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Money That Grows On Trees
parvez1 submits this piece about a process that uses plants to soak up and accumulate contaminants - and gold - from near gold-mining sites. Then the plants are harvested for their metal content. The plants aren't bio-engineered - he's taking advantage of the natural tendency for certain plants to accumulate heavy metals.
Wow, I remember a show called "What will they think of next" (sort of a pre-Beyond2000), talking about banana trees doing the same thing... wow, lets see that makes it almost 20 years ago?
meh
talk about a cash crop!!!
OMFGLOL i kill myself.
To have one of those at home in my own garden! Place it somewhere, two years after you dig it up, move it 5 meters and let it be there for two years more. If you continue in this way, you should get a small gold harvest from the underground after a decade... :)
Easy money!
I like this guy, he's able to piss off tree-huggers and anti-mining people at the same time.
... how much do you spend to get a dollar-worth of gold/other metals to grow on a tree. The article does not say that.
small pigs seen flying over frozen lake of fire... Here is Tom with the weather...
...then where does paper come from?
if Gold was actually scarce, the reality is it is not uncommon at all, why go through a complicated refining process to extract grams when the same amount of extraction energy would be better put to extracting tonnes
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/2 8/1411233&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=191
Anybody who has ever played Animal Crossing knows that if you run around shaking enough trees eventually a bag of money will fall out.
Just be careful, some of them have bee hives.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I know you can sell/exchange it, but you can't trade it for groceries at the local Gas'n'Go... is gold even consider "money" anymore, or is it just pretty stuff with a historical sigificance that we still attach some value to?
What if gold filled plants cross-polinate?!?!? How could parents say a child can't have something if money trees really exist!
from the article "Anderson's field trials also yielded an unexpected and potentially profitable byproduct. The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles, which are purple, not yellow. These nanoparticles melt at one tenth the temperature of regular gold - which makes them highly sought after for industrial processes, such as cleaning up carbon monoxide in fuel cells."
so where can get that chemical spray for the soil? I like to apply some to around here
Theory is that gold nuggets don't just occur by themselves, they're deposited by microbial colonies.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Some bald guy named Kane will try to take over the world, while the rest of the world will unite in their attempt to harvest Tiberum with small bulldozers. Oh yeah, and WALKING MECHS! This is the day I've been waiting for!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
If only they'd get working on "chicks for free."
What do you mean? We've been eating Hot Dogs for years!
the reality is ... [gold] is not uncommon at all, why go through a complicated refining process to extract grams when the same amount of extraction energy would be better put to extracting tonnes
It's true that gold is not uncommon. My grandfather, a rockhound, used to observe that gold is very widely distributed around the world. He'd say: "Where is gold? Gold is where you find it."
What makes this plant-based reclamation process valuable is that it allows people who own low-grade deposits (e.g. mine tailings) to recover the gold. Say I'm a mine owner, and I've dug up all the gold on my land. I'm in the gold-mining business, but now my business will die, for lack of gold. Sure there's more gold in the world -- but can I afford to buy another mine? If not, I can at least use phyto-remediation to extract some gold from my otherwise useless mine tailings.
Besides, the main point of phyto-remediation to remove toxic metals from the environment. The process may not generate enough gold excite the envy of Croesus, but it does pay for the toxic-metal cleanup
-kgj
-kgj
... was actually called "Towards 2000" ... and they had a show on it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
my Breast-Tree is not so far-fetched after all.
"Sir, please no squeazing the fruit!"
Table-ized A.I.
Genetically engineered, aerodynamically sound, pigs with wings!
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Not only do we have to worry about how much gold/heavy metals will be left in the plant, a much more important question is how this material will be extracted. I assume that to get rid of all the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen that make up most of the plant, they would burn or heat the plant in some way, which could posssily contribute to pollution (since the Nitrogen containing compounds don't necesarily always go into Nitrogen gas). Also, since the plant is basically contaiminated with heavy metals, it really has no other side use, and so its only purpose will be for this mineral extraction. Is this profitable or feasible?
