I don’t think this gets said often enough, but oil is a biofuel, and it is one of the best we’ve ever found. Coal is another. Nothing beats nuclear, of course, but that solves the imagined problem, so we can’t use that. What to do, well – Exxon tried algae.
You’ll remember the ads, back before streaming, when cable television was king. Exxon spent tens of millions on ads to appease the Goreons ranting about our dying planet. Exxon invested vast sums in research that would (allegedly) turn algae into some replacement for oil with fewer emissions. What it did was replace money that could have been spent on something useful with nothing.
The end of algae as a substitute for crude oil comes after $350 million and 14 years of commitment. This expenditure was joined by a “green” advertising campaign around the project of at least $60 million, mostly spent between 2017 and 2019. … Exxon has slashed its support for Viridos Inc., a biotech company based in La Jolla, California, that operated as the oil giant’s key technical partner since it began its algae push in 2009. With Exxon funding drying up and difficulty finding other backers, the biotech firm laid off 60% of its staff on Dec. 27, according to Viridos executives.
Exxon has wielded a cleaver to the algae budget ending their commitment to icky goo as a viable alternative fuel.
Is this a good time to remind Exxon and everyone else that oil is biofuel or that CO2 from its use is not ‘warming the planet’ or the rest of it? No, too bad. It’s true. The Goreons are just angry little worker ants with empty, meaningless lives carrying the political ambitions of Marxists to fill their godless vacuum.
And to be fair, there are a growing number of folks who claim to believe in a God that has fallen under the same spell as Exxon – that you can appease these people. Like all their other science, hard, soft, or political, the facts are whatever advances the agenda. Playing along just encourages them.
Stop doing it.
The moment you think you’re close, they change the name and the rules and move the goalposts – none of which apply to them. It’s sort of their tell. You’d think people who make millions being smarter at running a business would notice.
HT | WUWT
