for a company focusing on wind power, it is no surprise that flower turbines chose lubbock, texas, as its home in the united states. lubbock regularly ranks in the top 10 windiest cities in the united states according to data reported by noaa. when this energy start-up blew into town, their mission was simple: democratize clean energy and give people more control over the source of their electricity. the inventors of a tulip-shaped wind turbine, flower turbines, are aiming to reimagine the technology of small wind.

flower power

small wind is about harnessing the power of the wind, locally. small wind systems are designed to be a way for everyday consumers to green up their power usage. energy.gov estimates that small wind systems could cut the average consumer’s electricity bills by 50%-90%. 

dr. daniel farb is the ceo of flower turbines and a strong advocate of small wind technology. 

traditional, fan-style wind turbines generate a few complaints: bird collisions, disruptive noise, and degradation of the visual appeal of natural landscapes are commonly cited as inhibitors of wind power. flower turbines, however, solve some of these issues attached to traditional wind farming. 

“they have low noise, actually – no noise, and they are bird-friendly,” dr. farb says.

near silence and bird-friendliness are achieved because tulip turbines operate on the vertical axis as opposed to the horizontal axis that the traditional, fan-style turbines use.

along with being safe for wildlife and non-disruptive to human ears, flower turbines pride themselves on being aesthetically pleasing as well. dr. farb says that he wants their turbines to be more like works of art themselves. 

“we are intending to use it to make a statement about climate change and so forth, through art,” dr. farb explained, “it’s a kind of ecological art.” 

the turbines come in three sizes and a customizable variety of colors.

most of flower turbines’ work has been in europe. they are two-time winners of the dutch sustainability award for their small wind contributions. 

“we’ve done a lot of encouragement of e-bike charging systems by selling combined wind and solar e-bike chargers to a lot of municipalities,” dr. farb says. 

dr. farb helped create and patent the “cluster effect” used by flower turbines. when grouped together, energy production efficiency increases. groups of tulip turbines can make their neighbors perform 20%-50% percent better. 

“we can have more zoom and less room,” dr. farb says. “in other words, by putting them together, we make better use of limited space in a small world.”

dr. farb explained that because of this effect, in certain parts of the world, small wind turbines can produce more energy per square foot than solar panels. the ability to place tulip turbines in groups and on roofs or the ground creates the opportunity for small wind farms in urban spaces. 

“i believe that now, we are the only small wind company that could scale into a large global company and make a significant impact on renewable energy the way that solar has grown,” dr. farb says. 

small wind in action

implementation of small wind systems shows great promise for building off-grid systems in rural areas or supplementing traditional energy sources in urban areas. 

researchers at texas tech university are putting small wind systems to the test in a project aimed at decentralizing the utility system. lead principle investigator brian ancell helped bring the home utility management system, or hums, to life in 2018. 

“the whole idea of the project is centered around the fact that centralized utility systems are really vulnerable to things like climate change and disasters, either natural or manmade,” ancell says. “we’re trying to develop a residential decentralized system where the house itself can produce a good amount of its own power and a good amount of its own water.”

the hums house includes a three-kilowatt, residential-grade wind turbine. ancell says the cost for the small wind system was $6,000-$7,000 when it was initially installed. while it does generate power, wind energy is a variable energy source. 

“the small turbine itself can’t really power a whole lot at a given instant in time, but storing the power in a battery for people to use later is the key,” ancell says.

the house uses a combined small wind and solar power system to provide as much sustainable energy as possible, but it is not aiming to be a completely off-grid system. 

“we know that a fully islanded house with no connection to any grid supplies probably also won’t work,” ancell says. “the idea is that the centralized grid will have to provide much less than it does today – it’ll be much more sustainable and much more reliable.” 

one of the main focuses of the hums house is a guidance system that learns the energy production and consumption trends of the house. it then guides homeowners on how to maximize their energy capture, storage and usage.

