Drew - I expect every foaming at the mouth freakazoid on the left to start screaming evil bushitlerburtonco scam and con within two nanoseconds of this being released into the msm -that is if it ever even budges the Obama/Wright mess out to be reported. . .
Imagine eliminating all the ‘cons’ of oil in such a damn short time - why this guy is the next Ray Kroc, Bill Gates and Henry Ford all rolled into one - the damn (and dying) American auto companies, American ‘oil’ companies and ripping off fleecers extraordinaire airlines ought to hire body guards and back this man (if it isn’t a hoax) to the max.
It would be the thing to turn around the American ‘recession’, boom the American economy and most importantly remove the US from ‘imperializing’ the Middle East. . .
But as those of us with functioning brain cells know, it will not solve the Middle East crisis because they will just sell to all the vile, evil thugs and mugs around the World - that is until the US teaches them (all the World oil buyers) to ‘fish’ for their own and maybe then the ME will be taught the lesson we all know -
Everyone goes after the Top of the Heap and tries to knock ‘em off - it is simply human nature. And when you fall - it is true character that will be the difference as to whether you rise again or wallow in your own waste. . .
So what are the science and economic blogs/sites saying about this - even an ounce of credibility or is this another lefist/fiberal pie in the sky scam meant only to drain a gazillion tax dollars from the hard working and legal citizens of the US?!? Inquiring minds want to know and not be put to mind numbing sleep by going to those sites ourselves!
Wardmama, the World Net Daily angle gives me pause too. They aren’t always tops when it comes to truthiness in reporting.
OTOH, it only took me a minute to find that other kinds of bacteria are highly useful in breaking down oil spills. They usually need the spill to be fertilized with some nitrogen and some phosphorus, then they go to town. Science has been pretty certain that crude oil was originally some kind of organic material, so making some ourselves is really a matter of understanding the process. It has to be some kind of decomposition too, since natural gas is almost always found in oil fields, and is also produced by composting. And by cows too!
One thing not mentioned in any of the articles is the cost of production. I’d like to think that it would be as easy as making beer - just grind the plants up in a big old vat, add water and bacteria, and come back in a couple weeks.
For now, I’ll allow myself the “audacity of hope” that this is real. It will revolutionize the entire world if true. Well, the entire world that actually has dirt and can grow things. It won’t do anything for the sandy countries.
I found out that JC Bell is on today’s G Gordon Libby radio show, but I don’t know how to get that.
As for officialness, the European Space Agency recently said that the satellite Cassini-Huygens has mapped Saturn’s moon Titan and found that the place contains more oil and natural gas than is present on earth. Dozens of oceans filled with crude oil!
Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.
...
Cassini has mapped about 20% of Titan’s surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth’s oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth’s coal reserves.
Even more interesting, the news releases call all these hydrocarbons “organics”. Ok, if they’re organics, doesn’t that mean they’re alive, or at least precursors to life? If so, why hasn’t this been a huge headline too?
“We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will be important in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe,”
Ok International Space Station, get busy building a 10 mile long tanker spaceship. I’ve got a mission for you!
But, to be really exacting, these news reports say “liquid hydrocarbons” and then compare the amount of that to the amount of oil here on Earth. There may be other kinds of liquid hydrocarbons, especially since Titan has a temperature of about 300 below.
Now, here’s the real problem. Whether it’s J.C. Bell or one of the other people working on this, one of the processes will work and the end product is hydrocarbon. The burning of hydrocarbons is the target of Al Gore and all the other Global Warming activists. That’s why we aren’t using more natural gas that burns cleanly without any special effort. That’s why we aren’t burning more coal, even though the technology to make it burn cleanly is difficult and reduces the profit margin of the power companies. Nuclear power has been shut down for other reasons, but all that matters is that it’s still off the board.
