A Solution To The Oil Crisis

Throughout World History innovation has driven societal advancement.

Most of the time governments and rulers are reactive rather than proactive when it comes to adapting to new technologies. Take for example electrical power plants. Their advent and the wiring of homes for electric lights propelled American society forward. It was such a huge innovation that government was forced to react to it nearly caught off guard as to just how societal changing electrification would. The same argument can be made for the train, the car, the plane, and a whole host of other inventions where innovation propelled us forward despite government's best efforts to hold us back.

Most of the time government is regressive as we have seen with the oil industry. Many in government seek to protect the industry rather than create the conditions that would require it to adapt. There is a tug of war in Congress between those who represent dying industries desperately trying to hold on to their profit and those who are trying to innovate the future and make America a better place.

We I am pleased that it was recently reported about a project that just might propel us into the 21st Century. Government is finally starting to take seriously some of the alternative possibilities to oil. Researcher J.C. Bell, CEO of Bell Bio-Energy, Inc has produced bacteria that can turn any decaying organic material to oil. Trash, vegetable matter, cow manure, and food waste can all be used as a source to produce oil.

This has gotten the attention of the DoD who is funding the production of three test plants for cost-benefit analysis. It is thought in 18 months the plants will produce 500,000 barrels of oil a day. In 2 years it will reach 1 million barrels of oil a day.

The U.S. currently consumes 13 million barrels of oil a day. If this project is successful, profitable, and can be ramped up we stand a good chance at being able to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.

I am cautiously optimistic that this program will work. After all, our history is riddled with dark times that were brought to light by the mother of invention. Something such as using bacteria to produce oil from waste could be a world changing phenomenon. No more oil wars. No more energy woes. It would help us pave the way for a cleaner, safer, and earth friendly energy future.

Often at moments in our history it has been the great inventors that have blazed trails to the future. I hope this is one of those moments.

U.S. green lights 'anything into oil'

Defense Department OKs facilities turning natural produce into energy

By Joe Kovacs
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Naturally occurring bacteria used to convert biomass into hydrocarbons.

A Georgia company looking to solve America's energy problem has finally teamed up with the federal government, hoping to make millions of barrels of oil every day from virtually anything that grows out of the Earth.

Bell Bio-Energy, Inc. says it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Defense Department to build seven test production plants, mostly on military bases, to quickly turn naturally grown material into fuel. Continues Here

Anything that grows 'can convert into oil'

Company finds natural solution that turns plants into gasoline

By Joe Kovacs
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

After three years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil.

J.C. Bell, an agricultural researcher and CEO of Bell Bio-Energy, Inc., says he's isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally change plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.

"What we're doing is taking the trash like corn stalks, corn husks, corn cobs – even grass from the yard that goes to the dump – that's what we can turn into oil," Bell told WND. "I'm not going to make asphalt, we're only going to make the things we need. We're going to make gasoline for driving, diesel for our big trucks." Continues Here

Cross posted at Pissed On Politics

Bacteria Producing Oil

Times Online - Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.

Continues Here

Video of Live Alien

It's being reported that later today video of a 'Live Alien' will be broadcast. I fear this will end up being yet another elaborate hoax but I will try to keep an open mind. No doubt it will eventually be on YouTube thus I will update accordingly...

Purported alien video confab concludes

A few minutes of grainy, black and white video show a creature with big eyes peeping over a windowsill. But does it show a puppet, or an alien from outer space?

A press conference earlier today on the Auraria Campus screened video that allegedly captured proof of alien life.

Over the course of three minutes or so, the footage shows a white creature with a balloon-shaped head that keeps popping up and down in a windowsill that was eight feet above the ground. The face was white, with large black eyes that seemed to blink. More at Denver Post

Sky News - Film Of 'Living Alien' To Be Shown

A US campaigner has vowed to release a video which he says proves the existence of aliens.

Jeff Peckman, who claims the film features a living extraterrestrial, will show the footage to the media on Friday.

The 54-year-old is lobbying for a commission to be set up in Denver so the city can prepare for contact with alien life.

Mr Peckman promised to show the film to officials when he appeared before them earlier this month.

He told the Rocky Mountain News: "It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera."

Mr Peckman - who said the film convinced him that aliens exist and the city needed to act - said the creature is about 4ft tall and can be seen blinking.

"As impressive as it is, it's still one tiny portion in the context of a vast amount of peripheral evidence," he said.

"It's really the final visual confirmation of what you already know to be true having seen all the other evidence."

Mr Peckham added that other "related credible evidence" proving aliens exist will also be shown at at the news conference.

He said an instructor at the Colorado Film School in Denver has analysed the video "very carefully" and said it was authentic.

The general public will have to wait to see the footage as it is being included in a forthcoming documentary.

Update:

Ok, so the video below is most likely a fake and a spook of the video that Mr. Peckman is talking. Below is an image from the actual video. You can see the differences between the YouTube video and the still frame from the Alien Video. The Alien in the still frame has smaller eyes and the window frame is different than the YouTube video.


An image taken from the video shot by Stan Romanek appears to show a head peeping above a windowsill. (Special to the Denver Post - photo credit Denver Post)

This is NOT the video Mr. Peckman is talking about...It is an obvious fake.

Denver Alien in Window

More-Powerful Fuel Cells

A cheap polymer material increases the power output of methanol fuel cells by 50 percent.

By Katherine Bourzac

Methanol fuel cells have the potential to replace batteries as a lightweight power source for portable electronic devices. But fuel-cell materials are expensive, and fuel cells that consume methanol are inefficient. In particular, the membranes used in methanol fuel cells are expensive and waste fuel. Now researchers at MIT have developed a cheap membrane material that increases the power output of methanol fuel cells by 50 percent.

The energy density of a methanol fuel cell "compares to the best high-energy-density batteries," says Robert Savinell, a chemical engineer at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, who was not involved in the research. And because they weigh less than batteries, methanol fuel cells are a promising power source for portable electronics.

For the military, tanks of methanol for refilling fuel cells would be lighter than extra batteries that would have to be carried on long missions. The energy density of methanol fuel cells could also be an advantage in portable consumer electronic devices such as laptops and iPods. But commercialization of methanol fuel cells has been limited because of their price: they require a thick internal membrane made of an expensive polymer. And even with this expensive material, they use fuel inefficiently.

To overcome these limitations, Paula Hammond, a chemical engineer at MIT, has made a fuel-cell membrane out of layers of polymers whose electrochemical properties can be precisely tuned to prevent fuel waste. Indeed, says Savinell, Hammond has solved a problem that chemists have been trying to overcome for years.

Article Continues Here