And what was achieved was, in my opinion, something remarkable.

Plants make for marvellous experimental subjects. No ethics approval required, no need to consider the health and well being of the plant. Genomes have been cracked, distantly related species interbred. Plants have been bombarded with radiation to create mutations, and genes introduced from entirely different kingdoms of life into plants, such as a gene encoding an anti-freeze protein from fish into tomatoes. The science of plant breeding is thousands of years old, the study of plants fascinated the Greeks, and taxonomy and plant anatomy bloomed in the Enlightenment. Despite this long history, there are aspects of plant science that remain technically challenging.

One such challenge is phloem analysis. Plants carry the nutrients produced through photosynthesis through specialised tissues called phloem. The sieve tube elements in the phloem, cells that are arranged end to end, with sieve plates at the adjoining walls, form a tube capable of transporting photosynthates like sucrose. While we know in general terms what comprises the phloem sap, accurately identifying the specific components carried in the sieve elements is a surprisingly difficult task. When a sieve element is cut, allowing phloem sap to exude, the contents of other cells are also released, contaminating the sample. The sap can be diluted by water from the xylem. Sap exudation rates are rapidly limited when sealing mechanisms in the plants are activated, and by the loss of the turgor pressure that drives phloem sap translocation. Collecting pure phloem sap is tricky. The solution to the phloem sap collection problem is by necessity ingenious, and uses aphids.

Aphids feed on the sap in phloem, and they do it so effectively – without interrupting sap flow – that their bodies overfill with it, excreting the excess as honeydew. Aphids are able to insert their stylet into the sieve element without reducing the turgor pressure in the phloem, maintaining a continuous flow of sap.

The aphid’s ability to do so neatly solves the problem for scientists of how to collect phloem sap, and only phloem sap: one cuts off the aphid stylet from the aphid, once it is inserted into the sieve element, with a laser. The stylets continue exuding sap even when separated from the insect. It’s an ingenious solution to a tricky problem, and one that came to mind on reading about about the Stanford research.

"We believe we are the first to extract electrons out of living plant cells," said the lead author, WonHyoung Ryu. It is incredibly tricky to directly analyse phloem sap, even though it can be obtained in millilitre quantities. One can imagine it to be orders of magnitude more difficult to directly intercept electron flow between protein complexes, located inside organelles, inside single plant cells. And all without the aid of a ready made nanoprobe like the aphid’s stylet.

The electrons in question are produced during the process of photosynthesis. Light energy is absorbed by photosynthetic reaction centers and then used to split H2O, generating H+ and electrons. The H+ generates a pH gradient across the thylakoid membrane which, together with high energy electrons (e-), reduces inorganic carbon to sugars and polysaccharides. These are the electrons we are interested in. When a molecule of chlorophyll in the reaction center of PSII absorbs a photon, an electron in the chlorophyll is excited to a higher energy state. The state of the electron is highly unstable, so it is rapidly transferred into what is called the electron transfer chain, a series of molecules that flow electrons from one photosystem to another. In fact, as a consequence of the high energy reactions taking place in the photosystem II reaction center, the D1 protein at the core is rapidly degraded and replaced; photoinhibition occurs when the rate of D1 breakdown exceeds the rate of D1 repair, a condition that can occur in high light conditions. Generating high energy electrons is not without cost.

Of course, the electrons are there for a reason. One electron transport chain provides energy for the synthesis of ATP, via chemiosmosis, while the 2e- that reach the end of that electron transport chain reduce the chlorophyll in PSI. When light excites chlorophyll in PSI, its electrons are transferred via another electron transport chain to NADP+ reductase, creating 2NADPH. Both ATP and NADPH are essential molecules, used for transporting chemical energy and the synthesis of lipids and nucleic acid, respectively.

By inserting an Au nanoelectrode into the algal chloroplast, the researchers were able to extract electrons directly from the electron transport chain. Molecules in the electron transport chain donated electrons to the nanoelectrode; electrons were extracted from either plastoquinone (the PQ pool) or Ferrodoxin (Fd), at the point when the electrons were at their highest energy level immediately after being excited by light. The figure below shows the two possible locations of the electrode and the two possible electron donors.

