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$3.00 per Gallon Gas not far off.
- Thread starter wilheim
- Start date
Phaedrus,
Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful response.
You seem to be a rational and intelligent person who could make the kind of adjustments to your lifestyle that would be needed when oil energy is no longer viable. How many citizens of the US or the world for that matter could do the same? What about countries like China who will want their share of the oil energy? Do you think that they will simply stand by while the US military dictates who gets how many barrels of a dwindling yet precious source of energy?
US attempts to seize control of the middle east oil fields are not new. They have been aware of their vunerability to maintain the oil flow for some time now. In Iraq it started with the Iran-Iraq war and when that failed they doublecrossed Saddam to start Gulf war 1. 12 years of sanctions to wear down their military and now this latest invasion which was suppose to be a cake walk. The plan has been in the works for a long time.
The US government is run by the very oil men you say are putting so much research into alternative forms of energy. Obviously they have come up with nothing that can come close to oil other wise why would they deem it neccesary to go to war with another country at all costs, even if it meant murdering 2000+ of their own people by blowing up downtown Manhattan.
Before you start calling me a conspiracy nut look at what has happened in the world since 911 and who has benefitted. The US now has control of Afganistan which is crucial for controlling Caspian sea oil reserves and a militry presence in Iraq. How convienient.
Radical changes would involve a dynamic change in our consumer culture. Things that most people would be unwilling to do and go places where governments fear to tread. It would basically involve putting all available resources into coming up with a sustainable form of energy at the expense of all else. All I know is that if things continue as they are we will all suffer a mighty upheaval. You are correct in saying that we will not run out of oil but rather we will simply not be able to use it as a form of energy to support our demands.
You talk about alternatives but as of now there are none. All you have to do to understand the enormity of what we are facing is read the news. Price of gas is up, airlines are chargeing a fuel tax now, transportation industries are facing rising costs which result in higher prices for goods. Once oil production peaks it will be a snowball effect all the way down the other side of the slope.
Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful response.
You seem to be a rational and intelligent person who could make the kind of adjustments to your lifestyle that would be needed when oil energy is no longer viable. How many citizens of the US or the world for that matter could do the same? What about countries like China who will want their share of the oil energy? Do you think that they will simply stand by while the US military dictates who gets how many barrels of a dwindling yet precious source of energy?
US attempts to seize control of the middle east oil fields are not new. They have been aware of their vunerability to maintain the oil flow for some time now. In Iraq it started with the Iran-Iraq war and when that failed they doublecrossed Saddam to start Gulf war 1. 12 years of sanctions to wear down their military and now this latest invasion which was suppose to be a cake walk. The plan has been in the works for a long time.
The US government is run by the very oil men you say are putting so much research into alternative forms of energy. Obviously they have come up with nothing that can come close to oil other wise why would they deem it neccesary to go to war with another country at all costs, even if it meant murdering 2000+ of their own people by blowing up downtown Manhattan.
Before you start calling me a conspiracy nut look at what has happened in the world since 911 and who has benefitted. The US now has control of Afganistan which is crucial for controlling Caspian sea oil reserves and a militry presence in Iraq. How convienient.
Radical changes would involve a dynamic change in our consumer culture. Things that most people would be unwilling to do and go places where governments fear to tread. It would basically involve putting all available resources into coming up with a sustainable form of energy at the expense of all else. All I know is that if things continue as they are we will all suffer a mighty upheaval. You are correct in saying that we will not run out of oil but rather we will simply not be able to use it as a form of energy to support our demands.
You talk about alternatives but as of now there are none. All you have to do to understand the enormity of what we are facing is read the news. Price of gas is up, airlines are chargeing a fuel tax now, transportation industries are facing rising costs which result in higher prices for goods. Once oil production peaks it will be a snowball effect all the way down the other side of the slope.
Sustainable oil?
By Chris Bennett
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."
In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to "deep earth" formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a "renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs."
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)," Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century."
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.
A Hedberg Conference, sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was scheduled to discuss and publicly debate this issue. Papers were solicited from interested academics and professionals. The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set.
By Chris Bennett
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
About 80 miles off of the coast of Louisiana lies a mostly submerged mountain, the top of which is known as Eugene Island. The portion underwater is an eerie-looking, sloping tower jutting up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, with deep fissures and perpendicular faults which spontaneously spew natural gas. A significant reservoir of crude oil was discovered nearby in the late '60s, and by 1970, a platform named Eugene 330 was busily producing about 15,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil.
By the late '80s, the platform's production had slipped to less than 4,000 barrels per day, and was considered pumped out. Done. Suddenly, in 1990, production soared back to 15,000 barrels a day, and the reserves which had been estimated at 60 million barrels in the '70s, were recalculated at 400 million barrels. Interestingly, the measured geological age of the new oil was quantifiably different than the oil pumped in the '70s.
Analysis of seismic recordings revealed the presence of a "deep fault" at the base of the Eugene Island reservoir which was gushing up a river of oil from some deeper and previously unknown source.
Similar results were seen at other Gulf of Mexico oil wells. Similar results were found in the Cook Inlet oil fields in Alaska. Similar results were found in oil fields in Uzbekistan. Similarly in the Middle East, where oil exploration and extraction have been underway for at least the last 20 years, known reserves have doubled. Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 680 billion barrels of Middle East reserve oil.
Creating that much oil would take a big pile of dead dinosaurs and fermenting prehistoric plants. Could there be another source for crude oil?
An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.
The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:
Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system – huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.
At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.
Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."
In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.
In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.
Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.
There are a number of observations across the oil-producing regions of the globe that support this theory, and the list of proponents begins with Mendelev (who created the periodic table of elements) and includes Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics and Space Research) and Dr. J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas.
In his 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," Dr. Gold presents compelling evidence for inorganic oil formation. He notes that geologic structures where oil is found all correspond to "deep earth" formations, not the haphazard depositions we find with sedimentary rock, associated fossils or even current surface life.
He also notes that oil extracted from varying depths from the same oil field have the same chemistry – oil chemistry does not vary as fossils vary with increasing depth. Also interesting is the fact that oil is found in huge quantities among geographic formations where assays of prehistoric life are not sufficient to produce the existing reservoirs of oil. Where then did it come from?
Another interesting fact is that every oil field throughout the world has outgassing helium. Helium is so often present in oil fields that helium detectors are used as oil-prospecting tools. Helium is an inert gas known to be a fundamental product of the radiological decay or uranium and thorium, identified in quantity at great depths below the surface of the earth, 200 and more miles below. It is not found in meaningful quantities in areas that are not producing methane, oil or natural gas. It is not a member of the dozen or so common elements associated with life. It is found throughout the solar system as a thoroughly inorganic product.
Even more intriguing is evidence that several oil reservoirs around the globe are refilling themselves, such as the Eugene Island reservoir – not from the sides, as would be expected from cocurrent organic reservoirs, but from the bottom up.
Dr. Gold strongly believes that oil is a "renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs."
