Obama Thinks You’re Stupid: Pushes Algae For Fuel

23 Feb, 2012 by William Teach

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He does, he really does (Via The Lonely Conservative)

(Washington Examiner) President Obama admitted today that he does not have a “silver bullet” solution for skyrocketing gas prices, but he proposed alternative energy sources such as “a plant-like substance, algae” as a way of cutting dependence on oil by 17 percent.

“We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance, algae – you’ve got a bunch of algae out here,” Obama said at the University of Miami today. “If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing alright. Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America.”

As I wrote over at TLC, I can attack this from a political, an economic, an energy, an environmental, and even a greenhouse gas point of view (though I really believe that a simple quadruple face palm picture would suffice).

• Political: he’s simply saying you people are idiots, and that he’s not to blame. This should play well as average citizens feel the pain of high energy prices affecting them directly and through rising consumer prices for food, clothing, everything. And, let’s consider, Democrats have been saying for 40 years that drilling for oil won’t help, because it’ll take 10 years to develop. Um, how long would it take to make biofuel out of algae? A decade? Multi-decades? Cause it really only exists as an experiment at this point.
• Economic: looking at some pie in the sky unicorn based energy platform which might exist decades down the road sure won’t help in the near future. Some say rising gas prices show that the economy is getting better. There is some truth to that. But, there is a tipping point when gas and energy prices cause the economy to tank, and the prices do true harm to the finances of people and companies.
• Energy: refer back to “it take a buttload of a long time to even get to that 17%”. Thanks, Democrats!
• Environmental: what is the effect in turning algae into a synthetic fuel? We already know that corn based ethanol uses vast amounts of water to create, and wastes huge tracks of land instead of growing food, driving up prices, and, it is still bad for the environment, because it is still a fuel. And that’s not even considering how it puts more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than gasoline. What happens if these vast vats of algae based fuels enter the biosphere? No one is sure. These biofuels always seem to come with a cost. For palm oil, large swaths of jungle are being clear cut and the animals, such as orangutans, are being intentionally hunted to create palm seed plantations for fuel.
• Greenhouse gases: again, we already know that most biofuels tend to create just as much, if not more, greenhouse gases for less power output than gasoline. How does this help replace easily obtainable oil?

And let’s once again consider that Democrats, including Obama, have scoffed at drilling for oil because “it would take a decade.” They’ve been working on biofuels for decades, and it’s still only in its infancy.

We could also get into the other types of alternative energy sources, and the current and future environmental damage being done/will be done. But, really, do we actually need a guy who is constantly taking unnecessary fossil fueled flights all over the country for campaign events and vacations, who drives around in 17 car motorcades in vehicles that get terrible fuel mileage, and keeps the thermostat set about 75 in the White House, to lecture the rest of us? Someone Else is paying for all his energy usage. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.