Drool

Next month, I will have my current car for 12 years. And my beloved little car is sure showing it's age. It's become very obvious that her days are numbered. We just bought a car last year, so we're not looking forward to do it again any time soon. Sadly, the choice may not be up to us. I've been very, very happy with my '98 Nissan Sentra. It's been reliable, low cost, a true pleasure to drive, so much so in fact, that we bought another one last year. We did look at other cars, however our experience with the sentra was the eventual clincher. Perhaps we've been infected with the brand loyalty bug, because I got really excited when I found out a while ago that Nissan is bringing an all-electric car on the market at the end of the year (in my area more like Spring next year). Meet the Leaf.

It'll go about 100 miles per charge, which is plenty for me, even allowing for lower efficiency because I'm hauling kids and cargo around. I've been drooling for weeks now.

There are some obvious drawbacks:
1. Although you can charge it on a regular 120V outlet, it'll take so long for a full charge (20 hours), that at least initially, Nissan will only sell the car to those who have installed a dedicated 240V charging station at their home. This will cost about $2000.

2. Even though it was designed for the general consumer market, it's still expensive for me, at a starting price of about $32k. Add tax, title and insurance, and.... ouch! There are supposed to be federal incentives, but for now those only extend to the end of 2010, no longer valid by the time I can get one.

3. I guess I'm still a little squeemish about the idea of not having a gas-backup. I'm totally aware of that fear being irrational. I'm never worried when I leave the house in my current car, that it'll run out. And I wouldn't have to make a detour to go to a gas station, my "gas station" would be at home.

4. My town isn't large enough I suspect, to invest on a large scale in charging infrastructure. Since I'd charging at home, this isn't too much of a problem, but still.

5. This doesn't have anything to do with the Leaf, but a major drawback is that my car might not last until next Spring. That's 9 months away! I'll consider myself lucky if my car goes for another 9 weeks. Wait, make that 9 days!

Check it out! I reserved my Leaf:

However, instead of the blue one pictured, I want the snazzy red one:

Artificial photosynthesis

From Sciencedaily. Photosynthesis involves the use of light energy to oxidize water, and reduce carbon dioxide, thus forming sugars, and releasing oxygen. Scientists looking for new ways to produce hydrogen as a fuel source from renewable sources, report that an inorganic metal cluster can oxidize water to hydrogen and oxygen. This process of artificial photosynthesis uses a rare transition metal. Problem solved? Not quite:
Botar explains the next step: "Now the challenge is to integrate this ruthenium complex into photoactive systems, which efficiently convert solar energy into chemical energy". So far, energy is still obtained from a chemical oxidant.

Sustainable agriculture

No more written exams! Yeah!!! My last written qualifying exam lasted for 4 1/2 hours, and consisted of 4 questions. Three of them were easily answered using the posts I put up 2 days ago (blogging my study results actually proved useful). Nutrient deficiencies were featured prominently, as was postharvest longevity of flowers. Three of the questions were polished off in about half an hour. I spent, however, 4 (!) hours writing on the first question which came completely out of left field. I received a thick stack of printouts with the draft standards for sustainable agriculture, and had to write 4 papers on these. The standards propose to work towards completely organic production systems, which (among other things) would not allow use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and gradually eliminate synthetic chemicals from production systems. I had to write a paper in support of the standards on GMOs, one opposed, one in support of the standards on the elimination of synthetic chemical use, one opposed.

It wasn't easy for me to write these papers. I was forced to treat the issues as black-and-white, which clearly, they aren't. I was not asked to form and write on my own opinion. There are arguments pro and con these standards, and I had to simply separate the pros to put in the papers in support of the standards, and vice versa, put all the cons in the paper opposed to the standards. There was no argument involved, no battle of the mind, no final conclusion to be drawn. That bothered me. Of course, I do have an opinion, and at some point I thought my arguments in two of the papers (those were I argued against my own position) became rather silly.

