Re: Does NYT Busines reporter understand Natural Selection?

Klaus wrote:
Occidental wrote:
QUOTE
Developing energy crops could mean new applications of genetic
engineering, which for years has been aimed at making plants resistant
to insects and herbicides, but would now include altering their
fundamental structure. One goal, for example, is to reduce the amount
of lignin, a substance that gives plants the stiffness to stand upright
but interferes with turning a plant's cellulose into ethanol.
Such prospects are starting to alarm some environmentalists, who worry
that altered plants will cross-pollinate in the wild, resulting in
forests that practically droop for want of lignin.
END QUOTE

Redesigning Crops to Harvest Fuel
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: September 8, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/business/08crop.html


This argument is stupid, anyway! It is more efficient to engineer crops
to produce biodiesel, which requires much less processing.
Biodiesel also does not corrode various metals or create noxious fumes
such as formaldahyde.
Klaus

...but wouldn't this require us all to buy new cars? IIRC, existing cars
can be cheaply converted to run on ~80% ethanol.

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