Daily Science Dose

Some big news came out of Washington today…

Maybe you are aware that the US Congress is finally attempting to address anthropogenic climate change, and by that I mean to say that the US government is maybe poised to possibly pass legislation in support of not only lowering carbon emissions, but also promoting renewable and clean energy sources.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee (ECC for the rest of this post) has approved H.R. 2454 — the American Clean Energy and Security Act — and has reported the bill to the House, for what will undoubtedly be a fun time to start watching C-SPAN. The vote just among the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee was 33 to 25, which yes, is a decisive victory within the microcosm of a congressional body, but still, methinks that the fight against “clean energy” legislation will be, ahem, dirty.

However, maybe this country has had enough of the Bush Era thinking that if we bury our heads in the sand, it won’t get as hot. The ECC was urged by many an environmental group to send the bill to the House, but you might be surprised at how many energy and manufacturing companies have given their support to the proposed legislation. Energy companies like Shell and BP, Duke Energy and Entergy; manufacturing concerns like Alcoa and GE, DuPont and Dow Chemical . Even the Big 3 automakers are signed on to support reducing the US carbon emissions by 83% by 2050 (working off 2005 levels).

Now, whether you blame human activity for global climate change issues or not, this move toward clean, renewable energy is smart and forward-thinking. Oil, gas and coal will run out one day. Why not do some planning now to make the transition easier for everyone when that time comes? Not only that, but fossil fuels almost invariably result in some form of waste that pollutes our land, air and water. I’ve never heard of a wind turbine leaching heavy metals into the groundwater supply.

Then again, I don’t want to give too much credit to Congress just yet…but hey, it’s a start.

Committee on Energy and Commerce, Energy and Commerce Committee, House, US, United States government, climate change legislation, Congress, global warming, renewable energy, fossil fuels, clean energy, green jobs, carbon emissions

It seems that Entergy’s CEO and chairman Wayne Leonard is the one of the few energy industry leaders that doesn’t oppose a proposed cap and trade system that is being debated in Congress. In fact, Leonard is not only not opposed, but he supports the legislation — as long as it is the right cap and trade system.

Entergy Corporation, based in Louisiana, is blessed with natural gas and a sizable “fleet” of nuclear power generation stations. And we all know that nuclear power is clean* and natural gas, according to energy experts like Sarah Palin, is clean and green. And that means that Entergy produces electricity from some of the cleaner sources around in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

*But not in terms of radioactive waste that lasts and lasts.

So, let’s say that Congress passes cap’n trade legislation that would auction off credits for companies to be allowed to produce carbon emissions. A company like Entergy would have to buy fewer of those credits or permits in order to cover its rather low levels of emissions. That means less costs are passed down to you, the consumer. That makes Entergy’s Leonard happy.

However, Entergy has not done much to expand its renewable power portfolio. And one form of the cap and trade law could include a government mandate as to how much renewable energy a company has to produce. That would make Leonard sad. He doesn’t think the Fed should mandate this renewable component, as he feels that the free market will prevail in encouraging companies to invest in the most economical renewables (if there are any in Leonard’s eyes) in order to decrease costs for pollution permits.

And then, there is the whole idea of the Fed giving away the credits to companies based on its individual emissions based on say a year chosen at random, like 2005. And if your company can reduce its emissions and not have to use all of those permits, your company can sell them to companies that still pollute. Well, Entergy had already reduced what emissions they could have by 2005, because they were responsible and did it way back in 2000. So, now all that hard work they already did, when it was voluntary, will work against them, as Entergy will get a smaller amount of credits to sell off to the the coal plant down the street, who never did anything in the first place or even now to reduce its emissions levels.

So, this insight into how one energy company views the current debate over cap and trade legislation is interesting to me, but also rather irritating. Think about it. Entergy is but one of many, many large and rich corporations that produce energy and do in it a way that pollutes the Earth. Each company is going to do its best to pressure someone in Congress to adjust, rewrite or add an amendment to the cap and trade law, if it even passes, that will be advantageous to that company, perhaps to the detriment to another company, who will then fight the new law. I just don’t see cap and trade passing any time soon, but then again, I’m not sure if it will make a difference in the long run.

And then again again, it’s not fair to blame the energy companies. They are only giving us what we want — cheap energy and a lot of it.

