Bryce takes on Friedman over biofuels

ROBERT BRYCE at counterpunch takes on the NYT's Thomas Friedman on biomass-biofuel but allows that algae-based biofuel systems might make sense:

Going beyond Brazil, biomass-based fuels may be worthwhile on tropical islands, like Hawaii, that have lots of rainfall and plenty of arable land. Furthermore, fuels derived from photosynthetic algae might – repeat, might – someday become commercial.

Friedman ended his column by saying that “we might really get a green revolution in the military.” Sure, that’s a possibility. But before Friedman writes another article about the promise of biofuels he should invest in a calculator.

Note the publication on December 30, 2010 of Joule's US 20100330642 with first claim stating:

A method for the biosynthetic production of 1-alkenes, comprising:culturing an engineered microorganism in a culture medium, wherein said engineered microorganism comprises a recombinant 1-alkene synthase, and wherein said engineered microorganism produces 1-alkenes, and wherein the amount of said 1-alkenes produced by said engineered microorganism is greater than the amount that would be produced by an otherwise identical microorganism, cultured under identical conditions, but lacking said recombinant 1-alkene synthase.

The second named inventor is Nikos Basil Reppas.

Recall also WO/2010/062707 [PCT/US2009/062884 ]

What is claimed is:

1. A method for producing ethanol comprising:

a) genetically engineering an isolated or recombinant nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NO: 17, SEQ ID NO:20, SEQ ID NO:42 and SEQ ID NO:43 into a host cell;

b)culturing the host cell to produce ethanol; and

c) removing the ethanol.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the host cell is a phototroph.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the host cell is a cyanobacterium.

Note also the "international search report" [ISR] of April 9, 2010, including references to Puzio [US 20070118916] and Maupin-Furlow [US 20030087368 ]