Electrons have been harvested from the electron transport chain before, using chemical mediators such as p-benzoquinone (BQ). To do that, the organelles that contain the photosynthetic apparatus, the thlyakoid membranes, are bathed in a solution of BQ and illuminated. When the light comes on, electrons produced in photosystem II are accepted by BQ, which is reduced to p-hydroquinone (QH2). 

Directly intercepting electrons from the electron transport chain, with an electrode, and without the use of a mediator like BQ, is what makes this such an achievement.

Nothing like this had been done before, and a number of obstacles had to be overcome to do it this time. The nanoprobe had to be designed, it had to be able to penetrate through cell membranes without killing the cell, and the algal cell had to remain stationary. A mutant of Chlamydomonas that has no motility was crossed with a strain of Chlamydomonas with a cell wall minus phenotype, to obtain an algal cell that wouldn’t swim around and, without cell walls, could be easily penetrated by the nanoprobe. The nanoprobe itself was just 100 nm thick, and had to be carefully positioned within the thylakoid stack (see inset box in the figure).

It makes for a fine piece of basic research. However, the reporting on the story focused not so much on the aspects discussed above but on the potential for generating bioelectricity. It’s like visiting a restaurant that makes great steaks, but only ever tries to sell the sizzle. Yet far from this being a story blown out of proportion by the press, bioelectricity generation is the motivation given for the research. The abstract concludes with the following: “This result may represent an initial step in generating “high efficiency” bioelectricity by directly harvesting high energy photosynthetic electrons.” It’s only fair, then, to examine the sizzle.

As their introduction states, “abundant solar energy is stored and converted into chemical bond energy by photosynthesis… one approach for extracting energy from the photosynthetic conversion process is to harvest the biomass stored as polysaccharide and convert it to ethanol, longer chain alcohols or hydrogen.”

True, and there is a theoretical limit to how much solar energy can be converted this way to polysaccharide; around 25-27 %, although in the real world this conversion efficiency is considerably lower.

So what can be done about it? “To increase the efficiency of light energy conversion, we evaluated the feasibility of generating bioelectricity by extracting e- from the photosynthetic electron transport (PET) chain before they are used to fix CO2… This approach potentially reduces energy losses associated with the multistep transformation of solar energy into products used for the production of biodiesel and bioelectricity.”

Ryu described the amount of electricity drawn from the cell, one picoampere, as “so tiny that they would need a trillion cells photosynthesising for one hour just to equal the amount of energy stored in an AA battery”. And there’s the rub. It may be a more efficient way of tapping solar energy than burning biofuels, but it isn’t any where near as effective. Solar energy isn’t a limiting factor for plant life and it isn’t complicated to grow a crop. Biofuels as a means of utilising solar energy may not always be economical, and may even be carbon positive, but they do work, and they work at meaningful scales of power generation.

In contrast, this isn’t a technique for producing useful bioelectricity, and nor will it be anytime soon. Stealing electrons from the process of photosynthesis in algal cells was not without consequence, as the cells died after about an hour. The amount of current harvested didn’t exceed the energy used in running the experiment (that is, the voltage applied to the electrode), so there was no net gain. Even the suggestion of scaling up the size of the chloroplast and electrode, to be able to capture more electrons, won’t solve the problem of the vanishingly small amounts of current involved, the technical challenges of fixing the cells so they don’t move, the difficulty of correctly inserting an electrode into each cell, and then having to start all over after an hour when the cell dies. It may be a more efficient conversion of solar energy to electricity than biofuels, but that’s just sizzle. 

The meat of the story can be found, at least for me, in just a single line in their introduction:

“In addition, the system allows direct monitoring of specific charge transfer reactions in live cells, leading to broad applications for investigating developmental processes and the responses of cells and organelles to light and chemical stimuli.”

It didn’t need to be sold as a breakthrough in clean energy. For photosynthesis research, the effort to elucidate one of the most important biological reactions on Earth, this technique is a great investigative tool. It’s as innovative as the aphid’s stylet, a true milestone in scientific discovery and an exciting piece of research. That’s more than good enough.

CBC reports that crews have already started pulling up some tulip beds a week before the festival is even due to start.

