By Tony Pereira, UCLA ME PhD To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. —William Blake If a grain of sand was all that was needed, our species would likely be sustainable forever. However, we humans require quite a bit more from…
Land-based systems play important roles for salmon aquaculture, but can RAS production ever catch up to net pens? Kuterra workers harvest farmed salmon at the company’s land-based RAS facility in British Columbia. By Tim Sprinkle In 2010, the SOS (Save Our Salmon) Marine Conservation Foundation entered into a unique partnership with the ‘Namgis First Nation in British Columbia. Their goal? To plan,…
Bill Mollison, the Australian researcher, scientist and “father of Permaculture” stated that Permaculture itself is the positivistic response to our environmental crisis. With this, Mollison means that people must observe their surroundings and formulate their knowledge around what their senses allow them to take in. Based on the interpretation of this sensory experience, humanity can derive information through reason and logic. Instead…
By Paul A. Olivier PhD The Vietnamese people get upset when they see industrial pollution. Think back on the pollution generated by the Formosa Steel Plant and how people were thoroughly outraged. But one might argue that industrial pollution is only a small part of the pollution problem in Vietnam. One might argue that many of the same Vietnamese people who denounce industrial…
By Professor Ted Cocking. A major new technology enables all of the world's crops to take nitrogen from the air rather than expensive and environmentally damaging fertilizers. Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. However, only a very small number of plants, most notably legumes (such as peas, beans and…
By Dr. Paul Olivier We have seen so far that compressed earth blocks can be used to build animal pens, to make larval and red worm pods, to elevate aquaponic sand beds, to construct duckweed ponds, and so forth (Pork, Fish and Vegetables). They can also be used, of course, to construct houses. Social enterprises can engage small farmers to construct their…
By Kevin Loria By 2100, the world will be different. A newly published study estimates that there's a 95% chance global temperatures will rise more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That's the level that's frequently considered the tipping point beyond which the consequences of climate change become catastrophic. The goal of the Paris Agreement was to set…
By Paul A. Olivier PhD 3/24/2018 There’s a big fat lie being told on every urban street corner and every rural road throughout the whole of Vietnam. This lie has become so convincing that the vast majority of people, even poor people, never question it. This lie has become so pervasive that many agricultural experts are actively engaged in its proliferation. This…
Two U.S. scientists have solved the hypothetical puzzle of the century: how to explain the reported climate "hiatus" and reconcile two different ways of predicting the global temperature by 2100. They say they now know why computer simulations and the forecasts made by a study of the historical record don't seem to agree. The good news is that scholarly conflict may…
Union County, Florida is 250 square miles, nestled in the middle of the state's pan—not the handle—about an hour southwest of Jacksonville and nearly as far from the state's southern border. Residents depend on four things for their county's survival: farming, trucking, timber, and the state's department of corrections. It is the country's third congressional district, the state's smallest county, and the…