Peaceworks' Missourians for Climate Action

09/30/2026

Did ya hear: This workshop is happening tomorrow, Wednesday, 6:30 at The Peace Nook

All are invited to attend this FB event. Wonder what we'll be talking about?

Some of what we'll explore at this workshop:

1) Explore (brainstorm) reasons for pursuing electoral politics, including, but also beyond, the obvious benefit of helping elect candidates one favors.

2) Explore limitations of electoral politics.

3) Discuss the various options for volunteer engagement in the electoral realm.

4) Roles and tactics for electoral activism

5) Vote for the Climate: What do we mean when we say “Vote for the Climate?” How do we do it and what do we hope to accomplish?

09/08/2026

This is a real Win-Win. And it seems i would be workable here in the States, especially in the SW where they do lots of irrigated agriculture and have shortages of water available.

France is covering its canal network with solar panels — a 1,000-kilometre programme that places bifacial panels directly above water channels, generating electricity from the reflection of sunlight off the water surface while simultaneously reducing evaporation losses from canals that carry 5 billion litres daily to southern French agriculture.

France's Canal du Midi — a UNESCO World Heritage site connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean — and the adjacent Canal de la Robine carry irrigation water through the Languedoc and Provence regions, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 38 degrees and evaporative water loss from open canal surfaces reaches 15 to 20% of total flow. The Canal de Provence irrigation cooperative has been losing an estimated 45 million cubic metres of water annually to evaporation — water that costs energy to pump, treat, and distribute.

Technique Solaire has developed a floating canal solar system specifically for French irrigation canals: panels mounted on lightweight pontoons that rest on the canal surface, provide 70% shade coverage, and generate electricity from both direct sunlight above and reflected light from the water surface below. The pontoon design allows maintenance boats to pass, fish ladders to function, and water flow to continue unimpeded.

The Aqua agrivoltaique pilot on the Canal de la Robine — 11 kilometres operational since 2022 — has measured 18% reduction in evaporation, 12% increase in electrical output compared to equivalent land-based bifacial panels from water surface reflection, and 100% of local maintenance performed by the same crew that maintains the canal infrastructure.

France's canals were built to move water. They are now generating electricity from the sun that was stealing it.

Source: Canal de Provence & Technique Solaire, French Canal Solar Programme Evaluation Report 2024

09/05/2026

When are we going to wake up folks?

The AI revolution is thirsty. Thirstier than you might think.

A large hyperscale data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day for cooling. That can be comparable to the daily water needs of a town with tens of thousands of people.

And increasingly, some of these facilities are being built in places already dealing with drought and water stress.

The numbers are significant.

U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023.

By 2028, estimates suggest annual consumption could rise to somewhere between roughly 37 billion and 73 billion gallons, depending on how quickly the industry expands and how efficiently facilities use water.

And the water footprint doesn’t end at the data center. Producing the electricity that powers these facilities can require additional water, meaning direct cooling figures don’t capture the entire water demand.

The drought dilemma is becoming harder to ignore.

A Guardian analysis found that roughly two-thirds of planned U.S. data centers are located in areas that have experienced drought.

Texas offers an especially striking example. Researchers estimate that data centers could account for between 3% and 9% of the state’s total water use by 2040, depending on how much the industry grows and how water-intensive its operations remain.

The technology is advancing rapidly, but so is the demand for computing.

The question is no longer simply how much AI can do. It’s also how much water, electricity and other resources we are willing to devote to building it.

09/03/2026

We keep seeing posts regarding the advantages of agrovoltaics and others saying the best way to go is not in the fields but on the roofs of buildings and over parking lots. Our sense is that both are needed and, given the climate crisis we're experiencing, ASAP.

Germany's solar industry is being disrupted from within — not by Chinese competition or grid congestion, but by its own farmers, who are discovering that agrivoltaic installations generate more revenue per hectare than any conventional crop while improving yields of everything planted beneath them.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems published a landmark study in 2024 covering 50 agrivoltaic installations across Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg, and Rhineland-Palatinate. The findings overturned the assumption that solar panels and farming are in competition for land. At every trial site, crops grown beneath elevated bifacial solar panels showed equivalent or higher yields compared to open-field controls. Wheat and barley saw marginal effects. Strawberries and specialty salad crops showed yield increases of 10 to 25% under partial shade in drought years. Lavender yields increased 30%.

The financial arithmetic has become impossible for farmers to ignore. An agrivoltaic installation on one hectare of Bavarian farmland generates EUR 6,000 to EUR 9,000 annually in electricity revenue at current grid prices, on top of unchanged crop revenue. Conventional cereal farming on the same hectare generates EUR 400 to EUR 600. The income ratio is 15 to 20 times in favour of agrivoltaics.

Germany's farming lobby — historically resistant to land use changes — has shifted from opposing agrivoltaics to lobbying for simplified permitting. The German Farmers' Association changed its policy position in 2023, officially supporting agrivoltaic development on agricultural land as a source of farm income diversification.

