Reply #7: Hard to engineer good irony [View All]

[cprise]

B-)

Esp. in such a long-winded fashion.

Could these GM algae compete with the unmodified pond-grown kind? Not for fuel. You are losing some of the sugar's energy by having the algae convert it to oil; i.e. wasting the solar energy stored by the sugarbeets or corn that produced the sugar. Fuel algae convert solar energy directly into combustable oil with no other biological process in between.

Natural algae strains yield high productivity gains over dry-land farming already. And the model for dry-land biodiesel production is non-GMO European rapeseed. Compare that to GM-soy biodiesel in the US, that gains about 40% less energy, yields 1/2 the volume per hectare, and is outclassed in total output for the forseeable future.

I do not support the GE efforts for fuel-algae. I think tinkering with these small organisms is probably more risky than nuclear energy in the long term.

You imply that certain classes of objects are not risky; I assert that processes determine the risk to our environment. GE is not safe as a component of general production.