These are the things which will move the world forward. The small wonderous discoveries which can actually change and fix things.
This example in particular is very simple and will have a smaller effect but it can potentially have a very vital effect on those in the region.
Other things like this will come around and some of them are going to have an amazing effect. I can't even define what that invention will be obviously...but maybe someone will someday make the air to electricity machine from Atlas Shrugged?
With computing power slowly ramping up and in some time nano technology being moved to a consumer level in combination with the printing of electronics (if we really even need that...with true control over molecular movements we technically could create whatever we wanted in a nice little microwave or whatever - a la star trek - and it really isn't all that science fiction...its just time and patience and some science)
People could soon be inventing the most amazing things in their own homes on random weekends...each of us will become research and creation experts...
its bright
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
People have know about this "soaking up minerals from the ground" thing for a while. Forinstance, tobacco plants soak up polonium(uranium?) from the ground and that goes in to your lungs, as well as the rat poison and what ever the hell is in those things.
What about deeper down in, say, the water table? What about runoff into rivers and streams? What I dont' like about this process (or maybe just this article) is that it seems to give a green light to irresponsible mining and toxic watest disposal by saying... "It's OK. We have these plants now. You can go crazy with the heavy metal polution."
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Just think of the possibilities in construction!
You could have gold-wood furniture, a light stained platnum, porch....
and what about amorphous-metal-trees the ULTIMATE building material!!!!
once more into the breach
The previous one was about microbes growing gold, this one is about plants.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I remember something similar was also done in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
They used leaves as money; the only problem was the galloping inflation that was caused by everybody suddenly becoming so rich...
I don't need a signature.
does it still work if its a dead spider plant?
But then we (homo sap. sap.)are good at this: we can accumulate lead in our bones from drinking water or contaminated air, and I believe that mercury too can get collected by the body (gets resorbed in the lower intestine, I think.)
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
...Panama Gold.
Bioremediation has been around for quite a while - it is a good idea in many situations.
There are a couple of things that really come out in the article is this - "First, he treats the contaminated soil with chemicals that break the gold down into water-soluble particles. Then he introduces the crops"
Gold and mercury in the soil is a pretty nasty amalgam - and gold being otherwise so *noble* - so I'm wondering how he's mobilizing it -
The article says the plants had purple leaves - "The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles" - again not totally breaking news - but he must be using something that can break the gold down *that* small (when there is a lot of gold in mercury, you can literally strain the gold out essentially with a filter like a cheesecloth - that is the technique that is being used by most miners of this sort in the first place.
Then they literally *cook* the amalgam covered pice of gold in a frying pan (though it could be done with nitric acid - or other things to remove the mercury from the surface)
In the process, a lot of mercury ends up spilled - and the residue from the *cook* is dense and fuming - and ends up not far away (like in the soil, the streams, or the miner's brain before too long) - Gold too small to picked up in the straining - In fact any microscale gold has been the subject of pretty intense interest because it is much more abundant than the occasional nugget -
Cyanide leaching is a very common process in areas where there is a lot of sunlight, since the cyanide can break down in holding pools - I highly doubt he would be using any cyanide - even if it could be shown to break down - it would most likely do very poorly on the plant side. Some halide - Bromides? Let's hope not. AuCl ion? - That's the most likely - or probably the most hoped for. There really aren't that many things that can dissolve gold - But there are actually quite a few ways to do what is being suggested with plants - here's one using geraniums.
1 Ton of dope sells for 13,607,760 USD
Thats 225 grams / meter squared
or 25 grams / plant (less than average)
Money doesnt grow on trees, it grows on weeds
Jon Bardin
It seems like I've heard of something like this before
-jim
...we'll be mining inner-city and third-world children for lead and mercury.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There's no need to move this stuff far, just crack the oil locally for the ethyl and methyl ester fatty acids after you've removed the heavy metals and you could power a diesel power plant which could probably power the whole project and the local village.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Certain plants (e.g. mushrooms) accumulate radio active materials - eating mushrooms harvested in the forests near Chernobyl is not exactly healthy.
