#climate change and coffee

[farmerstrend]

Major Causes on the Decline of Kenya’s Coffee Production: Causes and Solutions

Explore the decline in Kenya’s coffee production, the role of weak governance in cooperative societies, and the government’s strategic reforms to rejuvenate the industry. Uncover the key challenges affecting Kenya’s coffee sector, from high input costs to delayed payments, and the reforms aimed at revitalizing cooperatives and empowering farmers. Learn about the Coffee Bill 2024, the…

[jamaicamocha]

War and weather impact on coffee production

Every summer, the Sahara Dust drifts across Jamaica’s skyline, affecting this luxury coffee-growing island, already vulnerable to violent weather. For locals, the sight of the dust reinforces that summer is here! Remember, all weather involves the transfer of heat. If desert dust is visible, what about the thousands of missiles fired in recent years across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and…

[thegoodmorningman]

To be honest, the sandwiches aren't that good. There's a great bagel place next door though. Good Morning.

[artichokefartichoke]

Good morning sunshines!

(It's actually 1 pm, but I had nothing to do today and it's 90+ degrees AGAIN and I just want fall weather and my throat hurts. Still strong as a mother though.)

[jcmarchi]

UK and France to collaborate on AI following Horizon membership

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/uk-and-france-to-collaborate-on-ai-following-horizon-membership/

UK and France to collaborate on AI following Horizon membership

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The UK and France have announced new funding initiatives and partnerships aimed at advancing global AI safety. The developments come in the wake of the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, a move that was broadly seen as putting the divisions of Brexit in the past and the repairing of relations for the good of the continent.

French Minister for Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, is scheduled to meet with UK Secretary of State Michelle Donelan in London today for discussions marking a pivotal moment in bilateral scientific cooperation.

Building upon a rich history of collaboration that has yielded groundbreaking innovations such as the Concorde and the Channel Tunnel, the ministers will endorse a joint declaration aimed at deepening research ties between the two nations. This includes a commitment of £800,000 in new funding towards joint research efforts, particularly within the framework of Horizon Europe.

A landmark partnership between the UK’s AI Safety Institute and France’s Inria will also be unveiled, signifying a shared commitment to the responsible development of AI technology. This collaboration is timely, given France’s upcoming hosting of the AI Safety Summit later this year—which aims to build upon previous agreements and discussions on frontier AI testing achieved during the UK edition last year.

Furthermore, the establishment of the French-British joint committee on Science, Technology, and Innovation represents an opportunity to foster cooperation across a range of fields, including low-carbon hydrogen, space observation, AI, and research security.

UK Secretary of State Michelle Donelan said:

“The links between the UK and France’s brightest minds are deep and longstanding, from breakthroughs in aerospace to tackling climate change. It is only right that we support our innovators, to unleash the power of their ideas to create jobs and grow businesses in concert with our closest neighbour on the continent.

Research is fundamentally collaborative, and alongside our bespoke deal on Horizon Europe, this deepening partnership with France – along with our joint work on AI safety – is another key step in realising the UK’s science superpower ambitions.”

The collaboration between the UK and France underscores their shared commitment to advancing scientific research and innovation, with a focus on emerging technologies such as AI and quantum.

Sylvie Retailleau, French Minister of Higher Education and Research, commented:

“This joint committee is a perfect illustration of the international component of research – from identifying key priorities such as hydrogen, AI, space and research security – to enabling collaborative work and exchange of ideas and good practices through funding.

Doing so with a trusted partner as the UK – who just associated to Horizon Europe – is a great opportunity to strengthen France’s science capabilities abroad, and participate in Europe’s strategic autonomy openness.”

As the UK continues to deepen its engagement with global partners in the field of science and technology, these bilateral agreements serve as a testament to its ambition to lead the way in scientific discovery and innovation on the world stage.

(Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash)

See also: UK Home Secretary sounds alarm over deepfakes ahead of elections

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai safety summit, artificial intelligence, europe, france, government, horizon europe, research, safety, uk

[bumblebeeappletree]

Coffee is a daily routine for millions across the globe, but climate change is threatening production. What can be done to avoid a potential shortage?

#planeta #coffee #climatechange

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

Credits:

Author: Beina Xu

Video editor: Markus Möritz

Supervising editors: Michael Trobridge, Kiyo Dörrer

Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Thanks to:

Dr. Vern Long, CEO World Coffee Research

Dr. Alejandra Sarmiento Soler, Biologist

Dr. Nerea Turreira Garcia, Ethno-Botanist

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/ma...

https://hivos.org/document/coffee-bar...

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/...

https://theconversation.com/climate-c...

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/agr...

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

1:14 How did we get so addicted?

2:31 The current situation

5:21 Potential solutions

8:28 The future of coffee

[decapodparty]

double fisting the hot coffee and the iced coffee that the local shop gave me as i walk across campus

[winterweary]

I forgot about winter daylight hours for a second and thought this was just a portent of doom and was really upset for a good long moment

hey remember the sun is going away and you’re going to go nuts and to not take it personally

[esperanzawave]

Biodegradable McDonald's lid, cup, and straw.

I get a sugar free iced coffee every morning. It's a McDonald's I used to work at and the twins bring it out to me. They're so cute, they remind me of my little brother.

I recently got my brother a job at the place I work at.. 22.50 an hour.

[todayworldnews2k21]

Starbucks buys research farms as climate change threatens coffee supply

Starbucks is buying two new research farms that will test everything from drones to microbes as it seeks to make coffee more resilient to climate change, which has already constricted availability and driven up prices. A farm in Costa Rica will look at solutions including how technology can help growers. In Guatemala — a key supply region — Starbucks will replicate the challenges facing the small…

[farmerstrend]

Global Collaboration for Local Impact: How LM Re, Sprout, and Britam are Supporting Kenyan Coffee Growers Against Drought

Liberty Mutual Reinsurance (LM Re) has announced a partnership with Insurtech firm Sprout, Inc and Kenyan financial services company Britam to introduce a new parametric insurance product aimed at protecting Kenyan coffee growers from financial losses caused by drought. This new product, developed through collaboration at the Lloyd’s Lab Launchpad Pitch, is designed to provide swift payouts…

[skeletonpandas]

[jcmarchi]

Making steel with electricity

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/making-steel-with-electricity/

Making steel with electricity

Steel is one of the most useful materials on the planet. A backbone of modern life, it’s used in skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, bridges, and more. Unfortunately, steelmaking is an extremely dirty process.

The most common way it’s produced involves mining iron ore, reducing it in a blast furnace through the addition of coal, and then using an oxygen furnace to burn off excess carbon and other impurities. That’s why steel production accounts for around 7 to 9 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, making it one of the dirtiest industries on the planet.

Now Boston Metal is seeking to clean up the steelmaking industry using an electrochemical process called molten oxide electrolysis (MOE), which eliminates many steps in steelmaking and releases oxygen as its sole byproduct.

The company, which was founded by MIT Professor Emeritus Donald Sadoway, Professor Antoine Allanore, and James Yurko PhD ’01, is already using MOE to recover high-value metals from mining waste at its Brazilian subsidiary, Boston Metal do Brasil. That work is helping Boston Metal’s team deploy its technology at commercial scale and establish key partnerships with mining operators. It has also built a prototype MOE reactor to produce green steel at its headquarters in Woburn, Massachusetts.

And despite its name, Boston Metal has global ambitions. The company has raised more than $370 million to date from organizations across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East, and its leaders expect to scale up rapidly to transform steel production in every corner of the world.

“There’s a worldwide recognition that we need to act rapidly, and that’s going to happen through technology solutions like this that can help us move away from incumbent technologies,” Boston Metal Chief Scientist and former MIT postdoc Guillaume Lambotte says. “More and more, climate change is a part of our lives, so the pressure is on everyone to act fast.”