Smaller oil companies and innovative teams are using this theory to justify deep oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, among other locations, with some success. Dr. Kenney is on record predicting that parts of Siberia contain a deep reservoir of oil equal to or exceeding that already discovered in the Middle East.
Could this be true?
In August 2002, in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)," Dr. Kenney published a paper, which had a partial title of "The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum." Dr. Kenney and three Russian coauthors conclude:
The Hydrogen-Carbon system does not spontaneously evolve hydrocarbons at pressures less than 30 Kbar, even in the most favorable environment. The H-C system evolves hydrocarbons under pressures found in the mantle of the Earth and at temperatures consistent with that environment.
He was quoted as stating that "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last quarter of the 19th century."
Deeply entrenched in our culture is the belief that at some point in the relatively near future we will see the last working pump on the last functioning oil well screech and rattle, and that will be that. The end of the Age of Oil. And unless we find another source of cheap energy, the world will rapidly become a much darker and dangerous place.
If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible, deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100.
A Hedberg Conference, sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, was scheduled to discuss and publicly debate this issue. Papers were solicited from interested academics and professionals. The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set.
Thanks Sky,
Sometimes I can't believe what I see going on in the world around me and the disensitized(spelling?) attitudes of those around me. It's nice to know that there are others out there who are awakening.
And to you Phaedrus, will we return to life like it was in 1900? We as a species have lived that way a hell of a lot longer than how we have in the last 100 years. I don't doubt that we will carry many of our technology advances like computers etc. with us into the future it's just that there will be A LOT LESS PEOPLE around to enjoy them.
Bugs
Sometimes I can't believe what I see going on in the world around me and the disensitized(spelling?) attitudes of those around me. It's nice to know that there are others out there who are awakening.
And to you Phaedrus, will we return to life like it was in 1900? We as a species have lived that way a hell of a lot longer than how we have in the last 100 years. I don't doubt that we will carry many of our technology advances like computers etc. with us into the future it's just that there will be A LOT LESS PEOPLE around to enjoy them.
Bugs
Shotgun,
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
"If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible (at least they acknowledge it will run out someday.....), deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil (LIE! If this is a MAJOR scientific discovery why isn't it front page news? Guess what? We just discovered that oil is not a fossil fuel!) and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100."
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
I reccommend that you do a web search on how Shell oil company LIED about oil reserves and had to make a MAJOR adjustment to their proven reserves.
Also
"The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set."
For something this important? Yeah they called it off because it's a bullshit idea. If there was even a remote possibility that this theory was true why would the US government sacrifice everything the US stands for to get it's hands on Iraqi oil?
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!! This article is basically saying tyhat oil could last forever so don't worry about it. Ignore this problem at your peril.
Bugs
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
"If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible (at least they acknowledge it will run out someday.....), deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil (LIE! If this is a MAJOR scientific discovery why isn't it front page news? Guess what? We just discovered that oil is not a fossil fuel!) and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100."
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
I reccommend that you do a web search on how Shell oil company LIED about oil reserves and had to make a MAJOR adjustment to their proven reserves.
Also
"The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set."
For something this important? Yeah they called it off because it's a bullshit idea. If there was even a remote possibility that this theory was true why would the US government sacrifice everything the US stands for to get it's hands on Iraqi oil?
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!! This article is basically saying tyhat oil could last forever so don't worry about it. Ignore this problem at your peril.
Bugs
posted by Skyweasel:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
I agree with some of what you say, in particular that industry and people will adapt. But I'm a lot more pessimistic about regarding how much oil we have left. The Hubbert analysis of the U.S. peak was dead-on and the same analysis applied to today's situation shows the peak is coming very soon, within a decade is likely. www.peakoil.net
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The Hubbert Peak theory was dead-on about production, but does not take into account several other factors -- and many other predictions using the Hubbert Peak have been way off the mark, as I said above. See also "Will We Run Out of Energy?" by Mark Brandly, a recent commentary at the Ludwig von Mises Institute that analyses Hubbert Peak models and their advocates.
posted by BugBear:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
You seem to be a rational and intelligent person who could make the kind of adjustments to your lifestyle that would be needed when oil energy is no longer viable.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Thank you.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
How many citizens of the US or the world for that matter could do the same? What about countries like China who will want their share of the oil energy? Do you think that they will simply stand by while the US military dictates who gets how many barrels of a dwindling yet precious source of energy?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It doesn't really matter how many want to, or feel that they could or couldn't -- if posterity presents us with the need to adapt as a requirement of survival, then we'll adapt or take Option B. History demonstrates that posterity has done this to the human race a number of times over the millenia, and here we all are.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
US attempts to seize control of the middle east oil fields are not new. They have been aware of their vunerability to maintain the oil flow for some time now. In Iraq it started with the Iran-Iraq war and when that failed they doublecrossed Saddam to start Gulf war 1. 12 years of sanctions to wear down their military and now this latest invasion which was suppose to be a cake walk. The plan has been in the works for a long time.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
U.S. inteference in the Middle East, largely motivated by oil, is an inarguable fact of history. However, to say that the current war in Iraq is "all about oil" is just silly (and bear in mind I was and remain vehemently opposed to the current war in iraq -- I am not defending it, simply challenging the assertion.)
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The US government is run by the very oil men you say are putting so much research into alternative forms of energy. Obviously they have come up with nothing that can come close to oil other wise why would they deem it neccesary to go to war with another country at all costs, even if it meant murdering 2000+ of their own people by blowing up downtown Manhattan.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'm not even going to touch this one. Not to be rude, but the idea that the U.S. government was manipulated by oil cartels into staging the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for invading Afghanistan/Iraq in order to secure U.S. control of oil is just a little too Reichstag Fire-on-crack for me to tackle. From my own experience once a person believes in something this bizarre -- religion, alien abductions, vast right-wing conspiracies -- there is simply no point in trying to argue with that person.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
You talk about alternatives but as of now there are none. All you have to do to understand the enormity of what we are facing is read the news. Price of gas is up, airlines are chargeing a fuel tax now, transportation industries are facing rising costs which result in higher prices for goods. Once oil production peaks it will be a snowball effect all the way down the other side of the slope.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Economics plays an important part in the allocation of any resource which is scarce (scarce in the economic sense, not the dicitonary definition.) If we run into a true crisis with oil, oil prices (and by extension, the prices of oil-based products) will inevitably rise until demand drops -- this is how economic forces work. The only thing that will prevent this is government intervention in the market mechanism, which while a 100% certainty, will not work if we reach anything like a real crisis.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
And to you Phaedrus, will we return to life like it was in 1900? We as a species have lived that way a hell of a lot longer than how we have in the last 100 years. I don't doubt that we will carry many of our technology advances like computers etc. with us into the future it's just that there will be A LOT LESS PEOPLE around to enjoy them.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
We might return to 1900, or 1800, or even 1500, and it might happen for all kinds of reasons, not just oil. In fact I think we (the world, not just the U.S.) are heading for a societal collapse in any event, and that it will not be due to oil pressures but due to political collapse caused by the inability for current government models to compensate for the far-ranging effects of the Digital Revolution (see Davidson and Rees-Mogg's The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age for a fascinating history of the currently-prevailing system of government, and a somewhat disturbing prognosis for the next half-century or so.)
