Geneticist Craig Venter Wants to Create Fuel from CO2

This is very cool! Probably the coolest thing I have read all week! Taking CO2 out of the air would reverse what has already been up there, that is great! In the meantime Go electric!

Is it just me or does this sound like the mother of all stupid ideas? Taking CO2 and converting it into fuel only to have it's byproduct be one of the most diabolical GHG's in the world. Methane!!! Let's all jump with glee as we spew a GHG into the atmosphere that PETA says is 256 times more potent than CO2. Brilliant...

Interesting...

Dave: This process will not "reverse" any concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere because when the fuels are burned, they will release the CO2 right back. It is a clear improvement because the CO2 is cycled and not released anew form fossil fuels, but will do nothing to prevent global warming. It just won't add to the problem.

omega.proteus: I think you misunderstand; the methane produced (or other hydrocarbons) will be burned like current fuels, releasing CO2. no methane will be released into the atmosphere.

NOW, to make this really positive: harvest a small percentage of each production cycle of the fixed hydrocarbons to sequester underground and make it actually reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere! Such a truly "carbon negative" solution is, if we beleive the latest dire predictions for climate change, essentially needed to avoid catastrophe.

omega.proteus, I think you are misunderstanding things.

Methane that comes from the Earth's crust is indeed not "carbon neutral" and adds to global warming, and it is by volume a more potent green house gas.

Take CO2 from the atmosphere to create fuel is carbon-neutral.

If you create methane that way (aka natural gas) and then burn it, the emissions are CO2, not methane. So you are not adding to global warming, and you are not releasing methane in the atmo.

You could even use Venter's technique to sequester carbon back into the earth's crust, if it works well enough.

Very promising.

Hum,
Grey goo anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

I find this exciting because he is pairing genetically modified organisms with biofuels. I know many people are uncomfortable with the idea of introducing GMOs into the food supply, but surely most can agree that using genertics to reach better yields in biofuels is an idea worth pursuing. He even included the "suicide gene" so nothing can get too out of hand (assuming that works according to plan -fingers crossed). I for one really think this sounds promising.

People are always afraid of what they don't know and don't understand. I expect them to be afraid of genetically modfiied things until they've been using them for a few years..

When you think about it, the internal combustion engine is a pretty scary thing, with lots of moving pieces, explosions, flammable gasoline, etc. Yet people aren't scared because they're used to them.

@Thomas:
"He even included the "suicide gene" so nothing can get too out of hand (assuming that works according to plan -fingers crossed)."
That's exactly what I'm afraid of: genetic engineering with fingers crossed; focusing on what's known, but forgetting the unknown. Unfortunately that's what seems to be happening.

@Anonymous:
I'm very worried of the scientists capability of carelessly working on something extremely risky that they don't properly understand. Until year 2000 scientist thought that one gene makes one protein, and they based their methods and assumption of relative (even until then very questionable) safety of genetic modification on this misconception. In that year it was found that a complex system exists, which modifies the outcome of the genes. This makes the results of genetic modification much more unpredictable than they were thought to be.

After this the risks and acceptability of GM should have been thoroughly re-evaluated, and people also should have been made aware of with how little understanding the scientists had been tampering with this basic structures of life. Unfortunately the media (often even the alternative one) seem to let themselves to be led to only repeat the sales phrases of the GM companies - and researchers in need of funding.

There's been proven systematic corruption in the administration and science of genetic modification, and it may be easier nowadays to find unreliable than reliable sources of information on the subject. Here's a place to start:
http://tinyurl.com/2mfx2u
Much of it is about GM of food, but large part of the problems and risks are the same.

Spence you mean "green goo" not gray goo.

And their not talking about making the perfect bacteria that can live anywhere and eat anything they are talking about an organism designed to be kept in a specially chemically and temperature tuned tank and fed a careful mix.

There are plenty of organisms that will eat it for lunch.

And I am not all that scared of GM in general .. nature has been literally wildly tinkering with genes at random for the history of the planet; us doing something specific in attempt to improve things is much less likely then nature to screw anything up, the most we can do is fail to get the desired effect and have to try again.

So, if you are a large gas fired power plant producing electricity, you are creating your own self generating renewable resource. Almost sounds like fusion.

Why "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 "
Couldn't he just use the exhaust gas from his methane burning power plant as a source of CO2

Colin says: Couldn't he just use the exhaust gas from his methane burning power plant as a source of CO2?

I bet the math doesn't add up... meaning the ammount of methane produced to burn, doesn't emit enough CO2 to feed back to the organisms so they output a sustainable level of methane.

RE: Anonymous comment: I don't think I will get used to the idea of GM organisms created for one purpose, finding their way into the global ecosystem and creating for themselves and new purpose, whether benign or harmful. Look at where the internal combustion engine managed to creep into and mutate into gas guzzling horrors: bicycles, sailboats, woodsaws, snow shovels, the list goes on... and look where those exhausting mutations have brought us...

drama aside, GMO's haven't been sufficiently tested, nor can they feasibly be tested properly considering the playground they would inhabit. That's the scary part I will have a hard time getting used to.

On the flip side, I am all for progressive technologies pushing the boundaries of human insight and knowledge, and I believe regardless of laws and regulations, GMO's will become a common reality for better and worse. Regardless of the side effects, mother nature will always be there to clean up the mess. I just hope were around to help.

To Mr Venter,

While a carbon neutral biofuel is great, much much more important is a GMO that removes CO2 from the air and sequesters the carbon into the geosphere long-term.

Read my blog at www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod to understand how important it is to remove over 10 Gtons C from the air each year. Soon carbon sinks will become carbon emitters, not only significantly reducing nature's ability to remove CO2 from the air, but dramatically increasing natural greenhouse gas emissions.

We can't even fast and drastically reduce our emissions because the sun dimming aerosols keep us 2 to 3 C cooler. Heatwaves are going to dramatically lower the carrying capacity of the Earth rapidly. Soon we won't have the resources to do anything but crisis managment. Sorry for the seeming alarmism, but read my blog and you'll understand I'm only stating the truth.

This is exactly what is needed a solution that will follow the path of least resistance we will still be driving pretty much the same cars,ships and planes that the modern economy needs but in a way that adds no net new carbondioxide.Brilliant! even better than electric vehicles which still need to be given electricity from coal fired power stations in India,China and US (the big 3 as far as co2 emissions are concerned where coal is still the single largest power source).

I'm excitedly waiting all the changes in technology and availability of vehicles in the near future!!!