What I told Scientific American in response to Shell's "What shall we do?"
Survey (and some ridiculously negative commenters)
This a copy of the reply I posted in "comments" section to ad posing as a survey in Scientific American's website.
Here's a link to that answer, from there you can browse some of the others if it interests you.
Sometimes I wonder if they put something in the executive water coolers in most major corporations that makes them incapable of seeing any innovation as being worthwhile. Naysayers who claim it will take 100 years to transition to new energy sources are either delusional or dissembling or just insist on ignoring the facts.
Fact 1. The claims that the main obstacle to using algae and algae oil as a source for "new energy" is the extraction of the algae from the water and the extraction of the oil from the water/algae is nonsense. It has been solved at least twice in the last couple of years. Once by AlgaeVenture Systems (the Ohio Univ. spinoff) that dredges and concentrates algae using a wicking system to partially dry it (remaining drying does take energy, but that can be concentrated solar directly as heat or converted to electric and back to heat) but from there extraction is as simple as pressing mustard seed or any other oil seed for that matter. (Please note that this also overcomes the Food vs Fuel trumped up debate because the "left over" algae after extraction IS FOOD, for animals or humans). The second solution, thought first to be proposed and proven, is from OriginOil, which is lysing the cells via ultrasonic disruption, which bursts not only the cell membranes but also the vacuole membranes which store oils within the cells. This is a "wet" process, separation is natural gravity, but speeded to less than an hour by Electro Coagulation (as Colorado Linings calls it in their process), but is the same system my company has been proposing for 4 years based on old sewage processing methods from the early half of the 20th Century.
Fact 2. Assuming you had a very large number of containers to put it in, but let us consider as an example a moderately slow growing algae that only replicates its biomass a single time each day (some reproduce every 4 hours, or 6 times a day, which is 2x2x2x2x2x2 [=64 times original biomass], yes, in a SINGLE day). But remember, just calculating 1 duplication of biomass per day, assuming ideal temp. and plenty of light, and adequate basic nutrients. On day 2 we have twice what we started with, which if it were 1 kilogram, by the 21th day we would have 1,000 Metric Tons of biomass (ignoring for the moment what percentage may be extracted as oil, since you'll soon see it doesn't matter). By the 90th day, our colony of algae will weigh MORE THAN THE PLANET EARTH.
100 years is complete BULLSHIT! We could produce enough algae oil to replace all petroleum in 100 days! DO THE MATH YOURSELF!
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