To address some of your other points:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
WorldNetDaily is filled with anti-Bush, anti-neocon, &c. articles. It is very much a conservative site, but because the contributing writer base runs the gamut of conservatism (which is a suprisingly broad group) there are bound to be pro-Bush, pro-neocon &c. articles as well. A quick scan of the index is no way to evaluate a site, any more than a look at the table of contents is any way to judge a book.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I am unfamiliar with Dr. Kennedy, but fyi Dr. Gold is one of the most respected physicists in the world. He predicted the existence of other galaxies in the universe, the existence and nature of neutron stars, he co-designed and supervised the construction of the largest radio telescope in the world (Arecibo) etc. etc. etc. Like any other career scientist he has had his share of wrongs as well, but to simply dismiss him as a crank because you disagree with one of his theories is wrong -- the man has extensive credentials in the field of scientific research, from cosmology to geophysics and on into biology (he participated in pioneering work on the study of the inner ear in the 1940's.)
You can scoff if you like, but the idea that oil does not come from the traditionally-believed sources (or perhaps more correctly, not exclusively from that source) is not a new idea and is based in sound observation -- more sound, in fact, than the observation on which the prevailing theory is based. The Lesquerox Theory of oil production has to be looked at in its historical context to be really appreciated for how poorly-constructed it is:
1) Lesquerox formulated his theory in 1866, at the time of a sort of Rennaissance in interest in both oil's applications and geology. Hot off the presses were the gold rush and the discovery of dinosaurs, as well as several oil booms in the northeastern U.S., which had America and the whole world on fire with theories about all the neat shit they were digging up out of the earth -- endlessly abundant and useful fuel, gold and silver by the boatload, and amazing long-dead animals, oh my! -- so it was a slam-dunk to sell to the scientific press and general public (the same people who, right around this same time, were endorsing phrenology and studies about the natural genetic inferiority of blacks.)
2) Lesquerox' theory was not based on any scientific analysis of oil sources; rather it was based on chemical analysis of oil itself. The entire "dead dinosaurs" theory of oil is based on the facts that a) coal was known at the time to be created by decaying plant matter and b) oil and coal are chemically similar. That's the entire basis of Lesquierox' theory of diatomatic matter as the source of oil.
3) Although there was never any serious challenge to Lesquerox' theories, there are numerous contradictions that have been discovered, including the above-mentioned Eugene Island site (and it is not the only such example.) Oil in deep ocean environments, deep-drill oil found in Sweden in the 1980's under nearly four miles of granite, and other discoveries fly in the face of the Lesquerox theory, because it is not possible for the diatomatic matter which is generally believed to be the foundation of oil to have found its way into these places.
So, while diatomatic matter might indeed make up at least part of the formation of oil in the world, it is folly to suggest that any alternative theories are crackpot, given that examples which cannot possibly be explained by diatomatic theory abound all over the world.
Again, there will be no magic bullet that saves us from a potential oil crisis, but given the scientific, economic, and technological factors, and historical precedent for an adaptive human society, it is hard to imagine that any such crisis could be so severe as to destroy modern society the way most of the Malthus groupies describe it.
Phaedrus
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
I agree with some of what you say, in particular that industry and people will adapt. But I'm a lot more pessimistic about regarding how much oil we have left. The Hubbert analysis of the U.S. peak was dead-on and the same analysis applied to today's situation shows the peak is coming very soon, within a decade is likely. www.peakoil.net
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The Hubbert Peak theory was dead-on about production, but does not take into account several other factors -- and many other predictions using the Hubbert Peak have been way off the mark, as I said above. See also "Will We Run Out of Energy?" by Mark Brandly, a recent commentary at the Ludwig von Mises Institute that analyses Hubbert Peak models and their advocates.
posted by BugBear:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
You seem to be a rational and intelligent person who could make the kind of adjustments to your lifestyle that would be needed when oil energy is no longer viable.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Thank you.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
How many citizens of the US or the world for that matter could do the same? What about countries like China who will want their share of the oil energy? Do you think that they will simply stand by while the US military dictates who gets how many barrels of a dwindling yet precious source of energy?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It doesn't really matter how many want to, or feel that they could or couldn't -- if posterity presents us with the need to adapt as a requirement of survival, then we'll adapt or take Option B. History demonstrates that posterity has done this to the human race a number of times over the millenia, and here we all are.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
US attempts to seize control of the middle east oil fields are not new. They have been aware of their vunerability to maintain the oil flow for some time now. In Iraq it started with the Iran-Iraq war and when that failed they doublecrossed Saddam to start Gulf war 1. 12 years of sanctions to wear down their military and now this latest invasion which was suppose to be a cake walk. The plan has been in the works for a long time.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
U.S. inteference in the Middle East, largely motivated by oil, is an inarguable fact of history. However, to say that the current war in Iraq is "all about oil" is just silly (and bear in mind I was and remain vehemently opposed to the current war in iraq -- I am not defending it, simply challenging the assertion.)
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The US government is run by the very oil men you say are putting so much research into alternative forms of energy. Obviously they have come up with nothing that can come close to oil other wise why would they deem it neccesary to go to war with another country at all costs, even if it meant murdering 2000+ of their own people by blowing up downtown Manhattan.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'm not even going to touch this one. Not to be rude, but the idea that the U.S. government was manipulated by oil cartels into staging the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for invading Afghanistan/Iraq in order to secure U.S. control of oil is just a little too Reichstag Fire-on-crack for me to tackle. From my own experience once a person believes in something this bizarre -- religion, alien abductions, vast right-wing conspiracies -- there is simply no point in trying to argue with that person.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
You talk about alternatives but as of now there are none. All you have to do to understand the enormity of what we are facing is read the news. Price of gas is up, airlines are chargeing a fuel tax now, transportation industries are facing rising costs which result in higher prices for goods. Once oil production peaks it will be a snowball effect all the way down the other side of the slope.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Economics plays an important part in the allocation of any resource which is scarce (scarce in the economic sense, not the dicitonary definition.) If we run into a true crisis with oil, oil prices (and by extension, the prices of oil-based products) will inevitably rise until demand drops -- this is how economic forces work. The only thing that will prevent this is government intervention in the market mechanism, which while a 100% certainty, will not work if we reach anything like a real crisis.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
And to you Phaedrus, will we return to life like it was in 1900? We as a species have lived that way a hell of a lot longer than how we have in the last 100 years. I don't doubt that we will carry many of our technology advances like computers etc. with us into the future it's just that there will be A LOT LESS PEOPLE around to enjoy them.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
We might return to 1900, or 1800, or even 1500, and it might happen for all kinds of reasons, not just oil. In fact I think we (the world, not just the U.S.) are heading for a societal collapse in any event, and that it will not be due to oil pressures but due to political collapse caused by the inability for current government models to compensate for the far-ranging effects of the Digital Revolution (see Davidson and Rees-Mogg's The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age for a fascinating history of the currently-prevailing system of government, and a somewhat disturbing prognosis for the next half-century or so.)