It isn’t all bad. The late blooming beds are still going strong, although they might not last the full two weeks of the Festival. And there are some beds that have yet to flower.

Yes, this winter it snowed in Europe and the U.S. But it was damn hot up here.

Weaver Seeks Unprecedented Order to Remove Stories That “Poison” the Internet

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire – April 21, 2010) – University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis, launched a lawsuit today in BC Supreme Court against three writers at The National Post (and the newspaper as a whole), over a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet.

In a statement released at the same time the suit was filed, Dr. Weaver said, “I asked The National Post to do the right thing – to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused.”

Dr. Weaver’s statement of claim not only asks for a Court injunction requiring The National Post to remove all of the false allegations from its Internet websites, but also seeks an unprecedented Court order requiring the newspaper to assist Dr. Weaver in removing the defamatory National Post articles from the many other Internet sites where they have been re-posted.

“If I sit back and do nothing to clear my name, these libels will stay on the Internet forever. They’ll poison the factual record, misleading people who are looking for reliable scientific information about global warming,” said Weaver.

The suit names Financial Post Editor Terence Corcoran, columnist Peter Foster, reporter Kevin Libin and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher, as well as several still-unidentified editors and copy editors. It seeks general, aggravated damages, special and exemplary damages and legal costs in relation to articles by Foster on December 9, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web”), Corcoran on December 10, 2009 (“Weaver’s Web II”) and January 27, 2010 (“Climate Agency going up in flames”), and Libin on February 2, 2010 (“So much for pure science”).

The Statement of Claim was filed April 20, 2010 at the BC Supreme Court Registry at the Vancouver Courthouse: Weaver v Corcoran and others, SCBC No.102698, Vancouver Registry. Court record information and documents are publicly accessible online at Court Services Online: https://eservice.ag.gov.bc.ca/cso/index.do.

Good luck to Professor Weaver with the suit. Even if the Post is forced to remove the false allegations, they will be up against the Streisand Effect when it comes to taking down reposts on other websites. Which may be the point of the court injunction; the Sisyphean task may be onerous enough to make them think twice about defaming him.

“As in any day where we symbolize a matter of significance, Earth Day highlights the cause, it highlights the importance of all of us making individual efforts, and so yes, it’s important,” he said.

“I would like Canadians to think about our responsibility as stewards as one of the most remarkable landmasses on the earth and the obligation we have to leave Canada, cleaner and better than we found it,” he said.

To make that a reality, he said, Canadians should think about whether they should reduce the size of their car, recycle more, leave their phone chargers plugged in or if they need to keep that flat-screen TV on all the time.

“It’s a question of the individual choices we make,” he added. “How many televisions are you going to have in your house? Are you going to shop and try to get the most efficient appliances in your home? It’s about choices.”

If Canadians should think about changing anything it is their laws and politicians, not their behaviour. We have tried Prentice’s approach before, after all. The One Tonne Challenge was an abject failure of a policy for reducing carbon emissions, and would not have made much of a dent considering the sources of most of this country’s emissions (see chart).

Note: The grey portion of the chart represents GHG emissions from the energy sector. The activity sectors reflect the UNFCCC methodology. Source: Environment Canada, 2007a. National Inventory Report: Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada, 1990–2005. Greenhouse Gas Division, Ottawa, Ontario.

And besides, if Prentice really wants to change Canadians’ behaviour, he should do more than exhort them to just think about doing so for one day a year. A price on carbon, as economists will agree, would do more to change behaviour than would simply thinking a little on Earth Day.

The table below shows c02 increases on Mt Loa since 1959. One can notice the spiking of co2 when el ninos occur, and how the co2 increases were higher when the PDO went warm. This further supports my idea that we are going to get our answer as to what is causing the warming. Cycles of c02 and the evidence that the co2 RESPONDS to warming not causes is pretty straightforward with co-ordinating the data. The real kick in the teeth of co2 being the driver is the big fall with the Pinitubo cooling!

[table at link]

When you put it against the global temps, the co2 is plainly following the Pacific.. the new cold PDO should see a flattening out of the rate of rise.

