Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petroleum

The car that runs on dooty!

hehehehehe

Seriously, that's awesome. 205 square miles, eh? Well, what's Detroit doing these days? A couple of sports teams and...what? Giant rats? Plow it over!

Aren't we supposed to be moving away from petroleum based products instead of finding new ways to make them?

Shut up, hippie!

Remember a year or two ago when they were saying the world would be saved by getting fuel from algae?

Yeah, me neither...

I'm sure we could find some foreign country to take over and fill with bugs to make oil.

Mexico, not Canada.

Petroleum is used for a lot more than oil...

So even if we got off of it for running vehicles and powering cities, it's still used for many, many other things.

OK, so how about

I can only pray that oil prices have reached a point where OPEC and non-affiliated big producers can't do what they've always done: reduce the price to destroy nascent alternative energy industries, then get right back to price fixing ways a year or two later.

I heard about this. But wasn't this also the plot of the second MSX Metal Gear? Hmm....

Ack. Is it?

In any event, it's amazing that the U.S. has allowed this to happen for decades. Prices steadily creep up, alternative energies become semi-practical or cost-efficient. Boom, supply goes up and prices come down, and the alt-energy business model collapses. Without massive government subsidization, you can't keep attempting to develop alternative strategies with that kind of boom bust cycle. There's too much technology lead-up time and capital investment required.

This time, it looks like the high prices might stick. This is the oil-industry's biggest fear: not reduced consumption, but a price point high enough for a long enough time that businesses actually give a shit about going in a different direction.

Oil demand is famously inelastic: but nothing ridiculously overpriced stays inelastic forever.

Well I believe it was if my memory of the retrospectives was correct.

We're at a point now where we can devote energy and shift our market down new avenues, or we can fuck up and do what we did the last time this happened. There is plenty of oil yet to be drilled, if legislation will change. If that happens, then prices will go down and we'll deal with this again in twenty years.

EDIT: Unless bugs fuck everything up.

Fixed. And ditto on the comment about Detroit. Fuck Detroit.

You are correct, sir. It was called OILIX. I feel like such an unbelievable nerd for knowing that.

Ah, but the hot rumor is that the price run-up is being driven by SPECULATORS, who don't give a shit about oil's long-term prospects so long as they make their dollars now.

Whatever it takes: keep those high prices coming! We'll all be better off for it in the long run.

What's funny is I saw someone blaming the granola-eating hippies for the jump in oil prices.

I had to point out that granola-eating hippies don't have the means - or probably even the knowledge - to manipulate oil prices. That does NOT mean they aren't thoroughly enjoying the skyrocketing cost of fossil fuels.

I had an astrophysicist, a rather reputable one from Boulder Colorado, tell me last year that if we could get solar converters working at 10-15% efficiency and built a 200 square mile facility in deserts of the southwest, you'd provide more than enough energy for all of the United States. I like that idea more than using poop.

There's some pretty exciting stuff coming out next month or so. Say no more, say no more.

Isn't the problem distribution, rather than production?

If you're talking about solar energy, then I'd say the problem of distributing it, while real, is far less complicated/problematic than our currently balkanized worldwide oil distribution model.

Face it we will need algae, this bug, wind, waves, tides, rivers, and solar. face it in 50 years the world will need at least 20 terawatts, and to have every country close to the same standard closer to 30 terawatts, that is if the population does not go much over 10 billion.

Bumping this because I just discovered the thread. The crucial bit is that the company claims the fuel is carbon-negative...though there was no mention of that on the website. Is this misdirection? Because if not, hurray.

My brother says the two guys who found this (or something similar) were murdered, stabbed nearly 200 times post-mortem and had their laptop stolen. Anyone got a link? Because my searches are coming up empty.

I trust you have your Lord Humongus mask ready for those real life remakes of The Road Warrior.

I'm all for developing alternative power systems and better cars, but not at the cost of families going under thanks to job losses and high energy costs.

OK, I don't want to sound like a smart-ass (for once!), but I don't understand why some of you guys don't seem to understand why our world hasn't moved away from oil yet... you do understand that it's a human greed problem and not a technological one, right?

The oil companies control your life...literally. Most of your driving and electricity is derived from an oil source. Everything is delivered by ships and trucks. When oil goes up, inflation goes up. That affects who becomes the president. It affects governments. Politicians owe the oil companies. Oil companies are some of the biggest campaign contributors. It's all about money and power.

If things will change, it'll be the small companies who start the revolution. Look at Tesla motors and their electric sports car. Now look at how the big car companies are dragging their asses. Most of them don't even know what to offer us. They're too busy with their marketing departments figuring out what to charge us and what they could engineer to break down in an electric car.

Look at all the proven technologies we have: nuclear, solar, wind, hydro-electric. We even have tidal on the way. Bacteria and algae have proven to be able to produce electricity (or gas/oil). Ethanol and biodiesel... Just putting vertical wind turbines along a highway would produce alot of juice. They tend to be open areas, which means windy and even cars cruising by them creates wind. Stuff like that is simple, and in some cases, isn't all that expensive or complicated to implement, yet no one is doing it in a big way, except for that oil tycoon from Texas who wants to build a huge windmill farm. But even then, I think he wants an early start to dominate the industry...

???

/thread

Thank you.