Re: More Reasons "Peak Oil" is a Crock

Mitchell Jones wrote:

***{"Peak oil" is the theory that mankind has already extracted and used
up half or more of all the hydrocarbon deposits that were "out there,"
and, thus, that future discoveries will inevitably decline over time,
approaching zero as a limit. Result: runaway oil prices caused not by
government bungling, but by an inexorable decline in the available
supplies.

Unfortunately for the "Peak Oil" proponents, it is a simple matter to
calculate a lower bound for the size of the available hydrocarbon
deposits. All of the oxygen in our atmosphere was placed there by
photosynthesis, a process that uses sunlight to remove the carbon from
CO2, so that the carbon can be incorporated into biomass. Hence for
every O2 in the atmosphere, there is a carbon sequestered as part of a
carbon-based life form, or in the remains of such a life form buried
somewhere in the Earth--i.e., in a hydrocarbon deposit. If you compute
the total amount of carbon involved and subtract the part currently in
living biomass, you will find that the amount remaining in the Earth is
sufficient to allow a minimum of 100,000 years of oil production at
current rates of consumption.


[Hanson snipped]

:-)

--Mitchell Jones}***

You neglect the issue of time. It all may be there somewhere but
where is it and how soon can we get it into the "pipeline" in a usable
form? Soon enough to prevent the runaway? Time will tell but I think
not. At least not without large scale nuclear fission leverage and
the lead time to that is probably too long even if folks got their
heads out of their asses about it yesterday.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler."

A. Einstein
.