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Not content with using hybrid artificial photosynthesis to turn CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now claim to have produced an enhanced system that uses water and solar energy to generate hydrogen, which is in turn used to produce methane, the main element of natural gas, from carbon dioxide. Generating such gases from a renewable resource may one day help bolster, or even replace, fossil fuel resources extracted from dwindling sub-surface deposits.
Simply put, the process of photosynthesis turns light energy into chemical energy. In plants and certain types of algae, energy from incoming sunlight is used as the power source to synthesize simple carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. In the original Berkeley Lab hybrid system, a membrane arrangement of nanowires created from silicon and titanium oxide harvested solar energy and transported electrons to microbes where they used that energy to transform carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds.
Produces methane...Sorry, cows, you have been rendered superfluous.
Hybrid bioinorganic approach to solar-to-chemical conversion [abstract]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:40AM
Solar has a problem of not working at night. We still want power then. So things like this will act as a storage. In most cases you would be better off just using the power directly from the panel than converting it into something else.
Also do not confuse the price of oil with anything about supply. It is a manipulated commodity. We even elected a president at one point on breaking up the cartels. OPEC got in on the action in the early 1970s.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:17AM
Uhhh - that whole embargo thing in the '70's? It wasn't about price fixing, or anything so simple. It was a protest over the US going off of the gold standard. Members of OPEC insisted that the price of oil should be tied to the price of gold.
I've posted links in the past that shows that the price of oil in relation to the price of gold has been remarkably stable over the past century. Yes, in terms of gold, you are paying nearly the same price that your x-Great-Grandparents paid back in 1910. The fluctuations come from short term manipulation, and inflation.
Fiat money has no stability to speak of.
"Oil vs. Gold Chart Analysis
In looking at the chart we can see that the average since 1946 has been that one ounce of gold would buy 14.83 barrels of oil. Therefore, whenever one ounce of gold would buy more than 14.83 barrels of oil either oil was cheap or gold was expensive. And conversely, whenever an ounce of gold would buy less than 14.83 barrels, then oil was expensive or gold was cheap."
http://inflationdata.com/articles/comparing-oil-gold/ [inflationdata.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:22PM
Then we can just ignore the oversupply the producers and major consumers are talking about? We can ignore what The Saudis say they are doing. Because of your correlation? The Saudis have basically told OPEC 'we are doing what we want you guys are crazy'. There are 4 major producers of oil. OPEC, the Saudis who are sometimes part of OPEC, the US, and Russia (who are sometimes part of OPEC). The Saudis have enough oil currently they can manipulate prices. They wanted to end the shale/tar thing the US was doing. They also are mad at Russia and the rest of OPEC for some reason (probably pressure from the US).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-26/ecuador-reveals-the-pain-inside-opec-it-s-pumping-oil-at-a-loss [bloomberg.com]
Price fixing in the oil industry is rampant and been there for a long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [wikipedia.org]
Take for example my local area. There are probably 5-10 different gas stations yet they all have similar prices. Why is that? They all get their gas/oil from the same pumping station 1 city over. That pumping station sells gas at a fixed commodity price. Control the distribution and supply and you can control the price.
One guy I know owned a gas station. He could set the price to whatever he liked so long as it was 3 cents above what the oil company told him to do. If you dont think the good-ol-boy club exists you are dreaming. The high freq traders figured out you can skim a bit of money on the arbitrage. But as the Saudis have demonstrated for the past year, THEY control the price.
Oil is not a free market. It hasnt been for a LONG time. In fact it is in your theory. Gold is held to a fixed rate of oil. The 1970s where a reflection of OPEC showing the world who was in control of the oil and they wanted their price fixed.
What you have discovered is 2 things. A measure of inflation. As well as a very nice example of price fixing. I personally like to use cars as a measure of inflation.