German farmers fought for their land for generations. Now they are covering it in solar panels voluntarily.

Source: Fraunhofer ISE & German Farmers' Association (DBV), Agrivoltaic Market Development Report 2024

08/22/2026

Another take on agrovoltaics for those who might be interested.

You'd assume shading a crop costs you yield. For a lot of plants it doesn't, because plenty of them evolved on a forest floor under dappled light and actually struggle in full sun.

The panels aren't laid out in solid rows either. The Egyptian projects are testing checkerboard patterns, which produce less power than a conventional solar farm but let a lot more light down to the plants. Researchers elsewhere are testing transparent panels that split the difference.

08/20/2026

Short-sighted capitalism run amok with tragic consequences.

Alabama Power has guaranteed that residents’ power bills won’t increase as a result. Can the state’s largest utility keep its promise?

08/11/2026

This is critical information that so far seems to being ignored by most of the media.

Would you please do the world a very modest, but important, favor and share this important information widely?

Thinking we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record.

08/06/2026

There are many ways to pursue agro-voltaics; safe, clean, renewable and affordable.

China is rapidly expanding a farming system that produces both food and electricity on the same land.

The approach, known as agrivoltaics, places solar panels above farmland while allowing crops, fish farming, greenhouse cultivation, or livestock grazing to continue underneath. Instead of choosing between agriculture and renewable energy, the same land is used for both.

According to a nationwide dataset published in the journal Scientific Data, China had 1,678 agrivoltaic projects with a combined installed capacity of 134.55 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2022.

The study found that China's first commercial agrivoltaic project began in 2010, after which the sector expanded rapidly, making the country one of the world's leading developers of agrivoltaic systems.

Crop-based, fishery-based, and greenhouse-based projects are the most common. Some newer installations also allow livestock to graze beneath elevated solar panels, where the shade can reduce heat stress while the animals naturally control vegetation.

Researchers say agrivoltaics offer a practical way to generate more renewable energy without taking farmland out of production, helping support both food security and the transition to cleaner sources of electricity.

Source: Scientific Data (Nature Portfolio)

08/04/2026

Will the madness never cease?

Please make your voice be heard and your vote count.

Federal meddling has thwarted at least three wind farm projects in the state so far. | Opinion

08/03/2026

The concepts that no one owns the sun, that no fuel is needed to run solar panels or wind turbines, and that here in the U.S. at least, 100% of the renewable energy we use is domestic, not imported; these concepts are not new. Some of us were talking about all this and more back in the early 1970s.

The fact that some people still need to be convinced of this reflects on the power of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries that seek to continue profiting from dirty energy and, in the process, fueling more climate change, sooner than we should be facing.

https://www.facebook.com/markpw.haim/posts/pfbid034Tmtys4nwMpsa2SVU6HrGGqcPv7HzcFguBoks2yuFmD9FfDvqjw2T9BrbCuTrZZ7l

Top 9 Recent EV Breakthroughs
1 Global Tipping Point (2026): Global electric passenger car sales tracking to hit 23m in 2026, a 28% global share, with over 80% of Asia’s power demand now sitting in markets electrifying faster than the US
2 Light EV Revolution (Global South 2026): Global stock of electric 2- and 3-wheelers at 350m vehicles, displacing record 1.15m barrels of oil demand / day, single largest driver of road-fuel demand destruction on Earth
3 Battery Tech: CATL unveiled 3rd-generation Shenxing/Qilin battery tech, delivers 98% charge in 6 minutes + 1,500km range
4 Heavy Trucks (China 2026): E-trucks at 29% market share in China, overtaking LNG models for 1st time, backed by battery-swapping hubs that swap a 40-ton rig's battery in under 5 minutes
5 Extinction Event (Norway 2026): Pure BEVs hit world-record 98.4% of new car sales in Q1 2026, leaving diesel, petrol, and plug-in hybrids combined at under 1.6% market share as combustion engines reach effective extinction
6 Beautiful Bans (Laos 2026): Laos issued a complete import ban on refined petrol/diesel passenger vehicles, forcing vertical S-curve transport shift and halting foreign exchange bleeding
7 Indonesia Boom (2026): Electrified vehicle sales up 69% in H1 to 117,000 units, with 1 in 4 new passenger cars now electrified (BEVs alone ~16% share)
8 Australia Surge (2026): EV sales more than doubled in H1 to over 100,000 units, market share leaping from 7.6% to 16.4% YTD and hitting record 23.5% in June, outselling both diesel and hybrids for 1st time
9 Emerging Markets Boom (2026): Sales doubled in Brazil, India, Korea and Viet Nam (Viet Nam BEVs at 43% share and Brazil up 125% in H1), with New Zealand BEVs more than tripling in key months

Voila. Technology beats finite commodities every single time

Wires chewing pipelines