Reading the article in the Times-Picayune, I noted that Entergy is spending more than 4 million dollars on lobbying Congress to pass a cap and trade law that will benefit them. It makes you wonder how much the Coal Industry as a whole is spending to fight cap and trade altogether? What if all that money were spent on research and development of new technologies, more efficient energy infrastructure, and a better way to deal with spent nuclear fuel?

energy, Entergy, electricity, renewable energy, nuclear power, natural gas, Louisiana, cap and trade, Congress, carbon emissions, pollution

I was happy with the “talk the talk, but does he walk the walk” comment.

Thank you, CBS, for covering this charade foisted on the American Public for far-too-long. I can bitch and bitch about coal, but when it comes right down to it, nothing is going to change anytime soon.

What I don’t get is this fanatical need for the US Energy Kings to push the “grow the economy” paradigm. Maybe our economy is built on the same inflated values of Wall Street. It’s like we just found this cheap energy trough, and like pigs, we are stuffing ourselves with no thought to the consequences (like why is the farmer fattening us up in the first place?).

I am seeing the same scary consumptive trend in anything eco- or green or earth-friendly. Earth friendly would mean cutting back on all that sh*t you buy every day. If we all go out and replace our entire wardrobes with organic cotton and bamboo, we are still creating a waste stream that undermines our efforts to live lightly. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. That’s as eco- as you can get, but then that doesn’t “grow our economy,” does it?

Back to 60 Minutes…it’s about time that a major news organization calls our the Emperor’s nudity. Will it make a difference? Ah, heck no. Seriously, I hate to be pessimistic here, but we are doomed. Like I mentioned yesterday, we are not all going to die, but it’s going to be bad.

Here’s my great idea, and you heard it here first. Use carbon dioxide in fission-style reactions and capture the energy released while producing oxygen and carbon monoxide, which can then be converted into liquid fuels. Oh, crap, someone beat me to it.

In the late 1950’s, two scientists working at UCLA came up with a process in which fresh water can be made from seawater. It’s a little thing called reverse osmosis. One of those UCLA guys, while working at Ben-Gurion in Israel, had an idea to use the same kind of process to create energy.

It’s quite simple. The way that osmosis works with fresh versus seawater, water will naturally move from a less-concentrated solution (fresh water) to a more-concentrated solution, i.e. the salty water, and once something moves, it creates kinetic energy, and energy is energy, people. You just have to figure out a way to optimize and harness it.

And that is what this Sidney Loeb fellow wanted to do. He patented it anyway in 1973, and named the process Pressure Retarded Osmosis (gee, I wonder if you could get away with naming it that today). But with osmosis, you need a membrane that is permeable to something like water and not to something else, say salt. The water moves from fresh to salty, creating a flow, if enough pressure is present. The amount of pressure is key, and if you doubt me, think of a shower with really low water pressure. Yeah, exactly.

With enough pressure, you can move turbines, and turbines run generators, and yep, you got power. A group in Norway is working on new and improved membranes that can actually produce the pressure (about 12 atmospheres) needed to create power, which was the sticky point since 1973. The Norwegians are looking at plans to build a prototype power plant in a fjord near Oslo, a great location in terms of ample supplies of both fresh and seawater.

The Dutch group working on similar plans for their own prototype and they have come up with the term Blue Energy. The Dutch plans also include a series of batteries, powered by the salt water. Blue Energy uses the movement of the ions present in salt water, the + Na and the - Cl. It makes me think of how a solar panel works, using ions to create an electron flow which creates electricity.

So far, it seems that a fifth of the power that the little pressure retarded osmosis systems produce are needed to pump the water, so obviously, things are going to have to become a lot more efficient before we start replacing all the coal plants with osmosis plants. So designing the shape of the membrane “tubes” will become important, to maximize surface area, but also be as compact as possible. And then there is maintenance and cleaning of said membranes…and a limited number of suitable locations…constructing in hard-to-reach places that will require new roads…

Besides that, it’s brilliant. Clean, non-obtrusive, safe for the environment and wildlife…The Europeans are obviously getting creative.

reverse osmosis, osmosis, UCLA, desalinization, fresh water, seawater, salt water, pressure retarded osmosis, PRO, membrane, electron flow, ions, electricity, power, kinetic energy, energy, green energy, Blue Energy, Oslo, Norway, Netherlands

We humans are in quite a noodle. We need energy. Both in our bodies in the form of food and in our creature comforts in the form of fuel. Crops need good soil in which to grow, and there is only so much good soil in the world. Our fuel choice du seicle are fossil fuels, and though they sure do create a lot of energy, they also create a lot of carbon dioxide and other environmentally-detrimental substances. So-called biofuels are those that are not based upon deposits of petrochemicals underground, but instead rather on renewable (read re-growable) plant or other organic matter. Seems like these fuels would make a better choice for humanity’s power lust, but…

Some biofuels are better than others.

