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Bacteria to Destroy Greenhouse Gases
twivel writes "According to ABC News and this article, scientists are working on creating a bacteria that destroys CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. I wonder what happens if the bacteria works too good?" I thought green slime was vulnerable to fire and crushing weapons, just not edged weapons.
Sometimes I think we watch too much Star Trek (or, more likely, Star Trek, specifically, ST:NG reflects something that I don't like about our culture). Anyway, have you ever noticed that a ridiculously large proportion of ST:NG episodes feature some conflict that is resolved by Mr. LaForge saying something like "maybe, if we reverse the polarity on the field generator..." or Dr. Crusher saying "maybe, if we alter the microbes' DNA..."
My point is (and this is perhaps not so directly applicable to the article, but is reminiscent, anyway): Why is it that we so often look for technology to provide a quick fix for what is really a very complex and difficult social problem? Obviously, it's the easy way out, but does it really work? Think about all the various technical schemes for locking down copyrighted content that we have been discussing lately.
If we can come up with some technical way to reduce the CO2 output of smokestacks, then great. However, I still worry that unless we (and particularly we Americans) wake up and take up the difficult task of addressing all the causes of our massive CO2 output, this new method of scrubbing CO2 is not going to be enough.
Anyway, go cyanobacteria, because every little bit helps.
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That would be a problem, if the bacteria were turning CO2 into C and O2.
But it's not.
I don't know the precise reaction, but it's something similar to CO2 + H20 + light = O2 + some form of sugar. I don't know how much energy is required to keep the photosynthesis going, but I think it's less than was produced by the burning of the coal in the first place. So, this isn't a full-circle cycle...it's two steps forward and one step back.
Over the whole process, you're taking coal and oxygen and water and ending up with sugar and oxygen and energy released.
If any body bothered to follow the link, the following would be obvious. It isn't a genetically engineered bug, it is a naturally occuring cyanobacter (aka 'blue-green algae' or 'green bacteria'). Now on to the meat of the article.
The doctrine of Microbial Infallibility states that microbes can do anything that humans can, and that they do it faster-better-cheaper. But the idea that we put a bioreactor inside a smokestack or factory probably won't be practical. Sunlight is a limiting factor that they try to overcome using mirrors and light pipes. Light will still probably be a limiting factor as it will take a fairly large volume/surface area of green bacteria to slurp up the thousands of tons of CO2 that pass through a smokestack daily. Also, nutrients like N-P-K will be needed in large amounts to fix so much carbon. This will require lots of fossil fuel to fix the nitrogen, and will speed the depletion of limited phosphate resources. And what will they do with the tons of muck that are produced every day - it will probably concentrate more of the Mercury and Cadmium than Carbon.
While the idea is thought provoking, it is an idea that may cost more than its worth. There are a lot of green plants on Earth that have dampened the build-up of CO2, but cant stop it in the face of the growing hordes of industrial humans. This idea doesn't make too much sense to ecologists - even though green bacteria can grow exponentially and soak up lots of gas, they probably need to be coddled, or they would be doing it already!!
We have bacteria here that photosynthesise. Their carbon source is the atmosphere, their energy source is sunlight.
Why not bypass the middleman (the coal fired powerstation) altogether: grow the bacteria, and harvest them as the carbon source for your power station? You'd have solar power without the need for photovoltaic cells (which are inefficient - and photovoltaic cells take more energy to make than they will ever produce in their lifetime) and the energy source can be stored in a convenient form (the harvested bacteria could be stored in tanks).
There has been some research a bit like this in the past - using pond-scum to power diesel engines. Apparently, you can design a diesel-cycle engine that'll run quite happily on dried pond scum. This effectively gives you a renewable source of energy for your engine.
You'll still need quite large amounts of land to produce enough bacteria or pond-scum, but if you've ever driven through Wyoming or the desert southwest (which has plenty of sunlight, an important ingredient) the land's there.
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"[Photosynthesis] provides organisms that convert the gas through photosynthesis into useful byproducts, like oxygen."
The other useful byproduct is TREE. CO2 is Carbon plus Oxygen (2 of them). Photosyntesis releases the O, leaving the C behind inside the tree. Since I can't imagine they want things growing inside these smokestacks, I have to wonder where the C is going to go.
The problem with CO2 isn't how to get it out of the air. The problem is where to put it (especially the carbon, since we'd like to keep the oxygen around) once it IS out of the air. All that carbon used to be locked up inside plants/animals (some living, some dead--like coal and oil). I suppose they could scrape the bacteria off every few weeks and put it in an oil barrel, but where do we stack the barrels? Put 'em underground to turn into oil next year?
How about a better idea: stop putting carbon INTO the air?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Why does everyone here start with the assumption that global warming is even real? There is *very* credible evidence that there is no such effect, and a number of scientists have stated as much, but they're not getting the big megaphone from the UN and radical "environmental" groups.
Radical leftist "scientists" and their computer models have been known to intentionally lie to us before: witness the laughable computer predictions of the original 1970 Earth Day and the Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" fiasco which assured us with certainty that we would be completely out of oil, gas, copper, zinc, gold, and tin by now. Oh, and the pollution was supposed to be killing us off in the midst of the massive famines that have never happened. In fact, we now have more of all the resources listed above at our disposal than we had then, pollution is sharply down, and food production is at all-time record levels.
A few links that point this out the fallacy of global warming:
A good BBC article with coverage of some reasonable scientific dissent
A good overview of this from Reason magazine
Another article exposing the political as opposes to scientific basis of the IPCC report.
http://www.globalwarming.org is the source of these and other links exposing the truth about global warming, which is quite simply that there's no credible evidence that it even exists, and that the global warming crowd employs some of the worst science ever seen so long as it fits their political agenda.
It never ceases to amaze me that the numerous self-proclaimed libertarians on Slashdot are so willing to cede their liberty to a politically motivated cabal far more dangerous to our society than the RIAA or the MPAA could ever be. Wake up and pay attention to the things that really matter, and will impact your real freedoms in the future in ways that are truly Orwellian...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Any such artificial attempt to restore equilibrium in a natural system runs the risk of overcorrecting and causing more trouble than originally existed. In any complex system such as the atmosphere, the law of unintended consequences is pretty much guaranteed to rear it's ugly head. The proper course of action with regards to greenhouse gas is to lower our emissions and let nature clean out the excesses through natural processes. Unfortunately, that's a long term approach that requires our inconvenience, and therefore not possible until crisis occurs.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org