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Positive Energy Future the Organic Cures Blog by Nori Muster This blog is an aggregate of the latest news from sources like Google Alerts, using keywords like bioremediation. Whenever an interesting link comes along, or a new product, I add it to this page. In the newer part of the site, I have gone through to weed out dead links and put them into categories. To reach the new site, click here: new site map. Where you are now is the older site, where the links are only roughly categorized. You are welcome to sift through the links and use what you find. If you have feedback, please send it.* Info. about the fictional origins of my research and why I entered the Virgin Earth Challenge in 2007, click here. THE VIRGIN EARTH CHALLENGE Organic Cures by Nori Muster August 2008 Table of Contents Why I Entered the Virgin Earth Challenge Definition of Organic Cures How to Use Organic Cures Two-Stage Plan for Carbon Clean-Up Prescription: Steps to Environmental Peace UCLA Researcher Mirrors Organic Cures Ideas 21st Century Technology to Restore the Earth Treating the Oceans Probiotics That Eat Carbon Waste, an Interview with Bob Friedman Hair and Mushrooms Blue-Green Algae Cures Chlorella: Key to Heavy Metals Detox Photosynthesis and Global Warming Melvin Prueitt's Air Purifying Tower A 1,600 foot tower that can power a small city Algae Fuel Microbial Fuel Agrichar Initiative Probiotics and Soot Probiotics May Process Sequestered Carbon Probiotics May Reduce Methane Poplar Tree Bacteria Breaks Down Toxins A Fanciful Future Scenario Organic Cures: Why I entered the Virgin Earth Challenge by Nori Muster In 2007, Al Gore and Sir Richard Branson announced that they would award $25 million to anyone who could come up with a commercially viable design to remove anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. The Virgin Earth Challenge was based in Richard Branson's offices in London. This page is a summary of my entry, "Organic Cures," and a statement about Earth's ability to transform carbon pollution in a natural way. We will have to change our ways to get to a sustainable existence here. The best direction is to go back to nature and get in harmony with nature. Therefore, I wanted to show that the cure for excess carbon may also be natural. This page is a collection of puzzle pieces I have collected, which taken together and expanded, will address global warming. Some of the pieces may seem improbable, but some of it is already starting to take root. Over the years, I have clipped news articles about real scientists who are doing actual experiments with the same ideas. A good idea can occur to more than one person at a time, simply because the time for the idea has come. The idea for Organic Cures came from of a sci-fi story I wrote in 1991. Find Me At the Gates takes place in 2012, in a positive future where humans appreciate history and respect the earth. The Virgin Earth contest was like a scene out of my novel. Find Me At the Gates is available through Amazon.com. Definition of Organic Cures, my Virgin Earth Challenge Design Organic Cures includes anything that is probiotic - pro (for) bio (life), including plant botanicals, extracts, tinctures, enzymes, algae, chlorella, bacteria, microbes, mushrooms, kombucha tea cultures, acidophilus, natural vinegar; antioxidants like Vitamin C, natural astaxanthin, grape seed, and trees, which are like organic sequestration tanks. My work is based on the notion (as Buckminster Fuller, to whom I dedicate my work, believed), that the earth is a single system like a body. Another word for organic cures would be "bioremediation." Bioremediation products come from natural sources, are fully biodegradable, and yet consume petroleum waste. Some of these products consume petroleum, while others consume organic waste, chemicals, methane sludge, harmful bacteria, etc. Promoting the research and development of probiotics is the core of the Organic Cures design. To sum up: petro-toxins promote death. Organic Cures promote life. How to Use Organic Cures The air always seems cleanest after a heavy rain. It will be even cleaner if the "rain" includes beneficial organic compounds to dissolve carbon. I believe that spraying probiotics from platforms or airplanes (or seeding clouds) over polluted lands, would capture and break down excess carbon dioxide in the air and waterways. It could be tested at the Biosphere 2 facility in Arizona (http://www.bio2.com/) or in the field, as probiotics have no harmful side effects. Probiotics may be introduced through irrigation systems, or sprayed directly onto polluted land or water. Probiotic filtration systems could process pollution released from smokestacks and drains. Two-Stage Plan for Carbon Clean-Up Stage I - Develop easy-to-use consumer probiotic products capable of neutralizing carbon waste. If I had won the Virgin Earth Challenge, I would have used the prize money to fund grants for development of these products. I would first engage companies that already make