To address some of your other points:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
WorldNetDaily is filled with anti-Bush, anti-neocon, &c. articles. It is very much a conservative site, but because the contributing writer base runs the gamut of conservatism (which is a suprisingly broad group) there are bound to be pro-Bush, pro-neocon &c. articles as well. A quick scan of the index is no way to evaluate a site, any more than a look at the table of contents is any way to judge a book.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I am unfamiliar with Dr. Kennedy, but fyi Dr. Gold is one of the most respected physicists in the world. He predicted the existence of other galaxies in the universe, the existence and nature of neutron stars, he co-designed and supervised the construction of the largest radio telescope in the world (Arecibo) etc. etc. etc. Like any other career scientist he has had his share of wrongs as well, but to simply dismiss him as a crank because you disagree with one of his theories is wrong -- the man has extensive credentials in the field of scientific research, from cosmology to geophysics and on into biology (he participated in pioneering work on the study of the inner ear in the 1940's.)
You can scoff if you like, but the idea that oil does not come from the traditionally-believed sources (or perhaps more correctly, not exclusively from that source) is not a new idea and is based in sound observation -- more sound, in fact, than the observation on which the prevailing theory is based. The Lesquerox Theory of oil production has to be looked at in its historical context to be really appreciated for how poorly-constructed it is:
1) Lesquerox formulated his theory in 1866, at the time of a sort of Rennaissance in interest in both oil's applications and geology. Hot off the presses were the gold rush and the discovery of dinosaurs, as well as several oil booms in the northeastern U.S., which had America and the whole world on fire with theories about all the neat shit they were digging up out of the earth -- endlessly abundant and useful fuel, gold and silver by the boatload, and amazing long-dead animals, oh my! -- so it was a slam-dunk to sell to the scientific press and general public (the same people who, right around this same time, were endorsing phrenology and studies about the natural genetic inferiority of blacks.)
2) Lesquerox' theory was not based on any scientific analysis of oil sources; rather it was based on chemical analysis of oil itself. The entire "dead dinosaurs" theory of oil is based on the facts that a) coal was known at the time to be created by decaying plant matter and b) oil and coal are chemically similar. That's the entire basis of Lesquierox' theory of diatomatic matter as the source of oil.
3) Although there was never any serious challenge to Lesquerox' theories, there are numerous contradictions that have been discovered, including the above-mentioned Eugene Island site (and it is not the only such example.) Oil in deep ocean environments, deep-drill oil found in Sweden in the 1980's under nearly four miles of granite, and other discoveries fly in the face of the Lesquerox theory, because it is not possible for the diatomatic matter which is generally believed to be the foundation of oil to have found its way into these places.
So, while diatomatic matter might indeed make up at least part of the formation of oil in the world, it is folly to suggest that any alternative theories are crackpot, given that examples which cannot possibly be explained by diatomatic theory abound all over the world.
Again, there will be no magic bullet that saves us from a potential oil crisis, but given the scientific, economic, and technological factors, and historical precedent for an adaptive human society, it is hard to imagine that any such crisis could be so severe as to destroy modern society the way most of the Malthus groupies describe it.
Phaedrus
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BugBear:
Shotgun,
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
"If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible (at least they acknowledge it will run out someday.....), deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil (LIE! If this is a MAJOR scientific discovery why isn't it front page news? Guess what? We just discovered that oil is not a fossil fuel!) and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100."
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
I reccommend that you do a web search on how Shell oil company LIED about oil reserves and had to make a MAJOR adjustment to their proven reserves.
Also
"The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set."
For something this important? Yeah they called it off because it's a bullshit idea. If there was even a remote possibility that this theory was true why would the US government sacrifice everything the US stands for to get it's hands on Iraqi oil?
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!! This article is basically saying tyhat oil could last forever so don't worry about it. Ignore this problem at your peril.
Bugs<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Bugs, I'm really hesitant to get into an argument with someone who believes 9-11 was an American plot, but occassionally I do some stupid shit and this is probably one of those times. I'm hoping you will actually try to understand what is being said; reading your responses to Phaedrus shows me that you are more interested in putting across your Malthusian agenda than discovering something new.
A couple of quick points:
1) There is no proof that oil came from dead dinosaurs, leaves, or any other biological source. Fred Hoyle said in 1982: "The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.”
2) The theory advocated from Gold and Kenny (crackpot scientists in your view) reiterates what Russian scientists have been saying for 50 years.
" The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not the work of any one single man, - nor of a few men. The modern theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former) U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and contributed to the development of the modern theory.(Kropotkin 1956; Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir'yev 1959; Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966; Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al. 1977; Porfir'yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)"
I could go on and on, but basically I'm just repeating what is available online somewhere. A good start (if you are really interested...I doubt you are however) would be www.gasresources.net. Here is the conclusion to a study refuting the Hubbert analysis quoted earlier by Skyweasal:
"The many inconsistencies and errors, along with the ignorance of most prior research, indicates that the current school of Hubbert modelers have not discovered new, earth-shaking results but rather joined the large crowd of those who have found that large bodies of data often yield particular shapes, from which they attempt to divine physical laws. The work of the Hubbert modelers has proven to be incorrect in theory, and based heavily on assumptions that the available evidence shows to be wrong. They have repeatedly misinterpreted political and economic effects as reflecting geological constraints, and misunderstood the causality underlying exploration, discovery and production.
The primary flaw in Hubbert-type models is a reliance on URR as a static number rather than a dynamic variable, changing with technology, knowledge, infrastructure and other factors, but primarily growing. Campbell and Laherrere claim to have developed better analytical methods to resolve this problem, but their own estimates have been increasing, and increasingly rapidly.
The result has been exactly as predicted in Lynch (1996) for this method: a series of predictions of near-term peak and decline, which have had to be repeatedly revised upwards and into the future. So much so as to suggest that the authors themselves are providing evidence that oil resources are under no strain, but increasing faster than consumption!"
Shotgun,
An interesting piece of propaganda from what appears to be a pro-Bush right wing web site.
"If Dr. Gold and Dr. Kenney are correct, this "the end of the world as we know it" scenario simply won't happen. Think about it ... while not inexhaustible (at least they acknowledge it will run out someday.....), deep Earth reserves of inorganic crude oil (LIE! If this is a MAJOR scientific discovery why isn't it front page news? Guess what? We just discovered that oil is not a fossil fuel!) and commercially feasible extraction would provide the world with generations of low-cost fuel. Dr. Gold has been quoted saying that current worldwide reserves of crude oil could be off by a factor of over 100."