Japtropha

Jatropha curcas, also known as the Barbados Nut and the Physic Nut is a perennial shrub that produces black seeds or “nuts” that contain a large amount of oil that can be used directly in some generators and can also be processed into a higher quality bio-diesel. The seed is about one-third oil, and one hectare of jatropha bushes can produce over one metric ton of oil in even poor soils.

And that is the real bonus of jatropha. Jatropha bushes can grow just about anywhere. The bushes only need about 10 inches of rain a year, and that is only when they are young. Additionally, the Jatrophas are long-lasting producers and can live for 40 years.

Jatropha up until recently was not cultivated as a domesticated crop, but that may be changing as the potential of jatropha is being researched and developed in such developing countries as Zambia, Mali, India, China and the Phillipines. Jatropha originates in the Central America, and was exported to colonies to grow as live hedges to keep livestock and crops safe. The bushes are poisonous to most animals, so it acts as a great fence, in addition to acting as a good wind break for more delicate crops. The bushes were also inter-planted among field crops, and it was found that the bushes grew very well as companion plants.

Oh, did I mention that Japtropha has no need for pesticides and deters pests from entering the field? Yeah, jatropha is naturally disease- and pest-resistant. And the matter that is left over after the seeds have been pressed for oil is naturally high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which are the big three nutrients used to fertilize other crops.

Let’s review. Jatropha can grow in poor soils that won’t grow other crops and needs very little water. It can be interplanted among other crops as a secondary crop, and acts as a pest-deterrent. It needs no fertilizing, and it’s waste matter makes a great fertilizer rich in nutrients. Jatropha produces a biofuel that can be used to run generators in small villages as well as processed to produce biodiesel.

In addition to biofuels, the jatropha oil can also be made into soap, charcoal, and mosquito repellant.

jatropha, jatropha curcas, biofuels, biodiesel, fossil fuels, carbon dioxide, crops, agriculture, energy, fertilizer, pesticide, nutrients, soil

He’s been a professor at Stanford, he runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, oh, and he was part of team of scientists that won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Not a bad choice for Energy secretary, eh?

And the best part is that he understands the carbon conundrum. Kudos, Mr. Obama, for choosing Mr. Chu as your man to lead this nation’s energy policy.

So much better than that Dick Cheney, plain and tall…and in the pocket of the oil and coal companies. Not that Cheney was Secretary of the Department of Energy, but he might as well have been with his closed door energy wheelings and dealings. Not to mention the team of henchmen Bush employed to allow those oil and coal companies to ignore the consequences of carbon emissions.

I see a brighter and more informed energy future for America and in turn, the World.

Steven Chu is a big advocate for energy conservation. In a Q&A with Science News, he details that buildings account for nearly 40% of all energy consumed, and that with new more efficient technology and building methods, we can get that percentage down to half of that. He also feels that number can drop further, achieving the same results on 25% of what had previously been needed to run the same buildings.

Chu also advocates governmental tax credits to spur advances in energy technologies. In addition to tax credits, Chu feels that the US should be building a “greener” workforce in energy industries, by supporting universities and laboratories in developing the next generation of scientists that will continue to advance the field. Give more grants to professors, who in turn can employ more graduate students, who will in turn become the scientists that develop new and better technology to work to solve our inevitable energy crisis.

Steven Chu, Obama, Secretary of Energy, Department of Energy

How sad is it that it takes television commercials to inform the American public of, well, anything.

I have complained in the past about the Clean Coal ad campaign. So-called clean coal is not an economically viable alternative to simply allowing all kinds of bad stuff — carbon dioxide, methane, mercury, arsenic, to name a few — to enter the air we breathe. Furthermore, no one has actually built a successful large clean coal power generating plant.

Well, finally, environmental groups are entering the ad campaign game to counter the Clean Coal ad campaign. And Al Gore is putting his Nobel-prize-winning-weight behind the campaign.