probiotic products (click here to see list). Stage II - Donate these products for use in carbon-polluted areas worldwide. When the world is ready to take this step, the products will be available because of our research and funding. Our products will bear a label that reads, "Transform Carbon Pollution into Dust." Probiotics reproduce in warm water, so if we bring the appropriate strains to the warmest spots on earth, the people could make their own probiotics on-site. This would minimize the carbon footprint of the clean-up, since it would reduce the need to ship huge quantities of Organic Cures. Prescription: Steps to Environmental Peace 1. Our collective story about the earth is changing and we must flow with the changes. Old paradigm: Earth is ours to exploit, we will never run out of resources. Nature is threatening, evil. New paradigm: We are stewards of the earth and therefore must protect it for future generations. Nature is the divine manifest to us. 2. Our language about the earth must change. We learn to use words that describe peace and protection on Earth, instead of continuing to harangue the double negatives (i.e., "stop global warming" - "stop" is negative, "global warming" is negative because it is the thing we don't want). 3. No one person or one invention will change everything. Healing the planet is a shared effort. Many individuals will contribute to healing the earth. Most good ideas occur to a number of people simultaneously. UCLA Researcher Mirrors Organic Cures Ideas In my novel, scientists developed a natural plant substance that would float into the air, like soap bubbles. They grew the plants in hydroponic towers that cooled the air and generated electricity. Once the bubbles reached a certain altitude, they burst to provide nutritional elements that neutralized free radicals. In the mid-1990s, Associated Press reported, "A physics professor thinks he's found a way to halt depletion of Earth's ozone layer with electrical charges delivered by helium balloons. In his experiments at the University of California Los Angeles, Alfred Y. Wong found that electricity disabled the chlorine atoms released by ozone's atmospheric enemy, chlorofluorocarbons. "Each chlorine atom is capable of destroying hundreds of thousands of radiation-screening ozone molecules. By charging chlorine atoms in a chamber that simulates Earth's atmosphere, Wong and his colleagues prevented them from chemically reacting with ozone, he said. As a result, ozone levels in the chamber returned to normal. "Because the sun is constantly creating new ozone, ozone levels in the atmosphere similarly could be restored if the chlorine was disabled," Wong wrote in a paper published today in the journal Physical Review Letters." 21st Century Technology to Restore the Earth In the next hundred years, we need to work on many fronts to restore the earth to its virgin state and ensure the survival of the planet. Here are some areas worthy of research and development. probiotics (described above) alternative vehicles, fuels / mass transportation reclaiming open space ecosystem restoration / toxic site clean-up organic farming / hydroponic safe alternative chemicals (glues, solvents, lubricants, paints, fertilizers, cigarettes, prescription drugs, etc.) detoxification recycling / recycling from landfills Treating the Oceans In October 1996, I found another supporting article in the Washington Post National Weekly Journal. "Can an Iron Supplement Cool the Globe?" begins: "Six years ago, amid widespread fears of global warming, the late ocean scientist John H. Martin made an audacious proposal: Reduce the risk of 'fertilizing' the seas with thousands of tons of iron compounds. Dosing so, he and others argued, would stimulate minuscule marine plant organisms called phytoplankton (notably algae) so dramatically that they would gobble up huge amounts of carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water just as vegetation on the land removes CO2 from the air. And reducing levels of CO2 - a notorious greenhouse gas that traps heat radiation in the atmosphere - would presumably cool the earth." In my plan, we would use natural microbes, probiotics, to treat the ocean. The friendly bacteria would eat the pollution in the ocean and neutralize it. Once the natural enzymes have done their work, they turn into harmless dust. Probiotics That Eat Carbon Waste An Interview with Bob Friedman, founder of Bob's Aqua Care Products http://pondviewkoi.com/ [formerly bobsaquacareproducts.com] March 30, 2007 Nori: Did you say there are friendly bacteria strains that eat fossil fuel waste? Bob: I have strains of bacteria and enzymes that break down hydrocarbons. Here, where a lot of the oil is and comes from (in California), we provided one of the contractors. He goes to old service stations and the EPA requires him to biodegrade all the hydrocarbons, which is the oil, out of the soil, before they can build on that property again. Nori: So the bacteria eats oil? Bob: Different strains of bacteria have an appetite for hydrocarbons