From Japan to Iceland, futuristic vertical farms are starting to bloom

Indoor farming is a growing trend in urban centers, where a single facility can grow millions of heads of lettuce.

 by Mihai Andrei

 November 9, 2022

In 2016, a new farm in Japan made headlines. It wasn’t your average farm — instead of using soil, it used a hydroponic system, and instead of using sunlight, it used artificial LEDs. But the farm could grow 12,000 heads of lettuce per day, close to urban areas where the product is in high demand.

This isn’t an isolated example. Just one year later, another lettuce vertical farm was established in Iceland, producing a variety of greens that it sells to restaurants and retailers, without using any sunlight whatsoever. But are these isolated examples, or is vertical farming truly coming into its own?

Continues Here

COP27 a fossil fuel trade show?

Egypt Unsilenced Collective: "COP27 looks like a fossil fuel industry trade show" https://t.co/8lGwVSvY7Y

— Naomi Klein "#COP27 Egypt Unsilenced" (@NaomiAKlein) November 10, 2022

France Requiring Solar Panels to Cover Parking Lots by 2028

Parking lots across France are about to undergo a massive transformation. Over the past century, parking lots have become a ubiquitous feature of modern commercial development, with the exception of pre-existing densely-populated city centers. Swaths of sunbaked tarmac splotch the developed world with the sole purpose of having designated places to park vehicles. France's government now wants to give parking lots a second purpose.

https://jalopnik.com/france-requiring-solar-panels-to-cover-parking-lots-by-1849762488

“a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”-our cosmic environment

LISTEN. Happy Carl Sagan Day. He did something important, he got many of us to internalize a cosmic sense of scale and possibility that puts things in proper perspective. “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us…a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” PBD... (continues)

==

It's the birthday of Carl Sagan, born in Brooklyn, New York (1934), who created the TV show "Cosmos", which is still the most popular science program ever produced for television. He was a young astronomer advising NASA on a mission to send remote-controlled spacecrafts to Venus, when he learned that the spacecrafts would carry no cameras, because the other scientists considered cameras to be excess weight. Sagan couldn't believe they would give up the chance to see an alien planet up close. He lost the argument that time, but it's largely thanks to him that cameras were used on the Viking, Voyager, and Galileo missions, giving us the first real photographs of planets like Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.

Sagan also persuaded NASA engineers to turn the Voyager I spacecraft around on Valentine's Day in 1990, so that it could take a picture of Earth from the very edge of our solar system, about 4 billion miles away. In the photograph, Earth appears as a tiny bluish speck. Sagan later wrote of the photograph, "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… [on] a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

He actually never used the phrase "billions and billions of stars," which is often attributed to him, but Billions and Billions is the title of his last collection of essays, which came out in 1997, the year after he died.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-november-9-2022/

Igbok?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CktVlqQsfhu/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Security Cameras Make Us Feel Safe, but Are They Worth the Invasion?

…the implications of the increasingly tightknit relationship between tech corporations and government agencies should make us seriously assess how we use our cameras — so that we can protect our privacy in the long term…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/technology/personaltech/security-cameras-surveillance-privacy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Who’s Driving Climate Change? New Data Catalogs 72,000 Polluters and Counting

"We know we have a climate crisis; we don't need emissions accounting to tell us that," he said. "The emissions accounting tells us where the decisions need to be made, what actions need to be taken."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/climate/climate-change-emissions-satellites.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Questions NOV 10

 MF -p.204 (ch.47); FINAL REPORT PRESENTATIONS continue:  Tom, Conor, Brandon, Kelsey....

1. Are public protest demonstrations just parties that don't change anything? 156 Are "representatve democracies" always sabotaged by wealth inequality ("the rich will fight it")?  156
2. Is the Davos World Economic Forum relevant to world events or just a distracting sideshow that has no significant influence on events? 159f.
3. Do you think a "high middle class income" correlates with the greatest happiness? 163
4. Has modern economic/technological efficiency become a bad thing? 165 Do most politicians concern themselves with how to "best arrange our lives together on gthis planet"? 166
5. Are "crazies" outnumbered 100-1? 168 Is there a "silent majority"? How effective can it be in securing social stability?
6. Is "society" real, or a conceptual abstraction? 169
7. Are economists and those who think like them trying "merely to make more money" and not ttrying to improve the system? 171
8. Do we need a "carbon coin" to address "the tragedy of the time horizon"? 172
9. How can we lower the "discount rate"> 173
10. Can you explain blockchain and encryption (etc.) in simple but accurate terms?  177
11. More soon

Compensation Pledges Could Open a Door Some Countries Would Rather Keep Shut

A commitment by Scotland has prompted other countries to follow suit with more cash. That will raise the pressure on big countries like the United States.

