As befits a nasty pathogen, Clostridium perfringens grows aggressively. Its cells can divide every ten minutes, a handful turning into trillions of hydrogen makers overnight. That hydrogen gas can leaven dough just as yeast-generated carbon dioxide does. The result is something known as "salt-rising bread." A century ago, a scientist went so far as to bake bread leavened with Clostridium perfringens drawn from an infected wound, in what the West Virginia Medical Journal called "perhaps the most macabre experiment in culinary history."
Five German scientists have proposed a new strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change: turn coastal deserts into forests. Why? Forests, full of trees that consume carbon dioxide, are a great bulwark against the gas most responsible for global climate change. Deserts, with their lack of plant cover, are terrible at doing the same thing.
Virgin Galactic proudly touts the fact that each of the passengers who will fly into sub-orbital space on its SpaceShip2 will emit less carbon dioxide than a typical air passenger on a flight from New York to London. But some scientists say carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant to measuring the greenhouse gas footprint of the nascent space tourism industry. The big threat from the scaling-up of space travel, they say, comes from something called black carbon-a type of particulate matter that, when hurled into the stratosphere, builds up for years, absorbing visible light from the sun. According to one study, black carbon emitted into the stratosphere by rockets would absorb 100,000 times as much energy as the CO2 emitted by those rockets.
To find a way of fending off global warming, scientists sometimes look to nature. Plants, after all, use photosynthesis to snap up carbon dioxide, the biggest source of our climate change woes. So we get inventions like artificial leaves and ambitious projects like a plan to give fish photosynthesizing powers. One of the more interesting plans: genetically alter microorganisms so they can chow down on some CO2, too.
We don't want to be unkind, because it's nice that people are working toward a future where we won't have to rely on traditional brick-making methods, which produce tons of carbon dioxide. But a new idea for "green" bricks is a little less, uh, aesthetically pleasing than other ones we've noticed.
Artificial photosynthesis - the idea that we might be able to create energy and other useful thing from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, as plants do - is something of a holy grail for energy and green chemistry researchers. And while some efforts have shown modest potential - MIT's Nocera Lab, for instance, claims to have created an artificial leaf from stable materials - efficiency is still a problem. That hasn't stopped consumer electronics giant Panasonic; the company yesterday revealed that it is investing in artificial photosynthesis technology that turns carbon dioxide and sunlight into industrial chemicals. Just add water.
While we're all fussing about with things up here, Aussie researchers have helped investigate marine ecosystems, finding that the meadows of seagrass in the deep blue yonder actually help to suck up vast amounts of carbon dioxide, potentially providing new ways to tackle climate change. The problem is, these seagrasses themselves are in decline.
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