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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Feed the World
As a retired farmer, I know that the information in “Grassoline at the Pump,” by George W. Huber and Bruce E. Dale, about agricultural residues is false in a most dangerous way. There is NO extra residue from the corn harvest. Sure, you can take it away and use it to create fuel. But that residue is desperately needed right where it fell, to renew the soil. All of it and more are needed to sustain our already low organic matter levels created by years of plowing and other unsustainable agricultural practices. Soil can and does “die,” and then it is unable to produce food. Energy creation is important, but so is our ability to feed the world.
Camille Florence Coers
Charlotte, N.C.
THE AUTHORS REPLY: Biofuels researchers are striving to improve soil fertility as much as possible during biofuels production. Fortunately, there are ways to remove crop residues for use as biofuels while increasing soil fertility. For example, the organic matter can be balanced by reduced tillage practices; by double cropping, where two crop varieties are planted in succession in the same growing season; and by the use of cover crops that replenish the soil. The Dale lab Web site (www.everythingbiomass.org) details some of our work showing how such practices can provide both biofuels and fertile soil.
Your July cover story could not be timelier as oil prices remain volatile. The types of fuels envisioned by “Grassoline” have great potential for aircraft usage. Several U.S. carriers, including Continental Airlines, have conducted successful test flights using alternative fuels, but significant hurdles remain before these can be certified for commercial use. It is critical that we support further research and development for alternative jet fuels.
James C. May
President and CEO
Air Transport Association
Burden of Proof
As an admirer of the Skeptic column, I find it unfortunate that Michael Shermer’s opus 100, “I Want to Believe,” contains what I believe is a serious fault. Shermer cites negative results of tests of the power of prayer to heal. What if God simply declines to cooperate with our tests of His existence? Shermer asks what existed before our universe began. Why should we assume that God did not exist before our universe or before all universes?
I have never seen a scientific test that can prove or disprove God’s existence. In scientific terms, Shermer is correct; the null hypothesis is no argument. In religious terms, faith is everything. In my opinion, separation of church and science is as important as separation of church and state. Scientists who want to prove scientifically that God does not act in our lives play into the hands of religious spokespeople who want to prove that God controls our lives.
Roger Eiss
Ridgefield, Wash.
The Vision Thing
In “Origins of the Left and Right Brain,” Peter F. MacNeilage, Lesley J. Rogers and Giorgio Vallortigara mention Rogers’s experiments involving keeping a hen’s eggs in darkness so the right eye is not stimulated and consequently the left hemisphere does not develop normally. In humans information from the left visual field of each eye is processed in the right hemisphere, and vice versa. Is this not the case with chickens, or does this fact cast doubt on Rogers’s conclusions?
George F. Feissner
Cortland, N.Y.
THE AUTHORS REPLY: The projections from eye to brain are different in birds and humans. In birds each eye projects virtually entirely to the opposite hemisphere, whereas in humans the left side of the visual world relative to the point where the eyes are fixating projects to the right side of the eye and then to the same side of the brain, and vice versa. This difference is irrelevant to the point we made about the relative efficiency of lateralized and unlateralized bird brains. It was simply that when lateralization does not develop, unlateralized birds are less efficient at concurrent feeding and predator evasion.
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11 Comments
Add CommentThe problems with cellulosic ethanoj are many fold. First tthere isn't much waste ag biomass available. 2. Transportation will be expensive for the low density material. 3 Biomass must be uniform. Corn grain is dense, clean and very uniform. Even crop grown for cellulose, such as switch grass will be more un-uniform and may contain considerable, dirt, dust, ect that will interfere with processing and fermentation.. 4. Proponents of cellulosic ethanol often claim very high yields for crops grown exclusively for cellulose. These high yields are based on ideal land and growing conditions. Also claims have been made by Dr. Dale that no plant breeding has been done on cellulosic crops and claims responsible knowledgeable people believe breeding will result in 10 to 20 fold yield increases. This is simply ridiculous. We have been breeding cellulosic crops for the rumen animal and have made no progress. Alfalfa is a good example of major research effort with a 10 to 20% yield increase at best.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have no objection to some cellulosic ethanol research, but it will supply very little energy. We need to focus on systems that will provide condiderable cheap sustainable energy. The only way to do this is let free markets work.
