Slashdot Mirror
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.
... 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.
In the USA, we've moved off of the "Gold Standard" years ago. Fort Knox sill has a large gold reserve to prove that the US Government controls some riches, but there's no static exchange rate anymore. That's why the price of gold changes on a daily market basis just like the conversion between dollar and any other currency.
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?
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
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.
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.
to piss off tree-huggers
And why would that be?
Understand: tree-huggers is your name for them. Granted there are probably some neo-druids in the bunch who would get pissed off. 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. Just like hunting enthusiasts or fishermen (like me) are, but for different reasons.
It's the shameless fouling of habitat, leaving somebody else to clean up after them, that gets the "anti-mining" (your word for them again) people pissed. It's when the clean water regulations are rewritten so that miners can dump their tailings in streams that gets them pissed. Hell, that gets me pissed, but I'm not anti-mining. Mine all the hell you want but clean up after yourself and keep your crap out of the public's way. By your logic I'm anti-shitting because I don't want you to take a dump the sidewalk in front of my house.
Most environmentalists (including many who are engineers) want to create closed cycles (recycling get it?) in which waste products are reprocessed into goods. Like this guy is doing.
So, no, there aren't going to be many "tree huggers" objecting to this.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm getting pretty sick of right wing nutcases who "score points" with each other with arguments that are just plain stupid. I don't have a problem with guys like Bob Dole or John McCain who are intelligent and principled conservative. For chrissakes there's nothing that shows what a sorry state the Republican party is in than the fact they could have had McCain and they chose Bush (oh crap now you really got me going).
Getting back to this post, it's an intellectually slimy exercise: make an incredibly stupid argument, and dress it up as a joke. This is Rush's excuse when he's caught saying something that is utterly stupid: he's not a political commentator, he's an entertainer. Understand I have no problem with making a political point with a joke, but if you want to make a political point, have something at least minimally logical to say, no matter how you say it. Just because something is a joke doesn't man it has to be stupid. You don't get a fricken pass if you say your bullshit with a smirk.
I'm sick and tired of truth getting trashed, and I'm not gotting to let that crap pass anymore. Sorry to the rest of your folks, you didn't need to hear that.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.