A group of environmental organizations concerned about global warming, including one backed by former vice president Al Gore, is launching an advertising campaign this week to counter the coal industry’s efforts to promote what it calls “clean coal.”

The groups will spend millions of dollars on television, newspaper and outdoor ads, the first of which shows a factory door in the middle of a barren landscape and the slogan: “In reality, there is no such thing as ‘clean coal.’ ” The ads say that “there isn’t a single commercial coal power plant in America today that captures its global warming pollution.”

The campaign is a response to a $15 million-plus ad campaign that began earlier this year by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry-backed group that has tried to spruce up coal’s image. –Washington Post

Gore is super-serial about this greenwashing of the coal industry. He goes on to say that “We cannot base the strategy for human survival on the illusions of the industry that coal is already clean. It is not. What they want to do is build hundreds, if not thousands, of new coal plants on a vague promise that they might be able to retrofit those plants with a technology that does not exist.”

Of course, the Big Coal lobby’s public facade known as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity had a response.

… Joe Lucas, vice president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says that technology has helped coal plants meet environmental standards for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and that it will ultimately help reduce carbon dioxide emissions too. “To use the words of a new resident of Washington, ‘Yes we can’ invest in the technologies to make us capable of storing and capturing carbon from coal plants,” Lucas said.

“Ultimately”…hmm, that’s a funny word, as it describes a time, but that time could be a long, long time away. I give the coal industry credit for trying, but to come out with an ad campaign that plainly sells lies to Americans (and to the world, ultimately)is, frankly, irresponsible.

Instead of pumping hundreds of millions of money into researching clean technology for a resource that is limited and will run out, why not invest that same money into a renewable, clean source of energy? I may be talking crazy to some shareholders of energy companies that rely on coal — which is, like, all of them — but are we as a species really that stupid to not only believe in wasting money on short-term R&D, but also to believe the Coal Industry’s lies?

coal, clean, energy, industry, mining, technology, ad campaign, commercials, Al Gore, greenwashing, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, renewable, resources

I tend to think that if you are sweeping dirt under a rug, you are avoiding the real problem of the dirt being there in the first place. I kind of feel the same way about carbon sequestration.

The US Department of Energy has recently published its Carbon Sequestration Second Atlas, and in that atlas, it is estimated that there is enough space underground to store the next 1,100 years worth of carbon emissions from both the United States and Canada. Of course, it is only an estimate of available storage space that hasn’t exactly been tested yet.

Unfortunately, despite my reluctance to accept the efficacy of carbon dioxide being pumped into porous rock formations, saline formations, depleted oil and gas reservoirs, or unmineable coal seams, carbon sequestration may be one of many steps we humans have to take in order to turn back the tide on global warming due to increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

It seems to me that if you first try to cut carbon emissions via clean energy technology, then maybe drilling into these deep underground spaces wouldn’t be necessary. However, I don’t see any drastic cuts in emissions any time soon. I wish it were otherwise, but this world is too fractured by both national and corporate interests to come to any kind of smart plan to combat our own pollution.

What makes carbon sequestration a silver bullet? No one can say with any degree of certainty that trapping carbon dioxide underground would stay trapped. Seems like it is just more “burying our problems”, a out of sight, out of mind mentality. And Yucca Mountain comes to mind. Or your friendly, necessary(?) muncipal landfill. Is it just a natural human tendency to want to bury things?

However, regulations have to be passed in order for anything to happen on a large scale, said Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The only way carbon capture will occur in any meaningful way is if there are policies that give businesses an incentive to do it, Herzog said.

“Until there are policies that restrict the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, it’s always going to be cheaper to emit” instead of capture and store the gas, he said.

If businesses do receive incentives to put carbon dioxide underground, federal regulations and inspections will have to ensure the gas doesn’t leak out.

“If you put it in the ground, you want to make sure it stays in there,” Herzog told UPI. “You don’t want to pay for something if you don’t get it.”

And make no mistake about it, someone will have to pay for it. Herzog and his colleagues at MIT estimate current investments in carbon capture and storage need to triple for wide-scale implementation to occur. For the federal government, that would mean increasing the annual carbon storage budget from about $300 million to $1 billion.–UPI via Terra Daily

Oh, wait, it’s going to cost us taxpayers money and big business is going to have to be urged to bury their/our carbon emissions responsibly? Add to that the increased costs for the energy produced at those power plants that will be passed down to the consumers (who will know be paying twice for this carbon sequestration service).