Russian scientist are thinking about using plants to remove radio active pollution from the soil. Harvest the plants, freeze-dry them, and treat the residual for what it is - radio active waste.
This idea isn't really new, but it is interesting to see it applied to metals in soil. Fast-growing trees with tap roots have been used to extract contaminants from groud water for years.
The thing the article does not mention is how many harvests it takes to remove metals and the final concentration left in soil. Neither does it mention the processes effectiveness at removing other harmful metals frequently associated with gold deposits (silver, arsenic, lead, etc.). Metals like mercury and lead have human health and environmental impacts in very low concentrations. I'm not sure I would return this land to farming use without adequate analysis of post-remedial soils, but forestry may well be viable.
It must be true. I mean, after all pigs fly, fat lady has sung, and the cows have come home.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
Last term at the University of Oregon, we had the conceptual artist Mel Chin give a lecture on one of his projects entitled "Revival Field".
It's quite similar to what Chris Anderson is doing in Chile and Brazil. Funded by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Revival Field was the first experiment in the United States to use plants to absorb toxic metals from the soil. This launched the nation's burgeoning phytoremediation industry, which one business analyst predicts will be a $400 million dollar business by 2005.
Offtopic? The simple fact that parent pointed out, makes the article seem irrelevant.
We put it right next to the stereo speakers, and it harvested a lot of heavy metal too.
Bureaucracy loves company.
This was about 5 years ago, and she said this process has already been in use at that time.
make world, not war
And as long as we're nitpicking, I'm pretty sure all the money in America doesn't come from the same mint. Or even the same country for that matter. I assume you meant the United States of America, because America isn't of the United States, but I'm one of those people who has to point out every little thing like that.
And I don't do laundry, you insensitive clod!
Oh yeah - gonna make me sum green, growing sum green..
;)
What I want to know is; whose kid pilfered the seeds off Wonka, and what wacky punishment will be in store for him? Allowance inflaction? *ka-tchish!* I can't help myself
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
Money does grow on trees?
My Dad is going to get such a punching...
Ooohhh, so, that's how they make "gold leaf"...
for years. Mainly using water hyacinth to clean up polluted bodies of water.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Wasn't this particular species very handy at soaking up Mercury?
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Anyone remember Command&Conquer?
--- I hate my sig.
I'm no zoologist/biologist/ environmental impact assessor or environmental engineer but I do know that the concentration of the heavy metals and the likes increases up the food chain, i.e., the herbivores feeding on these plants would suffer from a higher heavy metal concentration which would not even be half as bad as that suffered by the carnivores/omnivores (think local human population) feeding on them...
Now, I'm sure that this person is very knowledgeable and will have tried to make sure that animals aren't able to feed on them, but as any engineer, I'm trained to be skeptical. It strikes me as difficult a thing to ensure, specially in such remote areas as the article mentions (Amazon... might also be of use in somewhere like Zambia/Congo, South-East Asia, Madagascar, etc.).
Furthermore, fast growing imports (shrubs, etc. which I presume would be of use here) could well outgrow the localised regions of the mines and start competing with the indiginous flora. Tropical forests take a long time to rejuvenate and tropical trees have very slow growth rates, which puts them at a sever disadvantage when having to compete against fast growing imports for space and sun...This phenomenon is to be blamed for the disappearance of the local ecosystem from such small tropical islands (e.g. Mauritius, Indian Ocean is one victim that I'm aware of) and so it is something that has to be borne in mind when you want to implement such a scheme.
I hope all of these are/will be factored in whenever such a scheme is to be implemented/ someone tries to "help" Nature recover.
There are Soooo many people in the world
:)
smoking weed that's just shit.
Pesticides, chemical fertilizers, WHO KNOWS!
I mean really, if it didn't come out of your back yard or from someone you trust, PLEASE be careful
and only smoke GOOD-Quality pot.
