Photosynthesis

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #425

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The Week That Was: September 19, 2020, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe. It is quite another to do so when the environmental problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by careful observations. This is definitely the case with global warming.” – Frederick Seitz, Introduction to Fred Singer’s Hot Talk, Cold Science (1999)

Number of the Week: 64%

NO TWTW NEXT WEEK: There will be no TWTW the week of September 26. TWTW will resume the weekend of October 3.

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Greenhouse Effect – Critical for Life: Last week, TWTW discussed that in 1859, physicist John Tyndall began experiments on gases that interfere with the loss of electromagnetic energy (heat) from the surface of the earth to space. These gases, known as greenhouse gases, keep the earth warmer than it would be otherwise, particularly at night. Tyndall recognized that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, and without it land masses would freeze at night, making vegetative growth virtually impossible.

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Rice genetically engineered to resist heat waves can also produce up to 20% more grain

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By Erik Stokstad– Re-Blogged From Science

Recent Breakthrough Boosts Plant Growth by 40 Percent

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Re-Blogged From Eureka Alert

One of the most significant challenges of the 21st Century is how to sustainably feed a growing and more affluent global population with less water and fertilizers on shrinking acreage, despite stagnating yields, threats of pests and disease, and a changing climate. Recent advances to address hunger through agricultural discovery will be highlighted at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at 8 a.m. Feb. 16, 2019, at the Marriott Wardman Park.

“The meeting this year is about ‘Science Transcending Boundaries’–the idea for the session is to highlight research that is transcending scientific and knowledge boundaries, with the ultimate goal to transcend geographic boundaries and reach smallholder farmers in Africa,” said Lisa Ainsworth, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and an adjunct professor of plant biology at the University of Illinois. Recently, Ainsworth was awarded the 2019 National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences.

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Climate Scientist Josh Willis Shows You How to Deal With Your Climate Change Denying Uncle

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By Dave Burton – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

Josh Willis, of NASA JPL, has a new video out entitled, “Straw Men of the Apocalypse – How to deal with your climate change denying uncle.”

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Notice that “catastrophic” is apparently not scary enough, these days. Global warming is now “the Apocalypse.”

The video starts out with two guys crawling along the parched ground under the blazing desert sun. One of them says to the other, “We’re gonna die out here, man. If only society had done more to fight climate change.” And it goes downhill from there.

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Bionic Leaf Turns Sunlight Into Liquid Fuel

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By Anthony Watts – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com

New system surpasses efficiency of photosynthesis

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The days of drilling into the ground in the search for fuel may be numbered, because if Daniel Nocera has his way, it’ll just be a matter of looking for sunny skies.

Nocera, the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University, and Pamela Silver, the Elliott T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, have co-created a system that uses solar energy to split water molecules and hydrogen-eating bacteria to produce liquid fuels.

The paper, whose lead authors include post-doctoral fellow Chong Liu and graduate student Brendan Colón, is described in a June 3 paper published in Science.

“This is a true artificial photosynthesis system,” Nocera said. “Before, people were using artificial photosynthesis for water-splitting, but this is a true A-to-Z system, and we’ve gone well over the efficiency of photosynthesis in nature.”

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