Found this cute wee frog when I was looking for fossils along a creek near our village - so tiny!!
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Glen L Creasy
@SabrosiaVit@epicure.social
mastodon 4.7.3Viticulturist for Sabrosia Winegrowing Services (France)
97 Followers
32 Following
38 Posts
Joined February 07, 2023
Age:
Plenty
Wine:
Yes, please
2025 sees big tech companies' greenhouse gas emissions jump. Amazon's increased by (a self-reported) 16% and Google's by 18% last year. Amazon's emissions from electricity consumption rose 34% in 2025, driven largely by growth in AI use.
Of note: "Amazon's emissions are more than those of the entire country of Austria..."
https://www.dw.com/en/google-amazon-emissions-rise-sharply-driven-by-ai-boom/a-77821598
Electricity storage is now a bottleneck for Europe's green energy system - half its energy comes from renewable sources now (bravo!! :-)
As well, the electricity grid needs improvement to cope with it, though investing in more at-home generation and storage will help with this.
Making progress, though!
https://www.dw.com/en/europe-s-energy-problem-isn-t-green-power-it-s-storage/a-77302218
90-year old vines are dying of drought: what was once sustainable is no longer...
Santorini Assyrtiko production was 500 tonnes last vintage, 1/5 of 2022, and producers are looking for creative ways to find irrigation water, including sourcing wastewater from nearby villages. Viticultural practices are changing to accommodate irrigation, and wine characteristics are changing due to the increased heat.
Welcome to the present...
Honey bees gathering water in the creek near our village. There were hundreds in a small section of the creek...
A very poignant article about the challenges of being a winegrower in France today. Vignerons despair over increased risks caused by climate change, added cost of administration and increased regulation, inflation, and an ever more competitive marketplace. Far too many take their lives trying to cope with it all...
A well-written and informative piece about a topic that shouldn't be shied away from...
Part 2 of 2
or which, if used next to vines reduce growth and productivity due to competition and allelopathy (as well the types of mycorrhizae are different - oaks have associations with ectomycorrhizal mycorrhizal and grapevines arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, so one has no influence on the other).
The article does more harm than good...
Computational improvements to image processing, using AI to extract more data from small pixels common to today's high-resolution smartphone cameras, looks set to dramatically improve image quality.
This new use of AI to leverage all the information captured, not fill-in-the-gaps, promises digital zooming without typical artefacts.
I'd like to see independent analyses of the system, but it looks impressive!
Nuclear power seems an attractive option for low carbon emission power generation, but until an environmentally friendly way of dealing with the radioactive waste is found, it just plain isn't...
"Japan reactor restart sparks fresh fears over nuclear waste storage"
#ZeroCarbon #NuclearPower #ClimateChange #NuclearWaste #Environment
What a disappointing article - many of the things mentioned are not responses to climate change (uninoculated ferments, vegan-friendly production), practices that have been, for good reasons other than climate change adaptation, in common use for decades (use of cover crops)...
Part 1 of 2
We drove through Almería recently and were astounded by all the plastic houses (~40,000 ha) used to produce vegetables, primarily.
First I thought of the plastic use, estimated to be 30,000 tonnes per year), then the effects on the mesoclimate (decrease in air temperatures in the recent past).
Efficient use of resources?? A good return on environmental impacts?
A couple of articles explaining more...
https://geographyfieldwork.com/CostadelPolythene.htm
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/almerias-sea-of-greenhouses-150070/
Two tonnes of thermally dense crushed soapstone is being used to store energy in a small municipality of southern Finland.
This installation can hold a week's worth of the town's green energy in winter - beating its constructor's expectations and allowing it to eliminate the need to purchase heating oil.
Will we see more of these types of systems being installed? I hope so!
Visit to Noilly Prat, vermouth producer in Marseillan. Fascinating history and process for making the beverage. Pictured here are barrels kept outside where some of the fortified (16%) wine is stored for a year, without topping. This is to simulate ship transport (part of this is that salt from the Mediterranean Sea makes its way to the barrels). In hot weather they are sprayed with water to keep the wood from drying out.
When I was growing up in New York state legal drinking age was 18 when I turned 18, but a short time after they raised it to 21, so I went back to being underage.
Didn't bother me, but I thought it was funny...
Rooftop solar has huge potential for decentralised electricity generation. I bought a solar generator recently and am impressed at what it can do, despite the modest investment.
We are on the cusp of generating a large portion of energy from the sun, though it does require battery installation to make it worthwhile...
https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/rooftop-solar-could-meet-40-eus-long-term-electricity-demand-2026-01-21_en
#SolarPower #Sustainability #Environment #CleanEnergy
@simonjwoolf
Hiya! Is it that time to think about seeing if you're happy to continue hosting this server? Make a contribution to its costs?? :-)
We visited Mas Cal Demoura in the Languedoc and they told us about Les Cinsónautes - a new organisation pledged to promote the long-dismissed variety Cinsault.
(I added their commitments to the poster due to character limits...)