Very few stems, no seeds, should taste nice not
harsh. Take OUT the stems and seeds please. You
don't eat watermelon vines or seeds, so don't
smoke the ones in pot.
Try not to smoke from anything but glass or brass.
No Aluminum, Copper or PVC please!!! They are extremely harmful to your body and WILL cause problems later in your life.
Enjoy in moderation.
but there is a more interesting tale from France. In the 1700's, France engaged in the Mississippi Scheme, a stock-jobbing plan based on expected returns from the Louisiana territories.
It had the classic effect, most recently repeated in the Internet boom and crash.
At the height of the Mississippi boom, the stock in the Mississippi corporation was a better currency than the franc, and was used as the national medium of exchange.
When it turned out that nothing was really happening in Mississippi at all, the paper money suddenly became worthless, and everyone tried to convert it into gold, then sneak that gold out of the country.
As a result, the king ordered that gold be illegal as a medium of exchange, and that ownership of more than a pittance was also grounds for confiscation.
When the U.S. prohibited the owning of large amounts of gold, it was entirely different... they wanted to maintain the stability of the metal itself, as the underpinning of the U.S. dollar, rather than suppressing gold ownership entirely.
Don't forget that when the U.S. was on the gold standard, having a dollar MEANT owning gold. That dollar was a certificate for that much from the federal reserve.
So far, it's been two hours since this was posted, and no one's mentioned tiberium? [Okay, someone mentioned Command & Conquer, and was maked 'offtopic', even though he wasn't.]
For those of you non-gamer geeks, the basic premise for money production in the game was that there was this plant, tiberium, which would leech minerals from the ground, and you would collect it up, and you'd get a source of funding that you could use to produce troops, tanks, buildings, whatever to take out your opponents.
Of couse, the problem was, that regular troopers were harmed if they went into a tiberium field. [However, they only took damage for moving, in the original game]. Later sequels introduced a mutant army, who healed if they were in a tiberium field.
Red Alert had crystal fields, which just wasn't the same [they didn't regenerate for one], and C&C Generals uses supply depots -- no concept of tiberium at all. [The best thing about tiberium was that it grew over time, as opposed to being a fixed resource]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Is it called Tiberium?
-R
More imporantly, what it doesn't say (and no one seems to be discussing here) is how you extract that 14 grams of gold and 7 grams of mercury from a full acre's worth of harvested plant material.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Point One: The USA is the only *country* in the world with the name America in it, so far as google and I know,
Point Two: The people of a country always have a descriptive name related to the name of said country. For example: Russian, French, Italian, Canadian, etc.
Final Point: Would you really have us called 'YouEssAyyans'? 'Staters'? 'United People'? What -- seriously, can you think of a more descript name for the citizens of the US of America?
"America" does indeed describe to continents, and yes, most, ahem, Americans know it. If there was country called 'The United Factions of Europe', you can damn well guarantee they'd call them Europeans, and everyone would know what they meant. As a matter of fact, I have a friend who's South African. No one questions the legitimacy of this description of his homeland, even though there are certainly other countries that could be called South African (the continent). Everyone, everywhere in the world knows what someone means when you say 'American' (and yes, it's usually conjures negative connotation).
Anyway, descriptors of continents often connote ethnic background, which isn't applicable here at all. 'South American' suggests a clear ethnic origin, as does 'European', 'Asian', and 'African'. But what does 'North American' suggest? The only valid use of 'North American' is for discussions of geography, in which the word 'continent' would usually be applied anyway. I can *absolutely* say that if you're in Mexico and guarantee something with American money, they won't be expecting pesos.
Brazil Nuts are naturally high in barium (0.3% by weight) and radium -- making it one of the most radioactive foods.
I wonder if plants can be used to extract waste pharmaceuticals out of the ground, too, such as destruxol and THC.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
...the last remaining superpower armed to the teeth with nukes. any questions? i didn't think so.
our buddies at the National Center for Bioinformatics now allow you to search for genomic sequences in the bacteria in mine sludge.
I hope this gives some people the hints they need to engineer some microbes to clean up the crap we humans produce.