It would appear the co2 spikes are occurring with warming that is caused by the natural drivers of the warm PDO and the el nino. The most damming of the evidence against co2 being the driver was the drop around 1992 with Pinitubo cooling. To the rationale, objective person, does this look like co2 with its erratic up and downs around the times of el ninos, is the driver, or the driven. The answer is obvious, it is responding to spikes that occur with warming episodes, the driven, not the driver. You can see the response in co2 with and after the nino.

Joe Bastardi is a senior long range weathercaster with Accuweather, and often seen on CNN and Fox News. He is also quite, quite wrong about CO2, fails to explain the year on year overall rise in atmospheric CO2 measured at Mauna Loa and appears to be oblivious to the relationship between gas solubility and ocean temperature.

Meteorologists are not climatologists, and sometimes it shows.

We can get a sense of their ubiquity from the following maps, first showing just the windmills recorded on manors in escheats (inquisitions post mortem). Source: Mills in the medieval economy: England, 1300-1540 By John Langdon.

Water was also widely harnessed on manor lands, both inland and at the coast as tidal mills. 

To get a sense of how common water and wind power was – when it used to be in everyone’s backyard – I also recommend reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel.

For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Mark Fiore, self syndicated, for his animated cartoons appearing on SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, where his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary.

According to the San Franciso Chronicle, “Fiore’s winning entry included "Science-gate," which adopts the voice-over tone of a mudslinging political ad to lampoon skeptics of global warming.”

You can see the winning entry here.

The opt-in climate policy he suggests offers a realistic way of dealing with the Alberta problem. There’s no way of getting around the fact that Alberta is increasingly dependent on the tar sands, and it is not willing to come close to making, or meeting, an effective emissions reduction target. However, other provinces, like Ontario and Quebec, are committed to making reductions and the Federal government could have a role to play in helping them meet the reductions targets.

A key change in Canada has been the shifting of population, political power and wealth to the west. The West got in, and don’t expect them to put in place federal policy that it would perceive as being against its own interests. Indeed, if politics is shaping up to mean a shift in power away from the federal government to the provincial, the sort of role the federal government can play in climate change will need to reflect and respect that shift. An opt-in program is a good compromise.

Unfortunately, should all the provinces except Alberta choose to opt in and meet targets, there could be little benefit for Canada on the international stage if Canada as a country fails to make overall emissions reductions. Nonetheless, as Prof. Donner points out, “it would be a vast improvement on the status quo” and “break the stalemate that has stalled progress on emissions reductions”. I’ll take it as a good start.

More: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1183-working-around-alberta-on-climate-change

Roy Spencer’s satire site ecoEnquirer’s article “Global Warming Activist, Journalist, Perish in Antarctica” fooled Fox and others. I’m not sure if a story where a bumbling Prof Schneider freezes to death should fairly be called satire or some kind of revenge fantasy.

Needless to say, this piece of humor doesn’t come close to the level of lulz obtained by Spencer’s previous, truly epic prank, “satellites show the Earth is cooling.” That one took years to expose.

Earth Hour: it’s all about the symbolism

Earth Hour came and went and one Kiwi produced a fine example of Poe’s Law ambiguity. Compare and contrast.

1. Obviously not a serious internet story:

“Power Hour” Trumps Earth Hour in the battle of conservation.

Power Hour was created for those Canadians who don’t care for the environmental movement and think global warming is a “complete joke”. The basic premise behind the Power Hour movement was to have participants turn on and consume as much electricity in their homes as possible during the hour from 8:30-9:30 pm as a stern act a defiance and way to counteract WWF’s Earth Hour campaign.

2. But what about this? Here’s New Zealander Rick Giles, President of Act on Campus:

“I’m actually in favour of Edison Hour… generally it is a celebration of technology and the use of energy rather than the opposite, which seems to be the Earth Hour’s promoted idea.”

Bonus quote:

“Do you believe in man made climate change?” “No, not at all… based on, no one has brought the evidence forth that can counter what I understand presently. But I don’t even… Man made climate change. I think my argument is so powerful that it is not necessary to talk about it.”

It’s so hard to do satire on live TV. Job well done. Maybe.