Yeah, that’ll work.

carbon sequestration, clean coal, US, United States, Canada, Department of Energy, atlas, porous rock, formation, saline, oil mine, power plant, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, global warming, Yucca Mountain, landill, business, consumers, energy costs

Ah, again, I write about coal. This time it is good news indeed.

The Environmental Protection Agency has had to swallow its own hot air over new coal-fired power plants. This week, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board (kind of an independent oversight) decided that the EPA had no reason to not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.

This all started when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide (CO2) is indeed a pollutant last year. As such, and as all pollutants, the EPA has a responsibility to regulate the amount of said pollutant into our environment. However, the EPA (with the Bush-appointed Stephen Johnson — booooo!) didn’t seem to see why it should bother to regulate the coal industry and its lobby (or any other industry that emits CO2), as Big Coal is Big Biz, and we all know that when the environment and Big Biz are competing for George W. Bush’s attention and favor, Big Biz will always win.

But cooler and smarter and fairer heads have prevailed. Now, over 100 coal plants that are in the pre-production process across the US, have to rethink their business plan and their blueprints. Any new coal-fired power plant will have to take its CO2 emissions into account, which essentially means that it is doubtful that the US will see new coal plants anytime soon.

The Sierra Club had originally sued to stop the construction of Deseret Power’s Bonanza Generating Station in Vernal, Utah, part of their nationwide campaign to stop new coal. The 110-megawatt plant, which received its EPA permit in July 2007, would have emitted 3.37 million tons of CO2 a year — the equivalent to putting another 660,000 cars on the road. In detail, Thursday’s decision means that any new air pollution permits for coal plants will require that Best Available Control Technology (BACT) be used to reduce CO2 emissions, the same criteria currently used for other pollutants, like sulfur dioxide or soot. BACT requires companies involved in power plants to use the best available technology to control pollutants — it’s a tool to keep pollution controls up to date as both safety technology and our understanding of pollution impoves. In the past, CO2 wasn’t affected by BACT because the EPA didn’t recognize it as a pollutant. This decision changes that.

Right now, however, there is no definition of BACT for CO2, and environmentalists estimate it will take six months to a year to figure that out. In the meantime, all other coal plants in the permitting process, or stuck in the courts, will be frozen. Over the longer term, it’s possible that new coal plants may be impossible to certify at all until a technology exists to greatly reduce or sequester carbon emissions from coal plants — and currently none has been proven. “The decision says the EPA can’t ignore CO2,” says Nilles. –Time

It is nice to see this kind of justice happen, not only in regards to keeping more coal plants from being built, but also that George W. Bush’s plans to gut the EPA’s protections in regards to CO2 are being frustrated — well, finally.

Still, it doesn’t help that China and India are building coal plants. Check out this graphic below for a wake up call. Click on the image to see the details better.

EPA, environment, coal, power, plants, coal-fired, carbon dioxide, CO2, pollution, George Bush, George W Bush, China, India

The title may not refer to you, as an individual, unless you happen to be a owner of a coal mine, but what some may see as a blight on the environment — a coal mine — the Dutch have converted into a geothermal power plant.

Your basic geothermal power plant

From a story on Energy Daily:

Claimed by its originators to be the world’s first such energy generator, the “Mine Water Project” in the south-western Limburg province went into operation last month, heating some 350 homes and businesses in a newly built neighbourhood in Heerlen.

It emits 55 percent less polluting carbon dioxide than other water heating systems.

“The global energy question can no longer be solved with fossil fuels,” Christion Cornips, executive of the residential company Weller that initiated the project, told AFP.

“Energy shortages have to be addressed at a local level, and mine water is an example of that.”

The project saw five new wells being drilled into the ground at five different locations. The wells reach depths of 700 metres (2,300 feet), from which are pumped nearly 80 cubic metres (2,800 cubic feet) of water per hour.

“The water temperature measures 32 degrees C (89 degrees F) at the bottom (of the well) and 28 degrees when it arrives at the surface,” explains Jan-Jaap van Bergermeer, who supervises the project.

What does this mean? It means that the areas of this world that may not have their own inherent potential for geothermal energy production may be able to fake it — if the area happens to have some deep mines.

The Province of Limburg and its former coal mines.

