In Between Times 11-3-2023
Farming sunshine, Electric planes, Carbon credit integrity, AI saving the rain forest
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In rural America farming sunshine takes root
Your editor spends quite a lot of time in rural Virginia and he sees a lot of solar in the hinterlands. From the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the Piedmont, to the lowlands of the Tidewater solar farms are popping up all over.
As Clean Technica points out in the attached article, solar can make a lot of sense for farmers and “non-productive” rural landowners. One, a solar farm can provide off grid energy to a farm and this lowers cost and increases operational resiliency. Two, in addition to lowering electricity bills, solar can even provide a revenue source if a landowner is able to sell electricity back to the grid.
Additionally, solar panel stations can do double duty. Some crops that can use indirect light can be planted in and around the solar panels. Livestock can also graze around them.
Cows love some solar panel shade on a hot day.
(From Clean Technica)
The combination of agriculture and solar energy is known as agrivoltaics and is one of the fastest-growing applications of solar today. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that there are currently 2.8 GW of agrivoltaic sites in the U.S., with more projects coming online every week…
…Some high-value crops like broccoli, leafy greens, peppers, strawberries, and blueberries thrive in reduced light conditions. One study found that cherry tomato production doubled under solar panels and water efficiency was 65% greater.
Solar also provides an ideal environment for pollinators and microbiomes that support the long-term health of the land. Retrofitting more solar farms to accommodate pollinators could save farmers millions of dollars every year.
Click here for the article.
Solar grazing
Electric planes are becoming reality
The same issues that challenge electric car manufactures are even more challenging for those trying to make electric planes. Range is an issue of course, no one wants to run out of juice at 5000 feet. EV batteries are also heavy. Generally lightness is a virtue when it comes to flight.
But strides are being made, and the Air Force is now experimenting with a prototype developed by the startup company Beta. It is working with other companies too.
(From dnyuz.com)
Beta is one of many companies working on electric aviation. In California, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are developing battery-powered aircraft capable of vertical flight that, they say, will ferry a handful of passengers short distances. Those companies have backers like Toyota, Stellantis, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and large investment firms. Established manufacturers like Airbus, Boeing and Embraer are also working on electric aircraft.
The U.S. government has mobilized behind the industry, too. The F.A.A. aims to support operations of aircraft that use new means of propulsion at scale in one or more places by 2028. And the Air Force is awarding contracts and testing vehicles, including Beta’s CX300 and an aircraft that Joby delivered to Edwards Air Force Base in California in September.
How long until we see electric fighter jets taking off of air craft carriers? Probably a good long while, but considering that each of our carriers has a nuclear reactor onboard, charging should in theory not be a problem.
Click here for the article.
The striking difference in air pollution in some of the world’s capitals
New carbon credit integrity guidelines could boost buyer confidence
One of the issues with the carbon credit marketplace is its lack of transparency. It’s a relatively opaque market. Opaque markets make for inefficiency and are prone to fraud.
But carbon credits are certainly worthwhile financial vehicles if we can get them right structurally and if investors can have confidence in their value.
To that end there are significant efforts being made to develop robust and transparent carbon credit markets.
(From Ecosystem Marketplace)
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, also known as the ICVCM, recently launched its Core Carbon Principles, known as CCPs, a set of definitive global threshold standards for carbon credit quality. Soon, the ICVCM will begin an assessment process to determine whether carbon-crediting programs meet the CCP criteria, and whether certain carbon credit categories can be fast-tracked for CCP-approval or need to be more deeply evaluated to determine their eligibility.
The ICVCM will issue CCP-approval labels for carbon credits, a demarcation intended to build trust in the voluntary carbon market and unlock investment by making it easier for buyers to recognize and put a price on high-integrity carbon credits.
Click here for the article.
Kelp carbon sequestration has got potential, What we know and don’t know
We at IBT are big fans of kelp. Kelp forests are some of the most productive and biologically diverse areas of the ocean. Kelp also might be part of solving the carbon sequestration equation. Kelp sucks in carbon as it grows. Kelp grows fast, up to a foot and a half per day. So, it is surmised that kelp forests are important carbon sinks. But there are questions.
(From HaikaiMagzine.com)
The reality is, scientists don’t know nearly enough about seaweed’s capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it long term, a process known as carbon sequestration. And some of the outstanding questions are pretty big: How much carbon does seaweed pull out of seawater? When it dies, how much carbon sinks to the seafloor and stays there? How much ends up back in the food chain? And, of the carbon that sinks, how long does it stay locked away? So far, only rough estimates are available. But answering these questions with greater certainty could either water down seaweed’s carbon sequestration potential or cement it.
Fortunately, researchers are working to fill in these gaps. In the past few years, scientists have published a slew of review papers, weighing the evidence and probing what we know, what we don’t know, and what we really don’t know about how seaweeds store carbon.
Click here for the article.
Saving Brazil’s Amazon: These tree-hugging AI boxes can detect ‘when destruction starts’
This is something we’ve long suggested as a tool for fighting illegal deforestation. Well, not the AI part but the general idea discussed in the attached article.
The tech to monitor forests is so good and so cheap that it can be used to keep an eye on the forest. In the remote Amazon, where property rights largely don’t exist or are ignored an alert system like the outlined one makes a lot of sense.
Consider this.
Say you are a landowner interested in preserving the forest on your land, or imagine you are a park warden in charge of a swathe of protected rain forest. With these alert boxes illegal timbering can be identified and then pinpointed. Then drones can be dispatched to document what is going on as sending people into the forest to confront illegal loggers can be extremely costly and dangerous. Once illegal timbering is identified, then enforcement can ensue.
By the way, we’d love to buy a few acres of Brazilian rain forest (roughly $500/acre), put a camera, or a few satellite cameras on it and watch a feed of our forest from our office. Why hasn’t anyone done that? We’d be interested.
(From EuroNews)
"We recorded the sound of chainsaws and tractors in the forest," explains Thiago. "Then, all the collected sounds were passed on to the AI team to train [the program] so that... it would only recognise these sounds and not the characteristic sounds of the forest, such as animals, vegetation and rain.”
Once identified, details of the threat can then be relayed to a central point and agents deployed to deal with it.
"The advantage of this system is that it can detect an attack... or a threat in real time," says researcher Raimundo Claudio Gomes of the Amazonas State University behind the project.
Click here for the article.
We Need to Talk: Affective Polarization and Discussion
Network for Responsible Public Policy
In the talk, Professor Levendusky discusses the origins of affective polarization, the tendency of Democrats and Republicans to dislike and distrust one another. He will share strategies he has tested in his research for reducing this animosity, centered on discussion.
Matthew Levendusky is professor of Political Science, as well as the Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He also holds a secondary (courtesy) appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication. He was previously the Penny and Robert A. Fox Director of the Fels Institute of Government (2018-2023), Distinguished Fellow in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (2017-2019), as well as graduate group chairperson (2013-2018), associate professor (2013-2018), and assistant professor of Political Science at Penn (2007-2013), as well as a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University (2006-2007). He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2006 and his BA (with highest honors) from The Pennsylvania State University in 2001. Since 2014, he has served as a decision desk analyst for NBC News.