“the system provides guidance that tells you how much money you’ll lose or how much money you’ll save based on changing habits – essentially based on what you’re getting from the wind turbine and the projection of how much power you’re going to be using,” ancell says. 

the biggest factor to implement this technology is reducing the cost of battery storage. ancell is optimistic that the costs are going to come down enough in the near future that implementing small wind residential energy will become cost-effective.

in this podcast, planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 katie perkins sits down with asheley landrum, ph.d., a media psychologist and associate professor of science communication in the college of media & communication at texas tech university, to find out the answers to these questions and more. listen in for a short deep dive into the research surrounding science communication and why we, as communicators, should be paying attention to it.

full transcript below:

asheley landrum (00:00:04) i study sort of how science is communicated through the whole system of science, scientist to scientist, scientist to public science through intermediaries like journalists, museums, and other types like that.  

katie perkins (00:00:19) my name is katie perkins, planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 from texas tech university, and today we’re gonna dive into the science behind scientific communication. joining me is dr. ashley landrum, a media psychologist and associate professor of science communication in the college of media and communication at texas tech university. her research investigates how values and worldviews influence people’s selection and processing of science media. so i have with me dr. ashley landrum, thank you so much for joining me today! i went through a lot of your research and i found a lot of it so interesting. and one of them i wanted to talk about was, you have an article that talks about conspiracy mentality and the denial of science. so can you tell me a little bit more about why the public tends to disagree with the science that they read in the media?  

asheley landrum (00:01:10) it is not that every issue of science is rejected by the public, or any one issue of science is rejected by the whole public. different groups of people are more receptive to messages of science about different topics depending on their own worldviews, their values, and their belief systems. so for example, we might see or hear about when we’re growing up that there are people who reject the idea of human-caused global climate change because it conflicts with their deeply held political beliefs or with the beliefs of groups that they are affiliated with or things that are important or core to their identity. conspiracy mentality is the other sort of element of that. when people are more prone to distrusting authorities or institutions, maybe they have full reason to distrust based on some things that happen in their background or things that they’ve read about.  but when you’re more open to, in some senses, distrusting authorities and institutions, it makes it a lot easier to believe that they would engage in certain types of conspiracies. so that government agencies would hush or hide or cover things up. whereas people who are less likely to have that sort of worldview or are more trusting of authorities and institutions, they’re less likely to sort of buy into some of the conspiracy theories that exist. so there are sort of several different worldviews and beliefs that can contribute to rejecting any one specific point of science. but the public as a whole generally accepts most of what science tells us. we just tend to focus on the ones that aren’t.  

katie perkins (00:02:53) do you think that journalists can play a role in changing those people that tend to reject science? or do you think that those beliefs are so deeply held that it’s gonna be very difficult for us to talk to them in a way that will hopefully change their mind?

asheley landrum (00:03:06) so in my view, it’s, it’s hard to say that journalists could make it better, but they could at least not make it worse. and so, i think that regardless of your profession, right, everybody in this world has beliefs. they have a worldview. they have, you know, a system of values that influence the way that they see the world. if journalists are using their platform in a way to try to stick it to certain populations, that could only make the problem worse. so we had a study that i collaborated with dan kahan and kathleen hall jamieson, and it was out of the annenberg public policy center at the university of pennsylvania. we showed that journalists could end up sort of creating a politically polarized environment over the issue of the zika virus simply by framing that study as an issue connected to one that is politically charged.  so we had sort of three different message groups that people were randomly assigned into. they could have just read a public health message about zika. we had a second message that had that public health message, but then connected the issue to climate change that said something like, if you’re concerned about zika, you should also be concerned about climate change because… and then we had a third condition that said, if you’re concerned about zika, you should be concerned about immigration because we have people immigrating to areas of the us from areas where it is habitable for these mosquitoes. and you know, the virus is, is bloodborne, sexually transmitted, and mosquito-transmitted. so we showed that in the public health condition, regardless of your political beliefs, you generally were concerned about zika. you believed the science that was presented. but in the condition where we presented it and tied it to climate change, we found that people who were more politically conservative were more likely to say, well, maybe i’m not that concerned about zika. and you know, we hear that a lot. “oh, you know, political conservatives reject science.” well, we also made liberals reject science because then in the third condition where we had attached it to immigration, then we had people who are more on the progressive or liberal side of the political spectrum saying, “oh, well maybe zika’s not that big of a deal and i don’t believe that it causes microcephaly.” so we could, you know, basically by tying it to an issue that’s already politically charged. we ended up polarizing that issue when it wasn’t one that was polarized before. and we refer to that as polluting the science communication environment. but when i’ve talked to journalists, i think many of the journalists that i’ve talked to think of themselves as storytellers or you know, artists or their sharing perspectives. and when i brought this up at a panel at a conference where we were talking to some science journalists and i said, to what extent are you paying attention to science com research or having it inform, you know, the way you communicate science so you can communicate more strategically right?  what we ended up finding or what those journalists told us was, well, it’s not our job to do that. and i was like, “oh, okay.” i had used that example that i just shared with you as the example when they were asking me like, “wait, i don’t understand what you’re talking about. what do you mean pay attention to science com research?” and i was like, “oh, we did this thing.” you know, one of the potential implications coming from this recognizing it’s one study, right, is that science communicators could inadvertently pollute the science communication environment by attaching something that’s not embedded with political meaning to something that is. 