Great, the fate of the world is in the hands of two crack pots er...scientists or doctors or whatever with a "theory". Reserves off by a factor of 100?!? what if they're off in the other direction. This is a pipe dream fantasy with no science to back it up.
I reccommend that you do a web search on how Shell oil company LIED about oil reserves and had to make a MAJOR adjustment to their proven reserves.
Also
"The conference was scheduled to begin June 9, 2003, but was canceled at the last minute. A new date has yet to be set."
For something this important? Yeah they called it off because it's a bullshit idea. If there was even a remote possibility that this theory was true why would the US government sacrifice everything the US stands for to get it's hands on Iraqi oil?
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!! This article is basically saying tyhat oil could last forever so don't worry about it. Ignore this problem at your peril.
Bugs<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Bugs, I'm really hesitant to get into an argument with someone who believes 9-11 was an American plot, but occassionally I do some stupid shit and this is probably one of those times. I'm hoping you will actually try to understand what is being said; reading your responses to Phaedrus shows me that you are more interested in putting across your Malthusian agenda than discovering something new.
A couple of quick points:
1) There is no proof that oil came from dead dinosaurs, leaves, or any other biological source. Fred Hoyle said in 1982: "The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.”
2) The theory advocated from Gold and Kenny (crackpot scientists in your view) reiterates what Russian scientists have been saying for 50 years.
" The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is not the work of any one single man, - nor of a few men. The modern theory was developed by hundreds of scientists in the (now former) U.S.S.R., including many of the finest geologists, geochemists, geophysicists, and thermodynamicists of that country. There have now been more than two generations of geologists, geophysicists, chemists, and other scientists in the U.S.S.R. who have worked upon and contributed to the development of the modern theory.(Kropotkin 1956; Anisimov, Vasilyev et al. 1959; Kudryavtsev 1959; Porfir'yev 1959; Kudryavtsev 1963; Raznitsyn 1963; Krayushkin 1965; Markevich 1966; Dolenko 1968; Dolenko 1971; Linetskii 1974; Letnikov, Karpov et al. 1977; Porfir'yev and Klochko 1981; Krayushkin 1984)"
I could go on and on, but basically I'm just repeating what is available online somewhere. A good start (if you are really interested...I doubt you are however) would be www.gasresources.net. Here is the conclusion to a study refuting the Hubbert analysis quoted earlier by Skyweasal:
"The many inconsistencies and errors, along with the ignorance of most prior research, indicates that the current school of Hubbert modelers have not discovered new, earth-shaking results but rather joined the large crowd of those who have found that large bodies of data often yield particular shapes, from which they attempt to divine physical laws. The work of the Hubbert modelers has proven to be incorrect in theory, and based heavily on assumptions that the available evidence shows to be wrong. They have repeatedly misinterpreted political and economic effects as reflecting geological constraints, and misunderstood the causality underlying exploration, discovery and production.
The primary flaw in Hubbert-type models is a reliance on URR as a static number rather than a dynamic variable, changing with technology, knowledge, infrastructure and other factors, but primarily growing. Campbell and Laherrere claim to have developed better analytical methods to resolve this problem, but their own estimates have been increasing, and increasingly rapidly.
The result has been exactly as predicted in Lynch (1996) for this method: a series of predictions of near-term peak and decline, which have had to be repeatedly revised upwards and into the future. So much so as to suggest that the authors themselves are providing evidence that oil resources are under no strain, but increasing faster than consumption!"
A quick note about Thomas Gold: Russian scientists believed he plagerized much of what was in his book without giving much credit to the research done in the USSR.
"Sometime during the late 1970’s, a British-American, one-time astronomer named Thomas Gold discovered the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Such was not difficult to do, for there are many thousands of articles, monographs, and books published in the mainstream Russian scientific press on modern Russian petroleum science. Gold reads the Russian language fluently.
In 1979, Gold began publishing the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum origins, as if such were his own ideas and without giving credit to the Russian (then, Soviet) petroleum scientists from whom he had taken the material. Gold tried to alter the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins with notions of his own in order to conceal its provenance, and gave his “ideas” the (very misleading) name the “deep gas theory.”
Worse yet, Gold’s alterations of modern Russian petroleum science are utterly wrong. Specifically Gold’s claims that there exist large quantities of natural gas (methane) in the Earth at depths of its mantle are completely wrong, - such claims are upside-down and backwards. At the pressures of the mantle, methane is unstable, and the hydrogen-carbon system there evolves the entire suite of heavier hydrocarbons found in natural petroleum, in the Planck-type distribution which characterizes natural petroleum. Methane at pressures of the mantle of the Earth will decompose to evolve octane, diesel oil, heavy lubricating oils, alkylbenzenes, and the compounds found in natural petroleum. [These properties of the hydrogen-carbon system have been described at greater length and rigor in a recent article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.1] Regrettably, Gold is as ignorant of thermodynamics as he is of ethics.
A few moment’s thought should have been given to the reasonable probability that an astronomer, who had no previous knowledge of petroleum or geology, and no experience in those fields, might have independently thought up, all by himself, a formidably extensive body of knowledge which itself resulted from the directed work of many, many men and women of a large country with a splendid scientific tradition, working over several decades. The notion compares with the myth of Apollo springing fully-armed from the forehead of Aphrodite. As the French say, “incroyable !”
A common saying goes that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.” Perhaps one might speculate that plagiarism is somehow an even more sincere compliment. Not so. The plagiarism of scientific work constitutes theft of a scientist’s most precious possessions.
Scientists very rarely garner wealth from their endeavors. Science is usually done by its practitioners for the joy of discovery, - and for the credit and standing gained among their peers as reward for successful work. As one might expect, when the Russian petroleum scientists learned of Thomas Gold’s behavior, they were outraged. They remain so today.
The men and women in the former U.S.S.R. who worked hard to develop and enunciate the modern theory of abiotic petroleum origins struggled under unusual difficulties throughout their lives. This century has been very hard for every one born in the former U.S.S.R. All of the contributors to the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic hydrocarbon origins had to live through the worst of the Communist period in their country, and almost all of them suffered the terrible experiences of World War II. Their lives have been especially hard. Now without exception they are all poor. To have had even what little reward they deserved for their scientific work stolen from them by plagiarism is especially disgusting."
"Sometime during the late 1970’s, a British-American, one-time astronomer named Thomas Gold discovered the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. Such was not difficult to do, for there are many thousands of articles, monographs, and books published in the mainstream Russian scientific press on modern Russian petroleum science. Gold reads the Russian language fluently.
In 1979, Gold began publishing the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum origins, as if such were his own ideas and without giving credit to the Russian (then, Soviet) petroleum scientists from whom he had taken the material. Gold tried to alter the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins with notions of his own in order to conceal its provenance, and gave his “ideas” the (very misleading) name the “deep gas theory.”
