hmm....cloning....

[Pepper]

I was thinking.....their is alot of debate about human cloning.....and....its pretty much...some people want it, and others do not. This is going way off subject, but, people are upset about how much oil cost, so why not try to clone it?....just my two sense...wanted to no what people thought on the idea...

[RyanJ]

I was thinking.....their is alot of debate about human cloning.....and....its pretty much...some people want it, and others do not. This is going way off subject, but, people are upset about how much oil cost, so why not try to clone it?....just my two sense...wanted to no what people thought on the idea...

 

Unfortunatly its not that easy.

 

Cells divide and oil is formed through a complex processes on dead see animals so its not the same thing.

Scientists are trying to work out a way to turn plastics back to oils though

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Pepper]

thanks, that was really starting to bug me

[RyanJ]

thanks, that was really starting to bug me

 

No problem

 

If oil were alive then it would eb possible but because it is dead material its not possible to just clone it, cloning required the subject to be alive

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[MattC]

Actually, oil comes mostly from ancient bogs - plants died in a bog, and because of the water they were not oxidized/broken-down. Over time, the bogs filled up with sediment, and the dead plant materials compressed, and later heated, and so on. Do a google for a more complete picture of the process, and for information on other sources (beds of sea plants, for instance; sea animals and land animals only play small roles in this).

 

What I really wanted to point out is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding here of what cloning is and what it's uses are. We can clone animals, but we can also just breed them - the advantage of cloning, one advantage at least, is that we can produce a genetic copy - an animal, plant, person, whatever, that is genetically identical to the subject (which does not, technically speaking, have to be alive - with current techniques this may be necessary, but I strongly suspect this will not be the case for too long - all we will need is a complete picture of the DNA, without any gaps).

 

In the case of oil, or rather petroleum specifically (after all, that olive oil in your kitchen is oil, and it could be used to power a car, if you wanted to build the right type of combustion engine), we are not dealing with an organism with DNA, but rather an organic compound.

 

Petroleum is a string of carbons and hydrogens (with some other things, but for the most part what we want is the hydrogen and carbon bonds, which can be oxidized to produce water, co2, and lots of energy), and it can indeed be manufactured, both from plastics and from scratch. The problem is these processes are relatively difficult and energy-consuming, so while we *could* make our own petroleum, we'd end up spending more energy making it than we'd get out of it, with current techniques.

 

Current techniques ... that's the keyword. In the near future, it will be feasible to utilize solar power, or some other renewable source of energy, to turn carbon dioxide in the air and water into 100% clean fuels. If we manufacture a fuel in this manner, there is no contamination of other chemicals, as there is in petroleum - nitrogen and sulfur, for example, which, when combusted along with petroleum, produce NOx and SOx (nitrogen and sulfure oxides), as well as other undesired chemicals.

 

Your basic question is, as I see it, can we make our own fuel? The answer is yes - in fact, it's already being done, and within your lifetime (I'm going to assume you're fairly young) you may be able to buy a hydrogen fuel cell car, which basically simplifies the whole process by taking out the carbon and using H2 and O2 to form H20 (water) and energy. Even the oil companies are interested in these technologies, because they know that our oil reserves are declining, and that, more importantly, the oil that is easy to extract is declining rapidly, and if they want to stay on top, they have to be on top of the research into alternatives. Not that they won't milk the last couple drops of money out of oil, at the expense, one might argue, of the quality of life for humans on Earth.