and they will clean it up. An abandoned gas station and all the ground around it is saturated with hydrocarbons and they'll just eat it up. Nori: So you're saying there are strains of bacteria that address petroleum problems. So they're using that already. How can you use it with air? I can see how you would use it for land or water. Bob: They use it with air because when they go to cure this saturated soil, they have equipment that will allow air to go in. Actually, they don't have to do that because they put underground aerators in to run night and day. Just like we put aerators in the water, they put aerators in the soil. Nori: So they put tubing under the soil and then drip out the bacteria? Like a huge drip system? Bob: You got it, that's exactly right. Nori: So when the bacteria eats things up, what does it turn it into? Dirt? Bob: That's a good question. Yes, dirt. The bacteria live on waste matter and turn it into dirt. You may have read about some of the farming communities in this country, where they raise cows, there's too much waste. Nori: Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm a vegetarian, so I'm interested in what's happening with the food supply. Cows are a huge problem because of the methane. Bob: You bet. Nori: Would the bacteria help with that? Bob: I don't want to tell you something that I'm not sure of, but it's a natural process, it leaves no after effects, and that's it. Editor's Note: click here for a company that supplies carbon eating microbes. Hair and Mushrooms Clean Up Oily Beaches By Meredith May, the San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday 14 November 2007 (excerpt) http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/111407EB.shtml A group of guerrilla volunteers is cleaning oil from San Francisco's beaches using an unorthodox, albeit totally organic, method: human hair and mushrooms. Using mats made of hair, they are absorbing the droplets of oil that have washed ashore since a cargo ship rammed the base of a Bay Bridge tower last week, spilling fifty-eight thousand gallons of fuel. Hair, which naturally absorbs oil from air and water, acts as a perfect sponge, said Lisa Gautier of San Francisco, who provided a thousand hair mats. They are about the size of a doormat, tightly woven with dark hair, and feel somewhat like an S.O.S [Soap] pad. While the mats may not be the obvious choice among hazardous waste experts, they hit San Francisco's green chord: More than seven hundred volunteers have tried them in recent days. Organizers hope their success will inspire more ecological responses to toxic waste removal. Gautier had one thousand of them on hand because she runs a nonprofit, Matter of Trust, which matches donations from businesses with needy nonprofits. She collects human hair from Bay Area salons and sends it to Georgia to be woven into mats, which she then gives to the San Francisco Department of the Environment to absorb used motor oil. Once the mats are soaked with black gunk, oyster mushrooms will take over, growing on the mats and absorbing the oil. National mushroom expert Paul Stamets was in town the weekend after the spill for the Green Festival, heard of Gautier's work and donated $10,000 worth of oyster mushrooms to harvest on the oily hair mats. Gautier said the mushrooms will absorb the oil within twelve weeks, Gautier said, turning the hair mats into nontoxic compost. "You make it like a lasagna," Gautier said. "You layer the oily hair mats with mushrooms and straw, turn it in six weeks, and by twelve weeks you have good soil." The soil may not be good enough to grow carrots but is certainly good enough to use for landscaping along roads, she said. The Environmental Protection Agency caught wind of the hair brigade and is giving the volunteers four-hour classes to certify them to clean up oil, Gautier said. Cole Hardware provided discount white Tyvex protection suits, and city workers from the Department of the Environment pitched in the eight hundred hair mats they had on hand. On Tuesday, volunteers used the mats and white plastic forks to gingerly lift tiny oil blobs from the sand at Ocean Beach. "It's interesting how when we are challenged, we become more inventive," said volunteer David Hirtz, who lives nearby and is a member of the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team run through the San Francisco Fire Department. "Instead of yelling and complaining and blaming, you are doing something about it," he said. . . . [Gautier has] been talking with a company in China that makes industrial-sized hair mats about getting more shipped to San Francisco. Gautier said she can even have large sea booms made by stuffing hair into nylon stockings. http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html YouTube video of volunteers using hair mats to clean up oil spill Blue-Green Algae Cures One man's quest to cool the planet - with blue-green algae Scum of the Air, Sierra Magazine, Sierra Club May/June 2005 by Frances Cerra Whittelsey http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200605/lol.asp