The BBC is reporting that Mars is working with IBM and the US Department of Agriculture to map the genome of Chocolate. That’s pretty cool.
However, the Chocolate Genome Project could lead to genetically modified chocolate, so we will have to be careful what we do with this new knowledge.
I learned yesterday that people still joust. Check out this photo from the Medieval Festival at Upper Canada Village.
I keep seeing this ad for Alcoa on TV. It’s well done, but every time I see it I think of Soylent Green.
When I wrote recently about the carbon credit industry I tried to make the distinction between good bad carbon credits. Today wired.com has a story about an Australian company that is planning on dumping urea into the ocean. This urea, (which is very high in nitrogen), is supposed to feed algae & plankton in the area, which in turn will use carbon dioxide from the air. When this algae & plankton dies, so the theory goes, it will sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon with it.
A plan like this screams for regulation. Does dumping nitrogen into the ocean really sound like a good idea? We’ve been told for years not to use soap or fertilizers with too much nitrogen in it because it unbalances the ecosystem of the bodies of water where the runoff ends up.
Not only does this plan pollute in ways that we’ve been trying to avoid for years, but it is also next to impossible to measure how much carbon will be sequestered, (if any), by this project.
That’s about all I have to say, read the article yourself and form your own opinions.
On Monday I wrote about Carbon Credits and was fairly negative about the way the industry is currently set up. Well, I just read an article on Wired.com that gives me hope.
Pop!Tech and Ebay have teamed up to create the Pop!Tech Carbon Initiative. They started selling carbon credits today and will continue to do so through the end of the year. The thing that sets the Pop!Tech Carbon Initiative apart from other carbon offset vendors is that you can actually choose the project that your offset will contribute to. There are three projects. You pick one and buy the offset and your money goes to that project.
Personally, I would like to see the projects certified as Gold Standard, or something similar, (they’re not at the moment), however since I can choose which project my credits support I can support the project that I believe is best, (for example one of the projects involves reforestation — I would likely choose another project).
Finally, this quote from the Pop!Tech Carbon Offset Initiative website that really drives home the concept of additionality in carbon offset projects:
It is essential that the activity you are supporting would not otherwise have happened. So if someone is installing a solar hot water system on their roof, for instance, which will reduce the amount of gas they burn to heat water, and you offer to pay for half of it, that is not a valid carbon offset.