katie perkins (00:06:36) i think that is just a really great example of why we need to, you know, look into the research that you’re doing and understand the science behind scientific communication, like you said earlier, because we play a big role in how the public perceives it and we can really be super divisive as journalists in scientific communication. 

asheley landrum (00:06:54) well one of the other things that we’ve talked about before is the way science journalists are trained compared to other types of journalists, and i can’t remember the exact numbers, but one of the researchers in science com was sort of counting and published the number of actual people who are hired as science journalists and how much it’s decreased over the past decade or even longer. instead, the people who are covering science are the ones who are covering politics or the ones that are covering other issues. and so they’re looking at science through that political lens already that can make – that can kind of complicate the issue, right? because they’re already kind of coming at it from this political perspective. and so the norms of communicating science as a journalist may need to be different than the norms of communicating politics or the norms of communicating, you know, economics or other types of issues. and when colleagues of mine and i do presentations on, you know, tips for communicating science and more frequently we do these with scientists, but these are also true for actual professional communicators. one of our first things is to really know what your goal is. and that seems silly because people know what their goal is, but do they? you know, it’s like, scientists might say, “well my goal right, is to communicate my science”. it’s like, okay, well if your goal is to communicate your science so that members of the public understand it, then you need to strategically design that message in order to do that. your goal might actually be to get people to think like you do – and that is a goal, but that’s a different one, from getting the public to understand it.  

katie perkins (00:08:36) i wanna talk a little bit more about your flat earth research. so you have a research article called ‘flat smacked converting to flat earthism’. and you talk about the role that youtube played in converting flat earthers. so what has your experience been in how different social media platforms contribute to how people accept science or like, digest theories that are controversial, things like that? 

asheley landrum (00:08:58) you know, social media platforms are communities now. some of them have a bunch of like, are broader used, especially at the beginning. i remember in its heyday, everybody was on facebook regardless of your age. you know, my grandmother who is 80 years old created a facebook page. you know, so you, you have pretty diverse audiences, but as platforms age or as there are more available, then you end up having different communities on them. on youtube, there’s a community of conspiracy theorists sharing videos about any conspiracy theory that you can think of. from there, it was either eric dubay or somebody around the same time who had sort of created a flat earth video sort of making an argument for flat earth. what was interesting is that almost everybody that we talked to said that they were first exposed to the flat earth conspiracy from watching videos on youtube. the only exceptions were people whose family members did and then introduced them to it. so it started off on youtube and then came off the platform to start bringing in family members and friends of those who are on youtube. they would start by watching conspiracy videos and then they would be suggested other conspiracy videos. and when they would present these facts, and i’m using quotes, air quotes there, right, “the facts of flat earth” to other people, they called it getting flat smacked because you’re just smacked with all this information at once. and so that’s where the title of that came from. and if you do watch eric dubay’s video, it’s like 200 proof that the earth is not a spinning ball or something like that. i think it’s been pulled off of youtube a bunch of times. but if you watch it, you’ll see it’s just like sort of argument after argument, and they’re so fast that you don’t really have, if you’re just watching it in real-time, you don’t have time to actually critically evaluate it. you just feel like you’re being overwhelmed with information that’s like, wow, like this is, this seems really legit when it’s not at all  

katie perkins (00:10:45) and so, is that kind of how you see that misinformation coming in over social media platforms regarding scientific communication? it just comes at you so fast that you don’t have time?

