Perhaps I'm an asshole, but I worry more about the endocrine disrupting powers of plastics more than I do the layer of black carbon in the atmosphere. I'm not sure if it's correct or not, but I heard that the atmospheric carbon has an upper limit before it just can't be held in the atmosphere anymore and the excess comes back to earth.

We really, really need to get on with our plastic recycling business, turning old forms of it into inert construction materials. This poses very bad for all life on the planet.

I'd also like something done about the deaths of reefs. Gotta tighten up global farming and agricultural practices so the runoff isn't feeding a population explosion of starfish. And jellyfish. The last thing we need is an ocean full of inedible crap.

>>458

Yeah, the carbon does, but it keeps on trucking in the ground the same way it does in the sky.

IBM has an idea to make PET plastics more recyclable, but its yet to be seen if their use of organic catalyists to get new polymerization reactions will be cost effective or not:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/recycled-plastic-gets-fairy-godmother.html

>>459
'Ow ta speak economist...
Big Fat Government Subsidy.

http://www.greenwala.com/community/blogs/all/5413-U-S-Sitting-on-Mother-Load-of-Rare-Tech-Crucial-Minerals

Bumping this with related info I came across, rather than new thread: Synthetic Photosynthesis as a hydrogen producing mechanism...oh wait, they actually made the GM organism do SOMETHING MORE DIFFICULT THAN THAT.

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/nano/toward-hydrogen-economy-clues-nature

A nice simplified breakdown of how exactly Craig Venter and his team went about creating that synthetic cell:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575266460432676840.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

>>1065
>>1239
This shit is so amazing.