Slashdot Mirror
Bacteria Could Help Stop Desertification
Bridgette Steffen writes "In attempt to slow down desertification, a student at London's Architectural Association has proposed a 6000 km sandstone wall that will not only act as a break across the Sahara Desert, but also serve as refugee shelter. Last fall it won first prize in the Holcim Foundation's Awards for Sustainable Construction, and will use bacteria to solidify the sandstone."
Welcome our brick and mortar overlords.
why exactly are we to interfer with this process?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I see a lot of postulation on whether or not they can without much convincing information on why they should. Seems to me that constructing a 21st century version of the Great Wall of China through the Sahara desert isn't something that's worth the effort.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
...until some fool blows it up with atomics.
So basically, Bacillus Pasteurii will be used to actually turn the sand into sandstone instead of waiting for thousands of years or using other kinds of walls.
To be honest, the part which is more interesting is the fact that desertification will be stopped by using a wall. Sure, the Slashdot summary used bacteria as a hook, but in all honesty, the wall is more important than the bacteria anyway, which is why there's only a small mention of the bacteria in the source article.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
A main part of the problem is that sand storms blow so much sand on surrounding grasslands, it kills the plants and spreads the desert. I don't see how a wall could help, unless it was kilometers high. It would need to stop this ?
At first I read "Bacteria Could Help Stop Decertification," and I was intrigued at how bacteria could possibly have anything to do with PKI or SSL. Not that the actual topic is any less interesting...
The most information I could find is here (the full-size images are pretty large) and here.
It's hard to pick through the information, but is this scientifically viable? Or is this the random musings of an architecture student focusing only on the architecture side, and ignoring the biology side?
I had the same de-certification read, only I was confounded about how bacteria could help teachers retain their credentials. (my brain processed it as a typical /. typo that got past the editors ... just like all the rest)
How the hell are you supposed to pronounce that bizarre word, anyway?
You use irrigation techniques designed for low-water environments and strategically place human settlements in areas that you need planted. Plantings and irrigation anchor the soil and add more water to the system.
I know this is a scientific oversimplification, but I think it's been working well enough to shrink some of the Californian, Chinese, and Negev deserts.
The slow grain pierces the shield wall.
As I understand the dune-grass in Northern Canada up through Oregon and Washington is invasive and a foreign species. It was originally planted as a way to stop erosion of some beaches and spread out of control almost overnight. What's to prevent something like this happening / getting out of control and wrecking the natural ecosystem of our planet's deserts?
I thought the title read, "Bacteria Could Help Stop Disinfection." Crap! Rubbing eyes... going to bed.
-Blind faith runs into things.
Little googling revealed that bacteria could actually do it.
Bacterial cement However bacteria need nutrient (urine base btw) to do it. It may happens simple concrete could actually be cheaper.
...by artists so full of themselves that they think can understand and harness something like stone-making bacteria. I know many of these types. They want to discuss ad nauseum every single scientific advancement and it's cultural implications, thinking that they can make some important contribution to the field. It's obvious these guys don't have a clue, as they think that an ice-nine scenario is something that, first nobody thought of, and second is even possible. These are the same people who hear about the LHC and think that there's a good chance that the universe might implode when they turn it on. As if the world works like it does in the politically motivated somewhat-sci-fi books that are all the rage in these circles.
Please, stay in the coffee shops in the village, discussing the importance of your latest pathetic attempt at relevance through putting mannequin arms in toilets bowls and calling it art.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
They want to tax my gore-given internet, let them pay for this fucking 3600 mi. wall, the folley of africa. I mean, it's africa. it's a desert. Get over it already.
I propose genetically engineering bacteria that turn sand into chocolate in an attempt to speed up dessertification, with a side effect of feeding starving refugees.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would love to see that bacteria stop my CCNA from expiration.
fungi?
if you can make sandstone by urinating on sand and sprinkling Bacillus Pasteurii, you can get rich
What is the evidence that there is any desertification? Where that is defined as deserts which are advancing, and whose advance is not containable by substitution of sustainable farming practices for unsustainable ones, such as over grazing by goats rather than mixed arable farming. That is, mixed crops and animal husbandry with attention to composting, manure and crop rotation.
