"Please to be making no efforts to diversify and researching various non Arab.. I meaning non Fossil fuels energy"
Posted on 03/01/2008 4:17:06 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
MONTEREY, California (AFP) - A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.
Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.
"We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.
"We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock."
Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter.
Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.
"We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future," Venter said. "We are limited here only by our imagination."
His team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life, he said. Organisms already exist that produce octane, but not in amounts needed to be a fuel supply.
"If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet," Venter said. "The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them."
The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter.
The limiting part of the equation isn't designing an organism, it's the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page.
Scientists put "suicide genes" into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves.
Venter said he is also working on organisms that make vaccines for the flu and other illnesses.
"We will see an exponential change in the pace of the sophistication of organisms and what they can do," Venter said.
"We are a ways away from designing people. Our goal is just to make sure they survive long enough to do that."
So he’s gonna starve and kill all the trees and plant life ?
For plants, yeah. Try putting that in your gas tank.
“Aren’t the things that cause mad cow disease (can’t recall the term for them) neither bacteria nor virus?”
Correct. They are called Prions and are made up of protein only.
They don’t know enough to do this. What has been considered ‘junk DNA’ in the past has been found to have uses as our tools improve. The arrogance is scary.
GW ping
Isn’t methane a worse greenhouse gas than CO2?
I actually thought of Deep Space Nine and the Jem Haddar. They were genetically designed to die if they didn’t receive a constant supply of some kind of drug.
“I actually thought of Deep Space Nine and the Jem Haddar. They were genetically designed to die if they didn’t receive a constant supply of some kind of drug.”
I’m like that with beer.
"Please to be making no efforts to diversify and researching various non Arab.. I meaning non Fossil fuels energy"
(NOTE: Guys who challenge Venter's credentials must put their own on the line first).
Alge farts oxygen and water while developing gall diamonds
Also is used to make that non-nutritive cereal varnish...
LOL!
Amazing how someone just using Internet Explorer can match years of lab work and shot it down!
I bet their great grandfathers were blacksmiths.
Carbon dioxide is not "climate-ruining", as this absurd excuse for a "journalist" wrote. It is one of many essential gasses. And humans are a insignificant factor in the epochal cycle of climate change.
So the critters Eat CO2 which is a weak greenhouse gas and create CH4 with is a strong Greenhouse gas?
Anything to end Arab control and bankrupt them.
I hope it’s true.
DayAM! That covers it!
I purpose a national EXHALE DAY.
Nope. If it works, there will be something wrong with it. The greenies goal is not reduced CO2. It is power and the ability to make people live as the greenies think they ought to live.
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