We prepared ourselves for the symposium of the day, on Plant Carbon Cycling. The first speaker was an Australian who seemed like a nice guy and tried to make it interesting, but he just didn't make any sense. He was using equations to discuss modeling of photosynthetic rates in shade leaves versus high light leaves so making sense is a tall task. No one had questions for him.
The second speaker seemed like a business man with a plan for saving the United States - all you have to do, it's very simple really, all you have to do is - instead of planting all this corn for ethanol like you're doing now, well, just plant miscanthus or switchgrass instead.
There are several problems with this simple idea from a business perspective, including, resistance to change, resistance to planting perennial instead of annual crops (because you can't change what you plant if the markets change), no biorefineries in the area, and no cheap conversions of lignocellulosic biomass into liquid fuel. However, from an ecologist's perspective, it's great! The land becomes a carbon and nitrogen sink, so that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and the biodiversity of the landscape increases from 2 plants (corn and soybean) to 3 or maybe even 4. He got one question.
During the coffee break we sat in the hall and read our books. Eric is devouring the Collected Sherlock Holmes, while I am whizzing through the Anne of Green Gables books. I'm already on Anne's House of Dreams, and I remember some key plot points that I'm just waiting to have divulged. So we reluctantly began to pay attention to the third speaker, Paul Falkowski. I have read his work before on photosynthesis and already had a sense that he is a crank. He told us about the two carbon cycles in the evolution of Earth. The slow cycle is very slow and ancient, and caused all the carbon stores of the Earth to be locked up in rocks. Soil carbon sequestration or biomass turnover mean nothing compared to the carbon content of these rocks. The fast carbon cycle is based on photosynthesis and also relates to oxygen availability. He spoke very quickly and determinedly and I stayed awake for the whole thing. His biggest point was that oceans are an amazing store of carbon as part of the slow cycle - but it's only good for carbon sequestration if inorganic carbon is entering the oceans, such as limestone. The rate of production of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels is unable to be countered by normal oceanic absorption, so if we don't quit it with the fossil fuels we're fucked. Thank you for your attention.
He got many questions.
The last speaker is convening the next international panel on climate change, and reminded me a lot of Pat Reeves. He showed us how we have very good ways of measuring carbon fluxes in the air and the ocean, as well as overall, but carbon flux on the land is just "whatever's left". This is an embarrassing situation for scientists, so he showed us some new tools that might help alleviate this problem. Nevertheless, he agreed with Paul Falkowski that burning fossil fuels is definitely not helping anything.
And that was that. Eric had to do his poster session now, which meant standing by his poster for two hours so that no one could talk to him. This was the even-numbered poster night. I looked in the program for any interesting posters I might check out, and they were all odd-numbered. So I wandered around very bored eating popcorn. Eric had popcorn too, and some people did talk to him - a busybody lady with purple rimmed glasses and a purple backpack and a purple sweatshirt tied around her waist, who told him the only way to get to know people at a convention was to talk to them, and who told him she didn't know anything about copper or laccases. Then a drunk guy talked to him about the drunk guy's project (there was a cash bar set up in the poster hall, so people could get to know each other easier). And a lady from Cold Spring Harbor told him that his microRNA target prediction was all wrong and her way is much better.
But then it was done, and now Eric can take the poster back and hang it in the hallway and put it on his resume. It was a very awkward and boring time all around.
We went back to Brit's Pub to celebrate, and this time it wasn't windy at all and people were bowling on the green, mostly wearing white, which looked very nice. We had some drinks and then the shuttle took us home. Our previous drivers had all been African immigrants but this dude had pink Ray-Bans and a creeper mustache and was very white. He still wore a suit-jacket like the other dudes so it wasn't 100% creepy but still...
We realized that we were still hungry so we finally succumbed to the Wendy's across the street and enjoyed many fine selections from the dollar menu. In Fort Collins just before leaving they all had Wendy's and the fries had so much salt on them they were literally inedible - except to Tai who thought they were a little salty. Stupid guys being tough! These fries, though, were just right, as were the Frosties and the sandwiches.
The pool at the hotel was full of noisy kiddies again, including the hot tub, so we forsake that pleasure in favor of hot showers. Eric has now finished the Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes and has only the Memoirs left, which he will save to start tomorrow.
whew!
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