| Author | Message | ||
     Midknyte |
http://io9.com/in-fifty-years-carbon-fiber-will-be -spun-from-the-trun-1603040049 Rather fascinating | ||
| Gschuette |
I continue to be blown away by some of the incredible ideas people have. | ||
| Hootowl |
Hell No! GMO! Just kidding. GMO have already saved the planet, or at least a whole lot of people on the planet, and yet they are still reviled by the ignorant masses. You can bet the greenies won't go for this. | ||
| Aesquire |
Those evil Genetic monsters could displace natural trees with ones that produce useful products for the running dog capitalists.... Or not. The tree itself won't make carbon fiber, they just want to breed a strain that produces more lignin. Which is also produced as a byproduct in other processes. I'm not sure lignin is actually that great a feed stock, but it might be decent, and we do need alternatives for chemical making other than oil. In the time frame this guy is talking we'll be mining the dumps for the plastic in diapers to feed industry. Actually if you know Waste Management, they are pretty far along on developing the tech for that, since they own the best and biggest dumps, aka "Green Mining". ( I wonder if that phrase is copyrighted? I should look into that ) This reminds me of the Brits that had this scheme to make "gasoline" out of air. And a multi megawatt power plant, but that part is not on page 1. Take air, pull out the water, turn it into hydrogen and oxygen. Pull out the CO2 and feed the 3 chemicals into a different chemical plant to make methane, then another to make methanol. 5 different energy intensive processes...... and you can turn air into fuel. If you have a source of cheap power, it's great! It's also a stunt, looking to get investors. ( like the future super trees ) If you have an ocean or a river, you can skip the dehumidifier part and just split that water, buy the CO2 from a commercial company....or buy the same equipment to make your own, and just have the 2 chemical plants to build...... and the electrolysis gear..... and the big transformer set to carry the power. ( Actually I think you get that installed by the power company. ) If you are using a nuclear, solar, or other clean, renewable power, you have a carbon neutral power cycle. If it's a coal plant, not so much. The base idea come from the "Mars Direct" lander concept. It's very hard to make a Mars Lander mission work. Once you've assembled the ship in orbit... You have to carry enough fuel to toss yourself at Mars, Slow down when you get there, ( yeah yeah, aerobraking!.. the heat shield weight nothing? ) then you have to fuel a lander to fly down to the surface, with enough fuel to take off again, and fly to orbit. Then toss yourself at Earth, and slow down again so you don't resemble the Tunguska Event. You can, however, cheat. Send landers to mars, empty, and have them make fuel for the flight back up. Send a robot lander to Mars, with a tank of H2, a small complex robotic chemical plant, and a small nuclear reactor. The lander sucks in Martian air and uses the Hydrogen to make methane and oxygen and fills tanks of fuel for the manned landers coming after. You Don't send the manned ships until the robot ones are full and ready. Send a bunch of them. they are useful. Bring more H2 and you get more Methane. And Oxygen! Landing next to and refilling, or just walking over to the fully fuelled return lander is the stuff of sci-fi movies, no doubt the ones on Syfy will have gelatinous brain suckers. So.....as to the original article? Neat! I'd want to know a lot more before buying stock. I did NOT buy stock in the Air to Fuel Aint We Clever company. | ||
| Aesquire |
Here's a bit on GMO foods. To be declared "natural" by Congress. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/war-in-eu rope/ Congress says: Americans Too Stupid for GMO Labels I like to keep an eye on the leftist news; sometimes it’s worth my time. The Huffington Post seems to report more on Kim Kardashian’s butt than it does on anything else. Would you believe, I’d never even heard of Kim Kardashian until she kept popping up in the "Huff Post" twitter feed? But, every so often, they produce a real story: <.