h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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Many years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote an
essay called "Life's Bottleneck" in which he
pointed out that because phosphorus is
much less concentrated in soil than it is in
either organisms or their excreta, putting
sewage in the sea increases the rate at
which it is lost to the land without
providing
a mechanism to reverse this
process.
One solution to this is clearly to use the
sewage to grow food on land, and another
is to eat seafood a lot. However, for
vegetarians this means eating a lot more
seaweed to achieve the same result as
eating a lot less animal seafood. Another
problem for vegetarians is getting enough
of the right fatty acids from sources other
than fish, though it is possible.
So, lots of phosphorus is lost from the
land to the sea, vegetarians need fatty
acids in which fish are high, but they
object to eating them.
However, algae, such as diatoms, are often
very high in oil which is itself high in the
relevant fatty acids. Solution: harvest the
algae, extract the fixed oils using
supercritical carbon dioxide, use it to
make supplements, unhydrogenated
margarine, salad oil and even cooking oil,
soap and biodiesel, then discard the rest
of the algae onto the land to return the
phosphorus. Needless to say, sewage
could be dumped on the land too, but that
won't return the phosphorus which has
already gone, and both could be done.
Guano-Smuggling Ninja Pirates
Emergent_20invention
For [bungston] [imaginality, Mar 06 2008]
[link]
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I had a horrible feeling about this idea
until I realized there was a capital letter in
the title. |
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Me too! But you know it would have been more like "veggie fish oil reverses the phosphorus bottleneck" |
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No need to panic. Seabird excreta, rich in phosphorus, finds its way back to land in the form of fertilisers. |
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Phosphorus cycles through the ecosystem in the same way that other water soluble elements do. Chemical and physical weathering strips break salts from their mineral forms and transports them to bodies of water where they can be remineralized. These deposits are transported back to the surface by geologic action and the cycle starts again. We could look for solutions to the calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and lithium bottlenecks but I am not aware of a crisis there either. Sure we rape the earth and waste resources, but for biological purposes we are no nearer to running out of phosphorus than say iron or aluminum. |
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The weathering of minerals is a geologic process. Changing what we eat will not significatly affect the ratio of ocianic/terrestrial phosphorus. Think about the scale man, even the powerfull influence of humans through massive mining and fertilizing operations doesn't scratch the supply. The real problem comes when our giant output is dumped into the sea, an ecosystem unprepaired for a sudden increase in nutrient. The problem is not a lack of supply but our destructive waste of what is a valuable resource. |
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It probably isn't a huge problem
compared to the likes of indium
depletion or persistent pollutants, but
the rate at which phosphorus is lost
from the land is definitely greater than
the rate it returns. Considering that
urine was the source from which
phosphorus was originally extracted, it
does seem to be relatively highly
concentrated, though admittedly not
hugely, and although it is only lost
slowly, geological processes are also
generally very slow. |
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It is also the fact that algae are a good
source of oil, and when it comes down
to it, literally the source of mineral oil
deposits. |
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I would also say that lack of supply as
such is never a problem, more having to
work against entropy to get it back into
a practical form. Almost all the mineral
resources humans have used, in terms
of actual elements, are still on the
planet in some form, except maybe
some of the more radioactive ones, but
getting them back into a useful state
would require a lot of energy in some
cases. |
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Ahh but the process is self limiting, as phosphorus becomes less available the land loses fertility, grows less biomass, feeds fewer animals and thus maintains a balance between compound forms. Phosphorus is not unique in this, even oxygen is part of a similar cycle of different forms. Immediate feedback in the form of ocean organisms is the most immediate mechanism. My point was that there was little we could do about it, other than to stop wasting it wholesale. We can harvest all of the low lying fruit without having a huge effect on the tree but we will suffer for our shortsightedness. Other areas are going to bite us before phosphorus. I'm bunning. |
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[I had a horrible feeling about this idea until I realized there was a capital letter in the title] |
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The soultion is guano. All that penguin guano is going to waste in the infertile antarctic. If plastic bedding could be laid down over the nesting areas, the bedding could be removed and replaced if off years with harvesting of the guano. |
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Likewise, seagulls love to roost in cities. Provide a mechanism for guano collection. |
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Guano is mined to this day for fertilizer and accomplishes extactly the end you hope for. Guano, I say. Guano! Guano guano guano. |
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Bizarelly enough, the Tongan for "guano"
is "oguan", a rotational anagram. Anyone
know of any other instances of words
being rotational anagrams in other
languages? ("And" is "dan" in Malaysian,
and there's "el" and "le", but these are too
short to be interesting.) |
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Does SIDA and VIH (AIDS and HIV) in Spanish/English count enough for you? |
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I doubt it, [ericscottf]; there's a simple formula at work there, whereby
1. you take an acronym based on words with very similar cognates in other languages,
2. you find the equivalent acronym in any of the languages where adjectives tend to follow nouns (rather than vice versa), and
3. you offer it as interesting. |
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The French acronym OTAN springs to mind, for example, as, perhaps unkindly, does that famous business plan involving gnomes and underpants. |
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In any case, I don't think it's what [Max] is on about. |
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Heret si a anguagel alledc Nglishe herew, yb omes izarreb oincidencec, lla ordsw rea otationalr nagramsa fo heirt English quivalentse (ithw het xceptione fo "English"). Nglande, het ountryc herew ti si pokens, si nownk sa het lacep herew ecimald ractionsf fo het umbern evens dan tsi ultiplesm erew irstf iscoveredd. |
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Seriously though, the Dutch "het" for "the". |
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[Eric] Sort of, though as [pertinax] points
out, acronyms like this would be quite
common due the rotational nature of
grammars foreign. |
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[ineteenthlyn] I'm impressed! |
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//Provide a mechanism for guano collection.// |
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See link, near the end of the annos, for one such method. |
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I recently found it interesting that "angered" anagrams to "enraged". Synonym + anagram = synogram? |
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Obligatory WIFRT - from the title I thought this would be another idea from Treon. |
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[Canuck] has an allergy to scrolling up, methinks. |
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Reminded me of Larry Niven's "Destiny's Road", where a similar situation occurs with potassium. Speckles, anyone? |
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Thanks, [lurch], i used to be a big fan of
the Known Space series. I didn't know
about that until now. |
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