Atop the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's twenty-megawatt campus power plant stands a structure resembling a pipe organ. Instead of shiny metal, the thirty clear plastic pipes are pond-scum green, full of one-celled algae fighting global warming. The algae are eating carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the plant's emissions - forty percent of the former and eighty-six percent of the latter - and turning them into harmless oxygen and nitrogen. Each day, an algae crop is harvested that could be dried and converted to solid fuel or processed into biodiesel or ethanol, transforming a pollution problem into a moneymaker. Chemical engineer Isaac Berzin came across the algae idea in a 1996 government report while working on a project for the International Space Station and was immediately impressed with the possibilities. "You could take something no one knew what to do with and turn it into fuel," he says. With the MIT test a success, Berzin has attracted $2.4 million in capital, founded GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, and begun field trials at an unnamed power plant in the Southwest. The idea "has a lot of promise," says Barry Worthington, executive director of the U.S. Energy Association, which represents the electric power, oil, and gas industries. "If the GreenFuel technology works on a large scale, then all of a sudden you are looking at being able to sequester carbon dioxide not just as a cost of doing business, but you actually get some revenue." It would be a dream solution for the industry, given that forty percent of carbon dioxide and twenty-five percent of nitrogen oxide emissions in the country come from electric power plants. Other ideas for getting rid of CO2 include burying it underground or discharging it into the deep ocean, both expensive ideas with unknown consequences. But who can complain about a lot of algae? Chlorella: Key to Heavy Metals Detox A medicinal supplement available in health food stores, HMDTM (by Natural Path), removes lead, mercury, aluminum, and all heavy metals from the human body. Following is a list of the ingredients, taken from their website. If chlorella can detoxify the human body, algae is a probiotic that may detox carbon and chemical pollution from the earth, as well. http://detoxmetal.com/NewFiles/WhatIs.html HMDTM is a proprietary synergistic blend of three natural ingredients combining: Chlorella Growth Factor; A homaccord of specially energized cell-decimated Chlorella Vulgaris; Organic Coriandrum Sativum tincture (Cilantro Leaf) What is each of these three ingredients and what are their benefits and value? The three individual elements that HMDTM consists of are all natural substances, which apart from their chelating properties also have many health benefits: Chlorella Growth Factor (CGF) C.G.F. is obtained by hydro-thermally extracting premium quality chlorella. Chlorella Growth Factor (CGF) derived its name because laboratory test indicated that the addition of CGF to a standard growth medium increased the growth of friendly bacteria, lactobacillus, by up to 400%. CGF is a nucleotide-peptide complex and in addition to playing a synergistic role in the chelation of metals, as used in HMDTM. It has been tested by independent labs to be 100% pure and metal free. CGF has been shown in various research studies to have many health related benefits. Homeopathic Cell-Decimated Chlorella The chlorella vulgaris was made into a homeopathic homaccord of three different (C) potencies. It goes through manual and not mechanical succession for highest vibrational frequency. The literature is full of data about chlorella purporting to detoxify heavy metals. Homeopathic chlorella was tested based upon initial results using homeopathic plumbum, arsenicum, antimonium and cadmium. These homeopathics did appear to have some chelating properties to the specific metal that they represent, probably based upon their resonating properties, but not all the others. When homeopathic chlorella was tried by itself there was no chelating effect. But when combined with the other natural remedies in this formulation there was a powerful synergistic effect. Coriandrum sativum (leaf) herbal tincture - commonly referred to as Cilantro. A researcher named Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, using bioenergetic measures, discovered that some patients excreted more toxic metals after consuming a Chinese soup containing cilantro. Photosynthesis and Global Warming At the heart of probiotics is the cycle of phytosynthesis. Realizing this has probably already been explored, I located this book: Artificial Photosynthesis: From Basic Biology to Industrial Application, edited by Anthony F. Collings and Christa Critchley Wiley, ISBN 3527310908. Chapter seventeen: "Greenhouse Gas Technologies: A Pathway to Decreasing Carbon Intensity." This information may prove valuable for removing carbon from the atmosphere. For more information about this book, go to: