Fertilizers, Animal Wastes Both Culprits in Gulf Dead Zone

Every year, beginning right about now, an area of the ocean the size of New Jersey dies at the mouth of the Mississippi.

A new USGS study shows that the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone is caused mainly from corn and soy fertilizers and animal wastes running off of the seven states abutting the Mississippi, and also Indiana and Ohio along the Ohio River, which drains into the Mississippi.

Ocean dead zones are caused by extremely low oxygen levels in the water – a condition known as hypoxia. Hypoxic conditions develop where there is an excess of agricultural run-off, because of the high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in fertilizer and manure.

Massive algal blooms occur where there is an abundance of these two nutrients. As the algae die and sink to the ocean floor, brigades of bacteria decompose it – sucking copious amounts of oxygen from the water, and creating a “dead zone” where no other organisms (save a few invasive species of jellyfish) can live.

Fertilizer is not currently viewed as a pollutant by the EPA, and farmers have no regulations on their release of it. Animal wastes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are supposed to be contained in lagoons capable of handling up to a “25-year rain.” Of course, upon a 25-year rain (inevitable) a legal sewage fest flows straight into our rivers.

Interestingly, the USGS study found that phosphorous from manure is not just coming from CAFOs - range and pastured animals are contributing to over a third of the phosphorous pollution as well.

Seems the fisherfolk of the Gulf and the farmers of the Midwest might need to have a little throwdown over this Gulf Dead Zone. In the meantime, we can help by supporting rising initiatives for wetland restoration (which help remove pollutants) and regulations of fertilizer and animal waste run-off. And of course, by minimizing our consumption of industrial agricultural products - including soybeans and meat.
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Seen While Running: Eaten By Trees

The beauty of running are the things you pass by as you run along. You get to see things that you don’t notice as you drive by in a car. You may have run the same route 50 times but you find yourself seeing something different each time. I ran by a tree than had grown over a fence and it got me to thinking, there are probably some cool picture of things “swallowed” by trees. Here are some of the cooler ones I’ve found

Most policeman keep track of how long you’ve been parked in a spot by marking the tires with white chalk. This may be the only instance ever where they can measure the time by counting rings in a tree.

This must be what people are looking for when they are looking for a money tree. Instead of the normal throwing a penny into a fountain and making a wish, people hammer a penny into this log. I absolutely guarantee my wish starts off with a smashed finger on this one. I always have better luck with fountains anyway.

This proves that anything against a tree for a long period of time will be eaten by it. This wash basin was merely leaning against the tree and with time, the tree has grabbed it and lifted it up.

Another one of those, how frickin long has that motorcycle been there? This is definitely the best bike lock I’ve ever seen.

You know those neighbors that never take down their Christmas lights? This is what they’re trying to get to. Lights grown right into the tree. Just plug them in and the tree is ready to go. I see a future in this one. A “plug in” live tree

This is what they call a “live frame” It only takes about 10 years to make each one. The funny thing about this picture is that despite the fact that the tree has swallowed the sign, we still all know exactly what the sign says. Evidently the photographer didn’t.

More Funny Pictures Here

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Will Plug-In Hybrids Become the Standard?

Farmers are planting corn and soybeans like crazy, turning food crops into ethanol and biodiesel. Scientists are squeezing oil out of algae while others are trying to coax hydrogen into a fuel that is easy to produce and safe to use. Still other developers are touting the battery-operated electric car, and one company is building a car that runs on compressed air.

Which system will survive? Or will we have a mixture of E85’s, biodiesel, electric, air and hydrogen fueled vehicles cramming our highways and straining the fuel delivery system infrastructure? Eventually, according to the age-old theory that the fittest shall survive, one method of moving us from point “A” to point “B” will emerge, and some folks are betting on the plug-in hybrid.

Designing a battery that will store a lot of energy and handle power surges has been a real problem for automakers. The Lithium-Ion battery has shown it can do both, but engineers say rapid discharges can degrade the battery’s lifetime. One car company using Lithium-Ion batteries, Tesla Motors , has developed a high-performance, all electric roadster with a range of 200 miles or so. The price tag, around $90,000, give a take a few thousand, takes it out of the family car bracket.

Hybrid-electric vehicles combine a battery with an electric motor and a gasoline engine to propel the car. The engine, and energy regenerated during braking, keep the battery charged and the car moving.

Designing a practical plug-in hybrid is another story, and it’s all about the battery, or batteries. It takes more batteries for a plug-in, with substantially different capabilities, such as storing a lot of energy and providing quick acceleration, or discharge of energy when needed. In addition, these batteries need to be more compact, affordable and safe as they cycle through various uses.

Lithium-Ion batteries fill most of that bill, but their useful lifetime can be degraded by sudden sudden surges of power, and there still seems to be a lingering doubt as to their complete safety when overheated.

So how do we answer the need for quick power surges and large storage capacity? With capacitors, of course.

Actually, they’re called Ultracaps, the electrical equivalent of a shaken champagne bottle. The difference being they also recharge quickly, having 10 to 100 times the power density of typical batteries and only one-tenth the energy density.

In case you aren’t acquainted with capacitors, I’ll try to help. First of all, capacitors are used in every electronic circuit, in your computer, tv, radio, and cell phone to name a few.

How do they work? Take two separate strands of wire, and on the end of each, attach a flat piece of metal we’ll call a plate. In between these plates, place what is called a dielectric, or a material that will not pass electricity, and put all that into a material that holds it all together which is, in itself, a dielectric.

Now, hook one wire up to the positive side of a battery, the other to the negative side for just a second. A charge builds up on one plate only, and stays there until you put the two wires together, and the capacitor discharges in a flash. I wouldn’t try this with a huge power source, a 6 volt drycell should give you a small spark.

Increase the size and capacity of these capacitors and you have ultracaps, capable of providing an instant power thrust and literally recharging a second later. This, as they say, is a marriage made in heaven for plug-in hybrids.

A working example of this concept is the Extreme Hybrid which was rolled out at the Detroit auto show in January. The developer, AFS Trinity, is not an auto company. They took a Saturn vue hybrid and retrofitted the vehicle to achieve a 40 mile electric range before reverting to run efficiently on it’s gasoline engine like a normal hybrid. Gas mileage comes in at around 150 mpg.

The Extreme Hybrid site features several videos featuring the car. No, it isn’t ready for production yet, but the technology has been proven and this type of plug-in hybrid may become the standard for automotive transportation in the future.

You might say, but what about the gasoline? Will we still have to buy fossil fuels to run our small engines? Not likely, with the advances in biofuels, especially the promise of algae-derived fuels, the day may soon arrive when we won’t use gasoline at all.

What a concept.

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