Worse yet, Gold’s alterations of modern Russian petroleum science are utterly wrong. Specifically Gold’s claims that there exist large quantities of natural gas (methane) in the Earth at depths of its mantle are completely wrong, - such claims are upside-down and backwards. At the pressures of the mantle, methane is unstable, and the hydrogen-carbon system there evolves the entire suite of heavier hydrocarbons found in natural petroleum, in the Planck-type distribution which characterizes natural petroleum. Methane at pressures of the mantle of the Earth will decompose to evolve octane, diesel oil, heavy lubricating oils, alkylbenzenes, and the compounds found in natural petroleum. [These properties of the hydrogen-carbon system have been described at greater length and rigor in a recent article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.1] Regrettably, Gold is as ignorant of thermodynamics as he is of ethics.
A few moment’s thought should have been given to the reasonable probability that an astronomer, who had no previous knowledge of petroleum or geology, and no experience in those fields, might have independently thought up, all by himself, a formidably extensive body of knowledge which itself resulted from the directed work of many, many men and women of a large country with a splendid scientific tradition, working over several decades. The notion compares with the myth of Apollo springing fully-armed from the forehead of Aphrodite. As the French say, “incroyable !”
A common saying goes that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.” Perhaps one might speculate that plagiarism is somehow an even more sincere compliment. Not so. The plagiarism of scientific work constitutes theft of a scientist’s most precious possessions.
Scientists very rarely garner wealth from their endeavors. Science is usually done by its practitioners for the joy of discovery, - and for the credit and standing gained among their peers as reward for successful work. As one might expect, when the Russian petroleum scientists learned of Thomas Gold’s behavior, they were outraged. They remain so today.
The men and women in the former U.S.S.R. who worked hard to develop and enunciate the modern theory of abiotic petroleum origins struggled under unusual difficulties throughout their lives. This century has been very hard for every one born in the former U.S.S.R. All of the contributors to the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abiotic hydrocarbon origins had to live through the worst of the Communist period in their country, and almost all of them suffered the terrible experiences of World War II. Their lives have been especially hard. Now without exception they are all poor. To have had even what little reward they deserved for their scientific work stolen from them by plagiarism is especially disgusting."
Some interesting references here ...
Discovering Oil
by Bruce Bartlett
TownHall.com
Predictably, the recent rise in oil prices has the usual doom-and-gloom crowd, which has consistently been wrong for 30 years, out saying once again that this proves we are running out of oil and that severe curbs on gasoline consumption must be imposed to preserve what little is left for future generations. They need not worry. There is growing evidence that oil is far more plentiful than we have been led to believe.
The prevailing theory of the origin of oil is the dead dinosaur hypothesis and dates back to the 18th century. Its originator was a Russian scientist named Mikhail Lomonosov, who put it this way in a 1757 paper, "Rock oil (petroleum) originates as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an unimaginably long period of time, transforms into rock oil."
However, in the 1950s, Russian and Ukrainian scientists developed a new theory about petroleum's origins called the abiotic or abiogenic theory. According to this view, oil is fundamentally inorganic and has no relationship to dead plant or animal life. Rather, oil originates deep in the Earth's crust from inorganic material that is part of the planet's origin.
In the words of geologist Vladimir Porfir'yev, "The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have erupted from great depths."
For more than 50 years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have successfully used the abiotic theory to find oil and natural gas. For example, the Dnieper-Donets Basin has yielded a significant amount of oil and natural gas even though it is an area that conventional biological theories reject as unpromising. A recent technical paper found that the results "confirm the scientific conclusions that the oil and natural gas found in…the Dnieper-Donets Basin are of deep, and abiotic, origin."
As Russia has opened up since the fall of the Soviet Union and because it has become a large and growing factor in the international oil market, American scientists are becoming increasingly knowledgeable about and interested in the abiotic theory of petroleum. Recently, the National Academy of Sciences published a paper on the topic. The Gas Research Institute has financed exploration based on abiotic theories, with encouraging results. And the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has taken an interest in the subject as well.
The leading supporter of the abiotic theory in the U.S. is Prof. Thomas Gold of Cornell. His 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" (Springer-Verlag) is a thorough discussion of the issues. It is based in part on research financed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Among prominent scientists whose work supports the abiotic theory are Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, and J.F Kenny of the Gas Resources Corporation.
Interestingly, economic research also implicitly supports abiotic theory. A leading researcher in this regard is Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research and formerly chief energy economist for DRI-WEFA.
In a new paper, Lynch debunks a common theory called the Hubbert Curve, which postulates that the yield of oil fields is inherently limited. The problem, as Lynch points out, is that actual experience in many instances contradicts the Hubbert theory. Its primary flaw is that it views geology as the sole factor in oil discovery, recovery and depletion. In fact, oil prices, government policy and technology play critical roles. But the evidence he presents of oil fields that yielded far more than the Hubbert Curve predicts is consistent with the abiotic theory, which says that oil fields can be refilled from sources well below those in which production now takes place.
Finally, it is important to remember that improving technology improves the oil situation regardless of the theory of its origins. A study last year by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that five emerging technologies--remote sensing, visualization, intelligent drilling and completions, automation, and data integration--will greatly improve the ability of energy companies to increase their drilling success rate, better manage reserves, and operate more efficiently.
William Severns, the study's leader, explained, "With these capabilities, companies may be able to increase the amount of oil and natural gas recovered in a given field by 2 percent to 7 percent, reduce lifting costs by 10 percent to 25 percent, and increase production rates by 2 percent to 4 percent."
Of course, higher prices also make known deposits of oil that were previously too costly to exploit viable economically, as well as reducing demand. Consequently, it is impossible to ever literally run out of oil. The possibility should not be a factor in the energy debate.
Discovering Oil
by Bruce Bartlett
TownHall.com
Predictably, the recent rise in oil prices has the usual doom-and-gloom crowd, which has consistently been wrong for 30 years, out saying once again that this proves we are running out of oil and that severe curbs on gasoline consumption must be imposed to preserve what little is left for future generations. They need not worry. There is growing evidence that oil is far more plentiful than we have been led to believe.
The prevailing theory of the origin of oil is the dead dinosaur hypothesis and dates back to the 18th century. Its originator was a Russian scientist named Mikhail Lomonosov, who put it this way in a 1757 paper, "Rock oil (petroleum) originates as tiny bodies of animals buried in the sediments which, under the influence of increased temperature and pressure acting during an unimaginably long period of time, transforms into rock oil."
However, in the 1950s, Russian and Ukrainian scientists developed a new theory about petroleum's origins called the abiotic or abiogenic theory. According to this view, oil is fundamentally inorganic and has no relationship to dead plant or animal life. Rather, oil originates deep in the Earth's crust from inorganic material that is part of the planet's origin.
In the words of geologist Vladimir Porfir'yev, "The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have erupted from great depths."
For more than 50 years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have successfully used the abiotic theory to find oil and natural gas. For example, the Dnieper-Donets Basin has yielded a significant amount of oil and natural gas even though it is an area that conventional biological theories reject as unpromising. A recent technical paper found that the results "confirm the scientific conclusions that the oil and natural gas found in…the Dnieper-Donets Basin are of deep, and abiotic, origin."
