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POPSBiofuels Breakthrough: Making Fuel From Air With Engineered Microbes Although the process sounds similar to algae-produced biofuels, the Joule process is incredibly (and beneficially) different for several reasons: * Doesn’t produce biomass * No agricultural feedstock needed * Can be conducted on non-arable land * Doesn’t need fresh water * Produces fuel directly without the need for extraction or refinement Apparently Joule has discovered some unique genes inside these microbes that produce the enzymes responsible for directly making the molecules found in diesel. From there, engineering organisms to make other fuels was a simple step. At this point, production of the fuels has only been done in the lab, but Joule has plans to open a pilot plant in early 2011.
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POPS Who says it's green to burn woodchips? Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch said: "It's almost unbelievable that we're creating vast areas of monoculture, mile after mile, just to be cut down as fast as they grow, to be shipped thousands of miles to be burned just for people's electricity. It just doesn't make sense. What about all the habitat that gets destroyed along the way?" Arrrghhh!!!! Please pass on ... retweet ... whatever. Somewhere I line must be drawn. See how woodlands can support multiple livings, and how complex they really are... www.worldwidewood.wordpress.com.
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POPSScientists Create New Life Form to Clean Up Water "We're kind of making a new machine," said Dan Tarjan, a senior majoring in biology at University of Virginia. The live machine is to be entered in The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which will be held Halloween weekend at MIT. The annual competition is built on the premise that life can be broken down into a warehouse of off-the-shelf, interchangeable parts and reassembled into creatures that have never existed. Over 100 teams will use synthetic biology (similar to genetic engineering) to show that DNA building blocks (BioBricks) don’t have to come from nature and can be designed and built from standardized parts that behave predictably. The hope is that these tiny factories will produce clean biofuels, powerful new medicines and environmental pollution sponges. Good luck to all contestants.
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POPSNext Stop - The Dead Zone Grows and Grows You know there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, south of New Orleans, right? You didn't even more reason to read this. But the harsh news is that one of the only ways to reduce its growth, it to use less fuel, walk more, drive less. Pretty harsh? Climate change and clean up is not going to be easy - did you think?
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POPSThe Food Crisis Will Be Back More than 1 billion people, or every one in six, are starving, according to a report issued by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on June 19. The number of the hungry increased worldwide by about 100 million in 2008 alone, a hike of 11 percent. "The silent hunger crisis...poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said FAO Director General Jacques Diouf. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/07/content_11668272.htm Global warming, top soil degradation, and water mis-appropriation can all be linked to the decreases in production that in turn lead to food inflation. One Stanford study stated that rice and corn harvest has decreased 20-40% as global temperatures continue to rise. Lester Brown states that for every degree C the earth warms above normal, production yields decrease by 10%. http://www.examiner.com/x-9508-Honolulu-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Environmental-factors-to-blame-for-rising-food-crisis
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POPSOakland is 4th greenest city in US (San Fran is #2, Berkeley #7) More: Since there is as yet no official criteria set by the Environmental Protection Agency for determining a city's "greeness", Mother Nature Network considered several key areas to measure the effectiveness of a municipality's efforts at carbon footprint reduction. These included air and water quality, efficient recycling and management of waste, percentage of LEED certified buildings, acres of land devoted to green space, use of renewable energy, and easy access to green products and services.
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POPSThe Era of Cheap Oil Is Officially Over Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands.
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POPSMaking fat disappear; or how to augment? "the study borrows strategies from synthetic biology, a field that has for the most part focused on engineering new functions into bacteria and other lower organisms. The study suggests that the same concepts could be applied to mammals: just as we create bacteria that produce biofuels, we could introduce new abilities into the bodies of humans and other animals." A new path in the road of augmenting the specification of a said specie.
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POPSBiofuels Bad for the Environment (Feb 08) The last line is especially noteworthy: we know less than we think we do about these matters. We therefore risk unintended consequences that could make things worse rather than better.
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POPSSynthetic biology gets ethical An interesting and important move. In these days there is a real need to implement ethical thinking together with the technological developments. Only then will the transition to a new era may become smoother.
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POPSEnergy Nonsense In an April 4 Newsweek guest editorial, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu also proved that -- his Nobel Prize notwithstanding -- common sense and rudimentary knowledge are lacking. First he did not offer one sentence on securing the 87 percent of energy supplies that the US needs other than to discuss “advanced biofuels.” Not to be outdone in slogan-style exaggeration, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar chimed in...Salazar, the Wall Street Journal reported, “raised eyebrows when he said offshore wind farms could replace 3,000 coal-fired plants.” Never mind that the US only has 600 of them. He also claimed that offshore wind in the Atlantic could deliver 1,000 gigawatts of capacity – approximately equal to the entire electric generation capacity of the US...Salazar’s statement should raise a lot more than eyebrows.
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POPSObama gives biofuels the big thumbs up
On the surface this may seem like a good idea, but the mandate to, by 2022, have up to 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol counted toward the 36 billion gallon biofuel production level will only worsen its effect on food production. We’re at 6-9 billion gallons of corn ethanol now and with all the havoc that has wreaked on agriculture worldwide, the concept of almost tripling that amount over the next 20-odd years is terrifying. What may yet save us is the fact that it will likely prove a simply impossible standard to meet. And the fact that the administration’s rationale for expanding the use of biofuels continues to be the misplaced desire “to reduce our dependence on foreign oil” is just ludicrous. Addressing climate change WILL reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But simply reducing dependence on foreign oil won’t save the planet—only zeroing out our carbon emissions will do that. So energy policy in this country must be seen through that one, single lens.
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POPSAre aerosoles the key to climate change? The tough thing about this issue is that so many brilliant scientists have so many diverse, well reasoned, theories. The study in this article suggests that aerosoles, often produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels, are a leading factor is causing and potentially reducing global warming.
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POPS The Next Oil Crisis It takes considerable time to greatly increase oil production, and it also takes time to reduce production. Despite the global recession, oil production capacity is only slightly above demand Low-cost oil production is declining sharply, as the old easy-to-produce fields are being rapidly depleted. There are still huge potential oil supplies, but most of it will be in very expensive, deep-sea areas, or in oil sands (Canada) or oil shale (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah), all of which are much more costly to produce. Biofuels are also expensive and compete with food for land on which to produce them. If suddenly it were announced that a miracle electric battery - one that could power a full-sized automobile at high speed for more than 300 miles and could be quickly recharged - had been developed, what impact do you think it would have on the price of gasoline next week?
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