White Whale / Black Sheep / Black Gold

You can’t blame them for trying.

Icelandic schoolgirl Andrea Hildursdottir last week demonstrated that whale oil can be cracked into the full range of petroleum distillates using only Iceland’s copious supplies of geothermal steam. In an apparently-unrelated study, Reykjavik bioengineer Sigrun Sigrunsdottir (mmm. I should move to Iceland and rename my entire family) claims to have successfully developed a strain of GMO sheep that produce fat with the chemical structure of whale oil (insert lonely-goatherd / Moby Dick joke here.)

Both of these studies were underway well before Iceland’s unexpected return to a natural-resources-based economy. But every little bit counts, right?

_{image CC-BY-NC-SA by Skygge}

_{Inspected by 9973 and verified false at time of posting.}