...Rich nations, which have emitted half of all heat-trapping gases since 1850, have worried that compensating poorer countries for climate disasters already underway could open them to unlimited liability. But on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France said Europe was already helping poorer countries, and that other Western nations needed to do more. "Europeans are paying," he said. "We are the only ones paying."

"Pressure must be put on rich non-European countries, telling them, 'You have to pay your fair share,'" he said, in a not-too-veiled reference to the Americans. John Kerry, President Biden's climate envoy, has agreed to discuss the idea of financing for loss and damage at the climate conference, but the United States has not agreed to a new fund.

The new pledges come as African leaders on Tuesday emphasized that their countries could not afford the cost of adapting to climate change or mitigating the disasters that it fuels...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/08/climate/cop27-climate-summit?smid=em-share

In fashion industry, When Does Collaboration Become Collusion?

…what if they could come together to improve the efficiency of their industry to prevent the mountains of unsold inventory and wider waste issues that were contributing to fashion's environmental toll on the planet?

…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/fashion/fashion-industry-antitrust-sustainability.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

COP27

UN chief, Gore give heated warnings at climate talks

Seth Borenstein

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Printed in The Tennessean newspaper November 8, 2022 p. A7

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – With the world on 'a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,' the United Nations chief on Monday told dozens of leaders to 'cooperate or perish,' singling out the two biggest polluting countries, China and the United States.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wasn’t alone in preaching with tones of fire and brimstone to try to shake up the world’s sense of urgency at this year’s annual U.N. climate conference.

'Choose life over death,' former U.S. Vice President Al Gore urged. 'It is not time for moral cowardice.'

Some of the strongest pleas for action came from leaders of poor nations that caused little of the pollution but often get a larger share of the weather-related damage. Several called on developed nations for reparations, which in climate negotiations is called 'loss and damage.'

'Africa should not pay for crimes they have not committed,' Central African Republic President Faustin Archange Touadera said, adding that rich nations were to blame for the climate problem.

'Climate change is directly threatening our people’s lives, health and future,' Kenyan President William K. Ruto said of the African continent, which he said is looking at $50billion a year in climate change damage by 2050... (continues) 

Highway to hell

'A Reason to Act Faster': World Leaders Meet on Climate Amid Other Crises

SHARM EL SHEIKH — World leaders gathered Monday to wrestle with the crisis of climate change, amid a sea of other pressing challenges that threaten to set back already inadequate steps to pivot the global economy away from fossil fuels.

Casting an ominous shadow over these talks is Russia's invasion of Ukraine, itself financed by the sale of Russian gas. The conflict has unsettled the global energy market, spurred inflation and led some to call for more oil and gas drilling. Meanwhile, poor countries suffering from climate effects are increasingly frustrated with wealthy countries whose emissions are driving global warming. And relations between the two biggest polluters, the United States and China, have fallen to a new low.

"We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator," the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, told the gathering of more than 100 princes, presidents, and prime ministers Monday at the summit, the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations climate convention, known as COP27.

Scattered amid the sprawling conference center were several pavilions dedicated to the promotion of oil and gas. Saudi Arabia had paid for an exceptionally large space to describe itself as an energy hub. OPEC had a space showing off what it called its international development fund. Mauritania boasted of its natural gas reserves…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/climate/climate-change-crisis-cop27.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Lean away from Elon

LISTEN. I can relate to Margaret Renkl's vertiginous heart-in-throat trepidation on election eve, and like her I am not an optimist. But I am still a Jamesian and a meliorist, ever hopeful that things will come out better in the longer run if we can somehow manage to forestall despair and ruin in the short run. No guarantees. But it's not easy being a meliorist these days, or a humanist who thinks the totality of our experience is "self-containing and leans on nothing." Who're we gonna lean on, then, and who's gonna catch us when we start to fall? (continues)

THIS POSSIBLE CLIMATE-SAVING SOLUTION WAS PULLED FROM THE PAGES OF A SCI-FI NOVEL

BY MICHAEL DAWSON/NOV. 6, 2022 6:30 PM UTC

...Kim Stanley Robinson's novel "The Ministry for the Future" is a book on climate disaster that proposes a new type of currency to fight back against pollution (per The Wall Street Journal).

Full Article Here

Oh the hilarity

"…certainly says a lot"
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2022/11/7/2133714/-Cartoon-Oh-the-hilarity

Forest regeneration that earned multimillion-dollar carbon credits resulted in fewer trees, analysis finds

Exclusive: Claim by academics, including former integrity chair of Australia’s carbon credit scheme, raises further doubts about system

Adam Morton Climate and environment editor

Sun 6 Nov 2022 11.30 EST

Projects meant to regenerate Australia’s outback forests to store carbon dioxide have been awarded millions of carbon credits – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – despite total tree and shrub cover in those areas having declined, a new analysis has found.