> It’s pretty rare that members of Congress and all the witnesses they’ve called will declare out loud that Americans are just too ignorant to be given a piece of information, but that was a key conclusion of a session of the House Agriculture Committee this week. The issue was genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they’re often known in the food industry. And members of the subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture, as well as their four experts, agreed that the genetic engineering of food crops has been a thorough success responsible for feeding the hungry, improving nutrition and reducing the use of pesticides. People who oppose GMOs or want them labeled so that consumers can know what they’re eating are alarmists who thrive on fear and ignorance, the panel agreed. Labeling GMO foods would only stoke those fears, and harm a beneficial thing, so it should not be allowed, the lawmakers and witnesses agreed. </> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/gmo-label s-congress_n_5576255.html And, as if saying that Americans are too stupid to handle GMO labels wasn’t enough, matters take an Orwellian twist: <.> The issue may soon gain fresh relevance on Capitol Hill, where a measure backed by Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) to stop states from requiring GMO labeling could get marked up as early as September. The bill also would allow genetically engineered food to be labeled "100 percent natural." </> Yes, it’s all making sense to me now.. Labeling the food as "100 percent natural" will let those who know avoid GMO while those who do not know will consume it. In fact, people might avoid non-GMO foods thinking those are not natural. It’s a bit of a sick joke, but it’s publicly invisible and privately recognizable while subject to the pact of law. —– Most Respectfully, Joshua Jordan, KSC Percussa Resurgo | ||
| Hootowl |
Mankind has been genetically modifying food crops for hundreds of years. It's just that up until a few years ago, we've been doing it by guessing. Broccoli didn't exist 5000 years ago. We (the royal we) made it out of cabbage. | ||
| Slaughter |
Worth a lissen: | ||
| Jaimec |
Greenies? One wonders how the religious fundamentalists feel about man essentially playing GOD... | ||
| Sifo |
I'm far from paranoid about GMO foods, but I recently had a very interesting discussion on this topic with a very good friend's wife. She has some auto-immune issues that have seriously affected her life. Doctors were virtually unable to help her out with this. Doing her own research online, she found that many with these problems were able to turn their lives around again by eliminating GMO foods from their diets. No, not the "GMO" foods that we have modified for thousands of years through selection, but those developed in recent years in laboratories. She has made a huge turn around in her health by avoiding GMO foods, and it's very visible that she is far healthier again. I do have some questions about modern GMO foods. What exactly is being done to a given plant that makes it "pest resistant"? Many plants are naturally pest resistant simply because they produce chemicals that will kill the pests. Splicing those genes into our food may not be the best thing that we can do, if those chemicals are unhealthy for US too. Sure, we are told that these foods wont hurt us, but the GMO food producers do spend huge amounts of cash lobbying for legislation that will allow their use. It raises some serious questions. I'm simply at a point where I have some of those unanswered questions floating in my mind. Anyone actually KNOW how a GMO food is modified to be more "pest resistant"? | ||
| Hootowl |
I would be willing to bet that her new diet includes more changes than eliminating gmos. She has probably gone organic, which means she has dropped junk food, and that is the significant bit, not gmo, or organic. | ||
| Sifo |
I think you would win that bet. She was never big on junk food to begin with though. Hard to say what has actually helped her health. The ability to splice genes into plants gives some amazing capabilities though. Some are almost certainly beneficial. Others almost certainly shouldn't be done. I'm willing to bet that some are not going to be immediately clear where they fall. To be perfectly fair, I'm not sure I could survive her diet. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Or time. Autoimmune diseases can be devastating, but they pretty much defy common sense in how they progress. | ||
| Torquehd |
I'm going to petition to have these trees outlawed, as they create a CARBON footprint. Elections have proven, there are enough stupid people who don't understand anything going on in the world today. They'll get behind this movement. I'll also be petitioning to have greenhouses outlawed, because greenhouse gases are bad for the ecosystem. I wonder if folks would get behind a movement to reintroduce CFC's into circulation. They deplete the ozone you know, and right now, there's too much atmosphere, which is making the earth hotter. CFCs are like insulin for diabetics. The more fossil fuels you burn, the bigger the hole you have to make in the Ozone to let more greenhouse gases escape. |
