>> ^Stormsinger:
He said it could run on solar power, for Pete's sake! This just screams con-artist to me.

That looked like a piss-poor editing job on 60 Minutes' part. He was clearly about to continue on with a qualification of some sort like "if you used solar power to hydrolyze water into hydrogen and fed that into the fuel cell".

I think the real thing they gloss over here is that it produces CO2 emissions. They were comparing it to the pathetic amount of power they got from solar, but solar doesn't require any fuel, nor does it produce CO2.

If it's a big improvement over the efficiency of power plants, it's still a huge deal, and could reduce CO2 emissions via improved efficiency, but it's not a silver bullet.

A silver bullet would be something like cold fusion, zero point energy, some sort of direct matter-to-energy converter, or just a form of algae that produces a ridiculous volume of biofuel.

>> ^DemolitionDave:
It's been determined that this is just a very large bloom of algae: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090718/us_time/08599191151700.


Thanks for the link -- Updated the video description.

this is known to be algae

It's been determined that this is just a very large bloom of algae: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090718/us_time/08599191151700.

Guess which one of those the octopus wished that was....

>> ^ponceleon:
floating algae
floating algae
floating algae
CUTTLEFISH!!!!!

floating algae
floating algae
floating algae
CUTTLEFISH!!!!!

^ I imagine it's necessary to prevent algae and mould from growing in the bottle and turning it black.

Most fresh water turtles will eat anything and I mean ANYTHING, dead or alive. They're opportunistic scavengers through and through and some can survive for half a year without eating at all. If a consistent food source is available they will gorge themselves. And hey, I say pigeon beats pond algae any day of the week. I don't know where this image of a cute & friendly aquatic vegetarian comes from but it needs to be dispelled now, FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN.

Neat!, but since when are algae plants? (as in "hybrid plant/animal!"). I thought the whole point of New Scientist was to make science palatable for the masses Without resorting to lazy inaccuracies.

^imstellar, I don't think that it even gets to a question of whether humans with chloroplasts would be a 'good design'. The historical constraints on this sort of thing evolving through natural selection are huge. Horizontal gene transfer enabling algal chloroplasts and a vertebrate host to live together as a chimeric organism ain't going to happen... probably more because of the immune response to the chloroplasts than because of barriers to introgression of the genes.

..besides, isn't it cool enough that this happened in a mollusk?

Floating through the midday dreary
My spirit beaten, soul is weary
Going through the constant motions
Caught in a vast gray ocean
An ocean without any floor
An ocean without any shore

Peering through the surface downward
Algae, tang and muck to hoard
Doing this for untold ages,
I'm so very very bored

A glimpse of color in the surface,
something I've never seen
Cutting though the gray and brown,
like a knife infinitely keen

Gone it was, absorbed by darkness
Withered in the ocean's starkness
Gone for ever,
ever more

Again! My eyes are filled with color
Where do all these dreams come from
Like some ancient, unseen drum
My heart beats, thump - thump - thump

Turning all of my sight upward
I see light
burning like a candle bright
like it could my flesh ignite,
Opening my eyes for ever,
bathing in the sight of light

When I woke the light had gone
Shrunken for the coming dawn

Looking down towards the bottom,
colors peering up at me
Orange, blue, red and yellow
White and black and green and more

My eyes had opened up for ever
opened up for ever more.

reminds me I need to clean the algae from my fish tank glass

Personally I don't give a shit what any one believes, as long as you keep your beliefs out of my ass. Specifically the banana.

Believe what you want, there is no power that will save from something except the power in yourself, and occasionally a nice something. dog, cat, human, algae, never know when a good algae can save your life.

>> ^MINK:
mg
you might be forced to give it up by economics and/or world destruction. that's my point.
and your dude in the SUV is not fucking up the planet as much as all the meat farms you pay for. so what annoys me is people who ignore the pollution caused by meat, and rag on other lesser polluters. hope that explains it.


you think growing meat in vats would make things better? i'm kinda scared of this, and i don't eat very healthy... well, i guess it's better than living on algae bread or some vegan shit like that

we're all scum. Now, get over yourselves and finish your algae dinners.

It was a very good speech. And there were both converted choir members and the non-converted in that audience (delegates were chosen from among non-profit groups and government officials).
Let's not forget that this Rio conference led to the Biodiversity Convention. http://www.cbd.int/convention/guide.shtml
Biodiversity loss will be the end of us (unless we all want to eventually rely on algae).