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Originally Posted by malcolmf
This is a key point in relation to your beasties, Michael. Models of the soil carbon cycle (e.g. Colorado Uni's Century) usually allow for such pools as fast (1 year), slow (decades) and stable (centuries / millennia) turnover rates. However, even these are approximations: some papers on mycorrhizae suggest their turnover time can be as little as five days, as compared to the glomalin they produce which seems to join the slow pool.
The headline is that, once creatures get hold of carbon, it is as good as gone, back to the air. This implies a trade-off between the two main goals of carbon burial, namely removal from the air and agricultural productivity. The former does not want creatures to access the carbon, the latter does. We have to examine our motivations for making terra preta, and the two camps might choose very different methods as a result. I suggest that atmospheric goals might require high-tech, high-volume, highly recalcitrant carbon while soil goals might require something much closer to Amazonian practices or RBlack's carbon-compost approach.
Your history is in compost, isn't it? How do you feel about the potential conflict of goals between atmosphere and soil?
M
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Well I've had a BIG THINK and it didn't help.
Does anyone know the answers to your questions?
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Some lovely writing about wee beasties of all kinds
EG
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1) Eat Radiation
Humans have only three responses responses to radioactive waste: pay someone else to take it away quickly, die, or develop superpowers. Unfortunately the last option has a vanishingly small success rate and the tragic side-effect of utterly destroying the victims fashion sense. Luckily a species of bacteria with the ability to consume uranium and other extremely antisocial wastes has been discovered by US scientists - and as a bonus, it's utterly impossible to make a crap movie adaptation of a bacteria.
Geobacter sulfurreducens has already been used at the Rifle Mills site to clear up a large amount of what the nuclear industry calls "oops!", and what us non-radioactive humans call "a goddamn nuclear contamination of groundwater and the Colorado river". Following on the brave scientific tradition of not only looking a gift horse in the mouth but sending it to the vet for a full set of dental X-rays, some scientists suggest the metal-munching microbe could form the basis for a bio-battery cell. Because when you've fed a superpowered organism nothing but nuclear waste for years, nothing can go wrong with then sticking it in a box and carrying it around with you.
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"Super Cells" that Eat Radiation, Generate Electricity & Cure Cancer -A Galaxy Classic
I loved "tragic side-effect of utterly destroying the victims fashion sense"