It’s quite simple. When you get past a certain depth down in the Earth’s surface, things start getting hotter. The closer to the Earth’s mantle, the hotter it becomes, and we humans can use that heat in the form of geothermal energy. We take the heat (thermal) from the Earth (geo) and we use that heat, better thought of here as potential energy to create steam. The steam, due to its expansive nature, takes its potential heat energy and turns a turbine, thus converting the potential energy to kinetic energy, which creates electrons to flow through power lines, and voila, electricity! Ok, that is a really simplified explanation, but give me a break, I teach kids and I try to make things understandable for everyone involved in this silly little muddle called Daily Science Dose.

The Dutch Province of Limburg was once a prosperous coal-mining region, but coal became more and more expensive to mine in that part of Europe, as the government did not artificially make coal more competitive with other energy sources with the help of subsidies, as in the United States.

The Minewater Power Plant is not quite at the point where it is generating electricity, but instead employs the heat from the water to heat radiators in homes. Scientists had discovered that water had seeped into the abandoned mines over time, and that water was hot. 89 degrees Fahrenheit at the bottom, and a bit cooler at the surface. The Minewater Power Plant pumps up the hot water, pumps it through pipes to heat residential water systems that run radiators in 350 homes in a small neighborhood in the Netherlands.

The flip side of the Minewater Power Plant is that homes can also be cooled by the same methods, the difference being that cool water in shallower wells is used instead of the hot water from almost a half-mile below the Earth’s surface.

When you think about how much energy is used to heat and cool buildings, it can be quite a lot of non-renewable resources used and a whole lotta carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. So even if these minewater projects are feasible in former (soon to be former when the coal runs out) coal mining regions, it could still cut into conventional energy demand and conventional energy pollution.

Dutch, geothermal, energy, electricity, coal, mine, mining, abandoned mines, Limburg, power, Minewater power plant, pollution, carbon dioxide

Ok, that is a bit misleading, I admit, but scientists have discovered a fungus in South American that produces octane and other hydrocarbons that are also found in petroleum.

Gary Strobel, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, happened upon a fungus growing on an Ulmo tree in Patagonia. When he and other researchers grew the fungus in their lab, they found that the fungus “exhaled” the same hydrocarbons that are found in diesel fuel.

From Science:

After discovering the new fungus wedged between cells in a stem from an Ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), Strobel and colleagues cultured the organism, collected the gaseous compounds it produced, and ran the compounds through a mass spectrometer to identify them. When he saw the printout, Strobel says, “every hair on my body stood up.” The list included octane, 1-octene, heptane, 2-methyl, and hexadecane–all common components of diesel fuels.

Although other microbes are known to make individual volatile hydrocarbons common in fuels, Strobel says none can match the synthetic repertoire of G. roseum, which makes a staggering 55 volatile hydrocarbons: “No one has ever observed anything like this with any microbe before.” He suspects that the fungus produces the hydrocarbon stew to inhibit other organisms from growing nearby.

So this little fungus gives off these noxious fumes in order to carve out a nook for itself to live, and this “perfume” just happens to be the same stuff that we humans rely on for transportation needs. My question is naturally, if we do find a way to harness this octane brew, will it still burn off into carbon dioxide?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Seriously, this is pretty neat, that a small microorganism can produce gasoline and jet fuel, but how is producing renewable fuels that are burned and give off carbon dioxide among other gases help us in the long run? I agree that these fuel-producing microbes could alleviate “peak oil” and great loss we will all suffer when the eventual day comes when we run out of oil. But unless scientists can also find a microbe that can turn carbon dioxide into oh, let’s say, oxygen, I don’t see how these new biofuels, renewable or not, can help mitigate all that carbon dioxide we all have had a hand in pumping into Earth’s atmosphere.

However, to play the positive side of Lulu, this new fungus could provide impetus for people to preserve what little undisturbed wilderness we have left on this planet. If this little fungus was growing on a tree in Patagonia, who knows what is growing on trees in Canada’s arboreal forest, or the rainforess of Borneo. We could wipe out these trees and forests and other undisturbed ecosystems before we have the opportunity to stumble upon little hydrocarbon-producing fungi.

biofuels, gas, oil, octane, fuel, transportation, fungus, ulmo tree, South America, Patagonia, hyrdocarbons, forests, rainforest, Canadian arboreal, wilderness, carbon dioxide, oxygen