Jeremy Singer-Vine, Data is Plural: “As part of its National Water-Quality Assessment Project, the US Geological Survey publishes maps and datasets that estimate local pesticide usage, based on “proprietary surveys of farm operations.” The datasets provide high/low estimates (measured in kilograms) by county, chemical, and year, as well as by crop group for each state. The most recent “preliminary” figures refer to 2019, with the next release not scheduled until “late 2024.” Read more: “Move to change how U.S. tracks pesticide use sparks protest,” an article by Virginia Gewin in Science, reporting on the pushback against USGS’s decision “to reduce the number of chemicals it tracks and to release updates less frequently.” [h/t Walt Hickey]
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Category Archives: Food and Nutrition
Beyond Factory Farms: A New Look at the Rights of Animals
Yale Environment 360: “Philosopher Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, helped launch the animal rights movement nearly 50 years ago. He talks with Yale Environment 360 about how we now better understand how animals feel pain and how other species are not so different from humans as we thought.” Continue Reading
USDA Climate Hubs Go Global
“For more than a decade, USDA’s Climate Hubs has been at the forefront of supporting climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts for U.S. farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners. Last week, the department significantly boosted its efforts globally, by launching the International Climate Hub. The new hub builds on the experience with 10 regional Climate Hubs… Continue Reading
ReFED Releases New Food Waste Estimates and Calls for Increased Action by Food System
“ReFED has released new estimates on the extent, causes, and impacts of food loss and waste in the United States, as well as an updated analysis of the solutions needed to fight it. The findings represent a stark call to action for food businesses, funders, policymakers, and other food system stakeholders to dramatically ramp up… Continue Reading
The decline of time-based law firms
Jordan Furlong: “Feeling apocalyptic about the impact of legally trained Large Language Models (LLMs) on the future of law firms? No? Allow this excerpt from Corporate Counsel to help you with that. [T]here’s reason to believe a boatload of tasks could be replaced by AI—about 44% of legal tasks within the U.S., according to Goldman Sachs’… Continue Reading
Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law
The Alan Turing Institute and the Council of Europe: Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law: “…It is a remarkable fact that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies over the last two decades have placed contemporary society at a pivot-point in deciding what shape the future of… Continue Reading
Groundwater Gold Rush
Bloomberg [no paywall]: “Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink…Some of the world’s largest investment banks, pension funds and insurers, including Manulife Financial Corp.’s John Hancock unit, TIAA and UBS, have been depleting California’s groundwater to grow high-value nuts, leaving less drinking… Continue Reading
Stressed Plants ‘Cry’—and Some Animals Can Probably Hear Them
Scientific American – Microphones capture ultrasonic crackles from plants that are water-deprived or injured: “Plants do not suffer in silence. Instead, when thirsty or stressed, plants make “airborne sounds,” according to a study published today in Cell. Plants that need water or have recently had their stems cut produce up to roughly 35 sounds per hour,… Continue Reading
Alexander Skarsgård Explains the Answer to Everything
The New York Times – (It Involves Doing Some Math – Opinion / Video) “Partha Dasgupta is a Cambridge University economist who in 2021 prepared a more than 600-page report for the British government about the financial value of nature. Not your average bedtime reading. But believe us when we say his report, the culmination… Continue Reading
OpenAI is massively expanding ChatGPT’s capabilities to let it browse the web and more
The Verge: “OpenAI is adding support for plug-ins to ChatGPT — an upgrade that massively expands the chatbot’s capabilities and gives it access for the first time to live data from the web. Up until now, ChatGPT has been limited by the fact it can only pull information from its training data, which ends in… Continue Reading
AI isn’t yet going to take your job
Washington Post – “but you may have to work with it Artificial intelligence is increasingly making its way across industries, changing jobs from retail to medicine to marketing…Today, AI can power grocery store robots that change how stores get stocked, speed up vaccine production and generate creative ideas. But the latest advancements raise important questions… Continue Reading
Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce
Environmental Working Group – EWG’s 2023 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™: Nearly 75 percent of non-organic fresh produce sold in the U.S. contains residues of potentially harmful pesticides, EWG’s 2023 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ finds. In this year’s guide, blueberries and green beans join our Dirty Dozen™ list of the 12 fruits… Continue Reading
