Agriculture
What are the three main categories of outputs that can result from the thermochemical treatment of biomass?
Gas, Liquid and Solid
This federal agency is responsible for maintaining the Air Quality Index and reporting the daily levels.
What is the EPA
This New Orleans-based nonprofit is swapping noisy fossil-fuel generators for solar panels and batteries in North Carolina.
What is the Footprint Project?
This MIT professor and lead of the Decarbonization Mission warns that AI's impact goes far beyond just the electricity used to plug in a computer
Who is Elsa A. Olivetti?
This U.S. mountain region experienced catastrophic flooding from Helene’s rainfall.
What are the Southern Appalachian Mountains?
What is the name of the thermochemical conversion process used to create biochar?
pyrolysis
While the AQI measures several pollutants, these two are the primary focus because they pose the greatest threat to human health.
What are ozone and particulate matter (PM2.5)?
Seventeen days after this 2024 hurricane, the Footprint Project had deployed its largest relief effort to date in western North Carolina
What is Hurricane Helene?
A single query using this popular OpenAI tool consumes roughly five times more electricity than a simple web search.
What is ChatGPT?
This weather feature over the Atlantic helped push moist air toward the eastern United States during Helene.
What is the Bermuda High?
The bill requires the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to update a strategic plan for protecting which specific resource by October 1, 2026?
Strategic Plan for Protecting Agricultural Water Resources
This specific size of particulate matter, roughly 30 times smaller than a human hair, can embed deep in the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.
What is PM2.5?
This operations director of the Footprint Project was inspired to use solar tech after responding to an Ebola outbreak in Guinea in 2016.
Who is Will Heegaard?
By 2026, global electricity consumption by data centers is expected to reach 1,050 terawatts, ranking them between these two nations in total power use.
What are Japan and Russia?
This river in Asheville exceeded its previous flood record set in 1916.
What is the French Broad River?
Why does New York State's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 currently present a policy challenge for biochar advocates?
CLCPA does not recognize pyrolysis as a "negative-emission
An AQI value of this number or higher is generally considered the threshold where the air becomes "unhealthy" for everyone, not just sensitive groups.
What is 151?
In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, these machines were so common that harmful air pollution in San Juan rose above safe legal limits.
What are diesel/gas generators?
Training a model like GPT-3 generates an estimated 552 tons of this greenhouse gas
What is carbon dioxide (CO2)?
Studies suggest this global phenomenon made Helene’s rainfall about 10% heavier.
What is climate change?
what is the penalty for repeated crop larceny violations?
Fine of $500
The AQI scale officially runs from 0 to this maximum number, which represents the highest level of hazardous pollution.
What is 500?
This is the primary reason disaster responders prefer solar microgrids over generators, as fuel can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month.
What is cost/fuel savings?
Beyond electricity, data centers require an estimated two liters of this substance for cooling for every kilowatt hour of energy consumed.
What is (chilled) water?
This climate pattern developing in the Pacific can reduce vertical wind shear in the Atlantic, creating conditions that help hurricanes like Helene intensify.
What is La Niña?