More noise about climate

[Morris Dovey]

Oh great! Now once again I know more than I understand (the story of my life). :)

That I understood. OTOH an entire acre of grass with both sides of each blade emitting at firefly levels would be a /lot/ different from dark. My point is this: If you can produce LEG (light emitting grass) that breeds true, the cost/lumen is _zero_. How closely can that cost level be approached with any other (excepting solar!) technology?

Back in the days before LEDs were bright enough to be more than binary panel indicators (not much better than fireflies), I built an array of

12x960 LEDS (an early LED graphic display device, I still have it stored away) that could make a person squint when they were all lit.

At half that light per pixel, but at perhaps fifty times the pixel density, you'd have a significant amount of light.

I'm not a biologist (IANAB?) but that _does_ sound fantastic. Movies? Can you post (or send) a video? With a voice-over to tell about what's shown? Please...

[Max]

"Dave Balderstone" wrote

Max

[Douglas Johnson]

Small traces can have big effect. The tetanus toxin is fatal at doses at 2.5 nanograms per kilogram of body weight or 0.0000000000025%.

-- Doug

[Morris Dovey]

I understood that. I also understand that they aren't exactly independent; and yes - they may, indeed, conflict (a reasonable conclusion since those conflicts have already produced presidential assassinations and toppled entire governments).

The oil folks are unlikely see the pumps as a threat, but the international lenders and the infrastructure/electrical grid builders might - which is one of my reasons for distributing the development to independent teams spread over five continents.

[HeyBub]

From the Romans through the Middle Ages people used wood and charcoal to the extent that there are almost no forests left in Europe. Fortunately, they discovered coal. Coal powered the industrial revolution, but eventually gave way to petroleum products.

When oil becomes too expensive, we'll find something else.

[J. Clarke]

It's not free energy. The emission of light has to compete with the production of sugar that the grass needs in order to survive and grow.

Professor Chia Tet Fatt in Singapore did create a bioluminescent transgenic orchid that would glow for about 5 hours. Nothing much seems to have come of it--at least I don't see anybody offering them for sale anywhere.

Cost/lumen is zero if it puts light in a useful place and if the cost of keeping that grass in place and not having it pushed out by some other variety that doesn't have the metabolic burden of bioluminescence doesn't increase the cost of upkeep.

Source intensity and surface illumination are different things. Shine a laser pointer in your eye and it looks insanely bright. But try to put enough light on a book to read by one.

[HeyBub]

Whatever. At least they're open.

From the U.S. Geological Survey:

"Aggregates produced from recycled concrete supply roughly 5 percent of the total aggregates market (more than 2 billion t per year), the rest being supplied by aggregates from natural sources such as crushed stone, sand, and gravel."

also aggregate usage: 1,120,000 (x 1,000) metric tons (Table 6) Total recycled asphalt and concrete: 7,210 (x 1,000) metric tons (Table 14)

[HeyBub]

I agree. For the rest of the game, not a single flag was thrown.

[Morris Dovey]

That makes sense. I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on the idea, though. Perhaps we could start with a grass which does sugar production unusually well, and then trade off the growth speed in favor of light output. Perhaps have it only glow in the /dark/ so as to not waste its energy during the day...

You've probably guessed that I'm one of those people who're easily amused. :)

Yuppers, although the cost/lumen is the same no matter where the light goes and regardless of utility. We already put a lot of plants where they're not /useful/ (other than that someone finds them attractive), so usefulness isn't necessarily part of the equation.

[Han]

Mark & Juanita wrote in news:SbWdnSMGoKPnZvjWnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Should be true if all light of that wavelength has been absorbed. Don't know if and when that would happen. There might be very much light of those wavelengths, more than crrently or in the near future would be absorbed.

[Han]

"HeyBub" wrote in news:kL-dnZGoe5OYi_vWnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

PULLEAS!!!! All that statistic says is that more aggregate is being used for concrete production than can be supplied by recycled concrete/asphalt. (only ~

0.7% could be supplied by recycling). Seems to me at least. Don't confuse us with incorrect data/conclusions.

[Han]

Morris Dovey wrote in news:hk4u48$t8l$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

Someone in our division gave a talk of unpublished work showing time-lapse movies like that. Two kinds of cells (tissue culture), identical but for the absence of something fairly essential in one set. Movement of proteins indicating movement of organelles was seen in the "wild-type" cells, but not in the "mutants".

I have seen some more like that, but I don't have the references at hand. I'll keep this in mind for a future posting. The voice-over I can't promise.

[Morris Dovey]

I didn't mean to impose on anyone and then realized that I was, and I'm not sure I wasn't out of line. It /does/ sound fantastic and exciting to be able to see, but I'd like to retract all the pushiness...

[LDosser]

I am having a hard time getting my head around that theory. The earth's crust it (on a scale model) is thinner than the shell on an egg. All the ice and water at that scale would be invisibly thin. Earth, reduced to that size in scale would feel considerably smoother than an egg, in fact it would be impossible to find either the Mariana Trench or Everest by touch. Just the fact that we have shrunk the planet with communications, this is still Mother Earth.. a pretty big ball of stuff.

=============================================================

See

for a decent explanation.

[LDosser]

snip

Given sufficient melting of glacial ice, the introduction of massive amounts of freshwater into the oceans (particularly the North Atlantic) could disrupt warm currents in the northern hemisphere. These warm currents keep the hemisphere relatively ice free. If the currents go, Northern Europe at the very least will enter an Ice Age. It's cyclic.

[LDosser]

Japanese produced glow in the dark pigs sometime in the last couple years. And it all sounds very nice, but where's the Off Switch!?

snip

[LDosser]

Here, for your dining and dancing entertainment, is Matsunari-San and the Luminescent Pigs!

[LDosser]

url might be useful

[J. Clarke]

And that cycle has been ongoing for the 2.5 million years that the northern hemisphere ice age has been going on. Including the melting of the ice caps and the fresh water disrupting the warm currents and the whole nine yards.

[Bob Martin]

Not one of those links backs up your statement that "CO2 is NOT, in fact, a greenhouse gas".