Good News Headlines 4/10/2023
Middelgrunden wind farm – CC 3.0. European Wind Energy Association
Not A Single Collision For Seabird Populations In Offshore Wind Farm Says $3M Radar Study
by Andy Corbley, Good News Network
There’s something deeply comical about suggesting that seagulls are smart enough to wait for you to look away before stealing your french fries, but dumb enough to fly into wind turbine blades. A two-year study on the interactions of several seabird species at an offshore wind farm found that not a single case of birdstrike was recorded over the study period or in the 10,000 videos taken. Looking at herring gulls, gannets, kittiwakes, and great black-backed gulls, Swedish state wind company Vattenfall found that most of the birds maintained a 50 to 230-yard distance between themselves and the radius of the spinning turbines.
‘A Living Pantry’: How An Urban Food Forest In Arizona Became A Model For Climate Action
by Samuel Gilbert, The Guardian
Near downtown Tucson, Arizona, is Dunbar Spring, a neighborhood unlike any other in the city. The unpaved sidewalks are lined with native, food-bearing trees and shrubs fed by rainwater diverted from city streets. One single block has over 100 plant species, including native goji berries, desert ironwood with edamame-like seeds and chuparosa bushes with cucumber-flavored flowers. This urban food forest provides food for residents and roughage for livestock, and the tree canopy also provides relief to residents in the third-fastest warming city in the nation. It has made Dunbar Spring a model for other areas with increased heat, drought and food insecurity.
The Climate Solution That Not Enough People Are Talking About
by Liz Kimbrough, Positive News
When it comes to climate solutions, your first thought may not be the wildebeest. But in the Serengeti, these antelopes are the key to carbon capture. Wildebeest eat large amounts of grass and recycle it back into the soil as dung. So when their population plummeted in the early 1900s due to a disease transmitted from domestic cattle, the loss of natural grazing led to more frequent and intense wildfires, turning the Serengeti into a carbon source. Efforts to bring back wildebeest through disease management were a huge success, helping reduce the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and restoring the Serengeti back into a carbon sink.
3D Printing Promises To Transform Architecture Forever – And Create Forms That Blow Today’s Buildings Out Of The Water
by James Rose, The Conversation
In architecture, new materials rarely emerge. For centuries, wood, masonry and concrete formed the basis for most structures on Earth. In the 1880s, the adoption of the steel frame changed architecture forever. Steel allowed architects to design taller buildings with larger windows, giving rise to the skyscrapers that define city skylines today. That may soon change with advances in what’s called “large-scale additive manufacturing.” Large-scale additive manufacturing, like desktop 3D printing, involves building objects one layer at a time. Whether it’s clay, concrete or plastic, the print material is extruded in a fluid state and hardens into its final form.
This Evolving 3,000-Mile-Long Park Is Already Improving Cities Along Its Path
by Ashira Morris, Reasons to Be Cheerful
The American Tobacco Trail is just one small stretch of the East Coast Greenway, an evolving network of trails from Calais, Maine down to Key West, Florida. Project leaders at the East Coast Greenway Alliance have been working since 1991 to stitch them together and create new greenways with the goal of establishing a car-free, 3,000-mile route for walking and biking. The Durham Belt Line will add about two more connecting miles to the Greenway’s remaining 2,000 miles. Although it’s a fraction of the path’s full Eastern Seaboard-spanning journey, it will be a critical car-free route for Durham residents on a daily basis.
