Vertical Farming has come a long way since the original series was posted 3 years ago, and there have been many developments that are shaping the future of the industry. Whether it’s large scale plant factories, community urban farms, or even new types of farm, the size of vending machines, and even vertical farms at home, the way we grow is changing.
But it’s not just the way we grow, what we grow is also changing. Vertical Farms are adding new crop types like tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and many other types of fruits and vegetables, and this change has happened sooner than the original series projected.
But to really have a significant impact on the global challenges of climate change, food security and water security, we will have to grow energy intensive crops like wheat and rice in vertical farms.
Are we on track to meet this challenge, or is vertical farming struggling to improve its energy efficiency? Is vertical farming closer to changing the world?
Previous video in series: The Future Of Vertical Farming.
https://youtu.be/ESuzrY2abAw.
Is Solar Power The Future Of Energy?
Advanced Nuclear Power Advocacy For Humanity — Eric G. Meyer, Founder & Director, Generation Atomic
Eric G. Meyer is the Founder and Director of Generation Atomic (https://generationatomic.org/), a nuclear advocacy non-profit which he founded after hearing about the promise of advanced nuclear reactors, and he decided to devote his life to saving and expanding the use of atomic energy.
Eric worked as an organizer on several political, union, and issue campaigns while in graduate school for applied public policy, taking time off to attend the climate talks in Paris and sing opera about atomic energy.
Eric began his full time nuclear work in May of 2016 with Environmental Progress by organizing marches, rallies, and trainings in California, New York, and Illinois, before leaving to found Generation Atomic in late 2016.
In only a short period of time, Generation Atomic has made significant progress in the world of nuclear advocacy. Over the last year they’ve held several advocacy trainings at conferences, Marched for Science, talked to over tens of thousands voters, and carried the banner for nuclear energy at the climate talks in Morocco, Germany, and Poland.
Starship, SpaceX’s under-development rocket, braved the elements during an impressive lightning display.
Editor’s note, 6/28/21, 3:35 PM: The article was updated to clarify that Natrium features a sodium‐cooled fast reactor and not a type of molten salt reactor, as previously reported.
A nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates has announced plans to build a new kind of nuclear reactor at a retiring coal plant in Wyoming.
This reactor will be the first real-world demonstration of the startup’s technology, which could help power the world — without warming the climate.
But the global effort to fight climate change is also causing problems. Europe’s wind farms haven’t seen a good breeze in months, and droughts in China and South America have dried up power generation from hydro dams. Meanwhile, surging prices for carbon pollution credits in Europe have made fossil alternatives even more expensive, and Chinese grid operators have come under mounting political pressure to help the country meet its carbon emissions targets by burning less coal.
The energy crisis could imperil political support for climate policies, just as the COP26 climate summit approaches in Glasgow in November. But there are steps governments can take to prevent energy market turmoil leading to sky-high electric bills and breakdowns in the global supply chain.
“What we’re seeing is an unfortunate set of circumstances during a period of transition where we haven’t fully moved from one system to another,” says James Henderson, director of the Energy Transition Research Initiative at Oxford University. “During that period, market risks are enhanced. It’s impossible to envision a world where there won’t be more volatility.”
Disaster sciences, digital twins & artificial intelligence — craig fugate, chief emergency management officer, one concern.
Mr. Craig Fugate is the former Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA — an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, whose primary purpose is to coordinate the response to disasters that have occurred in the United States and that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities.)
Mr. Fugate is currently the Chief Emergency Management Officer of One Concern, (a Resilience-as-a-Service solutions company that brings disaster science together with machine learning for better decision making).
Mr. Fugate is also senior advisor at BlueDot Strategies, where he assists a range of clients with emergency management implementation strategies and crisis communications.
Mr. Fugate serves on the Board of Directors of PG&E Corp., one of the largest electric and natural gas utilities in the U.S., and on the staff at Indian River State College, serving as a strategic consultant in emergency management.
From ecosystem development to talent, much effort is still required for practical implementation of edge AI.
By Pushkar Apte and Tom Salmon
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made this technology important for many industries, including finance, energy, healthcare, and microelectronics. AI is driving a multi-trillion-dollar global market while helping to solve some tough societal problems such as tracking the current pandemic and predicting the severity of climate-driven events like hurricanes and wildfires.
Thu, Sep 23 at 10 AM PDT.
The Ivors Academy Trust presents the David Ferguson Lecture with Brian Eno, Professor Brian Cox, Dr Tamsin Edwards and Hannah Peel.
It has never been more urgent to reflect on the music industry’s impact on the climate.
From streaming to touring, join us this Ivors Week as we explore the industry’s role within the climate emergency.
Researchers recently found that a few years back, they “slept” through a hurricane. On analyzing weather satellite data from 2,014 scientists discovered evidence of a hurricane from space that pushed plasma toward Earth’s upper atmosphere. Though these events are invisible to the eye, the evidence reveals that they’re not uncommon. Understanding more about them could help to protect satellite and communications systems from disturbance and preserve radar and GPS output for life below on the planet’s surface.
Satellites in orbit around the planet gather immense amounts of data on environmental and climate activity. A recent publication in Nature Communications explains how the first hurricane from space was discovered through analysis of data gathered back in August 2014.
The research team looked at recently released files containing measurements taken by four satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. From their analysis, the scientists created a 3D image that showed the hurricane from space forming features similar to what we’re familiar with in Earth’s lower atmosphere. A press release in Science Daily describes it as a gigantic spiral of plasma, with its arms swirling counterclockwise above the North Pole.