Tonight’s the night for the inaugural meeting of Café Scientifique-Morris for the 2007-2008 school year. The topic is:
Food or Fuel? A simple multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems
It will be presented by Abdullah Jaradat of the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab; I suspect he’ll be talking about their research into newer, better crops for the production of energy. It should be good, come on down to the Common Cup Coffeehouse at 6!
Unfortunately, this will be one I have to miss. I have to catch a plane to San Diego for the Beyond Belief conference (perhaps I shall be live-blogging it tomorrow…or perhaps I’ll be too busy and you’ll have to wait for my summary in the evening). Instead of me doing the introductions, the delightful MC Skatje will be hosting tonight’s event, which will improve it immensely.
It looks like the speaker, Abdullah Jaradat, is involved in a lot of interesting projects (e.g., cropping systems management to promote economic and environmental sustainability; biological and management strategies to increase cropping efficiency in short-season and high-stress environments; biomass-bioenergy crops in the United States: a changing paradigm).
http://www.ars.usda.gov/pandp/people/people.htm?personid=31097
I’m discovering that liveblogging a conference is not easy. Mad propz to you if you manage the task.
I’m vey envious of your getting to go to BB. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of Owen Flannigan’s latest book, “The Very Hard Problem.” His “Problem of the Soul” was a revelation (though he shares a little of Harris’s secular Eastern mysticism woo). Have a blast, and represent the great state of Minnesota.
This website belongs to a friend of mine in Brazil:
http://www.biofuelsnow.com he has been working with detoxification of soils in Brazil among other things. He is also a big proponent of organic farming and has been doing it for more than a quarter of a century in Brazil.
PZ,
I’ve noticed the proud paternal tone when mentioning Skatje and I’ve only recently read her blog archives. Wow.
She’s brilliant AND well adjusted. Kudos to you and your Trophy Wife (insert trademark here). The Myers clan is formidable, it seems.
“Simple”, or “multi-scale integrated”? :^)
“Simple”, or “multi-scale integrated”? :^)
Bah, crops. I’m looking forward to cars powered with processed turkey guts. (Wiki’s info suggests that mad cows and heavy-metal fish would be good choices, too.)
#7, don’t forget human fat:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1559489.ece
BB2: unfinished business! I hope Harris and Atran throw down.
Krauss and Hameroff could be entertaining, as well. If the whole thing erupts, might we see a PZ/Dawkins tag team?
PZ, it appears that you don’t have any great misgivings about your personal air travel and its rapacious carbon debt.
Your personal 4000 mile round-trip to San Diego by air produces approximately two tons of CO2.
I am genuinely interested in biofuels IF they can be used in a system that doesn’t mandate that we still steal food from people living in non-Western nations. I love PZ for his many insights, but gerald (immediately above) gives a good case in point. Our short-term interests are running up the debt in fuel, the pollution, the actual sustainability, the actual crop-production and to whom it should be fed, and raising the global temperature.
The techno-fixes that people are proposing seem fantastic and interesting. But there is nothing like resource reduction to get the ball really rolling.
I want a new Enlightenment very much. But it better really engage hardcore the three R’s: Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!
Enough moralizing. Hope the BB conference goes splendidly. I look forward to seeing what I can.
Why come all the way to Minneapolis? Why not start a Cafe Scientifique at The Commons in Morris?
Crops for food? You must be talking about food for the animals who are food for us, right? Who in their right mind would be eating the grain and grasses we’re talking about? :-)
I just finished reading Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories Bad Calories” Veeeeerrrrrry interesting.
Eat a cow, reduce the methane! ;-)
ANF
Test for Comic Sans?