Scientists Find Bugs That Eat Waste and Excrete Crude Oil

[tucsonlib]

Sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is apparently on the level. Silicon Valley scientists have genetically altered bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil. Where's the U.S. media on this? Isn't this potentially the story of the century?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

[pt22]

1. And they will be very happy to sell you stock in their ...er, enterprise.

:eyes:

[frogcycle]

2. anyone who goes apeshit

over this bugshit story

is batshit crazy

[bluedawg12]

3. This is a bummer

'However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago. "

[truedelphi]

4. And how would you keep the bugs from not eating the carbon

That we want to have remaining as carbon??

Anyone remember the tale of King Midas??

[bluedawg12]

5. The bugs eat sugar cane- great

Now we'll be dependent on bugs that eat imported sugar. E.coli to be specific.

Nice. I wonder what scientific journal this was NOT published in?

"Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel."

[kristopher]

6. There is nothing far-fetched or crazy about this

We need biofuel technology to produce energy stored in liquid form; and this is one of many promising avenues of exploration. We don't have to power our entire transportation infrastructure with it, but we have to have the qualities of liquid fuels to power heavy machinery in all sorts of applications such as mining, shipping, or aircraft.

Carbon neutral technologies like this beat the hell out of carbon intensive fossil fuels or ethanol.

And for the record, it doesn't require sugar - that is only one possible source of feedstock.

[Javaman]

7. poop. nt