Posts Tagged ‘biofuels’
EcoTuesday
EcoTuesday!
* Kim Stanley Robinson, hero of the environment.
* People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.
* We’re double-saved! ‘New Facility Uses Algae to Turn Coal Pollution Into Fuel.’
* Except we’ve already destroyed the oceans and the rainforests.
Closing a Few Open Tabs
Closing a few open tabs.
* The New York Times has an article on Fermi problems and the importance of intuition in mathematics. (There’s a game.) (Via Boing Boing.) Kottke links to some such calculations at 3quarksdaily, saying they used to be part of the interview process of Microsoft and Google.
* Roger Ebert explains why some people say he gives movies too many stars.
* The new season of the Ricky Gervais podcast is out.
* More radio: an episode of This American Life from May that explains the origins of the mortgage crisis.
* And Bill Gates is investing heavily in algae fuel. We’re saved!
Random Links
Random links in anticipation of the big speech tonight.
* Wikipedia’s page on the crucial compound unobtanium. Via kottke.
* A brief history of tabloids.
* Geographically misplaced statues of pop-culture icons.
* McCain gets prickly with Time.
There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.I’ve read your books.
No, I’m not going to define it.But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.
* Have we hit Peak Tequila?
* And Banksy visits New Orleans.
Cyanobacteria
Here come cyanobacterial fuels. We’re saved!
Dramatic progress has been made over the last decade understanding the fundamental reaction of photosynthesis that evolved in cyanobacteria 3.7 billion years ago, which for the first time used water molecules as a source of electrons to transport energy derived from sunlight, while converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.
The light harvesting systems gave the bacteria their blue (“cyano”) colour, and paved the way for plants to evolve by “kidnapping” bacteria to provide their photosynthetic engines, and for animals by liberating oxygen for them to breathe, by splitting water molecules. For humans now there is the tantalising possibility of tweaking the photosynthetic reactions of cyanobacteria to produce fuels we want such as hydrogen, alcohols or even hydrocarbons, rather than carbohydrates.
Envirolinks!
Envirolinks!
* Climate Debate Daily, from the good (if too conservative) folks who bring you Arts & Letters Daily, is the latest addition to the ecology section of my sidebar.
* And from way back in February: the top 50 eco blogs, as ranked by the Guardian.
* 25 tips to make your apartment a green paradise.
* More from the the 55-mph wars: Nissan’s new ECO pedal “presses back upward when it senses drivers are driving too quickly.”
* ‘Junk Mail Produces as Much CO2 as 7 States Combined.’ Here’s how to stop it.
* ‘Prepare for global temperature rise of 4°C, warns top scientist.’
* Scientists predict that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice ‘will lead to a large-scale transfer of shellfish, snails, and other animals from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.’
* But will algal ethanol save us? Virgin Airlines says yes!
