ScienceBlogs

What We're Talking About Friday, January 27, 2012

Full Speed Ahead?

On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham reports that scientists have genetically enabled E. coli to digest a sugar found in algae. Bonham writes, "Scientists have been picking this bug's locks for decades, and it's already been engineered to make not just ethanol, but many other useful products as well." With the ability to metabolize sugar from a source as prolific, low-maintenance, and renewable as algae, E. coli could become a much bigger player in biofuel production. Meanwhile, Greg Laden considers the State of the Union address from an environmental perspective. Laden gives President Obama a pass for his pragmatic approach to an incendiary political issue, but admits that some of us might have preferred "a fire and brimstone demand to step up our national efforts to address Global Warming and the other issues related to the high rate of release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere." Laden says we must first elect a more unified Congress willing to enact science-based policy. In the meantime, the USDA's revised plant hardiness map shows that "all the climate zones have moved north permanently." And in 2012, that's just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Fuel from Seaweed

we beastiesJanuary 26, 2012

"There's also been a lot of interest in using different sorts of algae as feedstocks for the production of biofuels. Their rapid growth makes them eminently renewable, they require almost no effort to cultivate, no fertilizer, no fresh water, they would not use up arable land that can be used for food crops. The main draw back is that one of the most abundant sugars present in algae, called alginate, is not digestible by the microorganims currently used for biofuel production at an industrial scale. Until now."

Climate Change and the State of the Union Address

greg laden's blogJanuary 25, 2012

"Find out who is running for nomination to Congressional office in your area. Find out which candidates, if any, support science-based policy. Tell them that you like this about their candidacy, volunteer to work for their campaign, and send them 25 bucks. If there are no candidates like this in your area, contact the campaigns of those that are running and tell them you want them to engage in science-based policy. Don't send them that 25 bucks unless they show promise, and seem sincere. If you live in a district or state with an anti-science Representative or Senator, work against them and do so with the explicit overt intention of working against the anti-science representatives we have now in Congress."

Global Warming is Real

greg laden's blogJanuary 25, 2012

"The USDA has just released its new Planting Zone Map. It turns out that all the climate zones have moved north permanently. Thus the new map. You can plant stuff never before plantable right here, this year, now. The climate change has happened, and continues; A new and changed map is expected again in a few years."

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Salamanders (and caterpillars) curl up and roll out of harm's way on Pharyngula.

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Multiple wavelengths reveal a supernova could have carved the Eagle Nebula on Starts With a Bang!

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A murmuration of starlings moves like a mercurial amoeba in the sky on Life Lines.

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In Conversation

“We know that a majority of oil producing nations have already had peaks, and that the world itself must inevitably peak - the only question is when - and the material evidence increasingly suggests that we are already on a bumpy plateau.”

Oil's Tipping Point in Nature
casaubon's book