There is no such evidence. All that is needed is sensible traditional mixed farming. And a lot less journalistic blather about desertification that is not happening, global warming that is not happening, and how the one imaginary event is a consequence of the other imaginary event. And for well meaning idiots to stop subsidizing goats.
And no, its not happening in the Sahel either. But if we buy them enough goats, we could probably make it happen!
What about bacteria that fix nitrogen from the air? I wonder if some combination could do it?
Where do they expect to get enough sand to build a wall 6000 km long?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Bring on the God Emperor!
"Many men have tried." "They tried and failed?" "They tried and died."
SiÃn Phillips and Frank Herbert FTW.
de-sertification?
I don't think a wall will help if the land turns to dust and the lakes dry up.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=38348&src=eorss-manews
They want to use self-replicating nano-entities? Don't they know that anything that self-replicates immediately covers the entire earth and destroys life as we know it?
relevance through putting mannequin arms in toilets bowls
Apply for a grant or other financial support from the Arts Council, or whatever your local tax-wasting equivalent is. That idea just might fly, if you write a bit more toad-screed around it...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
whatcouldpossiblygowrong
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
But I Love Ice Cream!!!
>> How the hell are you supposed to pronounce that bizarre word, anyway?
I had the same though. It's either DESERT-ih-fih-KAY-shun, which... I dunno, just sounds wrong... Or, it's deh-ZERT-ih-fih-KAH-shun, but I think that would be spelled Dessertification - which is the transformation of food stuffs into dessert. Example:
"Overproduction of high fructose corn syrup by Big Food is responsible for the dessertification of American food, and Americans' resulting embiggenment."
This is what to do with deserts. It's similar to your proposal, but solves two problems at once.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does this sound uncomfortably like ice-nine to anyone else?
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Ahhh, the light finally came on!
HFCS is what embiggens us all!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That really does seem like an excellent idea, especially as most of the world's population lives near the ocean.
But I have one concern.
Some large energy or food conglomerate will patent it & deny all uses of it. While not legal or logical, it will tie up this idea for decades.
That, and it tastes like asparagus. Nasty.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Because moving the farmers would require something approaching socialism, and not moving the farmers would require something appraching starvation. Moving the desert is a better choice.
...assuming socialism can be equated with starvation. Many might even choose stone-cold communism (if this were ever proffered as a choice, not a mandate) over starvation.
The issue has aspects of political theory and of environmental ethics, but the most basic questions are of engineering. Civil engineering, surely, but also environmental and/or social engineering. Changing farm policy in Northern Africa might have some effect on desertification at this late date. Or it might simply be too little, too late. The answer to this isn't for speculation, but for numerical analysis of well constructed models of the system-of-systems in question.
Similarly, one would anticipate some effort might occur first at predicting the results of wall building across the Sahara - whether the technology is bacteria or concrete. Would this really do anything useful? Only after demonstrating the practicality of the idea should cycles be wasted speculating on the ethical dimension - it would certainly be unethical to invest resources on schemes that can't possibly succeed.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun
From the article it looks like the bacteria will continue to live in the wall repairing and reshaping it, but how will they keep it in the wall? Are we at some point going to end up with the great Sahara sandstone parking lot?
One does not simply solidify sandstone into mortar.
I can't say I like that idea. Using salt water will leave the salt in the soil, making it much harder to farm anything but the biofuel. Why not use a species that can make biofuel in freshwater?
we can then call em a Sietch, and ride giant sand worms around yelling "Muad'Dib".
Once this bacteria get going and turning sand to sandstone, how do you stop it? Are we then going to have to worry about all the world's sand getting turned to stone from rogue bacterial infections?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I dunno, sounds kind of shitty. Must be the camel dung.
But the biggest things we can do to stop desertification, so far as I know, would be to adopt better agricultural practices and stop forcing a stationary lifestyle on ecosystems dependent on migration.
But what will stop verbification, Hobbes?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!