The Great Oil Conspiracy: How the U.S. Government Hid the Nazi Discovery of Abiotic Oil from the American People
by Jerome R. Corsi
Rating: 1.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2025-01-11
Such a strange book. I read it because my partner’s grandpa really liked it. In no particular order:
- It’s full of typos. Seems like he didn’t have an editor
- Despite the title and cover art, the “conspiracy” is pretty much just the first chapter
- He argues that hydrocarbons can be made from nonorganic compounds. This is true, and how Saturn’s moon Titan got its hydrocarbons. It also happens on earth sometimes. But Probably less than 1% of all naturally occurring hydrocarbons are abiotic.
- He argues that the existence of oil deep under the ocean proves that it couldn’t have been made biotically. But I think it’s commonly believed that it came from marine life that sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is buried under sediment.
- He argues that because oil is made abiotically, it is a renewable resource. But it doesn’t sound like the abiotic process is any faster than the biotic process.
- The later sections seem to consist of news headlines he liked and turned into sections of his book.
- He is right about one thing: we keep discovering new oil and natural gas reserves, and we’ll probably never run out before we transition to something more advanced.
One of my favorite lines: “The Bible teaches, ‘dust unto dust,’ to explain what happens to the human body at death; nowhere does the Bible admonish, ‘dust into oil.’“
I do agree we should be creating synthetic fuels. I think we should be doing direct air carbon capture and electrolysis of water, powered by solar or wind, to produce synthetic natural gas.