About https://tellementsoif.tv/o/TextContent/les-cinsonautes-le-cinsault-en-reconquete_tco_34452546
My oenologist wife, Kirsten, and I are hosting a two week school for Bordeaux Sciences Agro Bachelor in V&O students. Here we are introducing them to the wines and wine regions of the Languedoc!
#Languedoc #BordeauxSciences #Teaching #WineTasting #LanguedocWine
Wassailing, which I always associated with spiced hard cider and Christmas carols, turns out (also) to be a pagan fertility rite focussing on fruit trees, which is gaining in popularity!
Inside Europe did a story on this the week before last (starts at 48:15)...
https://www.dw.com/en/more-trouble-for-uk-prime-minister-keir-starmer/audio-76057779
More detail on the celebration here
https://www.discoverbritain.com/history/traditions/wassailing/
The average doesn't tell the whole story and economic models are catching up to this fact.
More warnings about the effects of climate change and the influence of extreme events on the economy.
Economic models don't seem to take into account quality of life issues, either!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/05/flawed-economic-models-mean-climate-crisis-could-crash-global-economy-experts-warn
#ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #ExtremeWeather #TippingPoint
Is that "recycled" plastic packaging actually recycled? How much CO2 does it prevent being generated as opposed to virgin plastic?
It turns out, no, and 6% to 8% more.
Be wary of claims made on manufacturer packaging and marketing materials - the petrochemical industry may be feeding them lines about the environmental impact of their processes and they lobby heavily to keep their market for oil growing...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/27/recycled-plastic-packaging-claims-misleading-say-experts
#Greenwashing #Plastics #CarbonEmissions #Recycling #Lobbying
Replying to
@AlexGBardsley
Ooooo! I will have to find some!
I especially liked Noilly Prat's Extra Dry Vermouth, but I would, of course, because they developed it specifically for the US market! 😂
A Ficus vastra tree in Valencia's Jardín del Turia. Tremendous shade providers, and amazing to look at with their mangrove-like buttress roots...
Apparently native to the Horn of Africa...
A look into Agave production, but not in Mexico, in India.
Few agave plant farms exist at this point, so it's up to scouts to find blocks of plants used as hedgerows, or growing wild, to harvest.
Like with winegrapes, timing of harvest is critical to yield and quality, though I think hand harvesting grapes is easier!! :-)
Due to climate change induced droughts, dust storms are making a comeback in the US, which are associated with health problems, both from physically inhaling particles, but also disease organisms, such as those causing the potentially fatal Valley Fever, which is similar to bronchitis.
Currently travelling around Morocco and spied this on the horizon... I started calling it "The Eye of Sauron (after he started using eyedrops)"
It's the focus tower for a system of mirrors, with the energy used to melt salt so electricity generation can continue for some hours after dusk.
Completed in 2016, this system does use a lot of water for mirror cleaning and cooling - newer installations are designed around a dry cleaning method...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Station
Evidence for a very strong El Niño weather pattern grows, perhaps the strongest in 140 years, and its consequences will be exacerbated by climate change.
Fortunately, because it builds slowly, there's time to prepare for the effects of the event, but will governments do so?
#ClimateChange #ElNino #ElNiño #Drought #Flooding #HeatWave #Farming
@simonjwoolf
I'm on it!
:-)
Another energy storage system, using gravity, but with a twist.
Using excess energy capacity to pump water to a high reservoir and then using the descending water to drive turbines is not a new idea, but now there is a functioning version that uses heavy blocks instead of water, which has advantages of being able to be built pretty much anywhere and which has a similar efficiency rating...
Unusually warm weather for the time of year throughout France - though, unfortunately, it won't be as unusual in the future...
https://youtu.be/em9sUX5K1yM
#ClimateChange #BeachWeather #NewNormal
A common problem here in the Languedoc - abandoned vineyards next to producing ones... With the recent incentives to pull out unwanted blocks, there's less of this, but there are still a lot of examples around...
More tips on identifying AI-generated images...
TL/DR - it's in the details...
https://www.eweek.com/news/5-simple-ways-spot-ai-generated-images/
#AISlop #AIPictures #CriticalReview
Decades of photographs showing the state of/decline of the areas around the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The cleanup after the reactor meltdown & more recent de-commissioning of the other two reactors will continue into the 2060s.
Nuclear power is not the final answer to our energy issues... For more evidence, have a look at the Fukushima cleanup, which is expected to take until the 2050s...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-forty-anniversary
#NuclearPower #Radiation #Chernobyl #Fukushima
A wearable fabric that can harvest useable amounts of water from the air, even in arid environments. Promising, though at present requires DC power source and inflatable apparatus to extract the water...
It might be more efficient to place it on the inside of the jacket to capture water lost from our skin (about 500 ml/day is lost through our skin) or go full Dune and wear a suit and collect all the water! :-)
Original paper https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed9949
An example of the net direction of flow of phloem (plant's sugar transport system).
This pine tree has grown big enough for the step to block further expansion and phloem development, but because net sugar movement is from needles to roots, the result is a massing of cells storing sugars because they can't get past the physical block of the step.
The tree survives because enough sugars are transported back and forth to the roots through the rest of the trunk.
Ouf! Pretty telling on the state of the wine industry!