…. and time for a bit of spring cleaning!
After five years this blog is closing. The world is changing…. I am changing. It’s time to move on… new ideas, new interests, new activities.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
“The energy used in thinking seems to have a chemical origin….” wrote the English philosopher Bertrand Russell. “For instance, a deficiency of iodine will turn a clever man into an idiot. Mental phenomena seem to be bound up with material structure.”
In other words, Russell did not separate the mind from the body, and concluded the rich mental life of human beings, is chemistry through and through.
Reading: “The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements” by Sam Kean
UCLA ESS 15 ocean/climate science communication project by Thomas Li. Sung by Thomas Li and featuring Ryan Yoo on rap vocals. Parody of “Glad You Came”, by The Wanted.
Extra footage from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvc…
I do not claim ownership to any of the clips from the above link, nor do I claim ownership to the instrumentals. Original lyrics by Thomas Li and Ryan Yoo.
Lyrics:
The shells will melt
The reefs will die
And all this time emissions rise
The ocean life will never be the same
It’s time to change
When I was just a young boy
My father used to tell me about the ocean and sh*t
I never listened…
But you know what?
Things are gonna change
As of tonight
Everybody put your hands in the air
Everybody put your hands in the air
MCGB, Thomas Li in the heezy
Yeah, yeah, yeah
It’s hard to calcify, calcify
Acidic water makes it hard to thrive, hard to thrive
So oceanic life can say goodbye, say goodbye
Thanks to CO2 that we provide, you and I
To the oceans now
Now we’re watching as the fish
Fish for another prey
Pray they’ll get their wish
Wish the coral reefs survive
Survive another day
Days will go on by
And they can’t swim away
Away from all the change
[Chorus]
Have you heard about this epidemic sweeping the nation?
It’s called two words: Ocean Acidification
CO2 plus water makes carbonic acid
You put that in the ocean and you got something’ bad kids
When the pH drops below 7
You better start praying to your god up in heaven
The problem is bad and it’s only getting worse
This is a process that must be reversed
Too much H+ impedes calcification
Shellfish with no shells is a bad situation
Half the coral reefs are already dead
And it’s coming back to us by my calculations
[Chorus]
It’s killing all the plankton and it’s killing the reefs
The food chain is splitting right along this weak link
Save our fishy friends before they meet their end
Think of all the seafood you might never eat again
(4x) It’s time to change
Being human, most scientists conferm to the psychological Principle of Certainty, which says that when there are evidence both for and against a belief, the result is not a lessening but a heightening of conviction on both sides.
Biologists have many problems to solve. For each of them they have clear answers — usually too many answers.
The difficult part is picking out the right one.
“If you’re the most intelligent person in the room . . . you’re in the wrong room.”
James D Watson.
At the moment, pilot studies for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) systems propose the removal of CO2 by pumping it into holes deep underground, but it is both costly and has a long term risk of the gas leaking back out – possibly many miles away from the original downward source.
The Echinus melo or water melon sea urchin at Capo Caccia Alghero Sardinia. Source: Wikipedia
But now scientists have discovered that sea urchins use nickel ions to harness carbon dioxide from the sea to grow their exoskeleton – or shell. It could be a way to capture tonnes of CO2.
Using the nickel nanoparticles suspended in water vats at factories, power stations would capture the CO2 as it is pumped through, converting the gas into the chalk.
The nickel catalyst can be recycled and the by-product – the carbonate – is useful and not damaging to the environment.
Physicist Dr Lidija Siller, a PHD student at Newcastle University, discoverd the nickel enzyme by chance.
“We had set out to understand in detail the carbonic acid reaction – which is what happens when CO2 reacts with water – and needed a catalyst to speed up the process.
“At the same time, I was looking at how organisms absorb CO2 into their skeletons and in particular the sea urchin which converts the CO2 to calcium carbonate.
“When we analysed the surface of the urchin larvae we found a high concentration of nickel on their exoskeleton. Taking nickel nanoparticles which have a large surface area, we added them to our carbonic acid test and the result was the complete removal of CO2.”
Each year, humans emit on average 33.4 billion metric tons of CO2 – around 45% of which remains in the atmosphere. Typically, a petrol-driven car will produce a ton of CO2 every 4,000 miles.
Source and further reading: The Telegraph
I am a reasonable kind of person. If I hear something that seems to make sense, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
