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Sorry, leaves — we figured out a way to do photosynthesis better than you

by NeilR53gqo Posted on June 7, 2016

Sorry, leaves — we figured out a way to do photosynthesis better than you

By on Jun 6, 2016Share

Trees, be warned: the process of photosynthesis — once the exclusive domain of nature — has just been not only co-opted but upgraded by Harvard scientists.

The team, lead by professor of energy Daniel Nocera, has created a new-and-improved version of a system that converts solar energy into fuel at a rate 10 times more efficient than the fastest-growing plants. It is called the “Bionic Leaf 2.0.”

The “leaf” uses solar energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, explains Nocera. Engineered microbes eat the hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide into liquid fuel for transportation or conversion into more mainstream fuels.

In 2015, Nocera and Pamela Silver, professor of biochemistry and systems biology at Harvard Medical School, debuted the first bionic leaf. Though it successfully converted sunlight into liquid fuel (aka isopropanol, for you nerds out there), that version used a hydrogen-making catalyst that also ended up screwing with the microbes’ DNA. The result: a much less impressive conversion rate of CO2 to energy.

“[The Bionic Leaf 2.0] is an important discovery,” Nocera said in a press release. “It says we can do better than photosynthesis.”

So much better, in fact, that the team believes that its new invention can already be considered for commercial use. Nocera plans to look for ways to use it in developing countries as a cheap source of clean energy.

A future full of robot trees that create fuel for everyone? Doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

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Sorry, leaves — we figured out a way to do photosynthesis better than you

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Tiny sea creatures are saving us from hell on earth. So why are we endangering them?

by CliffEliott Posted on June 6, 2016

Tiny sea creatures are saving us from hell on earth. So why are we endangering them?

By on Jun 6, 2016Share

Deep in the ocean where the sun don’t shine, fissures in the earth’s crust spew super-heated geothermal water and gases of up to 400 degrees Celsius.

Sounds like hell? Not quite — hydrothermal vents discovered just 40 years ago by scientists, teem with a surprising abundance of life. And these hotbeds of biodiversity are crucial for underwater ecosystems and the global climate, according to a recent report in Frontiers In Marine Science.

The vents dot the sea floor at depths of 5,000 to 13,000 feet, gushing sulfides, methane, iron, and hydrogen into the ocean. Like moths to a (very hot) flame, microorganisms around the vents convert these elements into food. They are, in turn, eaten by other organisms, transporting that geothermal energy up a food chain that includes mussels, clams, giant crabs, and those truly bizarre scarlet tube worm colonies.

Importantly, researchers found that vent-dwelling creatures gobble up as much as 90 percent of the released methane — which, if it were to be released into the atmosphere, would act as a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

“There is more methane on the ocean floor than there are other forms of fossil fuels left in the oceans,” said Andrew Thurber, coauthor on the report, “and if it were all released it would be a doomsday climatic event. Through methane consumption, these life forms are literally saving the planet.”

But before you can say “OMG tube worm!”, there’s more. These extreme ecosystems are threatened by offshore oil and gas extraction — particularly the peripheral impacts like, anchors, noise pollution, leakage. Big plans are brewing to mine the vents for copper, gold, or silver, with the first deep-sea mining machines set for a test drive in the near future.

Since the vents are dispersed around the ocean floor around the world, any coordinated plan to protect them would require international cooperation. Since losing them might spell disaster — not to get too fire and brimstone-y on you guys — it’s as good a reason as any to work together.

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Tiny sea creatures are saving us from hell on earth. So why are we endangering them?

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Samantha Bee grills Texas legislator on abortion in hilarious, cringe-worthy clip

by CarsonVUPV Posted on March 2, 2016

Samantha Bee grills Texas legislator on abortion in hilarious, cringe-worthy clip

By on 2 Mar 2016 4:54 pmcommentsShare

Happy Texas Independence Day! Seems like the perfect time to celebrate all things Lone Star: chili con queso, Willie Nelson, and limiting women’s access to reproductive health care.

In advance of this oh-so-important holiday, Samantha Bee spoke with Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn (R) on Monday’s Full Frontal, the only late night satirical show hosted by a woman — and, coincidentally, the only late night show in which the host doesn’t get a desk.