They pipe their waste water through reed beds to remove contaminants. They've had them in place since the 1960s.
It isn't just the reeds themselves which clean the water, they support microbiological colonies which break down organic and inorganic toxins and fix heavy metals in the soil keeping them out of the ground water.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Here's a Spamazon link to the book.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
When you enter or leave the U.S., you have to declare the "dollar" value of any U.S. currency you are carrying.
... the Dustbin.
If you are carrying a single $100 bill, specifically a $100 Federal Reserve Note, as legal tender, or lawful currency of the United States, then you have to make a customs declaration for -- "$100."
If you are carrying five 20-dollar gold pieces (0.9 oz each fine gold), lawful money of the United States, for customs purposes, that also counts as "one hundred dollars," even though it is worth a lot more, in FRNs. The same goes for gift tax avoidance. By annual exemption, a person can give $10,000 per year to a child, for example. This can consist of 500 twenty dollar gold pieces, having a legal value of $10,000 dollars, and a market value of say $200,000.
BTW, a "dollar" is a weight (of gold), defined by law (U.S. Constitution, article 7). It's like when you say "a quart of milk," the word "quart" refers in this case to a volume. In a legal document, the word "dollar" refers to a *weight* of gold. Thus, when Congress passes laws on currency reform, bank deregulation, etc., their laws refer to $, and never therein shall you find the word, "dollar." A small point, which may not remain small for long, as once fraud is admitted into a currency system, history has it that that country is fast on its way to
probably because the EPA under Bush won't even enforce their own laws unless sued. link
phtyomining
Phytomining cleans soil, generates revenue
Gold phytomining [PDF] (very informative)
The last link explains, among others, how the metal is extracted from the plant.
I'd say call them "Americans," given that people from the United States of Mexico (los Estados Unidos Mexicanos) are called "Mexicans."
Of the Barter System?
That's right. All your base.
Stephen Baxter had a story once along these lines...I forget the name of it, but the basic plot was that humanity was stranded on the moon, with a very slowly diminishing atmosphere, and no appreciable resources to mine. All technology had been destroyed by a nanomachine, and the survivors were forced to use plants and their bodies to attempt to make concentrated amounts of gold, copper, iron, in hopes of producing a spaceship to return home.
Scientific readings (Michka, Verlomme mainly) suggest Cannabis (pot) is one if not the plant that's best for that kind of use. (as with many other serious & real uses *including recreationnal*) -- ksej
And parents all over the world lose one of their standard phrases. Now if we could only feed all those starving children in Africa...
-Colin
It's nothing new. They've been using bald eagles to collect trace amounts of DDT into a single concentrated place for years now...
Next thing you know they're going to deploy breast cancer patients to collect PCBs from the environment, and fleets of tuna to get mercury out of the oceans...
Use of bacteria to concentrate gold is done on a commercial scale in South Africa for about 2 decades already.
Oh well, what the hell...
Considering Canabis is perhaps the easiest plant to grow (provided you live in a country where the growing has been decriminalised) It would certainly be a complete waste of time to extract THC from the ground (if thats even possible).
PS: THC is one of the working chemicals in marijuana.
Sig you!
Sounds like the Tiberium from Command and Conquer.
Then the plants are harvested for their metal content. The plants aren't bio-engineered - he's taking advantage of the natural tendency for certain plants to accumulate heavy metals."
Kinda reminds me of the 'knife plants' in 'Saucer Wisdom' by Rudy Rucker.
Eg: "Jose and Amparo are no longer careful about harvesting every last knife. Here and there dried stalks rustle, with rusting knives..."
The book's an excellent 'stab' at what the future may bring - recommended to
a much more important question is how this material will be extracted.
Given that cleaning up the exhaust from burning plant material is well understood, I wouldn't sweat it.
It'd be more concerned with the chemical processes that "mobilize" the contaminants. They're talking about reacting them so they become much more water soluble. That's great for getting them out of the ground quickly. But it has the downside that it enormously increases the contamination level of the ground water.
