The Black Vault

I like to give the occasional opposition article on some of the alternative future plans because its important to realize the proper strategies must be worked out for lower environment impact. Example Windturbines vs bat, is purely HAWT related or do VAWT systems do the same as well and if so which styles (VAWTS have lots of different styles) ones have the lowest impact.

This article is a hold on a second don't jump the gun just yet warning, we saw what happened to food prices and the resultant shortages when farmers & ethanol. This article is about Biochar and questions whether or not Terra Preata can be duplicated simply through low temperature charcoal as well as some overreaching claims about trapping carbon dioxide with biochar. In other words it asks was there a secret ingrediant or special mixing formula that we overlooked. I myself remember from some articles there is a microorganism involved in Terra Preata. So it may be that such an organism is entirely necessary and is entirely region dependent in which case it does little good to try to make Terra Praeta outside the Amazon, but weapparently don't know enough about the stuff to know yett according to the article.

Now outside the who weird burn/make charcoal to capture carbon dioxide weirdness, the only things I considered important about Terra Preata was it was good for crops, and if made correctly (that means proper strategies) it could replace some of the topsoil everyone has been losing due to industrial farming. On the personal side I see no reason why one should not add coooled organic charcoal from a family BBQ into the compost heap for ones garden, its matter of giving back to nature whats hers, if it improves ones garden's health so be it. But industrializing the process before proper studies and experimentation has proven valid is jumping the gun IMHO. In other words don't buy 12-30 dollar bags of charcoal for your garden or farm hoping to get Terra Preta until more data comes out.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/08-1

I see my shock tactic worked. Lumping me in the same category as the Taliban is an ideological and theological contradiction, but it does bring up the point I was getting at. That is when messing with the building blocks of life especially in creating a new lifeform the process is inherently prejudiced and racist. That is the creator determines through pre judgement what is wanted and then eschews any other variants the lifeform could take, in some cases actually killing organisms that fail to meet the creators qualifications.

On top of that just using such a thing for an ARK still brings up the same matter regarding genocide, in this case I don't just mean humans I mean every biological would have to fit the creators utopian vision or be tossed aside to suffer whatever Earth's fate was.

We all know the day is coming when we can create life from scratch, but its a matter of "should we?". What stops a person from robbing another person from mugging someone if they are broke, what stops a person from murdering another person out of anger, what holds our hands from doing wrong, when we know in our minds we could. Its our own refusal our own judgements based on innumerable different and sometimes contradictory moral codes the world has and our own emotions. For the vast part of the world these are what keep us in check, and though you don't trust governments they to are held in check to a certain dgree as well by the people that them up. So our answer comes down to the vast majority of this will be on the up and up, but its what escapes that becomes our problem because it will escape and be abused. Not all our Monsters will be nice, and some of our idealistic Victor Frankensteins will find themselves turning into Victor Helios. Our dinosaurs will escape our amusement parks and someone will try to weaponize them. But as we know if the problem cannot be contained properly then it will become an endemic problem like narcotics and war.

Bio-tech? Cool, man!

...BRAINS...

This message brought to you by a veritable Umbrella of Bio-technology Corporations, and Aquarian, who says it's just around the corner.

Cheap, shameless plug: I'm still offering Martian land at ten bucks an acre...

C'mon, you're saying god is a racist because he created the life that inhabits this universe? The universe is a collection of physical laws. Before the universe there was infinite entropy (infinite choices). The universe as we know it began with a moment of extremely low entropy, perhaps zero, and very few choices, perhaps only one. All that there is exists because of this. God does not kill off life that doesn't measure up. The universe is filled with circumstances of limited access to resources and those species that adapt, survive, those that don't, don't.

The universe is unstable and in constant change so we have to adapt to those changing conditions. And our latest adaptation is creating new lifeforms to serve our needs. And in keeping with the topic of this thread, one of those things will be energy. You should be happy. You can't get any greener than biology.

And your last paragraph... governments are doing all those things now, nobody stopping them either.

Actually my previous post is in the wrong thread. It should be here
in the "Man-Made DNA has booted up a cell for the first time" thread where I'll will post it and Codeblack's response, since it makes more sense there.

Another don't jump the gun alert. Tis one will probably be tested a various labs before its final verdict is in but its important. Biomass burning particularly wood for energy may actually release 3% more greenhouse gases than coal apparently it may not be as carbon neutral as touted.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD9G8N55O0

More news on Lawrenceville Plasma Physic's Focus Fusion device experiments.
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newen ... on-effort/

A little vindication for one of your ideas, AT: Huge US Army Airship

ahhh a UAV Blimp. Thats been talked about as a possibility for quite sometime. With a coouple gaylords worth of payload, probably easily removed (battle damage) large refractor telescopic cameras possible with aucostic microphones. At that size they might even have 36 inch or larger mirrors. Sweet. What this means in tactical terms is that when SOP requires ROE confirmtion such as proof of a sniper the blimp will be able to track actual bullets and rockets et cetera for field HQ which can then authorize counterattacks appropriate to the situation, and have proof for a warcrime legal cases is civilian casualties occur. Mounted with an appropriate automated sniper rifle or 20mm cannon the blimp becomes a stable gun platform for troop support that reduces the civilian casualties caused by larger missiles and bombs by becoming the ultimate sniper on the high ground.

The problem is antiaircraft fire, unless the blimp has a laser area defense system to defend itself built in and not part of the payload capacity. Still sweet tech.

But its still not the large capacity cargo hauler I long to see. *sigh*