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The "green" gurus of the world are debating and schmoozing in Copenhagen this week and Al Gore is being criticized for predicting that the polar ice caps will all have melted by the summer of 2014. Folks are squabbling over whether our gooses will be cooked by global warming or by the carbon emission caps meant to fight it.  In the end, though, average Americans are more concerned about just paying their heating bills and putting gas in their cars than about massively altering their lives to stop global warming.

Things may or may not be rotten in Denmark, but at least we see some valuable developments in California and Pennsylvania. Human ingenuity is coming up with alternative ways to heat our homes and run our cars, potentially helping our pocketbooks, our national security, and even pleasing the Copenhagen crowd. Biofuel is one of the hottest new technologies out there, and these creative geniuses are making oil from stuff that would ordinarily pour into landfills.

Oil From Algae
The first place winner in Biofuels Digest's 2009-2010 "50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy" rankings is Solazyme, a company that gets algae to produce oil. That's right. Solazyme's little green guys are busy pumping out high quality crude oil that can be easily refined to run your car. In fact, Solazyme has been driving about 200 delegates from Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, and India around Copenhagen this week in a fleet of cars all powered by pond scum waste.

"Pond scum waste" may not be precise terminology, but that's basically what it is. Solazyme takes waste products from wood chips to waste cooking oil and feeds them to the algae, which turn the waste into crude oil. This is a process similar to the one used in making ethanol from corn minus the cost of growing corn, boiling away waste water or distilling alcohol. This biofuel also quite conveniently does not take corn from the food supply, but instead actually makes use of other people's garbage.

"We take biomass like wood chips, switchgrass, waste glycerol. And we feed it to algae in a process where the algae will convert that biomass into crude oil," said Harrison Dillon, who founded the company in his garage six years ago. The crude oil can then be used to make "diesel fuel, jet fuel, high-nutrition edible oil like olive oil, or plastics."

The downside?  Solazyme is not able to produce the oil at a competitive cost at this time, but Dillon projects that they will be able to produce it at $60-$80 per barrel within two years.  With oil around $70 per barrel right now, that's still not super competitive, but if oil coming out of the Middle East spikes up to $140 per barrel, it's not bad. Home-grown oil has the strong added appeal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

San Francisco-based Solazyme is definitely going places. The US Department of Energy just donated $21.7 million dollars toward the company's new plant in Pennsylvania, and the US Navy wants 22,000 gallons of algae-made jet fuel and ship fuel for delivery next year.

Oil From E coli
Another California company, LS9, has engineered strains of E coli to turn waste materials like wood chips or wheat straw into crude oil. The feedstock for the E coli bacteria simply needs to be able to be broken down into sugars, and the bacteria produce quality oil that is nearly pump-ready. Chevron received $25 million from Chevron Technology Ventures and three other venture companies in September, and says it could sell its biofuel for $45 to $50 per barrel by 2011.

The company also claims that its "Oil 2.0" is carbon negative, which means that burning it in your car will emit less carbon into the air than was taken from the air by the raw materials used to make the oil.

A USA Today / Gallup Poll found that 55 percent of Americans, especially young people 18-29 years old, want a global treaty on reducing greenhouse emissions, but 46 percent are afraid it will also hurt the economy. [The poll didn't ask how many people were concerned about handing our sovereignty over to an international body.] Forcing the country to reduce its carbon emissions by significant amounts will indeed encumber the economy, starting with those sectors that will be the most greatly affected, like the automobile industry. But regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, it's a win for everybody if bugs can turn waste material into oil. We can potentially reduce our dependence on foreign oil by using renewable resources that eat waste products, and we can still put smiles on the faces of the environmentally savvy.

In order for evolution to work on a grand scale, changing one family of creatures into another family of creatures, beneficial mutations must appear to add new information to the genetic code. Without mutations, there are no major evolutionary steps. Yes, the genetic information already existing within a species can vary due to natural selection, but this always strains out information; it never adds new previously non-existent coding to the genome.  Yet, while Darwinists claim that rare, beneficial mutations do exist, the math shows that random mutations result in the net removal of information from the genetic code rather than adding to it.

Beneficial Mutations?
Beneficial mutations in any sense are extremely rare in our world today.  Those that can be considered "beneficial" in specific situations always involve the loss of some function and usually result in the deterioration of the creature's general health. For instance, sickle-cell anemia is considered a beneficial mutation because it protects many Africans against malaria, yet sickle-cell anemia itself is a very serious disease.

Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disorder in which the red blood cells take a long, thin, sickle-like shape instead of the round donut shape of a healthy red blood cell. While this deformity prevents the body from carrying malaria, protecting people in high-malaria areas from dying from the disease, the sickle cell anemia is itself dangerous.  Sickle cell blood cells tend to clump up and get stuck in blood vessels, leading to infection and organ damage.  Sickle-shaped cells also tend to die after only 10-20 days, while healthy red blood cells live an average of 120 days before they die.  People with the disease therefore have a hard time producing enough red blood cells to replace the dying ones, greatly reducing general health. The life expectancy for men with sickle-cell anemia is only 42 years. 

 As we noted last week, bacteria that develop a dysfunction may also survive in the presence of antibiotics, but they are still weaker and quicker to die than other bacteria out in the world. A person with no arms may be less likely to contract a virus, because he can't rub his nose with infected fingers, but few people will argue that it's better to go around in life without arms. The fact is, examples of truly beneficial mutations are massively lacking.

Loss Of Information:
The real trouble with mutations takes us down to the DNA level. We learn in high school biology that our genetic code is made up of DNA, long strands of the nucleotide bases adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytocine – A G T and C for short. These four bases provide the digital code for our system, similar to the way 0s and 1s make up binary code for computers. In the cell, during the process of translation, these nucleotides get read in groups of three, called codons. Each codon is like a little train car of three letters that code for an amino acid, which go on to make up proteins. For instance, the codon AAA codes for the amino acid lysine and TGG codes for the amino acid tryptophan.  (During transcription, thymine is replaced with uracil - U - to make the codon UGG.)

There isn't just one code for many amino acids, though. Lysine can also be coded by AAG. Cysteine can be coded by both TGT and TGC, and the amino acids serine, arginine, and leucine all have six possible codes. Other proteins on the other hand, like tryptophan, only have that single code available to make them.

This causes a problem for the statistics of mutations. If there are errors in the transcription process and letters are not copied correctly (a source for mutations), certain amino acids are going to be favored over others. For instance, if AAG is accidentally transcribed as AAA, it won't necessarily harm the body because AAA still codes for lysine (provided the cell has high enough levels of tRNA for the alternate codon).  If TGG for tryptophan gets changed to TTG, though, it will cause leucine to be made. If TAA gets changed to TTA, it will also make leucine and if CAA for Glutamine gets turned to CTA, again leucine benefits. Statistically, an error is highly likely to accidentally make leucine and highly unlikely to make tryptophan.

If evolution were reality, we would expect to see a high ratio of serine, arginine, and leucine codes, because statistically mutations would favor making these three amino acids. As mutations accumulated over the generations, we'd expect these codes to dominate, making it rare to ever see tryptophan and leading to a loss of information in the genetic code.  Dr. Jerry Bergman writes:

‘This disparity would have worked against producing the code by natural selection in the first place. An example of this method of degradation is illustrated by the words "amino acid" which would be changed to "amano acad," then to "amaao aaad," and finally to "aaaaa aaaa" if the letter "a" dominated. Another mutation can change the "a'" back to an "m" or another letter but, in this illustration, the overall trend would be to the letter "a'" and would eventually stabilize largely at a set of "a" letters with a few converting back to the other letters from time to time.'

Mutations do rarely slip through even though there are built in mechanisms to correct errors. If evolution were true, this deterioration would have been rapid and destructive before these self-correcting mechanisms evolved.

It is also valuable to note that organisms considered closely related can favor different codes for the same amino acid. E coli uses AAA to code for lysine 75 percent of the time, but only uses AAG one fourth of the time.  Another bacteria, Rhodobacter, uses AAG 75 percent of the time - just the opposite. These two organisms, which are supposed to be more closely related, don't use codes in the same proportions, while the human being and fruit fly (not closely related) both use CTG to code for leucine just over 40 percent of the time.

Studies have also shown there to be far more deletions than insertions into the DNA code. In their article on the DNA loss in Drosophila (fruit flies) in the journal Gene in 1997, Petrov and Hartl found a "virtual absence of insertions and a remarkably high incidence of large deletions." In their article on nucleotide substitution, insertion and deletion in the human genome in Nucleic Acids Research in 2003, Zhang and Gerstein found the mutational deletion rate of base pairs to be three times as high as the insertion rate. Once again, this results in a net loss of information rather than the net gain required by the evolutionary model. 

