In Between Times 12-1-2023
Carbon credit 'gold rush' in Amazon, Botching AI, Bamboo is amazing, If you watch cable news you're more likely to be politically polarized
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For many who live in the rain forest carbon credits hold promise and peril
It almost sounds like the meetings your editor was involved with when the local power utility “engaged” the community on plans to expand a substation down the road. In the end the company was held accountable and a mutual solution was found.
In the rain forest, where people are often poor and education levels are low, there is a long tradition of big companies railroading the locals. But the companies in question were usually oil companies or cattle ranching outfits, not carbon credit providers as is the case in the attached article.
We are still in early times when it comes to carbon credits. Most carbon credit markets are thin (meaning that there aren’t many transactions relatively speaking) and like most markets just getting going they are opaque. There is a significant “black box” factor.
Then imagine explaining what carbon credits are and what a carbon credit market is to people who probably have a very limited understanding of basic economics. (Most reasonably educated Americans lack a basic understanding of economics also by the way.) The people creating the markets probably have only a cursory understanding of their projects themselves as the carbon credit market is one that is quickly evolving.
In all of this chaos there is great opportunity for good, but also ample opportunity for abuse.
(From Inside Climate News)
“The first time I heard about carbon credits, I didn’t understand what they were about at all,” says Queila Couto, a lawyer, while staring into the Itacuruçá River in the Brazilian state of Pará, “and it was bad.”…
…In 2021, Amazon Carbon, a company that uses commitments to protect carbon stored in trees as the basis for credits it sells to businesses, governments and individuals to offset their emissions of greenhouse gases, invited the heads of sleepy São João, as well as other leaders, to the nearby city of Abaetetuba. The agenda? Encourage quilombola community members to sign on to a new, lucrative project that would cultivate new carbon credits from hundreds of hectares of their land.
Couto, a legal advisor to the quilombola organization MALUNGU and 144 quilombola communities, contacted the public prosecutor’s office for Pará, the state where São João is located. She had seen project developers try to selectively convince local leaders that they were sitting on a goldmine, but fail to convene public meetings where community members could participate in the decision-making process—a clear violation of the free, informed and prior consent Brazilian law requires for projects with Indigenous and traditional communities.
Click here for the article.
India turns to coal as hydro generation falls
India is the world’s third largest carbon emitter, and it looks like it is set to emit even more.
AllSides: News companies' botched AI usage is bad for everyone
We’ve been following AI fairly closely for the past 5 years or so. Before that we still kept tabs on developments loosely as computer science is an area of particular interest to us.
Over the past year AI has burst onto the scene with laypeople and experts alike hyping its capabilities and warning of its perils. Just this week Eric Schmidt of Google fame argued that AI could threaten humanity within 5 years.
Maybe.
In the meantime Sports Illustrated and a number of other publications have been embarrassed by articles written by AI.
AI still has a way to go before it becomes our overlord.
(From Allsides)
If the reports are true, these are unethical moves by major media brands. Journalists, by trade, have a duty to only report information they can verify, and to be 100% clear about where that information came from. Publishing AI-generated material without full disclosure is a violation of journalistic ethics.
These issues couldn’t come at a worse time for journalists. Trust in U.S. media is at historic lows, and Americans trust their media far less than people do in many other developed countries.
Meanwhile, independent journalists have found homes on platforms that communicate a direct-to-reader approach as a core pillar of their product, such as Substack, Rumble, and X. Pundits like Bari Weiss (Center), Glenn Greenwald (Center), and Tucker Carlson (Right) have all migrated in one way or another from established news outlets to these platforms, and have maintained both an engaged following and a voice in the zeitgeist.
Part of what makes these pundits successful is that they're mostly or entirely on their own as an information source. Non-sentient AI, which depends on pre-determined source data to create output, is incapable of having such a reputation.
At this point bots like Chat GPT (Bard is arguably better) can do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to articles, but it at this point can’t do ALL of the lifting. AI writing also, almost invariably, has AI residue stuck to it. Like AI images, the writing can be close to great, in some cases almost exceptional, but it still lacks something. It’s the deference between a blip in a computer sequencer and the pluck of an acoustic guitar string. (And we say this having made two electronic albums in the early 2000s).
AI is a tool to make content better, if one knows how to use AI effectively. Unfortunately it is being deployed by many people who really don’t know what AI actually is. It’s not going to do the real meaningful work for you, but it can help you make your work better.
Click here for the article.
An architect has found a way to build flood-proof homes
She makes them out of bamboo, which is an amazing material because it is incredibly strong but also flexible at the same time. It also grows quickly and in so doing sequesters carbon quickly. In many parts of the world bamboo is used for scaffolding. A bamboo fishing pole can last one a lifetime. As far as we can tell hemp is the only plant that rivals bamboo in terms of durability and utility.
It is also abundant and inexpensive, two factors that make bamboo particularly useful in developing parts of the world.
(From The Washington Post)
A crew without much technical knowledge can manufacture and assemble the structures’ eight panels and the interior bamboo beams that support them on-site. Lari designed them so that homeowners can easily make repairs and even additions.
“If bamboo is taken care of,” she said, “bamboo can last forever.”
If a flood is coming, homeowners can dismantle the structure’s bamboo skeleton from its permanent foundation and move it to higher ground. Bigger buildings, such as community centers, stand on stilts several feet high.
Click here for the article.
Unfortunately lithium ion batteries can’t be made out of bamboo
If you get your news from cable TV you are more likely to be partisan, Get it from social media? Less likely
This is according to a recent TLP/YouGov poll of registered voters.
Though according to this study TV is still the most used medium for news (which kind of surprised us, we haven’t watched a news broadcast on regular TV in years), TV watchers do tend to be older, and presumably more set in their ways. Certain relatives of ours love MSNBC and other relatives of ours love Fox News, both cohorts tend to trend toward the senior segment of society.
(From Liberal Patriot)
It turns out, consumers of traditional media—mainly cable news, network television, radio, and national newspapers—exhibit far greater partisan imbalances than do consumers of the biggest social media platforms.
If analysts are looking for the information roots of America’s most intense political polarization, they might want to examine the consumer bases and news content of legacy media sources as much as they scrutinize social media platforms.
Click here for the article.
Event
December 4 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
The Soul of Civility
In an era marked by contentiousness, rancor, and bitter divide, what role does or should civility play in our society? Further, how ought proper civility be understood and meaningfully differ from mere politeness? In her new book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, Alexandra Hudson addresses these insights with a refreshing exploration that digs deeply into the history of civility, it’s relevance for today, and the impact it can have on ourselves, our relationships, and our society.
The Cato Institute’s Sphere Education Initiatives is pleased to host Alexandra Hudson in the Hayek Auditorium on December 4th from 12–1 pm EST for a special book release event. Please join us in person or via online streaming video for this important conversation.