Rep. Flynn is the co-author of HB2, the 2013 bill that closed nearly half of Texas’ abortion clinics and whose constitutionality is currently being debated in the Supreme Court. The bill required abortion clinics to perform cost-prohibitive upgrades to meet the standards of ambulatory care centers, which have, among other pretty arbitrary requirements: wide corridors, janitors’ closets of a specified size, separate locker rooms for men and women, and white walls. None of these standards are required for DIY abortions, by the way, which desperate Texan women are increasingly resorting to as their access to actual clinics is heavily limited. 

It should come as a surprise to no one that Rep. Flynn doesn’t actually know anything about abortion other than the fact that he is against it. But rather than be honest about his opposition to abortion, Rep. Flynn and his cohort claim HB2 is all about preserving women’s health. “We’re not removing access to health care,” Flynn told Samantha Bee. “We’re improving it.” Because the real threat to women isn’t a lack of access to abortion, it’s lavender walls at the doctor’s office.

If the Supreme Court upholds or fails to rule on HB2, the second-largest state in the Union will be left with only 10 abortion clinics. Already, some women in the state must drive hundreds of miles to find a clinic — which often means they simply never go. And that’s exactly the point, as HB2 co-author Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Texas) told NPR:

“Hopefully,” Isaac said, “they’ll be more preventative and not get pregnant.” Women who live far from a clinic should realize, he said, that, “Hey, that might still be an option legally, but now I live 300 miles away from the nearest place — I should probably be more careful.”

Enjoy your independence, Texas — just kidding! You’re still, unfortunately, part of the United States. And as for women’s rights, well, you just don’t have a whole lot to celebrate.

For more on the connections between reproductive rights and the environment, watch this Grist classic:

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Samantha Bee grills Texas legislator on abortion in hilarious, cringe-worthy clip

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Holy Shit. This Is How the Duggars’ Homeschooling Curriculum Allegedly Dealt With Sexual Abuse.

by WileyDPIWfcbe Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

All I can tell you about this tweet is that the Duggars are/were fans of Bill Gothard and that this sexual abuse “lesson” does appear to have been a part of his curriculum at one time.

Gothard himself has been the subject of sordid allegations.

Update: “This is what purity culture does. More than anything else, it silences victims.” —Samantha Field, whose thoughtful post “how Josh Duggar is getting away with it” served as Sarah Galo’s source for Gothard’s insane sexual abuse counseling sheet. Go read the whole thing.

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Holy Shit. This Is How the Duggars’ Homeschooling Curriculum Allegedly Dealt With Sexual Abuse.

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Oklahoma hit by eight earthquakes in two days. Is the fracking industry to blame?

by RamiroGeoghegan Posted on July 14, 2014

Oklahoma hit by eight earthquakes in two days. Is the fracking industry to blame?

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Shutterstock / Anthony Butler

The eight earthquakes that occurred in Oklahoma over the past couple of days may be yet another side effect the U.S.’s insidious fracking boom.

The quakes hit between Saturday morning and early Monday morning, most of them small enough that people didn’t realize the ground was shaking beneath them (they ranged from 2.6 to 4.3 on the Richter scale). But they’re part of a broader trend of increased seismic activity in the heartland over the last few years, a trend that correlates with the growth of fracking. As the L.A. Times reports, Oklahoma experienced 109 tremblors measuring 3.0 or greater in 2013, more than 5,000 percent above normal.

Fracking itself isn’t thought to blame, but the disposal of fracking wastewater might be. Scientists have found that pumping the wastewater from fracking operations into wells likely triggers earthquakes because it messes with ground pressure, especially as those wells become more full. Like the wastewater well in Youngstown, Ohio, that triggered 167 earthquakes during a single year of operation. The biggest one, a sizable 5.7, happened the day after the Ohio Department of Natural Resources finally stepped in to shut the well down.

Jonathan Hallmark, police chief in Langston, Okla., which was hit by the biggest of this recent batch of quakes, told the L.A. Times that they never use to experience tremblors like these. Unless Oklahoma decides to crack down on fracking, the state’s residents might have to get used to them.


Source
USGS: 7 small earthquakes shake central Oklahoma, The Associated Press
At least 4 earthquakes, including a 4.3, strike central Oklahoma, Los Angeles Times
8 small earthquakes shake Oklahoma as fracking critics grumble, CBS News

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.

