My view on this is that in all news there is editorial. If you choose not to report on the latest goings on in Ghana you are changing what information will get to your readers. Reporting is inherently done with a perspective, even if it is only in the sense of choosing what to report on.

The key issue for climate change is that things are changing due to human activity. There are lots of ancillary issues, for example how exactly things are changing or who is responsible for causing the situation. These are all valid parts of the overall story of climate change and each one adds to the knowledge of your readers. Adding another story of a bushfire does provide more context to your readers, but at some point diminishing returns starts to rear its ugly head.

If you only focus on the harms and never talk about solutions you are in fact biasing the information given to your readers. Recognising that you have not been providing a full context for your readers and then changing your reporting practises to fix that seems like good journalism to me.

We should absolutely be talking about the harms of climate change. This information is vital to actually making changes in who we vote for and what policies we support. But if we have no information about solutions we can't make informed decisions about whether a new technology is viable or vapourware, or whether a financial mechanism is useful or extractive. We need good information covering the causes and solutions so we can make good choices.

This sounds like constructive hope, rather than the “it will all be fine” type. Good. Exposing us to the idea of positive change is probably something we need more of.

Runner ducks

Sequesters carbon dioxide naturally and produces electricity and biomass.

OK, so you have explained what it is, but I am missing where in the climate change solution jigsaw this fits into.

Reducing meat intake means less deforesting, electric cars and renewable energy means less fossil fuel consumption. Making a duck farm does what?

Ah cool, beautiful

It's a pond channel, water covered in azolla in a long channel into the distance.

Is that a sunken garden bed? Or a little pond?

Many types of farmed ducks are bred to be unable to fly. But yes, their shit is actually biologically helpful. They do get sick and hunted which can be mitigated. Do you have any other animal types you think would be more robust in this system? I was also thinking maybe pigs.

If we can remove the back pillar then the design would be even simpler, and harvesting would be much easier.

Thank you, and yes fish could most likely be added, the immediate problem would probably be the fish eating all the azolla though. I was thinking you could ranch chickens and feed them the azolla, then sell the chickens which could be a value-added profitable time investment. The profitability comes down to how many need to be paid to manage and maintain the system. So if something like adding fish adds more value while not increasing the labor required too much, then absolutely. Cooling adds some efficiency when it's hot, not a huge amount, but more than nothing.

That's really cool. I wonder if it could be further enriched by adding fish like some aquaponics systems. (No doubt there would already be detritivore and other invertibrate life, though). Does cooling the panels improve their efficiency?

It depends greatly on location and solar panels are becoming cheaper rapidly. So I have no idea. I just think from an engineering perspective this is something that could be realistically scaled up to many acres.

This is awesome! If you don't mind, can you give a rough idea of the financials?

The one that survived without needing to be shut off essentially serves as proof of viability, and combined with the data from the ones that was repaired it helps them figure out how to adjust the design and manufacturing to make every unit last longer. Basically, future turbines should be cheaper to run.

the Swedish company SKF announced that its bearings and seals on one of the turbines had passed the 6 1/2-year mark without needing unplanned or disruptive maintenance.

I've read many optimistic articles detailing tidal energy projects, however they seldom address the inherent upkeep costs for equipment and infrastructure.

I'm glad maintenance is mentioned here, but I worry that it glosses over that only one out of the four turbines passed the six year mark without needing disruptive repair. How disruptive was the other turbine maintenance? Does it push it beyond viable profitability?

I genuinely do hope for the technology to mature and introduce more clean energy alternatives.