In " A path to sustainable energy by 2030" by Jacobson and Delucchi, they state without any supporting evidence that " most fossil-fuel transportation can be replaced by battery and fuell cell vehicles". Wow, considering that fossil fuels currently supply the bulk of our transportation energy needs that is quite a claim. While it may be true for small in town cars I find it naive to believe batteries and fuel cells will power our trains, trucks, cargo ships and airplanes anytime in the forseeable future, at least I don't want to fly in a battery powered airplane, arn't too many plug in refueling stations up there! How about our military with it's fighter planes, tanks, humvees, battleships and carriers are these going to run off of fuel cells and batteries?? I doubt it, would have been instructive if the authors had given a little more insight into how our transportation energy needs would be filled by non-fossil fuel alternatives
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good article, The author were pointing out that there is sufficient suatanable energy at reasoable cost, Once you have sustainable electricity, you can produce hydrogen from water. You could burn the hydrogen in a IC engine, but fuel cells or batteries are a better choice. True you can't fly on batteries or likely fuel cells, but once you have electricy, you have hydrogen, and once you have hyrdogen you can use it to manufacture about any fuel. That might be a good subject for another article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGrassoline at the Pump by Huber and Dale, states that, first-generation biofuels are not a long term solution. There is simply not enough available farmland to provide more than about 10 percent of developed countries liquid-fuel needs with first generation biofuels. The authors conclude that if the U.S. maintains its current commitment to biofuels, the logistical and conversion challenges the [biofuels] industry now faces should be readily overcome. Over the next 5-15 years, biomass conversion technologies will move from the laboratory to the market, and the number of vehicles powered by cellulosic biofuels will grow dramatically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the biofuels revolution is only contingent upon the improved conversion of the cellulose in existing surplus agricultural produce and since this technological advance fits into the existing technological infrastructure, the biofuels revolution is a likely future global warming solution. This would be cause for celebration except for three problems:
(1) Industrial agriculture is probably the leading cause of global warming.
(2) Industrial agriculture and its usurpation of wild land is the principle cause for the catastraphic extinction rate.
(3) Most farmers think there is insufficient surplus waste cellulose grown with the food supply. (See the letter titled, Feed the World in the November 2009 Scientific American.)
If industrial agriculture, and particularly biofuels farming, is removed to the biologically unproductive ocean, global warming can be solved WHILE FREEING THE LAND FROM THE BURDEN OF AGRICULTURE AND THEREBY RETURNING WILD HABITAT FROM EXTINCTION-BY-AGRICULTURE. The Floating Ocean Crop Circle (See URL: http://landnotbombs.pbworks.com/.) provides virtually free agricultural space for the biofuel revolution that could end global warming with the additional potential of returning existing agricultural land to wilderness. This is the only known global warming solution that could ease the catastrophic extinction rate that does not require a complete re-engineering of the existing technological infrastructure.
Sincerely, John Bergamini
Concerning 'grassoline', biochar technology takes crop residues and converts part of them into biofuels, leaving a second part as biochar which returns to the soil in a stable form that will not degrade for centuries, and sometimes for millenia. Thereby the residues contribute to sequestering carbon dioxide from fossil fuels from the air, surely one of mankind's greatest challenges at present? See www.eprida.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience ignores what is not proven. That someone believe in God is not what constitute a scientific hypothesis at all to be investigated. When someone that claims that God exist provides with something, anything than can be replicated, tested, measured weighed then science will have to test the claim that God exist. Until then science can ignore everything about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and God's So anyone claiming that prayer to what is considered a non-existent God (until proven otherwise) has the power of some kind of vaccine has the obligation of proof. Science can ignore the claim until a scientific proof that can be duplicated and tested is provided. Science has no obligation to prove anything about prayer or the tooth fairy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may not be a universal truth, but it comes close. What people get free or cheap, they use wastefully. This is obvious to see for anyone who looks at markets for things like energy and food. This is not a dig at the USA. In UK we are no better. Many of the coal fired power stations that still operate here are inefficient because at the time they were built it was cheaper to burn more coal than improve efficiency. Similarly food markets are priced entirely on the short term supply and demand situation, with oversupply being the norm due historically to some government support for production. The shift away from production support , due in turn to World Trade Organisation dogma on market freedom and trade