450px-Blue_Linckia_StarfishAre Coral Reefs Beyond Saving?

BBC News reports that prospects of saving the world’s coral reefs now appear so bleak that scientists have recommended freezing samples in liquid nitrogen to preserve them for the future so that, should global temperatures be stabilized, corals could be reintroduced.

If you’re wondering whether the situation is really that bad, read this.

Study Claims Use of Biofuels Risks Worsening Carbon Emissions if Land Use Is Not Considered

Planet Ark, reporting on a study published last Thursday in Science:

Governments and companies are pouring billions of research dollars into advanced fuels made from wood and grass, meant to cut carbon emissions compared with gasoline, and not compete with food as corn-based biofuels do now.

But such advanced, “cellulosic” biofuels will actually lead to higher carbon emissions than gasoline per unit of energy, averaged over the 2000-2030 time period, the study found.

Carbon Sequestration: Not Under My Backyard

In the November/December issue of Mother Jones, Victoria Schlesinger looks into the local issues surrounding carbon sequestration and asks, “Care to volunteer your town?“

It’s a question not to be taken lightly. In her article, Schlesinger quotes a 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS): “Although the general public is still largely unfamiliar with CCS, there are early indications that community acceptance may prove a significant challenge.”

Biochar Experiment in Cameroon Yields Promising Results

From CarbonCommentary:

Working with small groups of subsistence farmers around the town of Kumba, the [Biochar] Fund set up and managed a large-scale experiment to assess whether maize (corn) yields were improved by the addition of biochar to the soil. The biochar was made from local agricultural wastes and tree thinnings. The data from the trials strongly suggests that biochar adds greatly to food production. Some areas showed yield improvements of more than 250% over the control plots. The areas dosed with biochar also showed substantially increased production of crop biomass, including roots, stalks, and leaves.

Office Tower in Dijon, France Aims to Produce More Energy than it Consumes

Despite the Washington Post headline, it has nothing to do with mustard. Just good business and profitability:

The Elithis Tower, its builder says, is an office building like no other, an oval-shaped showcase for how to help save the planet on a reasonable budget. According to Thierry Bièvre, the 10-story tower in the eastern city of Dijon has the potential to become the world’s first commercially priced office building that produces more energy than it consumes.

Bièvre, 49, who heads the Elithis engineering firm, said in an interview that he did not start out as an environmental missionary, but as a businessman who wanted to make money.

Is GPS Destroying Our Sense of Direction?

From PopMatters, reviewing a piece by by Alex Hutchinson in the Walrus:

The main gist of the article is that GPS may be compromising people’s sense of direction by altering the way they think. “Our brains determine how we navigate, but our navigational efforts also shape our brains,” Hutchinson notes, drawing on the research of neurological researchers Véronique Bohbot and Giuseppe Iaria into our capability to form cognitive maps. Using GPS, they suspect, may lead us to lose our habit of making such internal maps (shrinking the hippocampus, the area of the brain that governs navigation) and leave us hopelessly and perpetually lost.

Favorite line in the article: “Perhaps I’m unsympathetic to the directionally challenged because I’m never afraid to get lost.” It’s an attribute I happen share, to which my wife will attest.