http://www.cplbookshop.com/contents/C2302.htm. Melvin Prueitt's Air Purifying Tower Discover magazine, January, 1997, column by Fred Guterl Melvin Prueitt of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico received patents last January for an air purifying tower for large smog-filled cities. At the top of the 650-foot tower, which would be made of metal beams covered with a fiberglass shell, a spray of fine, electrostatically charged mist would humidify the air. It would make the air cooler and cause it to sink, thus creating a downdraft that would suck more air into the tower. Since pollutants would cling to the charged droplets, they would be washed away when the mist condenses at the bottom of the tower. Clean air, humidified by the remaining water vapor, would waft out of the bottom. Prueitt figures that a mere 190 towers could scrub the smog out of a city like Los Angeles without inflicting noticeable aesthetic damage to the skyline. Editor's Note: Melvin Prueitt's ideas are similar to mine, including spraying a charged mist and capturing pollutants in the droplets. The main difference is that using the Organic Cures design, the mist would be infused with probiotics. A 1,600 foot tower that can power a small city Posted on Wednesday, August 9, 2006 by Bart Dabek in Alternative Energy, Science & Technology http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/alternative-energy/a-1600-foot-tower-that-can-power-a-small-city/ http://www.quantuminvestor.com/articles/print.php?id=77 Australian entrepreneur Roger Davey developed a wind tunnel that turns turbines to create electricity. Excerpt from the article: "Picture a 260-foot-diameter cylinder taller than the Sears Tower encircled by a two-mile-diameter transparent canopy at ground level. About eight feet tall at the perimeter, where Davey has his feet planted, the solar collector will gradually slope up to a height of fifty to sixty feet at the tower's base. Acting as a giant greenhouse, the solar collector will superheat the air with radiation from the sun. Hot air rises, naturally, and the tower will operate as a giant vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it will produce wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure. The result: enough clean, green electricity to power some 100,000 homes without producing a particle of pollution or a wisp of planet-warming gases." Editor's Note: A horizontal tunnel would also work. Algae Fuel Developments to Watch, Edited by Arlene Weintraub, Business Week, August 13, 2007 Green Fuel: From Pond Scum To The Jet Tank, by Tyler Hill http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_33/c4046068.htm?chan=search Boeing (BA) has teamed up with a handful of airlines to figure out how to make a jet engine that's efficient and environmentally friendly. Among the candidates for the biofuel that will power this engine: algae. Turns out the green gunk that coats stagnant ponds and unkempt aquariums offers advantages over other efficient fuels, such as ethanol made from corn. Algae-based fuels may hold up better in the extreme temperatures, pressures, and weather conditions at which jets operate. What's more, algae is abundant and grows naturally, which should make it cheaper to harvest than crop-based fuels. Boeing is working on the project with New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic and Air New Zealand. Separately, Boeing is testing other types of biofuel with Virgin Atlantic Airways in an effort to convert an engine to run on clean fuel by 2008. A spokesman says one promising candidate is babassu, a Brazilian fruit similar to the coconut. Microbial Fuel New Method Converts Organic Matter To Hydrogen Fuel Easily And Efficiently ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2007) - Hydrogen as an everyday, environmentally friendly fuel source may be closer than we think, according to Penn State researchers. "The energy focus is currently on ethanol as a fuel, but economical ethanol from cellulose is ten years down the road," says Bruce E. Logan, the Kappe professor of environmental engineering. "First you need to break cellulose down to sugars and then bacteria can convert them to ethanol." Logan and Shaoan Cheng, research associate, suggest a method based on microbial fuel cells to convert cellulose and other biodegradable organic materials directly into hydrogen. The researchers used naturally occurring bacteria in a microbial electrolysis cell with acetic acid - the acid found in vinegar. Acetic acid is also the predominant acid produced by fermentation of glucose or cellulose. The anode was granulated graphite, the cathode was carbon with a platinum catalyst, and they used an off-the-shelf anion exchange membrane. The bacteria consume the acetic acid and release electrons and protons creating up to 0.3 volts. When more than 0.2 volts are added from an outside source, hydrogen gas bubbles up from the liquid. "This process produces 288 percent more energy in hydrogen than the electrical energy that is added to the process," says Logan. Water