asheley landrum (00:10:55) so some cases, so that was, i mean that was the case with that. i think in addition to that, and probably more frequently for other types of science communication on platforms, things through memes or articles or shared stories. it’s people who are seeing misinformation that resonates with their worldview. so again, this is a, it’s an all-person thing. the acceptance of misinformation or acting in a political way is not something that’s true only for specific populations. it’s true of all populations. and the question is, is it something that’s gonna interact with your values or beliefs in a way that’s gonna make you respond in a way that’s not consistent with the evidence from science?  

katie perkins (00:11:32) so do you think that there is a way to not make issues like these political or is it just in their nature that in science media the science is gonna get polluted like you said earlier by political agendas?  

asheley landrum (00:11:45) right. so we can try to do what we can, we can’t control what everyone in the world says. and so, you know, political actors are gonna probably step in at some point and make things political. but we can at least try to not, you know, we can ask communication professionals who are doing this for a living to not make the problem worse. and it’s not, like i said, it’s not always predictable, it’s not always something we can stop. but there are circumstances where we know based on prior work, based on history, how something can happen. so, you know, we can do what we can, but once it’s like, once it’s really polarized like climate change, it’s very hard to come back from that without really strong messaging from a variety of different sources that tries to counteract that. and only over time, so trying to get younger generations to stop seeing climate change as a political issue and instead as a global and a human one.  

katie perkins (00:12:46) the last thing i have is, i was reading your most recent article about awe-inspiring scientific communication. could you tell us just a little bit more about awe and how it affects people?  

asheley landrum (00:12:56) yes. well, so we don’t know yet, right? so this is actually really exciting work. the paper you were referring to is one that we were looking at to see if we could measure people’s experiences of awe when engaging with, and in this case, it was reading science news stories and the stories that were, like several of them were written by ed yong because he writes in a very awe-inspiring way. but you know, other types of stories as well to see if we can measure awe. then the later goal will be to see – is this a style or a way of writing that might help increase openness to accepting science? but the aforementioned graduate student i told you about alex olshansky, his dissertation is also looking at how experiences of awe might limit people’s ability to counter-argue when being confronted with things like conspiracy theories.  

so if you are, if you are reading about a conspiracy theory or if you’re watching a video which seems to be more, more frequently the case and you have this experience of awe, is it taking more of your cognitive resources away from then being able to question what it is that you’re, that you’re watching? and it’s sort of a resource allocation question. and he has not done his analysis yet, but all of his data is collected. so it could have, it could be a double-edged sword, right? it could be a mechanism through which to get people excited and engaged with science, but it could also be a mechanism through which misinformation is spread.  

katie perkins (00:14:25) that was all super, super interesting and i think is really gonna interest a lot of people on planet forward. so yeah, just thank you so much for joining me today!

asheley landrum (00:14:33) thank you for having me.

this year, visitors looking for a fun fall activity are in for a surprise when they head to at’l do farms, located just outside of lubbock, texas, for there will be no corn found. in its place – a maze of multi-species cover crops that contains seven different plants. sorghum, sunflowers, pearl and foxtail millet, cowpeas, sun hemp and radishes will all work together to reduce water inputs. 

a family affair

eric simpson was born and raised on the same property that at’l do farms still calls home today, and agriculture has been a family affair for generations. originally, the land was a monoculture system that rotated growing cotton, sorghum and wheat until the mid-’90s. 

when a low period hit, the simpson family was forced to reevaluate their business. they decided to use the land in a different way and planted their first corn maze in an attempt to bring visitors to the farm and generate a new stream of revenue. 

