https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/germany-climate-seagrass/
People restoring sea grass to the Baltic Sea.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/08/the-serial-killer-and-the-texas-mom-who-stopped-him
This woman stopped a serial killer.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste
Plastic eating bacteria could change the world.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-28/quoll-thought-extinct-found-south-australia/102911364
An animal called a quoll thought to be extinct for 130 years has been rediscovered.
Since 2021, a French company named Carbios has been running an operation that uses a bacterial enzyme to process about 250kg of PET plastic waste every day, breaking it down into its precursor molecules, which can then be made directly into new plastic. It’s not quite composting it back into the earth itself, but Carbios has achieved the holy grail of plastic recycling, bringing it much closer to an infinitely recyclable material like glass or aluminium.
That’s a significant step forward from when the last time I read up on the plastic eating bacteria. Granted, I’d prefer it if it was recycled into something other than more plastic… but I’ll still take it.
I think it’s highly likely there’s a catch, like you have to grow 250 tons of bacteria. Usually there is with amazing advances which get a news story but not a lot of reaction from other academics.
They’re still in the process of genetically engineering the bacteria, so their efficiency is still a work in progress.
There’s also the issue that economies of scale tip heavily in plastics direction,
It’s not a carbon neutral process. There’s significant both heating and cooling involved.
And, it doesn’t really solve the issue of retiring plastics.
The last update I read on the bacteria, prior to the genetic engineering, mentioned that the bacteria didn’t actually like the plastic and would only really break it down for want of something more practical. Presumably that has been solved, but I didn’t see it brought up in the article.
This feels like an ice 9 situation
Well, how would we change it from plastic into something else?
The article explains that they use the bacteria to basically break down the plastic into two solutions, which they ultimately recombine into plastic—seemingly out of lack of any other practical use for the results.
I’m not a scientist, I don’t know what could be a better use for the results of the bacteria doing their job. And seemingly, neither do the scientists, but it’s still a very young project in the grand scheme of things.
Anyone else wonder if plastic decomposing bacteria might be a disaster? I’m interested in it’s research and development but can’t imagine how it would be contained to stop it from eating everything we have.
Don’t worry, we’ll invent a type of plastic immune to this bacteria and start the whole process anew!
As an aside, ‘plastic eating bacteria’ have been ‘discovered’ countless times over the past several decades.
Possibly due to each discovery being some bacteria that eat exactly 1 chemistry of plastic.
: )
The plastic arms race!
No idea about that, but your bringing up the issue reminded me of the movie Andromeda Strain…
“Just as he has this insight, the organism mutates into a non-lethal form that degrades synthetic rubber and plastic”
Apparently there’s a TV show based on the same story.
That Vanity Fair story is one of the craziest things I’ve ever read, thanks for sharing!
Isn’t that bonkers? I read it twice I was so interested.
Nice! As a follow up, is there a good app/source to get more positive articles Ike this regularly?
Also enjoy this article on drive in sex boxes in Zurich, giving a new meaning to public spaces: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/26/zurich-drive-in-garages-prostitutes
I tend to read Metafilter (https://www.metafilter.com/), it’s not all good news but it’s a weblog of really interesting content.
The quoll species in question (it is a small doglike marsupial, a carnivore, and very cute) was known to be alive and well in Queensland (a state to the north) and was only extinct in South Australia. It seems to have spread back to the southern state.
There are other species of quoll.
Oh ok sorry. Still interesting though!
Yes, very. Did the rounds for a week or more here in Oz. Interesting that it hit the world news though. It’s just another native cat, to most Aussies.
Australia must be so interesting because of all the animals. Although I’m given to understand that some are pretty deadly.
Nah, if you live in town you see few, and if you live in the country you just know not to poke the snake or spiders. People who mess with them get hurt, but people who leave them alone see them safely, and then the animals run away. It is played up for laughs, but it’s really safe as houses.
We don’t have rabies here, so no rabid dog dangers. No moose or bears. It is good to see a wombat or a kookaburra, but not dangerous unless you try to feed them.
My husband has Australian parents, we live in Canada, and he has pictures from his childhood visits of him petting a kangaroo, which seems wildly dangerous as I think it could kick the crap out of you!
**No different to peting a deer. They can be tamer, like deer at a petting zoo park. Most people don’t tame the boomers: If he is a kid, it is likely a joey (juvenile) or a wallaby(smaller species) and likely at an animal park petting zoo. If the roo is taller than a grown man then rare but not impossible tamed red kangaroo boomer and not during rut. Deer can be just as dangerous.
Incidentally, roos taste similar to venison too. Good healthy lean meat, better for the environment here than hoofed animals, which cut up the ground and damage the native plants.**
The death of all the coral in Florida.
It was front-page news where I live a few days ago but not a blip of it could be seen anywhere else.
It’s easily the most important news of the past two months and will negatively affect life on the planet anywhere but fuck all if humans outside of a local area could bring themselves to give a shit.
I hate to inform you that corals are dieing all around the world, not just in Florida.