liberisation, has changed the situation so that no one now takes any responsibility for ensuring that enough is produced. Thanks to somewhat corrupt governments over the past few decades a few large supermarket chains and multi national food processing companies dominate the food market to their own excess profits and the expense of the farmers at one end and the consumer at the other. Similar things are happening in the energy markets. Cars sold in Europe are more fuel efficient because of the high price of fuel. Today ( Sunday 15th November ) one litre of petrol costs one pound seven pence per litre. You can do your own conversions, but that is probably more than twice what you pay in the US. More than 60% of the cost of road fuel is tax. If these exhorbitant taxes were ring fenced and used purely to benefit transportation it would be more acceptable, but most of it goes elsewhere to allow government inefficiency to persist and keep the levels of even more unpopular taxes down. Our electricity is also taxed to pay the large subsidies to both the wind energy providers and nuclear power industry. Against that background of a corrupt establishment who won't see the damage they are accumulating, shifting to policies that have real economy and efficiency at the heart is going to be an uphill battle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFuels from crops should come from proper disposal of the surpluses that occur when production is maintained at strategically determined levels, rather than market speculation. Too often in the past surpluses from western subsidised agriculture have damaged others markets. Most of the material in a loaf of bread comes from wheat, yet it is one of the smallest components of the final price. Cheap food , whilst obviously attractive to the purchaser can be too cheap with insidious side effects, not least being a huge amount of waste.
The problem with some of us humans: We are cocky, and our ego's are confused to think we have the capacity to comprehend what God is. It's not physically /third demensially possible to grasp the idea. But, it is possible to wrap our finite brains around Him creating us in spirit outside of the third demension and blessed us with this physical experience untill the body perishes and moves on to other places. Where is the proof of spirit? It rest in knowing that we grow spiritually or posess spiritual qualities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSir ,IF WE WANT TO PRACTICE THIS CONCEPT IN INDIA , then how is this possible as we know that about 90% of agricultural waste is given to animals as this is the only means of their existence..Moreover , how we will heat the liquid or whatever we want to ...because in one or another way we are using some other resource like for heating coal or electricity is needed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHuman knowledge, understanding and insights will always be finite and limited. Which is precisely why everything in science is regarded as "TENTATIVE" and "NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL WORD" - that is how science is defined (Unless, of course, you can persuade the entire scientific community to redefine science). What this means, is that because scientific knowledge will always be limited and finite, no scientist will ever be in a position to say that "God does not exist." To do so science would need to
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishave an infinite knowledge of all that exists, and all that can exist. To assert this one would need to be God, and I don't know of any credible scientist that would make that claim.
Everything ever observed on earth and in the universe is DEPENDENT on something preceding it to explain its existence. Children need parents, who in turn need grandparents. And so it is for all things, including the universe itself. No one has ever seen anything in the universe that is capable of bringing itself into existence, and the ultimate Nobel Prize awaits any scientist who makes that unlikely discovery.
All of the above tells us that the universe was dependent on an external cause to explain its origin and existence, because nothing exists within the universe to prevent it running down and dying. The fact that the universe is incapable of preventing itself from running down affirms its dependence on something external to explain both its beginning and its existence. And nothing exists within the universe to restore the dying universe to its initial highly ordered low entropy state, the initial state of maximum order, information and usable energy. We are therefore forced to look outside and beyond the universe to explain how our universe came into existence, and how it came into existence in a fully wound up finely tuned state.
The answer of course is God, the necessary timeless self-existing first-cause. The only alternative is an endless regression of “dependent” gods or causes, with nothing ever capable of bringing itself into existence. As such, we have no basis for existence, not ever. And we wouldn’t behaving this conversation.
The atheist is caught in the classic "Catch 22"situation whatever way they turn. In seeking to escape the "Intelligent Cause" theistic implications of the fine-tuning of our universe, they have unknowingly affirmed theism. For in affirming that any CAUSE of the universe is TIMELESS and UNCAUSED, and not dependent on anything preceding, they have in fact AFFIRMED the classical "theistic" worldview. For theism itself is based on exactly this foundational premise.
Thus God becomes a philosophical and scientific necessity.
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