hydrolysis, a standard method for producing hydrogen, is only fifty to seventy percent efficient. Even if the microbial electrolysis cell process is set up to bleed off some of the hydrogen to produce the added energy boost needed to sustain hydrogen production, the process still creates 144 percent more available energy than the electrical energy used to produce it. For those who think that a hydrogen economy is far in the future, Logan suggests that hydrogen produced from cellulose and other renewable organic materials could be blended with natural gas for use in natural gas vehicles. "We drive a lot of vehicles on natural gas already. Natural gas is essentially methane," says Logan. "Methane burns fairly cleanly, but if we add hydrogen, it burns even more cleanly and works fine in existing natural gas combustion vehicles." The range of efficiencies of hydrogen production based on electrical energy and energy in a variety of organic substances is between sixty-three and eighty-two percent. Both lactic acid and acetic acid achieve eighty-two percent, while unpretreated cellulose is sixty-three percent efficient. Glucose is 64 percent efficient. Another potential use for microbial-electrolysis-cell produced hydrogen is in fertilizer manufacture. Currently fertilizer is produced in large factories and trucked to farms. With microbial electrolysis cells, very large farms or farm cooperatives could produce hydrogen from wood chips and then through a common process, use the nitrogen in the air to produce ammonia or nitric acid. Both of these are used directly as fertilizer or the ammonia could be used to make ammonium nitrate, sulfate or phosphate. This research is published in the November 12 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online. The researchers have filed for a patent on this work. Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., and the National Science Foundation supported this work. Adapted from materials provided by Penn State (2007, November 13). New Method Converts Organic Matter To Hydrogen Fuel Easily And Efficiently. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 21, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071112172203.htm Agrichar Initiative By Kelpie Wilson For Truthout.org, Thursday 03 May 2007 (excerpts) Terrigal, New South Wales, Australia - As delegates met in Bangkok this week to debate climate change solutions contained in the IPCC's latest report, one technology not mentioned in the draft report was being closely examined at a conference in Australia in the beach town of Terrigal, just north of Sydney. The first meeting of the International Agrichar Initiative convened about a hundred scientists, policymakers, farmers and investors with the goal of birthing an entire new industry to produce a biofuel that goes beyond carbon neutral and is actually carbon negative. The industry could provide a "wedge" of carbon reduction amounting to a minimum of ten percent of world emissions and possibly much more. Agrichar is the term not for the biomass fuel, but for what is left over after the energy is removed: a charcoal-based soil amendment. In simple terms, the agrichar process takes dry biomass of any kind and bakes it in a kiln to produce charcoal. The process is called pyrolysis. Various gases and bio-oils are driven off the material and collected to use in heat or power generation. The charcoal is buried in the ground, sequestering the carbon that the growing plants had pulled out of the atmosphere. The end result is increased soil fertility and an energy source with negative carbon emissions. Prominent Australian scientist Tim Flannery, who has written a book on global warming called The Weather Makers was on hand to give encouragement to the conferees. "I am deeply committed to your solution," he told the group. . . . The attendees were clearly excited by this potential, and, unlike other meetings concerned with climate change, an electric buzz of optimism was in the air. Joe Herbertson, director of a consulting company called Crucible Carbon, said, "When I heard about this technology, the hairs went up on the back of my neck. This is the best news on climate change I've ever heard." One reason for the excitement is agrichar's potential to address a range of problems from poor soil fertility to waste disposal to rural development. About half the world's population relies on charcoal for cooking fuel, and the production of charcoal drives deforestation in Africa and other places. Smoky, inefficient charcoal kilns pollute the air with noxious gases that harm health and heat the planet. An effort to replace these kilns with modern, efficient pyrolysis units would relieve the pressure on forests by reducing waste and adding the ability to use any source of biomass, including agricultural waste products such as rice hulls. The ultimate objective is to produce enough charcoal to have some left over to bury and increase soil fertility, leading to a bootstrapping effect where increased yields provide both more food and more biomass for