[Credit: Purdue Agriculture Connections]

In my opinion it is naive to think that the standards will be feasible in large-scale agriculture with our current level of understanding, and our current knowledge on integrated pest management. There were darn good reasons to introduce chemicals, one of them being that without those, you're large-scale monocultures are bound to be destroyed occasionally by a pathogen or pest. This would come at a great price financially, socially, and politically. Although you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks we should apply as many pesticides and other chemicals as humanly possible, it's not too hard to find people who are of the opinion we shouldn't use any at all. However, it is not realistic to think that we can basically maintain current production levels while eliminating the use of all synthetic chemicals and pesticides; they do serve a valuable function in agriculture today.

Organic production can work fairly well on a small-medium scale, but with the level of technology available today, is not yet feasible on really large scale. That's not to say we cannot work towards that. We most certainly can, and we most certainly should, and hopefully at some point in the future we can reach this admirable goal, but we're not quite there yet. Unless we're willing to put the livelihood of producers at risk.

[Credit: Wikimedia commons]

For example, the use of synthetic fertilizers allows us to add, very specifically, the exact amount of nutrients that we need. No more, no less. Replace that with something like cow manure (see picture), and the composition varies from one batch to the next, and you have to apply the whole thing, which also applies nutrients you already have enough of. Let say we have used the scientific knowledge of today to sample the plants in our field, and analyzed the nutrient content of the crop, and determined that it is low in nitrogen, but it has plenty of phosphorus and potassium. These are the 3 macronutrients routinely supplied in synthetic fertilizers (which means they were chemically produced in a factory). Now, we can add synthetic fertilizer containing only nitrogen, and since we know how much is in the plants, we know how much there needs to be, we calculate how much we are likely to loose in the soil because of leaching (even after we make every effort at our disposal to minimize leaching), and we apply the amount of nitrogen we need. We apply it near the plant, so that the roots will have optimal access to the nitrogen we've supplied, and we're careful not to apply it too far from the plants so as not to waste it. Had we instead applied cow manure, we would have had to calculate how much to add to satisfy our nitrogen requirements, but we would also be adding phosphorous and potassium, which our crop already has enough off. We risk overdosing on those nutrients (at high levels, toxicity symptoms become apparent), we waste valuable nutrients, because we don't really need any more, and we unnecessarily contaminate the groundwater with excesses of phosphorous and potassium. Virtually every organic fertilizer has the same problems, having the potential to increase groundwater contamination, and not because the source is organic, does that become any less of a problem. Would you still consider that sustainable agriculture?

You may say, but in floriculture, surely we can do without all those synthetic hormones that you apply to regulate plant height and flowering, like you described here? Surely that is frivolous. The reality of the capitalistic ideas of supply and demand, and consumer satisfaction, dictates that plants of irregular heights, that are not flowering (or not flowering synchronously) at the time of display, will be less desirable than those that are perfectly sized for their container, with a beautiful, abundant display of flowers across the board. Uniformity of the crop cannot be taken for granted in today's floral industry.

[Credit: Dr. Bob's Gardening Tips]

For example, the requirements for size, plant height, number of flowers, and availability of plants for poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) around December are extreme. On December 24, a poinsettia plant may be worth $12, after the holiday season, it's worth $1. You can hardly imagine all the hoops growers have to jump through to satisfy these extreme demands from consumers. From selection of desirable cultivars, exact scheduling of their crop depending on the growth conditions and how vigorous the cultivar grows, regulating day/night conditions, making sure the temperature is exactly right to prevent growing too much or not enough, application of very carefully calculated and applied fertilizers according to the regulations, scouting and treating for pathogens and pests also according to all the EPA regulations, pinching at the exact right time to allow enough leaves to grow, monitoring growth and applying growth regulators if the plants grow too fast or too slow for the schedule, monitoring and adjusting of the alkalinity, pH, and EC of the growth medium, to packaging, shipment, and meeting deadlines and quality standards of the retailer. The retailer will not buy a crop of poinsettia's that does not conform to the strictest of standards. A plant that is 1 inch over the desired height is practically worthless. So, if you measure your plants throughout the growing process (which growers do), and you see that (some of) your plants are growing too fast, too tall. You get off your butt, follow all the safety requirements, get yourself some cycocel, B-nine, or Bonzi, and do what you need to do to save your investment. If some of your plants are too small, some too large, and others ok, your retailer will send you packing, because you have agreed to X number of plants of Y height all in full bloom on the second Monday in December, and you've delivered a hodge podge.