Gore and the others have pretty good political connections. What kind of road blocks do you think they will throw in the way of this technology? We can’t forget that Gore’s issue isn’t really Global Warming, it’s making sure that he and his cohorts remain on the top of the food chain while the rest of us get to sacrifice for the “greater good”. That is more important than any other word you can apply to it. You can call this Communist, Socialist, Fascist or anything else you want, that’s really unimportant. The net result will be that most of us will get screwed as a result, that’s important.
...sandy countries. ha! at least they won’t be thirsty what with all that oil to drink!!
You know the product - artifical skin - sat in the hands of a certain chemical company for more than 10 years. . .Their take on it, was that it wouldn’t be profitable (let us completely ignore the saving of life, limb and future quality of life that it would accomplish). . .Fast forward and Johnson & Johnson actually bought the ‘formula’ if you will and now, this field is exploding (even as recently as 2001 there were only two products - now in addition to the several products available, they are testing a bioengineered product to be introduced directly into wounds to ‘grow’ skin and heal from within the wound).
Hopefully - this ‘manufactured oil’ field too will not be destroyed at birth by the Goracle and other fiberals who want to scam our taxes even higher to line their pockets and keep us dependent on Big Brother Government forever and ever or until V Day - when we all rise up against the Machine (I think I just bled together 3 diff sci-fi movies). Oh well.
In a free market society - this will come to pass or fall flat into failure - let us hope and pray that the fiberals don’t get enough power to keep this from even seeing the light of day.
Man for once in my life - I’d love to be on the ground floor (and initial investing) on the next ‘big’ thing - this is the stuff of the American Dream. I guess we know that means that the fiberals will make sure no one hears about it and will attempt to destroy it.
Drew I don’t dispute the possibility that bacteria could be used in bioreactors to produce alternative fuels, but I am not convinced by the overall energy requirements. Also when I see a statement like this....
Natural microorganisms can, indeed, produce amounts of complex alcohols. Using the genetic engineering techniques, researchers got bacteria producing them, but it wasn’t a simple or cheap method to develop. Besides the E. Coli, the team expects to work with less harmful bacteria, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
I tend to get a bit sniffy. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is brewers/baking yeast. It is a micro-organism yes, but a bacteria no. Bacteria are Prokaryotes. They have no cell nucleus. Yeasts are related to fungi and are Eukaryotes having a cell nucleus. They are much more sophisticated organisms. It aggravates me when they can’t get the basic stuff right.
A couple of years ago, the big talk was a process called “thermal depolymerization” which did the same sort of convert-trash-into-oil by strictly chemical means. First grind up the waste in a huge garbage disposal. Then heat it with superheated water in a sealed pressure vessel. Open the valve & the water flashes off into steam (to heat the next batch) The residue goes to the next stage where it’s heated longer without the pressure. The result is a product that can also go through a refinery.
The last I heard, there was a plant processing the turkey waste from a Butterball plant into diesel. There was some argument over smell from the plant, so I’m not sure of it’s current status. These guys say their process would work, with tweaking, on just about any waste stream from municipal sewage to old tires.
Another guy has proposed growing huge ponds of saltwater algae which produce an oil. I can’t find the link right now, but the scale seemed possible.... makes more sense than using your food for fuel.
This could indeed be the salvation of the American economy. Between what we pump out of our own ground currently, and what we could produce from our “plant trash”, we could be totally self-sufficient. ME? Venezuela? Pah! Watch them squirm without OUR money for a product we no longer need to buy from them.
“I think it is also very interesting that one of the most promising bacteria is mankind’s old enemy E. Coli.”
Obvious to me, really. Especially when you know what happens after beer and chilli con carne.
Re Drew’s posting: 99% of the hydrocarbons in the Earth’s crust were created at the same time as 99% of the rest of the hydrocarbons in the solar system - before or during the accretion disk collapsed into planets. Due to high temperature and pressure in the body of the Earth, some was polymerised into longer chain molecules.
Also re Drew: organic in this context just means carbon compounds.
Do we have any bioengineers on this site? Brewers, perhaps? Any professional opinions on the feasibility?
Followup: glad to see my new location is showing up. Have started a new job in Austria.
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