OT Hydrogen economy, not?

Of course plants are inefficient solar collectors. They're starving for CO2.

John

Many of you folks also know that food marketers like to confuse us by using about a dozen pseudonyms for sugar in ingredient lists. I ran into a new one today (at least, new to me): "Organic condensed cane juice". In other words, "concentrated liquid sugar". The bastards!

Vaughn

Mmm, that stuff's good. It's like molasses, but not as strong, sweeter and runnier (not quite maple syrup consistency). And what's more, it can't possibly be bad, it's organic as the name suggests!

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

How much has their growth rate increased in the past century, when atmospheric CO2 concentration increased about 35-36%?

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Dunno. I'd imagine that high-yield plant breeding has tracked ambient CO2 levels. People who grow stuff in (real) greenhouses often add extra CO2.

If you look at estimated CO2 levels over the last zillion years

fig 7

it looks like CO2 levels have dropped almost linearly, from a peak of about 2500 PPM, over about the last 120 million years, and not exactly linearly from 7000 PPM in the last semi-gigayear. One could extrapolate the curves to zero in another 25 million or so.

Plants wouldn't like that. Perhaps the planet is cooling off, with fewer massive volcanic events, and plants continue (greedy green buggers) to strain CO2 out of the air and sequester it.

Certainly plants could evolve to use sunlight better, much better, but at current CO2 levels, it's probably not worth the effort.

John

It has been known for hundreds of years that the lactobacillus acidophilus which sours milk and makes cheese is the only culture involved in normal sourdough and is used straight from the source, the milk itself. That how a start is made from scratch. Has been so for centuries. The sanfranciscensis strain has been feed only flour, water, and a pinch of salt for i think over 150 years. Treating it that way makes it very sour, adding milk makes it sweeter. Other than that possible exception sourdough should not contain any yeast. It would be a contaminant normally.

Sounds like i might find your place quite comfortable, then again maybe not so comfortable. I do like my creature comforts.

Why would we do that? Place in proportion to where we got it in the first place (non-operating mines only)

About 6.2% in the last 20 years according to this article:

Hey, that outpaces CO2 ppm increases, doesn't it?

Cheers, James Arthur

Nope. Sourdoughs can be and are traditionally started by exposing flour and water alone to air, to catch airborne yeast spores. I've read it in books, and done it myself.

Regional yeast(s) vary and impart different flavors to the breads they yield, leading to a certain obsession about collecting and sampling around for "the best."

Some places have no local yeast worth mentioning--either the climate doesn't support enough to start a culture or it's bad-tasting--while San Francisco is famous for having a delicious native yeast that's prime:

The actual culture is a symbiotic(?) mix of bacteria and yeast; I don't know how the bacilli get in there, but thank heavens they do.

I'm feasting off a giant 2.5 Kg round I baked yesterday. Yum.

Certain yeasts wreck it; you mustn't expose your starter to air within a day or so of using commercial yeast, or the domesticated frankenspores will take over your starter.

But the original starter has yeast, just a different variety. Sniff it. It smells yeasty for a reason.

But I think we digress...

Cheers, James Arthur

When I have something 'good" to dispose of (or something profitably recyclable) , I just put it out at the curb early. For mechanical/electronic items, I sometimes even leave a note so folks don't have to guess about its condition. It is virtually never still there when the trash man comes. Instant freecycle.

Vaughn

Can't be done. When rock is broken it "bulks". Each rock type has a density in place and a density as mined and typical hard rock expansion is >50%. Modern mining methods include what is called "Back Fill" of mined voids with mine waste, often using fly ash and other captured pollutants from nearby fossil fuel power plants to "cement" the waste in place. Usually the most toxic of the mine waste is used in the backfill operation to reduce environmental contamination.

But there is always "more dirt than came out of the hole".

--


Don Thompson

Stolen from Dan:  "Just thinking, besides, I watched 2 dogs mating once,
and that makes me an expert. "

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.
~Goethe

It is a worthy thing to fight for one\'s freedom;
it is another sight finer to fight for another man\'s.
~Mark Twain

Thanks John, for the lingo. A really good friend of mine (former programmer for American Express Card Services) just became a long-haul truckdriver. Frankly, I never quite understood the switch, but I guess he'd had enough of cubicles...?

Anyway, now I have some vision of life on the road. I did not realize those rigs had mini-kitchens. I knew they had bunks. Very interesting... Can you elaborate any.

And actually, my friend would probably want a "lot lizards inquire within" Ha!!

-mpm

OK, to the extent this is allowed to cause biomass to increase we have a negative feedback mechanism. Some of this was not due to increased CO2 but due to increase in sufficiently warm land area. Some of this is also from breeding of faster-growing plants, irrigation and other developments for agriculture.

Latest 20 year period in the Mauna Loa data is 1984 to 2004. CO2 increase was 9.6% for that stretch.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Does he think he'll do it indefinitely? I think it'd be great to do what John did, talking, e.g., a year off to drive around the country -- but I definitely wouldn't want to spend much more than that doing it. :-)

"And actually, my friend would probably want a "lot lizards inquire within" Ha!!"

Clearly a lot of guys do. As long as they're keeping it safe (and they're hopefully single), why not? The U.S. is one of very few countries that has big hang-ups about sex-for-hire.

---Joel

But most of the sourdough here does contain yeast.

John

Interesting; not quite 1:1, but the plants and the plant breeders need a little time to tweak the genetics to match the changing environment.

Smart agribusiness will short-cut the time lag: breed plants in greenhouses optimized for, say, 450 PPM, and be ready to cash in.

John

mpm wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:

A podcast...? I saw some references to other refernces, but no info.

However, many of those references addressed the Glycemic Index, and seemed to implicate an overabundance in the diet fo simple carbohydrates (including sugars) as an inportant factor in obesity.

Isn't there a transcript?

It seems to me that the following support that the simpler a carbohydrate is, the more quickly it's be absorbed, and sent into the bloo dstream as glucose:

"The glycemic index and glycemic load systems are popular alternative classification methods which rank carbohydrate-rich foods based on their effect on blood glucose levels. The insulin index is a similar, more recent classification method which ranks foods based on their effects on blood insulin levels. This system assumes that high glycemic index foods and low glycemic index foods can be mixed to make the intake of high glycemic foods more acceptable." Now, granted, there is no citation, and I don't keep citation lists each and ever time I read anything (I'd end up with a room full of nothing but jotted-down citations!), but from all I learned (and have read abotu regarding) digestion, bhiochemistry, and physiology, the Glycemic INdex, and Insulain Index, are predicated upon the rate at which various carbohydrates are absorbed; the larger (longer and/or more highly branched) a carb. molecule is, the longer it takes for teh body to break it down and absorb it into the bloodstream as glucose. ANd some forms of carbohydrate, the indigestible types of fiber, are so complex that they cannot be sufficiently broken down by the digestive ssytem to allow any siginificant absorbtion.

A few general references:

"Complex carbohydrates, which are generally large chains of glucose molecules, take longer to digest and provide more nutrients than simple carbohydrates."

That contradicts your claim that length/complexity of carbohydtrate chains has nothing to do with the rate of digestion, i.e. breakdown to, and subsequent absorbtion of, glucose into the bloodstream.

IOW,

A decent Biochemistry textbook should also be informative on the topic.

HTH!

JosephKK wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Well, comfort is not a matter of new, or of price tag - it's a matter of balancing quality, application/function, and personal aesthetic. A pair of fuzzy ankle sox keeps my toes just as warm, in winter, as a $175 pair of wool slippers. Especially since comfort is also, in part, a well- diversified retirement portfolio ;)