Energy Developments

That you should be aware of. When the price of oil skyrocketed, people all over the world started to investigate alternatives. This is still at a developmental level like that of aviation in 1914, but the future looks promising.

Taking Pulp to the Pump
Gasifying black liquor from pulp mills will accelerate second-generation biofuels. So people aren't buying newspapers like they used to, maybe they can make fuel.

Cheaper Cellulosic Ethanol
Qteros thinks its microbe could cut production costs.

Lean eating machines: These slender bacteria, called Q microbes, can dissolve cellulose into sugars and convert the sugar into ethanol, all in one step. Credit: Qteros


Bacteria Make Better Alcohol Fuels

Modified E. coli produce long-chain alcohol fuels that have advantages over ethanol and butanol.

By engineering the metabolic process of the common E. coli bacteria, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have coaxed the microorganism into churning out useful long-chain alcohols that have potential as new biofuels. The bacteria-produced biofuels have between five and eight carbon atoms, compared with ethanol, which has two carbons.

Rainforest Fungus Makes Diesel

BOZEMAN, Montana, November 4, 2008 (ENS) - A unique fungus that makes diesel compounds directly from cellulose has been discovered living in trees in the Patagonian rainforest.

"These are the first organisms that have been found that make many of the ingredients of diesel," said Professor Gary Strobel from Montana State University. "This is a major discovery." From Environment News Service. Bet that critter gets its DNA sequenced pronto.

Culture plate of Gliocladium roseum, a fungus that produces myco-diesel hydrocarbons

Genetically modified genocide

DailyMail : GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops

Here's how that works.
India gets IMF loans in exchange for allowing western companies like Monsanto access to the billion-strong Indian markets.
Government seed banks ban traditional seeds to promote uptake of GM seeds.
Farmers are pitched the very expensive "magic seeds", Monsanto's BT Cotton.
Farmers take out loans to buy them.
Drought. Too bad because GM seeds require twice the water of traditional seeds.
Crops die and farmers are unable to save seeds to plant next year because of course there are no seeds.
Farmers takes out additional loans to buy more seeds.
More drought plus parasitic bollworms. Crop failure.
Farmers can't pay off loans. Lose land. Suicide.

Monsanto official : "Suicides have always been part of rural Indian life."

Nice. And for what? Are more people fed?
No, because GM crops produce lower yields than traditional plantings.
So the entire purpose of GM is so that a few multinat corpses can own the entire food chain.

Prince Charles is on the case "setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM."
But Prince Charles has his own problems at home :

Independent : Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production

"Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.
The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them.
And they show that the leaders want "agricultural representatives" and "industry" – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists"

Currently GM is only grown on .1% - that's point one percent - of agricultural land in Europe : none in Britain, France has suspended cultivation, and resistance is growing in Spain and Portugal.

And Canada? Well, we're riddled with the stuff - one of the world's largest producers of GMs.
A seldom mentioned aspect of the recent listeriosis story was the Ministry of Trade's decision to allow industry to oversee its own product labelling, meaning we're unlikely to become better informed of which foods are GM any time soon.
At present GM food labelling in Canada is voluntary.
In the absence of any other, I'd like to propose a genocide label.

Cross-posted at Creekside