If any of that water with the "mobilized" heavy metals makes it into the local ground water it's a serious hazard.
Probably easy to deal with, though: If they inject the "mobilizing" compounds just outside the borders of the contaminated area and suck the water to be used on the plants from the center (or downstream side if there's a significant undergound flow) they should pretty much get it all and use it to water the plants. The plants will get all the metals (except maybe for some of the mercury which will escape as vapor). Corn, in particular, is VERY thirsty so little water will get past the plants - and that will go back into the wells to be sucked out again.
When the toxins are pretty much leached out (along with most of the trace minerals), turn off the mobilizing compounds, keep pumping until the water comes clean. Any traces remaining will no longer be mobile and the ground should be at least as good as random ground.
This approach should also be useful for cleaning up naturally mineral-containing soil which has been unsuitable for farming up to now.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
For mining stuff using marine organisms to concentrate valuable minerals from seawater, see Jack Vance's "The Gift of Gab" from 1955. The problem in this story was that the niobium-concentrating organisms being pulped and chemically processed happened to be intelligent....
There's also Theodore Sturgeon's "The Skills of Xanadu" (1956) where a snail is mutated to make its shells of strontium rather than calcium carbonate, making extraction of that metal remarkably easy.
For bioremediation, see Cordwainer Smith's "The Queen of the Afternoon" (posthumous publication, 1978); the "fighting trees" concentrate nuclear bomb isotopes in their fruit for collection and disposal.
Well, wouldn't it open up the possibility of prospecting by taking plant samples? I could imagine going along a wash in Southwestern Utah or Nevada taking plant samples to look for gold or possibly other mineral deposits. Interesting idea.
I haven't read the other post, but I'm doubt it mentioned the poisonous gas Tiberium released as well..
Thank god Iron is not worth that much. Basicly Human blood can be mined for its metal content the trick is not taking too much blood so you can eat them and do it again. Basicly human blood just need heating to convert it. Now lets hope they stop with plants.
Those gold suckers and their gold sucking plants can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. :-(
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Gold doesn't have to have an inherent value to it by virtue of its usefulness, in fact, the whole point is that gold really doesn't. There are some industrial uses for it, but those are relatively few and comprise a small percentage of global usage.
Gold isn't particularly useful today, in an industrial sense. But in the ancient world, it was very useful as a readily-workable metal that never corroded. We may not be accustomed to thinking of jewelry as "useful", but as status symbols, gold jewelry had no equal among the ancients. Even today, gold retains this luster of status: we still speak of "the gold standard" when defining anything as the best of its kind.
-kgj
-kgj
However, what most of these folks (both people who want to preserve forests and those who want to keep mining regulated) are concerned about is the fouling of habitat.
It's also called "Shitting in your own nest". The main problem is that many folks don't see that their "nest" involves more than their own apartment or suburban subdivision.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
That's a nice posting and all, except for the fact that a 13 year study by University of Pittsburg found there was no statistical increase in occurrences of cancer around the Three Mile Island plant in Harrisburg PA.
Secondly, the reason you cite for not touching the Challenger fragments was because of (1) the temperature of the metal on re-entry and (2) the hazardous fumes from the aforementioned burning material. Although a local Texas sheriff claimed there was "radioactive material on board" (picked up by reporters with little fact checking), NASA has since said that the only radioactive material on the shuttle at the time were in the smoke detectors.
How do you check for deaths by radiation? By measuring the increase in cancers with respect to a "control group" of those that were not exposed to the radioactive source. For example, population of Seattle vs Chernobyl. If cancer rate is statistically higher, then you're golden.
Oh, and we have a great way to store radioative waste, it's called Yucca Mountain. Find a mountain of volcanic minerals, surrounded by more mountains and deserts, with an non-existent water table in a non-populated area, on government land with a 110 mile radius. Seal the crap underground, and post a guard for the next 6,000 years.
