I think that the much cheaper solution is neither to develop the technology nor fool people with fake research, but fund real research into areas where the economics probably won't work. (Which could be the whole field.) As we've seen with Theranos, and with plenty of smaller companies [1], it's easy enough to spend years taking investor money for things people want to exist but are probably or definitely impossible. That would get carbon polluters many years of delay. For corporate execs, that's plenty of time. And hey, a miracle might happen.

That said, fooling people is a well-established business of its own. It started with the tobacco companies, but it sure hasn't ended there. [2] So they might be sticking with the tried and true playbook here.

[1] E.g., this excellent blog on wireless charging companies: https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threate...

I think that's too simple a reading. There is a whole industry of people whose job it is to create doubt about science so as to prevent action that might harm those who pay them. It started with decades of denial that cigarettes could possibly cause harm, but went from there:

https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Their-Product-Industrys-Threate...

I'm glad that a guy with a political science degree is interested in scientific topics. But I think he'd be a little more sensitive to the broader problem of non-experts jumping in to an area that has become highly politicized, and where industry has such a strong short-term incentive to undermine the appearance of scientific consensus.