Mutation Hot Spots
Mutations also do not occur randomly throughout the DNA code, but are generally localized in certain spots. For instance, the CG dinucleotide has a much higher chance of being involved in a mutation than any other dinucleotide – 12 times as high according to Jorde, Carey and White in Medical Genetics(1997). Of 400 codon mutations mapped on the human tumor suppressor antioncogene gene just over 91 percent occurred in four specific codons. Some of these "hot spots" result from passing around the same mutation through inheritance, but most are truly hot spots in which certain parts of the genetic code are more prone to mutation than other parts.

The basic point is this: mutation is not evenly, randomly distributed throughout the genome, which we'd expect if mutations had brought about all the precise structures in living things today.

Genome Deterioration:
These mutations are not improving the genetic code, either. They can causes diseases like cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, inherited osteoporosis and literally more than 1000 others. Finding descriptions of deleterious mutations takes less than half a minute. Finding truly beneficial mutations is a headache, and even the so-called beneficial mutations are due to net loss of information that, while helping an organism survive in a very specific situation, also lead to the weakening of the organism's overall health.

If the evolutionary model of origins were reality, we should expect to see a number of beneficial mutations that were the result of added information. Instead, what we see fits the Creation model, that the genome was beautifully engineered it the Beginning and mutations only do damage to the excellence that once was.

There is an old proverb that says, "We only prepare for what we think is important." And, it's so true. If we don't feel that the subject at hand is important, then we certainly won't prepare for it. However, if the issue is something that matters greatly to us, then we'll conscientiously do whatever is necessary to make ready for it.

The "key" to God's presence and the "secret" to true joy and happiness. Without being worshipers, we'll not be able to enter God's presence; and without His presence, we'll have no joy (Psalm 16:11); and without joy, Nehemiah 8:10 tells us, we'll have no strength. Truly, worship is the "key" to being able to stand in these end times.

But, there are some conditions or stipulations to entering God's presence and worshiping Him in the spirit. We must first have clean hands and a pure heart. In other words, cleanness is the "key" to being able to worship. Thus, the saying "we only prepare for what we think is important" also applies to entering the Lord's presence. If we think worship is important, we will prepare for it; if we don't, we won't.

Read Psalm 24:3-4 with this preparation in mind:

"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? Only he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."

James 4:8 expresses the same principle: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands...and purify your hearts..."

These Scriptures tell us that the only path to the Holy Place (and God's presence) is having clean hands and a pure heart - i.e., being in the beauty of His holiness. By continually confessing and repenting of anything that is not of faith, the Lord cleanses our soul (clean hands) and gives us a pure heart. Scripture says that these two things are the only tickets inward!

Remember Psalm 66:18, which tells us that "if we regard iniquity in our heart, the Lord will not hear us." The reason He can't hear us is because sin separates, destroys, corrupts, divides, robs, perverts, damages, distorts, blinds, weakens, ruins and kills. If not addressed, sin can become an obstacle, a barrier and a wall between us and prevent our fellowship.

Now, we won't lose our salvation when this happens but our communication with the Lord will be affected. Therefore, repentance - the desire to turn around and follow God - is the key to holiness. It's what allows us to truly worship the Lord in spirit and truth. (John 4:23-24) True repentance awakens a hatred of sin in our lives and results in a genuine fear of the Lord. Consequently, only confession and repentance will give us a clean heart, a renewed spirit and restored fellowship.

Thus, a person who is holy is simply one who is totally surrendered to God. (Exodus 40:15; Deuteronomy 18:5; Leviticus 21:6-8) Holiness simply means "one who is set apart unto God's service. It does not mean continual purity (only Jesus could maintain this), but a constant recognition of one's sin and the choice to deal with it.

Holiness has everything in the world to do with our proximity to the throne.

Worship is the highest expression of our love for God. It's simply the paring down of our motives to "love" alone. Only love and holiness have access to the Lord's presence. Holiness means being cleansed enough to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and a vessel of His Love to others. Just as the priests reflected God's glory when they came forth from the Holy Place, we too should reflect the Lord's holiness after we have been with Him.