How About a Big Blob of Fungus to Heat Your Home

Yah, of course you already have one and you call it a husband but we mean fo' real fungus as a heat source and not simply by burning the stuff.  (Science Daily:  Biomass heating could get a 'green' boost with the help of fungi)

In colder weather, people have long been warming up around campfires and woodstoves. Lately, this idea of burning wood or other biomass for heat has surged in popularity as an alternative to using fossil fuels.  Now scientists report a step toward a "greener" way to generate heat with biomass.  Rather than burning it, which releases pollutants, they let fungi break it down to release heat.

- Science Daily

That was the summary but here's what they can do.

The researchers incubated two fungi species that do well in hot climates -- lignin-degrading Phanerochaete chrysosporium and cellulose-degrading Chaetomium thermophilum -- with blocks of birch wood, either sterile or with its natural biota.  C. thermophilum produced the most heat (0.63 Watts per kilogram) when degrading wood with its usual microbial inhabitants.  To generate enough heat for an average home in the Netherlands, for example, the researchers say they need to determine optimal nutrient, moisture and temperature conditions, as well as other parameters, to increase power production to 6 W/kg.

- Science Daily

Maybe you're feeling all scientific about this time and computing, well, to get that much heat then I will need 'x' number of kilos plus a whole lot of wood chips and then I can heat my house.

Let's review, Calculator Man, since the topic here is fungus.  In our review, what else do you know is a fungus ... yes, the fucking black mold.  In many things we do, we're trying to keep the fucking deadly black mold fungus out of the house and in this case we instead bring a different fungus into it ... by the fucking kilogram.

All it's going to take is one genetic variety to make you and your house the giant blog which ate the neighborhood.

(Ed:  this is getting Tim Burton again!)

Well, that's likely to happen when we're dealing with a deadly poisonous mold as a topic at a cocktail party.

(Ed:  you have never been to a cocktail party in your life!)

Nah, and I wouldn't want to be as hanging out in one as sophisticated drunkies or regular drunkie rummies is just the same.  They only wear better clothes at the cocktail parties ... but we bet Tim Burton has been to them.  Visualize that nightmare.

(Ed:  this hasn't been so much sci fi as horror movies lately!)

Well, it rolls where it will and sometimes that's to glorious visions of the future and others lead to horrible global death as we're eaten by mad fungus.  Perhaps you're getting a glimmer of why I hardly ever watch horror movies ... because I fuckin' believe them and, aaaiiiyyyeeee, the monster is going to eat my eyes .... aiiiyyyeeeeeeee.