#19 Rockdork and #26 Osprey101 are on the right track.

It's just amazing to me that there was a net build-up of such an energy rich substance on this far from equilibrium planet. The principles described in the book "into the cool" suggest the existence of universal inertia leading toward the degradation of energy-rich gradients like carbon-rich fossil deposits. In other words I am surprised some superbug did not come along to exploit the resource long before us super-monkeys came along.

The "deep hot biosphere" is on my "need to read" list.

I'd like to see the email he wrote two days after installing MovieMaker and finding how unstable and inadequate it is. MS seems to have done next to nothing to improve moviemaker since dropping that turd.

I am also unconvinced this is email real. The author sounds like they've just started using the internet.

Haven't we been through this already? Maybe I am just having a deja vu moment. After much debate, the conclusion will be that we can't do thermodynamically better than a tree. It's solar powered, converts carbon to a solid form and guards it against decay with fire resistant bark, self-healing properties, and phytochemical defenses. See
http://www.slideshare.net/guestf419ee/debunking-myths-about-forest-carbon-and-global-warming/

Three points:
First, cement is VERY heavy (a 50 lb bag is about as big a two big loaves of bread) so it's probably not shipped long distances in large quantities. just as nearly every town has a gravel source nearby, every state or region probably has a cement plant.
Second, cement production releases huge amounts of CO2 because as part of the production process they heat large quantities of limestone releasing carbon from the ancient shells of plankton. This is probably one of the big reasons that China has surpassed the US in GHG emissions.
Third, building is a dilemma in terms of global warming because cement emits fossil carbon and loggging native forests releases long-stored carbon as well.

unable to form an opinion, but I thought I'd share it anyway...

One problem with using books for insulation is that they are generally made of virgin fibers that come from trees and logging those trees results in a large pulse of carbon to the atmosphere which contributes to global climate change. Forests are good places to store carbon because they are generally stable and long-lived. Wood products are not such good places to store carbon because we live in a throw away culture. Studies have shown that only about 15-24% of the carbon stored in forests ends up stored as wood products after logging, while the remaining carbon is emitted to the atmosphere as logging slash, milling waste, transport energy, etc. It's safe to say that for every kilogram of carbon in your house or in your books there is another three kilograms of carbon in the atmosphere. I am not arguing against books, but let's not let the feel good thing go too far. At best, using your books for insulation might be a good idea to help mitigate for the effects of logging. Check out my report on the subject http://tinyurl.com/2n96m5

I had this game when I was a kid and spent hours trying to master seemingly simple tasks, but it was very frustrating because the balls bounced ("boinged") all over the place. I think there was a very small sweet spot in the center of each membrane that would lead to predictable "boings." Everything outside the sweet spot resulted in haphazard trajectories.

Damn you Bing Bang Boing!

Nice post.

Feedback loops make the engineering solutions more complicated. We have to keep in mind all the feedbacks between the atmosphere and the biosphere, especially forests. We could manage forests to help store carbon or we could exacerbate the release of CO2 from forests to the atmosphere. These problems are highlighted by, for instance, the recent report showing that biofuel crops are being grown on land cleared of native vegetation which has a counterproductive effect on climate.

One of the last lines in the notes of Saul's talk says that "We managed to stop cutting down rain forests." This link indicates we need to keep working on that:
http://www.fao.org/forestry/static/data/fra2005/maps/2.7.jpg

See also this report on forest-carbon-climate:
http://tinyurl.com/2n96m5
(self promotion disclosure ;-)

This is one of the classic demonstrations of a dissipative structure known as a "chemical clock" that demonstrates ordered behavior stemming from "far from equilbrium thermodynamics." See here:
http://www.faidherbe.org/site/cours/dupuis/oscil.htm
http://staff.science.nus.edu.sg/~parwani/c1/node60.html

The Eugene Register-Gaurd recently published a five-part series on this problem:

THE SERIES

SUNDAY: The Formosa mine in Douglas County is an old-style mining mess that was created barely a decade ago by foreign investors.

TODAY: Federal and state officials and private companies work hard to avoid being pinned with the cost of cleaning up Oregon's numerous polluted metals mines.

TUESDAY: The abandoned Black Butte mine has been contaminating Cottage Grove Lake with mercury for decades, making fish unsafe for children to eat.

WEDNESDAY: A state effort to study and remediate widespread arsenic and mercury mining waste in the city of Sutherlin dies for lack of money.

THURSDAY: Soaring metals prices could spark a resurgence in metals mining in Oregon. Are regulators prepared?

ex//
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Agencies+refuse+to+lay+claim+to+mine+cleanup...-a0147630987
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Pollution-fighting+funds+are+starved+of+cash.(Environment)-a0147630988

My introduction to his music came with the query - what makes music? Sounds and .......... silence.

Most of the bacteria are on the inside not the outside of our bodies, and most of the bacteria are "friendly," that is "not infectious." Instead of trying to wash bacteria off (futile by the way), we should be encouraging a healthy ecosystem of good bacteria to live on our bodies in order to deprive the bad bacteria of resources and keep their population low.

I predict that in the future we will be buying all sorts of products with beneficial bacteria, not just yogurt, but also armpit juice, kitchen cleanser, etc.

Search for "competitive exclusion" bacteria.