energy. Projects discussed at the agrichar meeting ranged from a household-size pyrolyzing stove that produces both cooking gas and charcoal, to industrial-scale units capable of processing large waste streams from sugar mills, pulp mills, poultry farms and even municipalities. . . . Mike Mason, director of the UK biomass company, Biojoule, said the impact of agrichar on nitrous oxide emissions alone would be enough incentive to fund the needed projects. Nitrous oxide is 270 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas and it lasts for 150 years in the atmosphere. Use of nitrogen fertilizers is a major source of the gas, and a difficult one to mitigate. But agrichar applied to fields seems to have a significant damping effect on nitrous oxide emissions. Lukas Van Zwieten, a researcher at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, looking at preliminary results of his field trials measuring nitrous oxide emissions from agrichar amended soils, said "the more I look into this, the more excited I get." Several farmers attending the conference were primarily interested in the increased yields possible with agrichar. Australia has some of the poorest soils in the world - seventy-five percent of Australia's soils have less than one percent carbon. . . . Field trials and experiments in pots show impressive yield gains in charcoal-amended soils, but so far researchers don't completely understand why. One question is whether the effect is primarily chemical and physical or primarily biological. Charcoal is a highly porous material that is very good at holding nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus and making them available to plant roots. It also aerates soil and helps it retain water. Charcoal's pores also make excellent habitat for a variety of soil microorganisms and fungi. Think of a coral reef that provides structure and habitat for a bewildering variety of marine species. Charcoal is like a reef on a micro-scale. One of the research papers presented at the conference documented an increased diversity of beneficial microbes in terra preta soils as compared with unamended soils, but there are still no answers about whether the fertility increase is due to physical or biological factors. The best answer may be that it is both. . . . Probiotics and Soot Here is a snapshot of recent research on the climate problems. The first article, "Soot May Play Big Role in Climate Change," offers more evidence that probiotics and other organic cures will work. Soot collects on windowsills and every outdoor surface. Even though temporarily grounded, winds will blow soot into the air again, or rain will wash it into the ocean, unless we use probiotics to neutralize it. Probiotics may also capture soot particles in the air and water. Soot May Play Big Role in Climate Change http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032508EB.shtml Tami Abdollah of the Los Angeles Times reports: "Black carbon pollution, or soot, produced by burning wood, coal, cow dung and diesel fuel, may be a much greater contributor to global warming than previously suspected, according to a study released this week." Probiotics May Process Sequestered Carbon In 2007 I found out that a contender in the Virgin Earth Challenge is a "GRT Air Capture Device." It may sequester carbon, but the designers say they would need one million of these devices to remove the one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, as specified in the contest. The sorbents inside the devices would become polluted sponges of poison. How to dispose of this? I still believe the answer to the carbon dioxide removal is probiotics. For example, if you did have a collection of sorbent sponges from the sequestration devices, these could be treated with probiotics to transform the carbon dioxide into a harmless substance, as the previous article illustrates. Probiotics May Reduce Methane In 2007, Sir Paul McCartney went on TV to say that the meat industry creates more carbon dioxide than cars. Probiotics can help with this problem in two ways. First, it can process methane-emitting cow dung that accumulates in stockyards. Second, adding probiotics to cows' food would reduce the methane they emit in their digestive process. Here is a news clip about scientists who want to reduce methane using a similar theory. Japanese researchers may have come up with a way to reduce methane produced by cows By Staff Reports - heraldonline.com Published 01/28/08 - 12:00 AM http://www.heraldonline.com/opinions/story/321192.html A research team at Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine in Hokkaido, Japan, might have found a way to reduce gas emissions from cows. The researchers discovered that supplementing the animals' diet with cysteine, a type of amino acid, and nitrate can reduce methane production. Poplar Tree Bacteria Breaks Down Toxins A 2007 Business 2.0 article (Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 84) said, "Researchers at York University in Britain have identified bacteria living in the