To the moon and back

The origins of Boston Metal’s technology start on the moon. In the mid 2000s, Sadoway, who is the John F. Elliott Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Materials Science, received a grant from NASA to explore ways to produce oxygen for future lunar bases. Sadoway and other MIT researchers explored the idea of sending an electric current through the iron oxide rock on the moon’s surface, using rock from an old asteroid in Arizona for their experiments. The reaction produced oxygen, with metal as a byproduct.

The research stuck with Sadoway, who noticed that down here on Earth, that metal byproduct would be of interest. To help make the electrolysis reaction he studied more viable, he joined forces with Allanore, who is a professor of metallurgy at MIT and the Lechtman Chair in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The professors were able to identify a less expensive anode and partnered with Yurko, a former student, to found Boston Metal.

“All of the fundamental studies and the initial technologies came out of MIT,” Lambotte says. “We spun out of research that was patented at MIT and licensed from MIT’s Technology Licensing Office.”

Lambotte joined the company shortly after Boston Metal’s team published a 2013 paper in Nature describing the MOE platform.

“That’s when it went from the lab, with a coffee cup-sized experiment to prove the fundamentals and produce a few grams, to a company that can produce hundreds of kilograms, and soon, tons of metal,” Lambotte says.

Boston Metal’s process takes place in modular MOE cells the size of a school bus. Here is a schematic of the process.

Boston Metal’s molten oxide electrolysis process takes place in modular MOE cells the size of a school bus. Iron ore rock is fed into the cell, which contains the cathode (the negative terminal of the MOE cell) and an anode immersed in a liquid electrolyte. The anode is inert, meaning it doesn’t dissolve in the electrolyte or take part in the reaction other than serving as the positive terminal. When electricity runs between the anode and cathode and the cell reaches around 1,600 degrees Celsius, the iron oxide bonds in the ore are split, producing pure liquid metal at the bottom that can be tapped. The byproduct of the reaction is oxygen, and the process doesn’t require water, hazardous chemicals, or precious-metal catalysts.

The production of each cell depends on the size of its current. Lambotte says with about 600,000 amps, each cell could produce up to 10 tons of metal every day. Steelmakers would license Boston Metal’s technology and deploy as many cells as needed to reach their production targets.

Boston Metal is already using MOE to help mining companies recover high-value metals from their mining waste, which usually needs to undergo costly treatment or storage. Lambotte says it could also be used to produce many other kinds of metals down the line, and Boston Metal was recently selected to negotiate grant funding to produce chromium metal — critical for a number of clean energy applications — in West Virginia.

“If you look around the world, a lot of the feedstocks for metal are oxides, and if it’s an oxide, then there’s a chance we can work with that feedstock,” Lambotte says. “There’s a lot of excitement because everyone needs a solution capable of decarbonizing the metal industry, so a lot of people are interested to understand where MOE fits in their own processes.”

Gigatons of potential

Boston Metal’s steel decarbonization technology is currently slated to reach commercial-scale in 2026, though its Brazil plant is already introducing the industry to MOE.

“I think it’s a window for the metal industry to get acquainted with MOE and see how it works,” Lambotte says. “You need people in the industry to grasp this technology. It’s where you form connections and how new technology spreads.”

The Brazilian plant runs on 100 percent renewable energy.

“We can be the beneficiary of this tremendous worldwide push to decarbonize the energy sector,” Lambotte says. “I think our approach goes hand in hand with that. Fully green steel requires green electricity, and I think what you’ll see is deployment of this technology where [clean electricity] is already readily available.”

Boston Metal’s team is excited about MOE’s application across the metals industry but is focused first and foremost on eliminating the gigatons of emissions from steel production.

“Steel produces around 10 percent of global emissions, so that is our north star,” Lambotte says. “Everyone is pledging carbon reductions, emissions reductions, and making net zero goals, so the steel industry is really looking hard for viable technology solutions. People are ready for new approaches.”

[crankygrrl]

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