A Fuel-Producing Fungus

While I am very much inclined to think that we will remain very dependent upon fossil fuels for the next several decades, I have nothing at all against the development of alternative sources of energy, provided they are not heavily subsidized by government. OK, I used the word "heavily", since I might allow a short-term light subsidy if one could be quite sure that the new energy source would significantly decrease our energy dependence. So far no candidate alternative energy source seems to have arisen to meet that criterion. This is based purely on considerations of defense policy.

The topic here is that it has been discovered by Gary Strobel and colleagues of Montana State University that a fungus which grows in the Ulmo tree of the Patagonian rainforest of South America produces a brew of hydrocarbons similar to diesel fuel. This may make it possible to use the fungus, G. roseum, to make fuel from biomass consisting of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin directly. Presently, enzymes called cellulases are used to convert cellulose to sugar, which is then fermented by microbes into ethanol.

Of course, even if the fungus does prove economically effective in converting the 400 million tons of plant stalk waste per year into fuel, this is a fuel which will fuel the Global Warming Holocaust Believers fears. It will burn to produce carbon dioxide, just as we produce carbon dioxide from the fuel we burn in our bodies and just as fossil fuel combustion does also. It appears we will never be able to use it after all!