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Oklahoma hit by eight earthquakes in two days. Is the fracking industry to blame?

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Thanks to shrinking sea ice, National Geographic puts global warming on the map

by rqu0hfl0 Posted on June 24, 2014

Atlas unshrugged

Thanks to shrinking sea ice, National Geographic puts global warming on the map

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Every once in awhile, we reach a moment in history that so radically changes our concept of the world it forces us to redraw our maps — events like Columbus rediscovering America or the Soviet Union collapsing. Now we can add global warming to the list.

For the upcoming 10th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, its cartographers say they have made one of the most visible changes in the publication’s history: it’ll show a lot less Arctic ice.

The loss of Arctic sea ice has been a glaring sign of climate change for the last thirty-some years. Rising temperatures have caused the ice to retreat by 12 percent per decade since the 1970s, with particularly notable setbacks in 2007 and 2012. Arctic sea ice is so responsive to climate change because of a positive feedback loop: As the ice melts it gets thinner, and because thin ice reflects less sun than thick ice, the ocean absorbs more of that heat – which weakens the ice even more.

None of which bodes well for the Arctic’s icy future. “With the trend that we are seeing now, it’s very likely that there will be a day within this century that there will no longer be ice in the arctic,” NASA scientist Josefino Comiso tells National Geographic.

NASAArctic sea ice minimum in September of 1979 and in September of 2011.

National Geographic’s mapmakers drew their new rendition based on how the Arctic looked in 2012, using sea ice data collected by NASA and NSIDC. While the amount of Arctic ice grows and shrinks throughout the year depending on the season, the Atlas depicts multiyear ice — ice that’s older than an year – in solid white, and the winter’s sea ice maximum is noted with a line drawn around it.

The new Atlas will be available on September 30. National Geographic cartographer Juan José Valdés thinks the changes may help convince more people of how real this whole climate change thing is: “Until you have a hard-copy map in your hand, the message doesn’t really hit home.” Hopefully, that’s true — but, then again, even the globe hasn’t done much to convince the Flat Earth Society.


Source
Shrinking Arctic Ice Prompts Drastic Change in National Geographic Atlas, National Geographic Daily News

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.

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Thanks to shrinking sea ice, National Geographic puts global warming on the map

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There’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

by Bettye39Wqhk Posted on May 23, 2014

There’s trouble brewing for your coffee habit

By

Shutterstock

Coffee lovers beware: Those miracle beans just got all the more precious. Coffee rust, a fungal disease, and Brazil’s epic drought are driving up the cost of that vital morning fix.

As NPR reports, wholesale coffee prices have jumped by more than 60 percent since January, from $1.25 per pound to $1.85. And traders suspect that the worst is still to come. Some predict that during the main harvest next month, prices could shoot up to $3 a pound. The long-term forecast looks even grimmer: Global warming is only making it easier for the fungus to spread, and some studies even suggest that our favorite blends will be wiped out by 2080.

Will you need a savings plan just to cover your morning cuppa joe? Well, it’s really the farmers and distributors who bear the brunt of the rust. On the consumer end, the serious snobs will feel the sting most: Even if plants survive, the fungus can hurt the coffee’s flavor, so specialty shops will need go the extra distance, and pay the extra penny, to get the best beans.

Some shops are already raising their rates. Joe, a specialty coffee chain with 10 shops in New York City and Philadelphia, recently raised it’s prices by 25 cents a drink because of the higher cost of beans.

So at what price does the coffee habit no longer become worth it? Ugh … get me another cup and I’ll stew on it.

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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How CO2 is killing the cutest snails you haven’t seen

by LatanyaSoper Posted on May 2, 2014

Snail Ails

How CO2 is killing the cutest snails you haven’t seen

By

Russ Hopcroft, UAF/NOAA

Today’s pteropods – pea-sized oceanic snails – may look pretty cute, but they must’ve done something truly rotten to rack up enough bad karma to end up in the world as they know it today. If they can manage to survive being gobbled up by fish such as salmon, herring, and mackerel, they still have to worry about ocean acidification melting off their shells.

Pteropods rely on aragonite – an form of calcium carbonate – to make their wee little shells, but when excess CO2 cranks down the ocean’s pH, that easily erodible base material starts to dissolve. It’s a phenomenon we’ve known about for a while, but a new study shows just how bad it is out there for these miniature mollusks: More than half of the ones found in the waters just off the West Coast now show severe shell damage — they’re thinned out, pitted, and pocked.