Continues Here

Are Trees Talking Underground? For Scientists, It’s In Dispute.

Justine Karst, a mycologist at the University of Alberta, feared things had gone too far when her son got home from eighth grade and told her he had learned that trees could talk to each other through underground networks.

Her colleague, Jason Hoeksema of the University of Mississippi, had a similar feeling when watching an episode of "Ted Lasso" in which one soccer coach told another that trees in a forest cooperated rather than competed for resources.

Few recent scientific discoveries have captured the public's imagination quite like the wood-wide web — a wispy network of fungal filaments hypothesized to shuttle nutrients and information through the soil and to help forests thrive. The idea sprouted in the late 1990s from studies showing that sugars and nutrients can flow underground between trees. In a few forests, researchers have traced fungi from the roots of one tree to those of others, suggesting that mycelial threads could be providing conduits between trees.

These findings have challenged the conventional view of forests as a mere population of trees: Trees and fungi are, in fact, coequal players on the ecological stage, scientists say. Without both, forests as we know them wouldn't exist...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/science/wood-wide-web-trees-fungi-talking.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/science-fraud-image-manipulation-photoshop.html

 

Maybe not directly related to the environment, but it still has big implications for climate and environmental research.

The World’s Peatlands Are Climate Bombs Waiting to Detonate

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/opinion/climate-warming-peatlands.html

BAMBOO GROWS AT SUCH AN ALARMING RATE THAT IT'S OFTEN MEASURED IN MILES PER HOUR

BY WILLA HART/NOV. 5, 2022 6:00 AM UTC

...It grows at a rate of 91 centimeters per day, or nearly three feet, according to Reel Paper. That insane rate means that an entire bamboo forest can grow from nothing into a full-fledged woods within three to four months of planting.

Whole Article Here

Herman Daly, professor who introduced ecology to economics, dies at 84

He envisioned a new practice of economics, one in which the environmental impact of commerce matters as much as the flow of money.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/11/04/herman-daly-ecological-economist-dead/

Nature is so awesome.  How can anyone conscience losing any part of it? 

Scientists mindblown after discovering underground ant city equivalent to the Great Wall of China

'It's been a mystery in both engineering and in ant ecology how ants build these structures that persist for decades,' Professor Joe Parker said.

In 2012, scientists found a sophisticated underground ant city that was once home to millions of insects, later captured in the documentary "Ants: Nature's Secret Power." The massive underground roadways, pathways and gardens of the deserted megalopolis were unearthed in Brazil. 

Continues Here

 

Questions NOV 8

MF -p.154 (ch.37).... FINAL REPORT PRESENTATIONS continue: Gary, Tom, Conor...

1. "You can hide but you can't run." 105 Are we already a maximum-surveillance society? Is privacy a quaint concept of the past? Is anyplace truly off-grid?
2. What do you think of covert "black wing" operations? 109 Are they a threat to democracy, a lifesaver for civilization, or as prevalent as KSR implies? Are they the Insider mirror of ecoterrorism? Are they "uncatchable"?
3. Are there really Tzadikim Nistarium, anonymous ordinary heroes who "keep the world from falling apart"? 118 How do we distinguish the righteous from the self-righteous?
4.  Does subglacial pumping sound likely to return ice-melt to its old speed? Or is it a silver bullet that fails to address the bigger problem? 121-2
5. Does periodizing remind you that things are always changing, or does it delude us into thinking that our present time is locked in? 123
6. Are you oddly-comforted by the thought that "we are all definitely always falling apart"? 124
7. Would Wendell Berry agree that "a return to local knowledge and local ownership" leads to political power? 126 Do you?
8. Are we wrong to discount future generations? 129-133
9. What do you think of the Children of Kali and their regard for "collateral damage" and "integrated pest management"? 136, 141
10. How close are we to recognizing that the cost of losing sea ice far outweighs the financial cost of avoiding it? 148

  

"Preserving the future of humanity is among the 

most important problems that we currently face."

CBS EVENING NEWS 

"It ripples through the entire economy": Climate change costs cotton farmers billions

BY JANET SHAMLIAN, CHRIS LAIBLE

NOVEMBER 3, 2022 / 7:57 PM / CBS NEWS

Lubbock, Texas — Many tractors and other farm equipment are sitting idle across Texas as the cotton harvest season gets underway. Climate change is threatening the $7 billion industry. 

