Domain: museletter.com
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Comments · 6
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Extraordinary Theor. require extraord. evidence
And for the abiogenesis origin of oil it is not there.
Abiogenesis origin of petroleum not likely
Quote : "There is no way to conclusively prove that no petroleum is of abiotic origin. Science is an ongoing search for truth, and theories are continually being altered or scrapped as new evidence appears. However, the assertion that all oil is abiotic requires extraordinary support, because it must overcome abundant evidence, already cited, to tie specific oil accumulations to specific biological origins through a chain of well-understood processes that have been demonstrated, in principle, under laboratory conditions."
To quote some argument : if petroleum was really formed deeply, it would have to go thru a part of the mantle with high pressure and temperature which would decompose it. And the proponent of all-abiogenesis origin of petroleum proposed no such meccanism up to now.
Furthermore oil exploitation firm sucessfully used the "biogenesis" origin of petroleum to predict and exploit new resource.
As for the field which were told to have abiogenesis origin , like the black lion one, here is a nice debunking article :
The Oil Drum.
A very nice quote : "What is disturbing is that these abiotic oil arguments are presented in the mainstream media (MSM, here CNBC) without any critical analysis. In the short interview format TV allows, Simmons was unable (or unwilling) rebut Smith's claim. Many fantastic and unbelievable claims are being put forward now as people scramble around to dispute oil depletion--abiotic oil is one of these. It is perhaps the most insidious of these false claims with its implicit promise that, to paraphrase Duffeyes, everything is OK because "God [the deep hot biosphere] will put more oil in the ground"." -
Re:Word from Chicken Littleso far humans have adapted remarkably well to changing climactic conditions. In fact, humans sans any real technology have managed to survive several much more radical climate changes - and without their numbers being endangered in any real way.
Except of course, when they didn't.
The Easter Islanders, whose competing clan leaders built giant stone statues in order to display their prestige and to symbolize their connection with the gods, cut every last tree in their delicate environment to use in erecting these eerie monuments. Hence the people lost their source of raw materials for building canoes, which were essential for fishing. Meanwhile bird species were driven into extinction, crop yields fell, and the human population declined, so that by the time Captain Cook arrived in 1774 the remaining Easter Islanders, who had long since resorted to cannibalism, were, in Cook's words, "small, lean, timid, and miserable." -
Re:Price noteAlso: How do you dig up Palladium? Ooooh - that's right - you NEED OIL to do it - the mining machinery is all diesel.
HYDROGEN IS NOT THE SOLUTION.
Hydrogen fuel cells are more like "batteries", and I think calling them FUEL cells is deeply misleading. We need to do the following, ASAP:
1.Reduce our population (without resorting to war and famine and such like)
2. Stop Using Oil
3. develop a lifestyle that is slower, more decentralised, and a few orders of magnitude more efficient.Otherwise, we're going back to the caves in 1000 years and just hang out waiting for the next asteroid to take us out or the flu to do us in.
Face it folks: THE PARTY'S OVER.
RS
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Re:America...This is more than just an issue of whether something is cheaper than fossil fuels today. It is about what kind of life any of us can expect in the coming decades. For example, if you look a little closer at the link between abundant oil, food and population, you see that they are way more closely correlated than is generally considered.
Our planet now supports 6.3 billion people. To feed them, we industrially generate as much nitrogen (in the form of chemical fertilizers produced from natural gas) as the biosphere produces naturally. Essentially, we use our unrenewable fossil fuel "capital" to make the planet produce approximately twice as much food as it could using the renewable "income" of solar radiation and natural nutrient cycles.
According to a study by David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro found that 10 kcal of exosomatic (non-muscle-power) energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking). We spend 10 times the fossil-fuel energy that we get back in food energy.
What happens when that fossil fuel "capital" is used up? Suddenly we can't support 6 billion people. Estimates of population size supportable under normal solar input range between 2 and 3 billion.
Further, an increasing number of people believe that we are much further down the slope of oil depletion than is generally acknowledged by goverments and oil companies. Many believe that we have already reached peak supply, while demand continues to soar. For example, it has been over 20 years since more oil was discovered in a year than was consumed that year. In that environment, energy intensive practices (including energy driven food production) will become economically unfeasible. I expect to see the effects of this becoming significant in the next 10 years.
So if one were to check up on these assertions (as I have tried to do) and conclude them credible (as I have), there is a frightening conclusion to be drawn. As the oil runs out over the coming decades, somehow at least 50% of the human population will need to be eliminated.
How this happens is up to us. We can go for a "last man standing" strategy (as I think the Bush Admin necons are trying today) where force is used to ensure that we maintain our industrial power and luxury lifestyle up to the very end, by condemning weaker nations to war and famine. Or we could try to ratchet things down more methodically and fairly and possibly achive a soft landing worldwide. This would mean changes to every aspect of human affairs, to seek solutions that allow us to continue human society using a fraction of the energy we use today, and with every effort made toward humanely lowering birthrates below replacement levels.
I frankly think that the latter option is the least likely of all, given the way things work in our world.
Still, it changes the entire framework of the argument when these assertions are considered--it is not so much about whether one particular option is more economically advantageous in today's market than it is a question of what can we do to preserve any kind of desirable human society as our current system becomes impossible to sustain over the next 10-40 years.
See the article Eating Fossil Fuels for a detailed treatment of this topic, or the book The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg for a more comprehensive analysis.
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Peak OilFirst, it means we can't predict when oil production will start shrinking. Second, it means that when it does, we're immediately fucked.
You are so right.
When I saw this item on SlashDot's front page, my first thoughts were:(1) How many of the posts will wax poetical (or, alternately, rant and rave) about scramjets and rocket backpacks and automated slidewalks of the future;
You did a fine job of addressing item (2). Thanks for spelling out the issues in your thoughtful post.
(2) Will anyone bring up peak oil and how fucked we're gonna be?
Interested readers might want to check out The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg.
And: Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler (scroll down to March 25 entry).
Or simply search for "peak oil".
-kgj -
Re:When the Oil Runs Out
according to this guy we will reach peak oil production within a decade. Yeah, we'll have oil for 50 more years, but our demand will continue to grow while the supply remains constant. This is not something we'll be leaving for our children. It's happening now.