As Russia has opened up since the fall of the Soviet Union and because it has become a large and growing factor in the international oil market, American scientists are becoming increasingly knowledgeable about and interested in the abiotic theory of petroleum. Recently, the National Academy of Sciences published a paper on the topic. The Gas Research Institute has financed exploration based on abiotic theories, with encouraging results. And the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has taken an interest in the subject as well.
The leading supporter of the abiotic theory in the U.S. is Prof. Thomas Gold of Cornell. His 1999 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" (Springer-Verlag) is a thorough discussion of the issues. It is based in part on research financed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Among prominent scientists whose work supports the abiotic theory are Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, and J.F Kenny of the Gas Resources Corporation.
Interestingly, economic research also implicitly supports abiotic theory. A leading researcher in this regard is Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research and formerly chief energy economist for DRI-WEFA.
In a new paper, Lynch debunks a common theory called the Hubbert Curve, which postulates that the yield of oil fields is inherently limited. The problem, as Lynch points out, is that actual experience in many instances contradicts the Hubbert theory. Its primary flaw is that it views geology as the sole factor in oil discovery, recovery and depletion. In fact, oil prices, government policy and technology play critical roles. But the evidence he presents of oil fields that yielded far more than the Hubbert Curve predicts is consistent with the abiotic theory, which says that oil fields can be refilled from sources well below those in which production now takes place.
Finally, it is important to remember that improving technology improves the oil situation regardless of the theory of its origins. A study last year by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that five emerging technologies--remote sensing, visualization, intelligent drilling and completions, automation, and data integration--will greatly improve the ability of energy companies to increase their drilling success rate, better manage reserves, and operate more efficiently.
William Severns, the study's leader, explained, "With these capabilities, companies may be able to increase the amount of oil and natural gas recovered in a given field by 2 percent to 7 percent, reduce lifting costs by 10 percent to 25 percent, and increase production rates by 2 percent to 4 percent."
Of course, higher prices also make known deposits of oil that were previously too costly to exploit viable economically, as well as reducing demand. Consequently, it is impossible to ever literally run out of oil. The possibility should not be a factor in the energy debate.
Interesting piece regarding so-called "heavy" and "sand" oils ...
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit
Who needs "oil independence" - our friendly neighbor to the north is sitting on a black gold mine!
by Brendan I. Koerner
Wired
Fort McMurray, Alberta, is an unlikely destination for a congressional boondoggle, especially when cold snaps of 40 below make it dangerous to leave any patch of skin uncovered. But here I am in midwinter, 250 miles north of Edmonton, watching a flock of Washington politicians in subzero parkas cling to tour guides like a trail of oversize ducklings. With gas prices approaching $3 a gallon in some states, the US representatives are braving the frigid air not for adventure but to learn about a filthy sort of alchemy, one that turns sludgy, sticky earth into sweet crude oil.
Alberta sits atop the biggest petroleum deposit outside the Arabian peninsula - as many as 300 billion recoverable barrels and another trillion-plus barrels that could one day be within reach using new retrieval methods. (By contrast, the entire Middle East holds an estimated 685 billion barrels that are recoverable.) But there's a catch. Alberta's black gold isn't the stuff that geysered up from Jed Clampett's backyard. It's more like a mix of Silly Putty and coffee grounds - think of the tar patties that stick to the bottom of your sandals at the beach - and it's trapped beneath hundreds of feet of clay and rock.
This petroleum dreck is known in these parts as heavy oil, and wildcatters are determined to get it out of the ground and into a pipeline. If they succeed, the stereotypical oil zillionaire may be not an Arabian emir but a folksy Albertan fond of ending sentences in a question, eh? Like Jim Carter, president of Canada's largest oil company, Syncrude. A coal-mine foreman by trade, Carter talks as if he just got out of a cut-rate business seminar, spewing jargon like "going-forward basis" and "continuous-improvement mindset." He's the kind of guy who straps a snowplow on his John Deere mower and clears the streets just for fun. But he clawed his way out of the pits to a corner office, and now he has a plan to make Canada's oil reserves pay off.
Heavy oil isn't a new discovery. Native Americans have used it to caulk their canoes for centuries. Until recently, though, it's been the energy industry's stepchild - ugly, dirty, and hard to refine. But the political winds are favoring the heavy stuff, as "energy independence" - aka freedom from relying on Middle East oil - has become a war-on-terror buzz-phrase. Even President Bush has waxed optimistic about Alberta's "tar pits."
Better yet, recent improvements in mining and extraction techniques have cut heavy oil production costs nearly in half since the 1980s, to about $10 per barrel, with more innovation on the way. The petroleum industry is spending billions on new methods to get at the estimated 6 trillion barrels of heavy oil worldwide - nearly half the earth's entire oil reserve. Last year, Shell and ChevronTexaco jointly opened the $5.7 billion Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta, which pumps out 155,000 barrels per day. Venezuela's Orinoco Belt yields 500,000 barrels daily, and that number should spike when a new ChevronTexaco plant goes online this year.
The trailblazer in heavy oil is Syncrude, a joint venture among eight US and Canadian energy companies, which has been harvesting greasy sand since 1978. Last year, the company shipped 77 million barrels of its trademark product, Syncrude Sweet Blend, mostly to US refineries. That's 14 percent of all Canadian oil sales, company executives boast - enough to produce 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline.
Chalk up the impressive output to Syncrude's efficiency. Carter and his team like to present themselves as roughnecks, but they run the company like bookish software engineers. Their oil mines - noisy and grimy and often reeking of sulfur - operate with the high tech prowess of a Taiwanese factory churning out LCDs.
The Caterpillar 797 dump truck is a true monster - 48 feet from tip to tail and 22 feet high, it creeps uphill with a 400-ton payload at 1 mile per hour. Syncrude owns 36 of the vehicles, which cost $5 million each. This herd of yellow pachyderms lumbers around the company's open-pit mines, shuttling oil sands from the digging shovels to a massive processing facility called a crusher. The inside of the crusher resembles the guts of the Nostromo, the doomed ore-hauling ship in Alien. Whale-sized pipes and narrow catwalks crisscross everywhere; steam billows from hoses that snake along the floor. Here the sands are pulverized, then sent to cyclofeeders to be mixed with hot water and pumped to gargantuan centrifuges where the oil-rich component, bitumen, is separated out. The bitumen is sent to giant cokers and roasted with hydrogen into Syncrude Sweet Blend.
It's a laborious process, to say the least - 2 tons of sand yields just one barrel of oil - but nowhere near as painstaking as it used to be. In the 1920s, Karl Clark, a University of Alberta chemist, discovered that steam could tease pitch out of sand. His breakthrough piqued Big Oil's interest, but no one could make the process cost-effective. In the 1950s, a few desperate hopefuls suggested detonating a subterranean nuclear bomb to blast the gunk to the surface. When Syncrude started, it relied on draglines, huge cranelike devices weighing more than 15 full 747s. Attached to these $100 million machines were enormous buckets; the draglines would scrape the buckets across the earth to scoop up huge chunks of sand - a tough process to coordinate come winter.