“it became more and more profitable and in fact, we slowly transitioned out of the production side of agriculture and now we just do the maze and a kind of agritourism type of industry,” simpson said. 

at’l do farms has operated the maze and other fall attractions for 21 years and the farm now welcomes over 50,000 visitors each season.

slideshow by katie perkins

a dry area in drying times

dubbed the llano estacado by early spanish settlers, this region is an approximately 32,000 square mile plateau situated atop the southern boundary of the ogallala aquifer that receives an average of 18 inches of precipitation a year. 

widespread drought and as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain during the winter of 2021 meant corn had a slim chance of growing to the height necessary to construct the maze. 

“what we could see from last year is it didn’t rain pretty much from september all the way until may,” simpson said. “corn, which is a very water-intensive crop, just wasn’t going to cut it. because of climate conditions, it just didn’t rain, and it forced us to make a better decision.” 

these conditions sent simpson to the drawing board in order to find a way the maze could still happen while reducing its water consumption footprint. his neighbor uses a traditional pivot irrigation system but simpson knew he did not want to be reliant on the ogallala aquifer.

globally, approximately 70% of groundwater that is drawn out of aquifers is used for crop irrigation. 

“the entire agriculture industry right now is propped up on the ogallala (aquifer) as its water resource,” simpson said. “the ogallala is depleting at a way faster rate than what is being recharged.” 

the ogallala aquifer is a finite resource. in the next 50 years, 70% of the ogallala aquifer is estimated to be depleted, with the main withdrawals stemming from the agriculture industry. 

“i think in my lifetime we will see a drastic transition away from agriculture on the llano estacado because of a depleting aquifer and extreme climate change,” said simpson. 

an artist by trade, simpson never planned on returning to the family farm after graduating from texas tech. he found himself back in west texas after being accepted to an art residency in lubbock.

“it was at that time that i saw that farming didn’t have to be the way that it’s always been here,” simpson said. “in the sense that you could make changes about biodiversity, soil health and planting drought-tolerant crops.” 

forging a new maze

creating a polycultural farming system like simpson has done at at’l do farms this season has a multitude of benefits for the health of his land. the variety of plants attracts pollinators, reduces erosion, decreases pesticide and herbicide usage, reduces harmful pests, and increases nutrient cycling. 

“lubbock is notorious for being a little bit behind the times, but i think that’s ok,” simpson said. “it gives us young folks the opportunity to see what other folks are doing in other parts of the country and jump in.”

simpson and his family are forging new paths in the agriculture industry and he believes they can spark change amongst his peers in the agritourism industry. change towards a more sustainable future. 

“to my knowledge, we are the first ones to do a multispecies crop for a maze,” simpson said. “i think we are showing people throughout the country the options for doing types of things like this.” 

looking toward the future, simpson says he definitely wants to continue planting non-traditional crops for the annual maze, building healthy soil and working with the land — not against it. 

“as long as we can continue to make little baby steps towards alternative and more drought tolerant and resistant practices, that’s what we are going to do to keep the farm alive,” simpson said.

today, we talk about a fun and tasty way to combat invasive species by putting them on the menu. invasive species are organisms introduced into an environment outside their native range that cause catastrophic economic and environmental damage. controlling invasive species can be costly and time-consuming but including them on your plate could be a viable way to manage and even reduce populations. we share a fun and simple crockpot feral pig pulled pork recipe. 

feral pig pulled pork sliders – recipe courtesy of invasivore.org

ingredients

4lb feral pig shoulder roast

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

½ tablespoon garlic powder

½  cup yellow mustard

brioche slider buns

water as needed

directions

1. coat pork roast in mustard to act as a binder for the dry rub.
2. combine seasonings and spoon over the pork roast, ensuring the rub adheres to the pork.
3. coat the bottom of the slow cooker with vegetable oil.
4. add pork roast to the center of the slow cooker.
5. cook low for 6-7 hours or high for 4-5 hours until meat easily falls off the bone or shreds easily if using boneless. once the internal temperature reaches 195°f-205°f it will be ready to shred and safe to eat. 
6. while still in the slow cooker, use a pair of forks to shred pork meat, removing fat as desired.
7. enjoy on a toasted bun.  optional: top with coleslaw to enjoy your sandwich “southern style!”

**note: if you notice your pork roast getting dry during the cooking process, add water until the roast is halfway submerged and maintain the water level for the rest of the cooking.**