How many times have you heard that we must stop getting our energy from fossil fuels? Coal is indisputably a fossil fuel, but there is considerable debate regarding the source of oil. When we are dealing with climate change hysteria, which wants to wean us totally from fossil fuels, meaning oil, it really matters if we get this right. For years I have been reading reports that oil might not be a fossil fuel at all, that it was formed abiotically, meaning it is generated by a subterranean process of heat and pressure.
Oil is made up of 85% carbon, 13% hydrogen, .05% oxygen with traces of Sulphur, and nitrogen. It was thought that oil originated from the decomposition of organic matter. Basically, from the remains of dead animals over millions of years. The theory said we would run out of it sooner, rather than later. At first, most oil wells were drilled into areas where there are fossils, so this seemed to make sense.
But at early as 1951, Russian scientist N.A. Kudryavtsev said that deep petroleum was produced abiotically. Keep in mind that at the time, Stalin was absolutely desperate to find new sources of oil. Anyone remotely familiar with Stalin knows that when he wanted something, people who failed him paid a very high price. So Russian scientists were literally on a mission to find oil.
It may surprise you to learn that Fortune Magazine published an article about this in 2003.
Some of the numbers are staggering.
“In the mid-1990s the world’s reserves of oil were thought to total about 890 billion barrels. Today reserves stand at 1.1 trillion barrels; the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that continued reserve growth, along with undiscovered resources, could bring world oil estimates to as much as three trillion barrels. “We’re finding there are pretty substantial oil reserves in the world,” says Tom Ahlbrandt, world energy project chief at the USGS. “New exploration and drilling technologies are making major new discoveries possible.”
In 2015, Forbes Magazine ran an article saying that we may have enough oil to last 1,000 years:
How Much Oil Does the World Have Left? (forbes.com)
It turns out that if we just use more efficient methods to get oil, we may already have more than enough!
“Additionally, ~66% of the oil in a reservoir is frequently left behind because it’s too expensive or difficult to extract. Since the 1970s, CO2-enhanced oil recovery offers a gigantic global prize of 2-5 trillion barrels and a safe way to sequester CO2 underground for 1,000 years. Wait: what was that? CO2 helps extract oil. I thought it was killing us?
So why don’t you know most of this? Why do decisions made by the Biden administration look remarkably similar to the predictions made by the Hubbert Peak theory? That was produced in 1956 and the only thing absolutely certain is that this has been thoroughly discredited.
Hubbert peak theory – Wikipedia
Hubbert assumed that after fossil fuel reserves (oil reserves, coal reserves, and natural gas reserves) are discovered, production at first increases approximately exponentially, as more extraction commences and more efficient facilities are installed. At some point, a peak output is reached, and production begins declining until it approximates an exponential decline.
The Hubbert curve satisfies these constraints. Furthermore, it is symmetrical, with the peak of production reached when half of the fossil fuel that will ultimately be produced has been produced. It also has a single peak.
This looked to be accurate, until people started finding oil, a lot more oil, and became much better at extracting it. Now, it is absurdly wrong.
I recently had someone I respect as intelligent, repeat the myth that 80% of scientists agree with him that global warming caused by rising C)2 levels is a threat to mankind. He was totally uninterested in hearing any facts to the contrary. This unfortunately is typical. We should all be willing to see facts, even if they are inconveniently inconsistent with our current beliefs. Truth always matters. Those who ignore truth, or suppress truth, are doomed to making monumental errors. When those people are stupidly elevated to position of power, we all pay a terrible price for their miscalculations.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
In summary, we are not running out of oil at all. It just may be the cleanest most renewal source of energy on this planet. Yet we have people who literally want to stop producing oil dreaming of a future with all electric cars and trucks powered by wind and solar. It is the impossible dream. It is also a nightmare, because all these clean renewable sources of energy are actually environmental nightmares. Wind Farms are ugly as sin. If you drive by any wind farm you will notice that most of the machines are not working. That is because wind powers machines only operate in a narrow range of wind speed. If the wind speed is too low, they won’t spin. If it is too high, the props are feathered to avoid burn out. Wind farms kill birds, lots of birds. The propellers are hard to recycle and are the polar opposite of biodegradable. And, wind farms are located in rural areas, which means electricity must be transmitted for miles.
Solar Panels also kill birds. They are also ugly. They work great in California, where the sun shines most of the time. Not so much elsewhere and even in California, they don’t work well in the winter, because there are not enough hours of daylight.
Electric cars are expensive, the batteries are very heavy, not biodegradable, use up our limited source of rare earth minerals, and need something to power the electricity to charge them. If the wind and solar stops working or anything else interrupts the power grid, electric cars become stationary objects. Not everyone can afford to fly to Cancun with Ted Cruz. (On a plane powered by jet fuel.)
No one is building dams. Nuclear power has been stopped, because of environmental concerns. So, we are betting on an all-electric country, powered by environmental damaging sources like wind and solar, neither of which is likely to be available in the event of power outages. What could possibly go wrong?
The real solution, as always, is to choose smarter people, who make decisions based on the truth, not on years of deliberate reporting of misinformation arrogantly presented as if it is straight from the lips of the God, they don’t believe in. Certainly not weak people who make decisions based on something as dumb as political correctness. They are the real fossils, and they can’t go extinct soon enough.
TDM