Supping from the Cornucopian teat

Nate Hagans, formerly a contributor at The Oil Drum, is off to Goldman Sachs to manage Cornucopia LLC, a new energy and resource hedge fund. He explains his conversion to Cornucopian thinking:

OK – here it is in a nutshell – though I used to think the main problem with economic theory was that it ignored biology on the demand side and ecology on the supply side, I now see the reality is that neither biology nor ecology has incorporated enough economic theory.

How could anyone continue to ignore economic theory? Especially once one considers these pearls of wisdom:

‘The United States must overcome the materialistic fallacy the illusion that resources and capital are essentially things which can run out, rather than products of the human will and imagination which in freedom are inexhaustible.’ –George Gilder

And then there’s Julian Simon, the intellectual powerhouse who liberated Bjorn Lomborg from the reality-based community:

‘On average, human beings create more than they use in their lifetimes. It has to be so or we would be an extinct species. This process is, as the physicists say, an invariancy. It applies to all metals, all fuels, all food, all measures of human welfare. It applies in all countries. It applies in all times.’ Julian Simon and Norman Myers from “Scarcity or Abundance”? New York Norton. 1994. pp.133-134.

“There is no reason to believe that at any given moment in the future the available quantity of any natural resource or service at present prices will be much smaller than it is now, or non-existent.” (Simon in The Ultimate Resource, 1981)

That’s the same Julian Simon who thought that resource limitation won’t be a problem because humans are smart, will one day invent Star Trek replicators and all live on the moon or something. And that’s why global warming is not a problem, but an opportunity.

Cornucopia LLC can help you seize that opportunity. Here are their core tenets.

1) the obvious fact that the environment falls outside of our market system, and therefore excess wealth derived from processing and packaging it, at least for those who have the balls to take it, is basically free.

1b) And God wants us to. (see Genesis 9, verses 1-2)

2) That growth and subsequent profits depends only in very small part on energy, but are primarily based on information, skill and human ambition. That human cleverness is the ultimate resource, requiring nothing but vacuum and time to create (almost) all conceivable value; and that matter and energy will always fall into line if we think about them cleverly enough. Since energy is a human concept, how can it be more fundamental than we are? This finally became clear to me.

3) The generation of financial capital (money) ushers in abundant social, human, natural and social capital as byproducts, but only to the ones near the source. Entropy does exist, just not in energy as I thought. As money is printed, you have to be close to its genesis to reap outsized rewards as the benefits it confers get watered down by the time it trickles into the economy at large.

Cornucopia LLC. Invest now.

Solved, every publishing scientist’s dilemma

It’s a problem all publishing serious scientists have had to face. From which prestigious journal should one seek a rejection letter, Nature or Science? Problem solved, as Nature and Science have decided to merge.

Science and Nature have ended their historic battle for the world’s best basic science articles, agreeing to cease their respective publications and co-launch an open-access, online-only journal with an innovative democratic peer-review system, sources at both journals revealed this morning.

In a novel revenue system funded by a grant from Facebook, preprints will be posted on a special social networking Web site where scientists registered in the newly created Faculty of a Million (trademark pending) can vote for acceptance by pressing a “Like” thumbs-up button or reject the paper by pressing a “Dislike” button. Each vote will cost $1/£1 and multiple votes are allowed. “There’s been criticism that peer review is too elitist, so we’re using the wisdom of the crowds,” says Aima Jouk, the journal’s new managing editor.

An end to elitist peer review? It’s about time.

You can preview the first edition of the new journal here.

The Dutch ambassador isn’t worried:

Dutch ambassador Wim Geerts, who grew up with tulips, said Ottawa residents shouldn’t worry as things could change between now and festival time. "We’ll keep our fingers crossed," he said.

The organisers of the tulip festival plant the tulips to bloom in the early, middle or late season. They planted more than a million bulbs in October 2009.

There is no option of rescheduling the festival to coincide with the blooming of the tulips. "It’s a force that can’t be stopped," said Christine Charette, the festival’s director of planning and operations. "We have booked many acts. It has to begin as scheduled."

The festival, which runs from May 7 to May 24, draws close to 600,000 visitors to the Ottawa area.

Charette says she is hopeful. "This is Canada. It could snow tomorrow. We’re not too worried."

Source: Ottawa Citizen