The sad state of their husks probably has to do with the fact that, since the industrial revolution, these waters have one-sixth of the aragonite available. Scientists project that this number will continue to dip, meaning that by 2050 pteropods shells will be dissolving at a rate three times higher than what we see today.

But it’s not really just about the snails. Because pteropods are at the base of the food chain, what happens to them shakes up the ecosystem from the ground up. So, even if what’s happening to the pteropods themselves isn’t enough to melt your heart (though, really, how could it not?), the fact that they’re having a rough time translates to fewer cute ocean critters all around – as well as fewer of the ones that we most like to munch.


Source
Sea Change: Vital part of food web dissolving, The Seattle Times

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.

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How CO2 is killing the cutest snails you haven’t seen

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The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

by neogrom Posted on April 14, 2014

Burn Baby Burn

The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

By

Shutterstock

By now it’s old news that the U.S. is in the midst of an oil and gas boom. In fact, with 30.5 billion barrels of untapped crude, our proven oil reserves are higher than they have been since the 1970s. But if that oil doesn’t stay in the ground, along with most U.S. gas and coal reserves, then the planet and all of its inhabitants are in trouble.

A new report from the Sierra Club takes a look at what will happen to the climate if we burn through four of our biggest fossil fuel reserves — and it ain’t pretty. The four stockpiles are Powder River Basin coal in Wyoming and Montana; Green River shale in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah; oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska; and frackable oil and gas across the U.S. Together these deposits could release 140.5 billion tons of CO2, the report says, enough to get the world a quarter of the way toward a global 2-degree Celsius rise, aka climatological catastrophe.

While the Sierra Club also reports that, for the first time in 20 years, domestic CO2 emissions are actually decreasing (and the U.S. has lost its place as No. 1 CO2 emitter to China), exploiting our oil, gas, and coal reserves will make it hard to maintain that trend. And, if we’re exporting the fuel, domestic trends don’t tell the whole story. Extracting even a fraction of these fossil fuel deposits would outweigh all of the positive climate steps the Obama administration is taking.

As Dan Chu, an author of the report, told Grist, “We have more [fossil fuels] than we can afford to burn. Our argument is … unless we are proactively keeping some of those proven reserves in the ground, we will assuredly go over that tipping point.”

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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The four fossil fuel stockpiles that could toast the world

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Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

by mr2ql Posted on March 28, 2014

Pass on Gas

Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

By

White House

The White House released its strategy to cut methane emissions this morning — President Obama’s latest sashay around Congress to pursue climate action (as part of the plan he announced in June).

Methane isn’t the most ubiquitous of greenhouse gases (that’d be good ‘ol CO2), but it is a potent one: The same amount of methane as CO2 has 20 times the impact in terms of future global warming over a 100-year period. While methane emissions have decreased by 11 percent since 1990, we’re still not in good shape: 50 percent more methane is leaking from oil and gas sites than previously thought and, without action, methane emissions are expected to increase through 2030 – mostly thanks to fracking. So far the oil and gas industry has balked at the idea of regulating its methane leaks, saying that it might slow production down (we’ve all heard it before, but, man, frack you!).

Obama’s plan looks at culling methane emissions from four big sources: landfills (methane gets released when all of our biodegradable trash breaks down), leaks from oil and natural gas production, coal mining, and cow farts. The report details how the White House will delegate government agencies to come up with and enforce better standards, i.e. the EPA will manage landfills while the Department of the Interior will handle methane leaks on public lands. It also focuses on ways to capture methane to reuse it for clean energy, such as biogas systems, which can convert cattle waste into fuel. So while we’re not going to replace our cows with less-farty kangaroos, it at least offers options for putting all those bovine leavings to good use.

All of these steps are pretty minor in the face of battling climate change, but the plan overall does have people excited. “Curbing methane is … a big step in the right direction,” David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at NRDC, said in a recent press release. And from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “As climate change continues to harm American communities from the Heartland to the coasts, we must use every tool at our disposal to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing it … I applaud the President for his ongoing commitment to public health and the environment.”

Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Obama’s new gaseous release: A strategy to cut back on methane

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