roots of poplar trees that produce an enzyme that zaps residue from RDX, a chemical compound used by the military and industry." Iceberg Creep What would be wrong with towing the loose iceberg back to the South Pole where it can remain refrigerated? If you leave an ice cube out on the shelf near Australia it will melt. If you tow it back to the freezer it will stay frozen. A Fanciful Future Scenario If we can develop probiotics that break down plastic bags and other plastic trash, we can apply probiotics to the plastic trash continents forming in the oceans. It would be like the dystopian movie, Waterworld, but probiotics would make it utopia. Waterworld: the earth is flooded, bands of survivors seek dry land. Probiotic waterworld: we turn the plastic trash continents into probiotic farms. We could make biodegradable hemp nets and get Greenpeace (or our own ships) to circle the trash fields, lacing the trash together. Since probiotics grow in warm water, the compacted trash continents could act as reefs for probiotics to grow. If successful, the probiotic crops would speed up the decomposition of the compacted garbage. Binding the trash would also prevent more of it from floating off or sinking, causing harm to marine life. If the plastic trash reefs grow an abundance of probiotics, besides processing the trash reefs, we could export probiotics to places that need it. My Fanciful Future Scenario Has Cred Check this out: Land Grab: Could Bioremediation Turn Pacific Garbage Patch Into Habitable Island? A research group out of University College London is proposing an unusually ambitious upcycling scheme—turning all that plastic junk swirling about the Pacific into a habitable island. The students aim to design and release a really tiny, genetically engineered, synthetic plastic-eating organism that could aggregate all those bottle caps, plastic bags, and broken toys into floating real estate or what they've called the "Plastic Republic." Sounds like the setup to a certain mid 1990s Kevin Costner film, but according to their site, they're not kidding. The North Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of many garbage patches identified around the world. The waste from these patches enters the digestive systems of resident organisms, which are affected either by the physical size of the plastic, or its toxicity from adsorbing organic pollutants. We saw the merits of using synthetic biology to overcome this problem, especially as conventional methods cannot target the majority of the waste—microplastics. By 'synthesising' a new strain of bacteria, capable of detecting, aggregating, and buoying these elusive microplastics, we aim to construct 'Plastic Islands' for removal and reuse or construction of a 'Plastic Republic' Apparently it's possible to "engineer enhanced adhesive properties" in Escherichia coli and marine bacteria Roseobacter denitrificans and Oceanibulbus indolifex in order to have them do this plastic collecting for us. Despite the complex chemistry, the team behind Plastic Republic definitely has a comic streak. They crowdfunded the launch of their project, by "selling" parcels of land on the future archipelago, resulting in a curious lot of early homesteaders. On the north side of the southernmost island there's "Plastique Romney Club de Yacht," a "yacht harbor for prep school boys who pretend to be self-made." We noted last year that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually far smaller than we were all once led to believe. Still, the problem of polymers bobbing around in our oceans is massive and deserves innovative attention. To learn more about seafaring plastic pollution and what you can do about it, visit the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Earlier articles about this: "'Plastic munching' "At the UK's University of Sheffield, scientists are investigating how they could accelerate the speed at which the plastic breaks down by looking at micro-organisms already found in the sea that naturally feed on plastic. "Promising results have already been seen in finding out which microbes are attaching themselves to plastic in coastal waters around the UK. "The next stage will be to analyse how these enzymes work in the natural environment and how they might work in controlled environments where plastic would be the prominent carbon source." See original: bbc.co.uk [article dated Oct. 6, 2010] More cred: This YouTube video offers evidence to back up my idea to use the plastic continents to build islands. This man proves it can be done. The next step is to add probiotics. According to the comments at YouTube, this island was destroyed in a hurricane, but he is building a new one. Rock on Richie Sowa! YouTube Even more cred: Nature.com reports that microbes are eating plastic in the ocean. The article reports: "Plastic-eating bacteria might help explain why the amount of debris in the ocean has levelled off, despite continued pollution." Search Tools!  sitemap - a list of pages at this site World Wide Web toxiccleanup911.steamboats.com