"Never has it ever been this bad," said Ricky Yantis, a fourth-generation farmer in west Texas. 

The region produces more than a third of the nation's cotton. Yantis has just 168 acres of healthy plants on his 6,000 acres — less than 3% of his land. 

"Where our harvest nearly normally lasts a month, month and half, it will last a day," he said. 

Extreme drought and a sustained summer heatwave taking an unprecedented toll. Farmers like Yantis had to plow fields without irrigation because plants were burning up. Statewide, almost 70% of cotton crops were similarly abandoned. 

Continues Here

 

Good, but...

On October 24, we extracted 10,755 kg of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch after less than five days. https://t.co/klrmi7jDSW
(https://twitter.com/TheOceanCleanup/status/1588184617860808704?s=02)

Glaciers in Africa

 

Climate change: Kilimanjaro's and Africa's last glaciers to go by 2050, says UN

Published
14 hours ago

Related Topics

• Climate change

IMAGE SOURCE

Image caption,

The glaciers that cap Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania will be gone by 2050

By Patrick Hughes

BBC News Climate and Science

Glaciers across the globe - including the last ones in Africa - will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report.

Glaciers in a third of UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades, a UNESCO report found.

Mount Kilimanjaro's last glaciers will vanish as will glaciers in the Alps and Yosemite National Park in the US.

They will melt regardless of the world's actions to combat climate change, the authors say.

U.S. Wind Power Just Crossed an Important Milestone

Onshore wind power is likely to provide at least 10% of the nation's electricity in 2022. Renewable energy hasn't hit that mark since the 1980s.

·         MAXX CHATSKO

Inflation isn't the only thing reaching highs last seen in the 1980s.

The last time a renewable energy resource claimed at least 10% of the nation's power mix was when hydropower accomplished the feat in the late 1980s. That's about to become a reality again in 2022, except this time it will be onshore wind power instead of hydroelectric dams.

According to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States leaned on onshore wind farms for 10% of its total electricity generation through August 2022 when small-scale solar is included. That all but guarantees wind power will provide at least 10% of the nation's power mix for the full year.

Continues Here

Big agriculture warns farming must change or risk ‘destroying the planet’

Report sponsored by some of the largest food and farming businesses finds pace of shift to sustainable practices too slow

Dominic Rushe

@dominicru

Thu 3 Nov 2022 00.01 EDT

·          

Food companies and governments must come together immediately to change the world’s agricultural practices or risk “destroying the planet”, according to the sponsors of a report by some of the largest food and farming businesses released on Thursday.

The report, from a task force within the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), a network of global CEOs focused on climate issues established by King Charles III, is being released days before the start of the United Nation’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.

Continues Here

 

The first all-electric community powered by a solar and battery microgrid launches in California

Peter Johnson

- Nov. 2nd 2022 3:22 pm PT

New clean energy communities are coming to California. Leading homebuilder KB Homes announced Wednesday it has established what it calls the first all-electric, solar-and-battery-powered microgrid community in the golden state.

Continues Here

Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour is one of the influences ksr named in his Ezra Klein conversation…

	Tim Howles ⁦‪@AimeTim‬⁩ Some articles by Bruno Latour on Gaia: 1."God of Totality": bruno-latour.fr/node/587 2."Life on Earth": bruno-latour.fr/node/837 3."Gaia-graphy": bruno-latour.fr/node/750 4."Latour & Lovelock": lareviewofbooks.org/article/bruno-… Also my interview on "Facing Gaia": shorturl.at/fosuX pic.twitter.com/yw9xYJC8JJ   11/2/22, 2:20 AM

Final report presentations

UPDATE: We'll begin on Thursday (3d). We don't have to go in precisely the listed order, if you're ready you can present earlier than indicated. Let's plan  to finish before Thanksgiving.

You can continue to explore your midterm topic OR select something new. Try to relate your topic to Ministry for the Future. An accompanying blog post is due Dec. 2-- think of the presentation as a work-in-progress preview and trailer/teaser for the post-- but you may find it helpful to post an earlier draft (you'll need to sign on as an author). Be sure to give us at least a couple of discussion questions.

NOV

1 Abby, Megan

3 Gary, Tom

10 Conor, Andrew

15 Brandon, Kelsey

17 Jacob, Matt

22 Julian, Liam

 ‘It’s about building community out here’

Highland Realm Farm a hidden gem offering berries, education

Jay Powell

Columbia Daily Herald | USA TODAY NETWORK – TENN.

Excerpt from November 2, 2022, The Tennessean newspaper p. A11

While tourism and growth continue to dominate Maury County’s major cities, discovering its hidden gems among the rural landscape is also a major draw for visitors.

