A new kind of oil

07/08/2008

The new oil

A friend of mine brought me clipping from “The Enterprise Ledger” of March 19, 2008, with the head line “Researcher says discovery could end energy crisis”, of course he was interested in knowing if it was time to sell his retirement fund which as you know holds the oil company shares, enough to make up and pay for the increase in gas prices. I know we have been told that we should be really happy to pay four dollars a gallon for gas and the higher food prices because we are getting rich by doing so, so I found it disturbing that something as simple as a bacteria, genetically modified could turn “ bio mass in to hydro carbons on a grand scale.
Upon further research I also found an article in the “Newsweek” of June 16, 2008, where no less an authority than Craig Venter, the man who decoded the human genome, to be working on genetically modifying a bacteria to eat carbon dioxide and create fuel for your car.
Call me paranoid, but last I checked my chemistry books, I am a bio mass, and I also contain carbon dioxide molecules. When they are talking about modifying bacteria to eat bio mass or carbon dioxide it makes me worry. What controls do we have to stop this bacteria from getting out control? How do we control it, if we are talking about tens of thousands , may be millions of “ refineries”? Will the bacteria know not to eat the human beings and turn the little kids in to oil slicks. Or the furniture in your house and the trees in your yard? Will it know the difference between the grass in your lawn and grass clippings? And if it eats carbon dioxide it could get in to ones lungs and fill them up with high test gasoline could it not? Will it know not to eat so much carbon dioxide that the plants and crops will die? Will the CSI know what to do with the oil puddles? And what if some one does get converted in to fuel (by accident I hope) could we use him to drive our car with?