[Credit: University of Illinois extension]

The value of flowers, more than that of any other agricultural commodity, is extremely sensitive to the presence of a ubiquitous fungus like Botrytis cinerea. A few botrytis or powdery mildew spores on your roses (see picture), and your crop drops to the value of $0. Not spraying, is simply not an option. By the way, B. cinerea is very indiscriminate. It is not very particular about its source of nutrition, and it spreads very easily, all the nice little black dots are spores. Millions of them.

[Credit: Cornell University Cooperative Extension]

You've got to be a plant pathologist to say "that's just gorgeous!!" This is reaction not uncommon among my colleagues. A former colleague did not remove a branch from her pear tree for the longest time: "it has such beautiful fireblight symptoms!" I myself, am guilty of maintaining a pot of Magilla perilla, because it was such a fabulous example of downy mildew symptoms (luckily winter decided that I had no right to do so and killed it). All I have left of it are the slides I made and the pictures I took.

But I digress, this is bound to happen once I start talking plant path. I think I've made my point. There are valid reasons to use synthetic chemicals. In an ideal world we would grow all our crops organically. But sadly, contrary to Voltaire's insistence, this is not the best of all possible worlds, and for the immediate future, we're stuck using chemicals. As for the GMOs? That's another post entirely.

Blog Action Day: Environment

I grew up in a tropical third world country. Most of the country is covered in pristine rainforest. Sadly, ever increasing areas are being logged or destroyed by mining. It is sad. For a couple of years I left the capital and moved to the rainforest. It really brought the rainforest to life for me, in ways short visits never had before that time.

In the tropics plants and animals (especially insects) are a normal part of daily life, but the diversity in the rainforest is truly astonishing. On a field trip on day I saw the most amazing caterpillar. That is, I think it was a caterpillar, since it's main body was long and narrow. However, it was unlike any caterpillar I had ever seen before. It had huge colorful ornamentations, spikes sticking out from all over it's body. I must have stood there watching it for the longest time, not wanting to take my eyes off of it. Where is the damn camera when you need it anyway?

Another time a black panther (or jaguar) crossed the dirt road right in front of me. Amazing, the large glistening body, the muscles in his legs as he ran, the sparkle in his eyes. I'll never forget the sight.

Snakes are not uncommon in the capital, but in the rainforest you run across one virtually every day. Since I don't know how to distinguish most of them, I've always kept a polite distance from them. Crocodiles were frequently sunning themselves on the bank of the river where I lived.

And then one day I awoke to the sound of heavy machinery. Across the river trees were falling one by one, and a few weeks later the river bank was barren. It tore at my heartstrings. Isn't there anything anyone can do to stop this?

Many organizations worldwide condemn large scale logging in tropical rainforests. Understandable, but often demands are rather unreasonable. Logging and mining are responsible for a substantial part of the gross domestic product of nations that are struggling to keep their heads above water in the modern world. As developing countries we don't really want to cut down the entire forest, it simply helps to diversify our economies. Often poor countries perpetuate their poverty because their economies are not diversified enough to grow. Dependency on one or two major export products can be devastating if the market for one breaks down. Many people living in rich countries really have no idea what it is like to live as an underdog in an underdeveloped country. It is a constant struggly to prevent yourself from drowning in the maelstrom that is todays world economy.

This post is in memory of my father. He opposed the ban on imports of tropical hardwood from countries with tropical rainforests. He argued that if developed countries no longer import hardwood, it would greatly decrease the value of each tree. There would be no financial incentive for us to keep our rainforest as intact as possible.

The solution, in his opinion, is to encourage developing countries to maintain their rainforests by giving incentives for logging in a responsible manner (which is possible). Ideas he had were incentives for a minimum trunk size before logging, so that the trees had had plenty of opportunity to propagate. An adoption program, which would allow people to adopt trees, or sections of the rainforest in return for sustainable management. He argued that if hardwood has no value for us, we would ultimately have no choice but to cut down the rainforest to allow more lucrative ways to use the forest. The bottom line is, it is all a question of economics.

Responsible programs have been developed and are in use in tropical rainforests all over the world. Poor countries need financial incentives to implement these programs.

In loving memory of EAB (November 1944- June 2007)