it has become a worn and tired topic for consideration. The rest of Americans who don’t care one way or the other are likely to think of climate change in an abstract fashion, a nebulous concept disconnected from the reality of their everyday lives.

Climate change should be a scientific and existential imperative, not a political debate. But by framing it as a partisan issue, self-serving politicians have undermined urgent action and trivialized a crisis that threatens all of humanity.

The massive resource demands of AI, advanced computing, extensive rare earth mining, and speculative ventures like Mars “colonization” are speeding up the destruction of Earth’s ecosystem. Governments, elites, corporations and politicians are the problem. And the solution.

Google and Microsoft

• AI data centers use water primarily for cooling servers, which generate significant heat during computation, especially during AI model training and inference. Evaporative cooling towers are common, consuming 1–5 million gallons per day in medium to large facilities, equivalent to the daily needs of towns with 30,000 to 50,000 people.
• In 2022, Google withdrew 5 billion gallons and Microsoft used 1.7 billion gallons of water globally, with Microsoft’s usage increasing by 34% year-on-year, largely due to AI model training on platforms like Azure.
• Training a single large AI model such as GPT-3 or GPT-4 can consume 0.8–1.3 million gallons of water over several weeks, including indirect usage from electricity generation, which itself is water-intensive.
• Data centers often draw from municipal supplies, groundwater, and surface water, leading to documented cases of local wells drying up, such as a family home near Meta’s data center in Newton County, Georgia, which lost water pressure and eventually had no running water after the center’s construction began in 2018.
• Thermal pollution is another concern, as heated water discharged from cooling systems into rivers or lakes can disrupt aquatic ecosystems.
• Indirect water consumption is also significant; thermoelectric power generation for data centers evaporates an average of 2.0 gallons per kWh in the U.S., further amplifying the water footprint.
• The production of AI hardware, including microchips, requires 8–10 liters of water per chip for cooling and cleaning during manufacturing, adding to the overall water burden.
• Only 0.5% of Earth’s water is accessible and safe for human consumption, making the scale of data center water use—hundreds of billions of gallons annually by major tech firms—particularly alarming for water-stressed regions.
• Innovations such as water recycling, direct-to-chip cooling, and immersion cooling offer minimal reductions in water and energy use, but adoption remains superficial at best and transparency in reporting is very limited because protecting the corporate takes precedence.

Mendenhall Glacier

Alaska is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the United States. This rapid warming is not unique to Alaska however, Russia is also experiencing accelerated melting across its Arctic regions as well.

The 2023 flood destroyed two buildings and carved deep gullies into the valley floor. The 2024 event set a new river height record. And now, in 2025, that record has been broken again amid even warmer conditions.

As temperatures rise, the Mendenhall Glacier, like nearly all glaciers worldwide, loses more ice each summer than it gains in winter. This negative mass balance has driven the glacier to retreat over 2.5 miles since the 1700s, with Mendenhall Lake only forming in the 20th century as the ice pulled back. Now, meltwater collects in basins like Suicide Basin, trapped behind unstable walls of ice. Each summer, the pressure builds until the glacier lifts, and the water escapes in a sudden, powerful flood.

The Mendenhall Glacier, one of Alaska’s most iconic natural landmarks, is once again at the center of a climate-driven crisis. As of today, the Mendenhall River is in major flood stage, cresting above 16.5 feet—surpassing last year’s record—and triggering warnings for residents in the Mendenhall Valley near Juneau.

As of August 13, 2025, a glacial lake outburst has caused the river to reach major flood stage, surpassing the previous record set in 2024. The event is part of an annual pattern of outburst floods that began in 2011, linked directly to climate change-driven glacier retreat and meltwater accumulation. Monitoring by NOAA and USGS shows real-time data indicating a crest expected between 16.25 and 16.75 feet, with significant downstream impacts in the Mendenhall Valley. Suicide Basin Monitoring and Current Conditions

How Do We Know It’s Climate Change?

• Temperature records show Juneau’s average temperatures have risen by 3–4°F since 1949, with summers becoming longer and hotter.
• Satellite imagery from NASA and the USGS reveals dramatic ice loss across the Juneau ice-field.
• Streamflow data from USGS shows increasingly frequent and intense flood pulses linked directly to glacial melt.

Planetary Emergency

• Earth’s ecosystems are interdependent — damage in one area cascades globally.
• The stability that allowed human civilization to flourish is unraveling now, as I write this.
• AI data centers guzzle ginormous amounts of freshwater.
• The carbon footprint of training and running large models is impossible to measure and accurately report on.
• The toxic waste and rare mineral extraction tied to microchip manufacturing is killing not only our planet but people as well.
• The outpour of trillions of dollars into escaping Earth rather than healing it is an ego driven venture.

WROL

An elite acronym: “Without Rule of Law.”

The science is very clear; this is happening because of human-caused climate change; not as a result of the individual gas consumption, or home computers, or because of leather products, nor the printing and publishing of books, that is a PSYWAR techno-delusion disseminated by predatory capitalist. The world is collapsing because of corporate greed, political profiteers, and billionaires who believe their super yachts and miles deep heavily fortified deep-earth bunkers will save them and their families. If you think I am making this up, check out this link: Apocalypse Insurance

There are many movies capturing the human psyche when it comes to group and individual survival, here is one: The Divide (2011) a post-apocalyptic thriller.