Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable

Boston Globe | May 22, 2001 | David L. Chandler

[chadsworth]

ping

[GOPJ]

And petrified wood happens in an instant?

[Billy_bob_bob]

"A 1/2 mile wide methane bubble underneath, instead of good ole sea water. Whoops!"

It's more like the water gets saturated with methane, which takes the density of the water and greatly reduces it. As a result, something that would easily float on regular water is instead floating on a methane saturated water solution that is no longer dense enough to provide buoyancy, so it sinks. When the methane continues to rise up in the air it provides a hazard to passing aircraft, flying through a giant cloud of air and methane tends to make engines explode. This is the current theory of the Bermuda Triangle, and I'm thinking that it is a good theory. I don't know if it's right, but it sounds right. I would love to find some proof if it's true.

As far as the renewable oil theory goes, I think it is very interesting, and it seems a lot more likely to me than the old "decayed vegatation" theory we were all told in school. I'm looking forward to more evidence being presented over time.

[NovemberCharlie]

REBEL STOP THE RULE OF THE SCIENTISTS

The most dangerous of all is BERNARD D. COLMAN

Who's he and why him in particular?

[Aurelius]

forget him

[Aurelius]

Spur of the moment personal thing that I shouldn't have done. Please forget it.

[NovemberCharlie]

If you say so.

[Aurelius]

Did you here the story about the guy who is driving along a country road beside an insane asylum when he gets a flat tire. He pulls over to change the tire and sees some of the asylum patients watching him. After taking off the flat, he spills the lug nuts out of his hub cap into deep grass and is unable to find a single one. One of the inmates says to him "Why don't you just take one nut off of each of the other three wheels to hold your spare until yu can get to a service station." The man is amazed and compliments the patient on the intelligence of his suggestion. The inmate replies: "Hey, I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid".

[Aurelius]

On the other hand, I think he already knows what I think of him.

[11B3]

I read about this guy years ago - and to date no one has been able to scientifically refute his claims. Firstly - where in the solar system have there been large enough concentrations of decaying organic matter to cause planetary atmospheres of methane? Seems like it would take one hell of a bunch of dinos to decay on the surface of Neptune to make a gas giant out of mostly methane. I know that there are plenty of chemists in here - tell me that high pressure, high temperature, combined with the entire periodic table for a menu can't make oil. (Much less that CH4 isn't very rare in the solar system.) And you geologists in here - plate tectonics require those plates to liquify in a subduction zone, right? What is the makeup of magma? Got hydrocarbons in it doesn't it?

So why is this guy's theory so hard to swallow? Doesn't anyone here remember back in the '70s when we were going to run out of oil "almost any day now"??? When that moron Carter decided that we all needed to wear those gay sweaters like he did to save fuel???

No, what this guy is proposing is strictly simple planetary mechanics at the fully integrated macro level - nothing outrageous. The REAL scam has been played on all of us by the oil companies who want to keep their product expensive, and the envirowackos who want to keep us scared to change our behavior and donate to their cause. Profit drives them both - science drives neither.

[Patria One]

Some crude oil is under pressure. Some has to be pumped. The technology to get the remaining 60% that was left behind in the OK and TX fields is extremely expensive. Extraction from shale is also expensive.

[Patria One]

I think Putin knows that Russia's future is dependent on having access to cheap petroleum.

[74dodgedart]

If the U.S. consumes roughly 17 million barrels every day

So unless oil is being reproduced at the rate of millions of barrels a day, the point is moot.

[74dodgedart]

His point is that we will NEVER run out of methane/hydocarbons. We may have to drill very deep, but it is down there.

So we don't need to drill in ANWR, we just need to keep drilling deeper and deeper in our existing fields ?

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[zog]

Drilling deeper in the producing fields we have now, or the ones recently depleted or uneconomic to keep extracting from, using the traditional methods. Now that really makes sense, if down much deeper is where the bulk of tha oil/natgas/me stuff is. We already are tapping the leaky points, those are identified. So it stands to reason just deeper there might hit the mother load, doesn't it? Question is how deep, is it possible with our technology? Can we ever get to say 20 miles deep, something like that? What would be the pressure and temps there, got to be awesome.

p.s. I actually used to own a 74 dart, with a slant six engine. Unquestionably the best basic transportation (sedan) I ever owned, hands down.

[Double Tap]

His point is that we will NEVER run out of methane/hydocarbons. We may have to drill very deep, but it is down there.

His "Theory" is that we will never run out of hydrocarbons. He has no proof.

If he's right, the cost of fuel/oil will still go up sharply, because it cost far more the deeper you drill.

Sorry, but I don't buy the conspiracy that the oil industry belittles his theories because it might hurt them. If it's there, they will drill for it, but it will cost more, so we will pay more, and everyone will continue to bitch about the cost.

[Double Tap]

Question is how deep, is it possible with our technology? Can we ever get to say 20 miles deep, something like that? What would be the pressure and temps there, got to be awesome.

Current technology will get you about 5-6 miles down (extreme case), but the reserves don't get better just because you go deep.

I will never say that we can't get to 20 miles deep, but it will be far in the future. Temperatures are high, over 200 C, and the cost is astronomical, so there is no reason to go deep.

[Looking for Diogenes]

So unless oil is being reproduced at the rate of millions of barrels a day, the point is moot.

No argument.

[IWONDR]

"The billions and billions of tons of plant-biomass material being accumulated and compressed in bogs and swamps became metamorphosed into peat, then lignite, bituminous, and finally anthracite coal. This makes sense as I have personally collected fern and plant fossils associated with coal mines in Illinois."

If coal is converted plant biomass, then why weren't the ferns and other plant fossils that you found in the coal, coal rather than fossils?