This is especially true when visitors and locals can bring home fresh, organic products produced by local Maury County farmers. However, there’s a lot more to discover than a simple bushel of berries, but a whole farming community that hopes to continue its own form of growth and educating the community.

Located just off Hampshire Pike in rural Hampshire, Highland Realm Farm has been a popular spot for more than a decade, inviting visitors each summer to pick fresh blueberries, camp and learn about farming. The lush farm even now now offers a cabin for rent

on the Airbnb market.

Having purchased the land in the mid-1970s, owner Deanna Maddy, a former professor of health at Columbia State Community College, began to focus on farming full-time after retirement in 1999. She began to learn the skills and knowledge related to things like using the right soil, how to grow her plants organically and, most importantly, the ability to maintain a thriving crop.

“I just woke up one day and said, ‘I’ve got to take better care of the farm,’” Naddy said. “I learned a little bit about what the soil should be like, and what chemical fertilizers do to the soil, if it makes the roots grow shallow.”

Over the last 12 years, Highland Realm has specialized in mostly blueberries, as well as a few blackberries, with approximately 2,800 plantings which are harvested each summer primarily during the June-July period. After about three years of trial and error, dealing with things like Japanese beetles and other damaging elements, Naddy discovered the secret to a good crop is in thermal composting.

Questions Nov 3

 MF -p.104

1. What are your questions/comments on the book, its characters, its depiction of life in the relatively near future, etc.?
2. Is the voluntary-exile scenario in chapter 14 something you can imagine ever having to experience yourself? 
3. What will it take to successfully "redirect fossil fuel companies to do decarbonization projects" and transition permanently from extractive industry? 53
4. What are you prepared personally to give up, in order to end your own "nonessential buying of things that degrade the biosphere"? 55 How often, for instance, do you make impulse purchases online?
5. Do you agree that living "at adequacy" is healthier and happier than the pursuit of wealth? 57  Is the notion that society must incentivize greed a myth propagated self-interestedly by the wealthy?
6. Is there enough energy, food, housing, clothing, healthcare, education etc. for all at present population levels? Should "enough" be a guaranteed human right? 58 
7. Are "actor networks" real, with or without agency? 60
8. Does hope "have to reside in something like this: hope to do some good, no matter how fucked up you are"? 64
9. Do you, like Frank, feel a confused compulsion to do something? And do you think it's not impossible that one person might actually change things? 65
10. How do we explain people in nations with rising inequality voting "for politicians who will increase their relative impoverishment"? Is monocausotaxophilia part of the explanation? 73
11. Do we need to replace GDP? Or take the question of our collective health and stability "back out of the realm of quantification"? 76 
12. Do climate scientists need now to be more like politicians? 82
13. "Philosophy is very often proving we can't think to the bottom of things..." 88 So is philosophy a help or a hindrance, when confronting a climate disaster?

Wheel of cognitive biases

LISTEN. Kim Stanley Robinson, the legendary science-fiction novelist, has a private utopian hope: “to dodge a mass extinction event.” He joins Azeem Azhar to explore his recent novel, The Ministry For the Future, and what it would take for institutions, individuals, and emerging technologies to save millions of lives.

Peak foliage in New England!

 November calls for color...

What Do American’s Middle Schools Teach About Climate Change? Not Much.

Around the United States, middle school science standards have minimal references to climate change and teachers on average spend just a few hours a year teaching it.

In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of 7th graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them.

It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year olds, Ms. Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of online disinformation. But she also thought it an important capstone to the end of two weeks she dedicates to teaching her Miami students about climate change, possible solutions and the barriers to progress.

"I'm really passionate about this issue," she said. "I have to find a way to sneak it in."

That's because in Florida, where Ms. Vazquez has taught for more than 30 years, and where her students are already seeing the dramatic impacts of a warming planet, the words "climate change" do not appear in the state's middle or elementary school education standards...


In the world beyond classrooms, thinking about climate change involves much more than merely understanding climate science and the greenhouse effect. It's about changing our energy systems and preparing for waves of climate migration. It's also about solutions, coming up with policies to adapt to extreme weather events and decarbonize large parts of our economy.

Which is why climate education is now expanding into areas like the arts and humanities, and social studies. Beginning this year, New Jersey is incorporating some aspect of climate change's effects, as well as solutions, into its standards for every grade band and in every subject area. National organizations representing English and social studies teachers have called for greater engagement with climate change in their classes.

These developments are a heartening and necessary step forward, Ms. Vazquez said. Teaching about climate change gets at the heart of what school is ultimately for: Helping kids make sense of the world around them, while preparing them for the future... nyt