Fellow Floridian here. I hope we can get someone better after DeSantis’ term limit is up. We live in one of the most climate change prone regions and a region where environmental changes mean a great deal.
this won’t get reported in the news but i started my dream job after 10+ years of shitty jobs and that makes me happy 😊 I’ve got no motivational advice, life sucks and then you die lol
If I was the news, I’d interview you.
Tbh would be nice to see this kind of news once in a while. Just a random wholesome thing, but no actual life advice (which might sometimes sound a bit condescending with the wrong words).
A police officer drover over and killed an Indian student in Seattle, and when he found out, he laughed about it. He did apologize later but the system that led to it is still in place. Hate the game.
I hate it when it happens with terrible news, but… I lost the game.
Probably due to the absence of lead that the previous generation got due to leaded gas emissions.
And maybe microplastics have the opposite effect. But this is just speculation, and afaik no sources support this.
Edit: I dunno why I got downvoted. Maybe I should be more specific that my claim, “maybe microplastics have the opposite effect”, has no support. I didn’t mean OP’s claim was unsupported.
Millennials are so lazy they can’t even commit acts of violence… Smh
I mean we’re not bothered to do anything nowadays. Not even bothered to commit crime. Why kill people irl which would lead to court and having to defend yourself and whatnog when you can just chill and do it in a video game with no consequence?
It’s a french news but in Rouen an empty appartement building full of asbestos burnt to the ground some days ago but due to the Hamas attack on Israel no news outlets talks about it anymore.
Baltimore schools are some of the most publicaly-funded in America. And yet, in 23 schools, 0 students passed a math proficiency test. ZERO. There were 10 high schools, 8 elementary schools, three middle/high schools, and 2 elementary/middle schools.
The news broke when a father raised the alarm. His daughter graduated high school with honors and was accepted in a military college. When she started classes, it became very apparent that she was not anywhere near ready to begin those classes and was put on academic leave. Turns out, instead of funding programs to get students up to speed, these schools just kept lowering standards for graduation, so that more students could pass, inflating graduation numbers.
Damn, that’s infuriatingly sad and scary.
I have the feeling we should talk more about bio char. Seams like a feasible improvement for three very different problem mankind faces right now.
Can you expand on that or provide some resources to learn about biochar. I’ve never really heard about it before.
Okay, in some ways bio char itself is like the regular charcoal we know from BBQs and the manufacturing process can be quite similar. But like most things, it’s a very complex topic, therefore, I’ll only give a very rough overview for now but I’ll also share some links to further information 👍 • While charcoal is mostly made from valuable wood, bio char can be made from every form of biomass, meaning it can be made from every form of biomass waste.
• During the manufacturing process, the chemical carbon in the biomass is put into a form that is stable for several thousand years, so unless the bio char is burned again it can’t reenter the atmosphere. • Each ton of bio char produced using plant based waste is equivalent to 2.6 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide captured by those plants. • The manufacturing process generates a small amount of base-load energy which can be, depending on the size of the facility, enough for several hundreds of households. • The end product can be used to revitalize the extremely degraded soils we’re fighting in industrial agriculture right now.Tl:dr we (indirectly) take something very bad from the atmosphere, generate useful energy with it and then store it within our dead soils to revitalize it.
It is not THE solution but I think it’s a feasible improvement.
I’m happy to answer more questions… here are some links ✌️
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/biochar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Future civilizations will find all our sequestered carbon and use it as a convenient fuel source.
Than that’s their problem. Right now we’re destroying the current civilization.
Ethan Liming.
Was a kid in Akron Ohio who was driving around with black friends.
They drove past a group of black kids playing basketball, and one of his friends shot them with a bright orange water gel blaster.
Ethan ended up being brutally murdered (the only one), fractured skull, bootprints on his chest, then the group stole their car and took it on a joy ride to prevent him being taken to the hospital.
They were just found not guilty.
What did being black have anything to do with this story?
Sounds like they’re claiming race was a motive in his beating, but I don’t know enough about this story to weigh in.
Seems like shooting at people from a moving vehicle was the motive. Story stays the same w race going unmentioned.
OP sounds like they may be pushing a narrative, but if it’s true that the white kid that died did not shoot the gel gun and was the only one in the car to be beaten then it is possible race was a factor in the crime. I’m still highly skeptical and I don’t have the time right now to delve into this to get a full understanding so I’ll just leave it at that.
Yeah, I don’t know the story but it kind of strains credulity the way OP told it. A bunch of black kids that did this would have the book thrown at them in America, and probably become a racially-tinged campaign story for the AG’s re-election campaign.
why don’t you research it then.
it’s all true.
or maybe consider that what you envision to be reality is not correct.
It’s almost like you’d have to try to get it this wrong.
Spanish princess is in the military academy now and today at the national day parade she was wearing her uniform. It would be front page news if not for the war.
Hunter’s biden laptop scandal. No news about it
Did they finally find more dick pics or something? What’s new to report?
Don’t your read the news? They are about to find all of the evidence and as soon a it is revealed it will change everything. Just like last month!
I dunno what news you look at but it’s all over the news I read.
I’m European sorry
