Untitled topic

the ai writing is so painful, even if the news is good

Terrible awful slop writing.

> At the University of Arizona, researchers ran the experiment for years at a desert site called Biosphere 2.

It'd be interesting to see results in places that are less arid. What do you see when you do this in a corn field in Iowa or a soybean field in northern Missouri? What about different types of crops? Soybeans are notably shorter than corn; that could impact the angle at which sun hits them. The Midwest is also notably less sunny than the Southwest.

Not that there is no value in this research, but I'm always somewhat suspicious of anything that writes off the efforts of farmers when it comes to what they think is best for their land. If there were ways to put solar on farmland nationwide that increased both electric and crop/livestock yields, and those yields translated directly into profits, I think there'd be obvious interest in it from farmers and ranchers. The fact that there isn't tells me there might be more to this.

Plentiful, near-free energy has other uses for food production, too: vertical farming, which is quite energy intensive, becomes feasible. Now you can grow tons of food on small plots of land, as well as year-round in cold climates. Desalination also becomes much more cost-effective. Now you can stop desertification, cultivate land that was previously too arid for crops, and so on. The possibilities for what we could do if we went all-in on solar in North America are super exciting, and we need to push on that narrative because the counter-narrative is the one that is winning right now, and it makes no sense.