I have a technically oriented education and spend a LOT of time reading the various newspapers ,web sites, and magazines that cover agriculture,energy,environment,you name it-mostly for my own edification but also because I still plan on living comfortably for a while and spotting the big trends early might make all the difference.

Twenty or thirty years ago I was told by reputable journalists that the world was thoroughly explored and that there would be no more major oil finds.I believed it.

Now I read that new finds are real possibilites/actualities due to deep water tech mostly.I believe it.

(I still believe in po,and have intellectually since I can't remember when,but I have only taken the concept seriously in recent years as it didn't matter much to me as long as it was another few years away.)

No matter what I look into it seems that the issue really is in doubt,and that the results are determined as much or more by the public relations wars fought by investors,lobbyists,environmentalists,and deal cutting politicians as by the engineering and biological facts-which are themselves disputed in nearly every case,even though there may be no dispute among the technically literate in SOME cases.

I'm not a genius but I am a lot smarter than your average bear,as is the case with 99 percent of the people who post on this site.

Now if I(and I am sure many or most other OD regulars) am often confused as to the actual facts regarding many serious issues and the most likely implications thereof,what chance does Joe SixPack or your high school English teacher-who most likely has only the barest fig leaf of a science course to her credit-have of sorting out the sci fi from the science?

It is perfectably understandable that the average citizens eyes glaze over at the mere mention of most of the stuff debated here.

Now that I've had my little rant and caffiene fix I feel a little better.

Plus my algal optimism meter has moved back into the green again.

The response here to the algae book review encourages me to believe that this technology will take off.I have long thought that it would someday become viable,and the drainage end of a feedlot looks like a very good spot for it to work at a primitive or early level.Land is cheap,water is available,any feed produced need not be transported very far,and any nutrient rich sludge can be spread on corn fields a good many miles away cheaper than most other commercial fertilizers can be produced and distributed.

If it doesn't work all the time not much is lost so long as it works well enough and often enough to pay its way,as any additional cleanup and recycling is better than none.

The key FACT INVOLVED is that if this process can be tuned to capture most of the phosphorus now being lost in waste water,it will enable us to put of the day of reckoning visavis phosphorus for a few more years-perhaps even a a couple of decades if it can be adapted to sewage treatment plants on a very large scale.Phosphorus is apt to be a very expensive commodity long before then,which will help keep the investors interested.

The algal chain of IFS-the biggest two letter word- is not so long that success is an impossible long shot imo-and we need to focus all our efforts on things that can be made to work within a couple of decades or bau is toast.