Hell, in another 100 years, we may find methods to "refine" the nuclear waste for more fissionable material, much like we do now in extracting uranium from ore. Just as we aren't going to run out of oil, we're going to run out of cheap oil, then we retool for more extraction. Our children's childeren will be thanking us for taking the time to concentrate all the material into one site for easy processing, just as we build trash-to-steam generating plants (sorry, "reclamation centers") at trash dumps today.
rush limbaugh eats everything
This is why disposing of mercury is so dangerous. When plants and animals eat it, it never goes away. It's highly toxic and causes brain development problems which are scary because they're so minor that people often don't notice.
far better uses include using such plants to pick up contaminents from an area. heavily polluted ground can be spread with a crop of said plants. a generation or two latter the ground is now hearlthy for normal plants which would not normally grow in the polluted soil
This sounds like that Tiberian thing from the game Command and Conquer...
low-tech oyster mushrooms eat diesel fuel:
n ew s1.shtml
Bioremediation of Diesel Contaminated Fuel with Mushrooms
http://www.thebreeze.org/archives/4.14.03/news/
|
| Senior John Templeton in his thesis entitled "Bioremediation
| of Diesel Contaminated Soil with the use of Mushrooms,"
| discussed his research with the oyster mushroom and how
| he used it in attempts to remove diesel fuel from contaminated
| soil specimens.
|
| According to Templeton, diesel fuel is made up of complex
| hydrocarbons, which have double carbon bonds, thus making
| them hard to degrade. However, he said mushrooms are a type
| of decomposer and are known to both breakdown and absorb
| various compounds, including certain petroleum products.
Of course, you probably wouldn't grow coffee, but use genetic engineered organisms/biologic factories to produce it.
Actually, making the cup out of nanotechnology is an OK idea, but you still wouldn't ask for a new cup every few minutes but re-use the old cup, and you'd have to place the old cup somewhere. Somehow in S.T., no one ever has to discard a cup, Janeway only is into getting new cups. She's probably hoarding the cups. "Here see my collection of 854 cups."
The way Star Trek does it has nothing to do with actual nanotechnology, it is more related to magic.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Another site that's unreadable because it's Flash-only.
I'm no zoologist/biologist/ environmental impact assessor or environmental engineer
So shut up, and let people who know what they're talking about get some work done. Argument from ignorance is a classic fallacy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Point number two: The nitrogen the Salmon ingest tends to get mostly, um, "dumped" as soon as they ingest more nitrogen. Sure, fish meal is a good fertilizer and it's made from dead fish, but their flesh doesn't hold that much nitrogen, maybe 9-12 % by weight. Fish waste, or emulsion, runs about 4-5% by weight and is continuously produced. By the time the spawning salmon have reached the stream head, the ocean nitrogen is pretty much gone (they don't eat much on the way).
The question is, once you have all these fish full of heavy metals, what do you do with 'em? Any attempt to use them as fertilizer will simply add the metals to the ground again...the circle is complete, but you've just moved the problem!
What a great idea. I've never heard anything about this before. Our world today uses up so much energy, and wastes so many products/ materials... it's good to hear about such resourceful ideas such as this.
The relation between salmon and nitrogen is the favorite new story that eco-jabbering meadow muffins like me enjoy. Googling "salmon nitrogen" gets quite a few hits. Here is a research paper with big words Salmon Derived Nitrogen in terrestrial invertebrates). They have the same propaganda on all the PBS stations.
Nitrogen seems to also explain while the soil in drainages with salmon runs tends to be a lot more fertile than those without salmon runs.
Considering the shear bio mass of salmon swimming upstream, it only takes a small portion of the biomass to change the soil. BTW, have you seen the large number of critters that feed on the salmon harvest.
Think of the salmon that swims 1000 miles in land. How much of that biomass really is going to get washed out to sea? It is going to be eaten by all the little critters and bugs in the water. The story seems plausible to me. But so did the relation between the ozone hole and CFCs.
Is this anything like Warcraft 3's Night Elves, and their Tree of Life entangling a gold mine?
..and your chicks for free.
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