Word: biomass
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...seater plane that stops first at a uranium-mining town called Olympic Dam, a cluster of machinery and huts in absolute flatness--red desert all around. As soon as you get out of the plane (which has to refuel), you are assailed by millions of flies. The fly biomass of central Australia must be 10 times the biomass of humans or kangaroos. You at once start doing the irritable wave of the hand known as the outback salute. The flies crawl into your nostrils, eyes and ears, and when you get back in the plane, they fly in clouds into...
None of this, of course, is entirely new. Advertising, like kudzu, has always existed opportunistically, moving unchecked through the cultural biomass until it finds a niche, then setting down roots. It long ago took hold on such improbable places as the fenders of racing cars and the insides of matchbook covers. The fact that logos and promotions now bloom on the uniforms of professional athletes, in the blinking screens of Internet data and even on the skin of the sad banana ought to be no surprise...
...This is assaulting the forest and extracting part of its biomass," he said. "There aren't many ecosystems in the world that are going to be helped in any way by that...
Oxygen is readily available in the atmosphere. But hydrogen only exists in trace amounts in the air, and must be produced artificially--usually from fossil fuels, and perhaps in the future from rotting biomass and solar panels...
...state of the orange roughy on New Zealand's Challenger Plateau. Discovered in 1979, this deep-water fishing hole took off in the 1980s when the mild-tasting, white-fleshed fish became popular with U.S. chefs. Happy to stoke the surging demand, fishermen are believed to have reduced the biomass of orange roughy as much as 80% before officials stepped in. Now, says Yale University ichthyologist Jon Moore, it may take centuries before the fishery rebounds. As scientists have belatedly learned, orange roughy grow extremely slowly, live 100 years or more and take 25 to 30 years to reach sexual...