The murderous climate caused untold headaches. The conveyor belts that carried oil sands from dragline to processing plant were prone to cracking. Whenever the cokers got clogged with calcified soot, Syncrude had to shut down for a week and send in cleaners with sledgehammers - "the kind of job that makes you thankful you have an education," quips Mark Sherman, who now manages the company's cokers.
When an OPEC glut sent oil prices skidding to $10 a barrel in 1985, Syncrude was losing $5 to $10 on every barrel of synthetic crude it produced. Only savage staff cuts staved off complete ruin. Nearly a decade later, Syncrude began to get creative. In 1994, the executives opened an R&D lab in Edmonton and started spending $30 million a year to devise increasingly efficient extraction methods. They ditched the draglines for more agile trucks and shovels and replaced some of the conveyor belts with hydrotransport, a method in which crushed sand is mixed with hot water into a pipeline-ready slurry.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Article continued here.
Phaedrus
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit
Who needs "oil independence" - our friendly neighbor to the north is sitting on a black gold mine!
by Brendan I. Koerner
Wired
Fort McMurray, Alberta, is an unlikely destination for a congressional boondoggle, especially when cold snaps of 40 below make it dangerous to leave any patch of skin uncovered. But here I am in midwinter, 250 miles north of Edmonton, watching a flock of Washington politicians in subzero parkas cling to tour guides like a trail of oversize ducklings. With gas prices approaching $3 a gallon in some states, the US representatives are braving the frigid air not for adventure but to learn about a filthy sort of alchemy, one that turns sludgy, sticky earth into sweet crude oil.
Alberta sits atop the biggest petroleum deposit outside the Arabian peninsula - as many as 300 billion recoverable barrels and another trillion-plus barrels that could one day be within reach using new retrieval methods. (By contrast, the entire Middle East holds an estimated 685 billion barrels that are recoverable.) But there's a catch. Alberta's black gold isn't the stuff that geysered up from Jed Clampett's backyard. It's more like a mix of Silly Putty and coffee grounds - think of the tar patties that stick to the bottom of your sandals at the beach - and it's trapped beneath hundreds of feet of clay and rock.
This petroleum dreck is known in these parts as heavy oil, and wildcatters are determined to get it out of the ground and into a pipeline. If they succeed, the stereotypical oil zillionaire may be not an Arabian emir but a folksy Albertan fond of ending sentences in a question, eh? Like Jim Carter, president of Canada's largest oil company, Syncrude. A coal-mine foreman by trade, Carter talks as if he just got out of a cut-rate business seminar, spewing jargon like "going-forward basis" and "continuous-improvement mindset." He's the kind of guy who straps a snowplow on his John Deere mower and clears the streets just for fun. But he clawed his way out of the pits to a corner office, and now he has a plan to make Canada's oil reserves pay off.
Heavy oil isn't a new discovery. Native Americans have used it to caulk their canoes for centuries. Until recently, though, it's been the energy industry's stepchild - ugly, dirty, and hard to refine. But the political winds are favoring the heavy stuff, as "energy independence" - aka freedom from relying on Middle East oil - has become a war-on-terror buzz-phrase. Even President Bush has waxed optimistic about Alberta's "tar pits."
Better yet, recent improvements in mining and extraction techniques have cut heavy oil production costs nearly in half since the 1980s, to about $10 per barrel, with more innovation on the way. The petroleum industry is spending billions on new methods to get at the estimated 6 trillion barrels of heavy oil worldwide - nearly half the earth's entire oil reserve. Last year, Shell and ChevronTexaco jointly opened the $5.7 billion Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta, which pumps out 155,000 barrels per day. Venezuela's Orinoco Belt yields 500,000 barrels daily, and that number should spike when a new ChevronTexaco plant goes online this year.
The trailblazer in heavy oil is Syncrude, a joint venture among eight US and Canadian energy companies, which has been harvesting greasy sand since 1978. Last year, the company shipped 77 million barrels of its trademark product, Syncrude Sweet Blend, mostly to US refineries. That's 14 percent of all Canadian oil sales, company executives boast - enough to produce 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline.
Chalk up the impressive output to Syncrude's efficiency. Carter and his team like to present themselves as roughnecks, but they run the company like bookish software engineers. Their oil mines - noisy and grimy and often reeking of sulfur - operate with the high tech prowess of a Taiwanese factory churning out LCDs.
The Caterpillar 797 dump truck is a true monster - 48 feet from tip to tail and 22 feet high, it creeps uphill with a 400-ton payload at 1 mile per hour. Syncrude owns 36 of the vehicles, which cost $5 million each. This herd of yellow pachyderms lumbers around the company's open-pit mines, shuttling oil sands from the digging shovels to a massive processing facility called a crusher. The inside of the crusher resembles the guts of the Nostromo, the doomed ore-hauling ship in Alien. Whale-sized pipes and narrow catwalks crisscross everywhere; steam billows from hoses that snake along the floor. Here the sands are pulverized, then sent to cyclofeeders to be mixed with hot water and pumped to gargantuan centrifuges where the oil-rich component, bitumen, is separated out. The bitumen is sent to giant cokers and roasted with hydrogen into Syncrude Sweet Blend.
It's a laborious process, to say the least - 2 tons of sand yields just one barrel of oil - but nowhere near as painstaking as it used to be. In the 1920s, Karl Clark, a University of Alberta chemist, discovered that steam could tease pitch out of sand. His breakthrough piqued Big Oil's interest, but no one could make the process cost-effective. In the 1950s, a few desperate hopefuls suggested detonating a subterranean nuclear bomb to blast the gunk to the surface. When Syncrude started, it relied on draglines, huge cranelike devices weighing more than 15 full 747s. Attached to these $100 million machines were enormous buckets; the draglines would scrape the buckets across the earth to scoop up huge chunks of sand - a tough process to coordinate come winter.
The murderous climate caused untold headaches. The conveyor belts that carried oil sands from dragline to processing plant were prone to cracking. Whenever the cokers got clogged with calcified soot, Syncrude had to shut down for a week and send in cleaners with sledgehammers - "the kind of job that makes you thankful you have an education," quips Mark Sherman, who now manages the company's cokers.
When an OPEC glut sent oil prices skidding to $10 a barrel in 1985, Syncrude was losing $5 to $10 on every barrel of synthetic crude it produced. Only savage staff cuts staved off complete ruin. Nearly a decade later, Syncrude began to get creative. In 1994, the executives opened an R&D lab in Edmonton and started spending $30 million a year to devise increasingly efficient extraction methods. They ditched the draglines for more agile trucks and shovels and replaced some of the conveyor belts with hydrotransport, a method in which crushed sand is mixed with hot water into a pipeline-ready slurry.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Article continued here.
Phaedrus
