If hydrocarbons are renewable - then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?

[chequita guevara]

Do you really want to create something more intelligent than the human race which at the same time has the emotional capacity of an insect?

[Velociryx]

Makes a fair amount of sense to me.

I don't have any idea if the author's point re: hydrocarbons being common elsewhere in the cosmos, but if it IS true, then he's got a point that's mighty hard to get around, given that we've not seen any evidence of dino fossils in any of the places we've sent probes thus far (granted, I have no idea if those places are known to have hydrocarbons, but if so...)

Anyway, it's intriguing, and if there ARE hydrocarbons "out there", that's all the more reason to go.

-=Vel=-

[chequita guevara]

Well, oil is not supposed to be from dinosaurs but algae. Given that we can make stuff that looks like oil from simple organic gasses and electricty, it's not a stretch to imagine that nature also did the real thing.

Coal is most definately fossilized, but oil? I'm not willing to say one way or anither.

[Kuciwalker]

He's actually one of them, sent back in time to murder the one who could unite humanity against them.

[chequita guevara]

[Kuciwalker]

oh oops, xpost*2

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Geronimo


What if human beings were to simply work around those limitations by not requiring human beings to do the accomplishing? What about development of powerful AI systems or even augmentation of human intellignece?

When this becomes the case, I can't see us, as a species, having much of an alternative but to merge with such intelligences and use them as our own...

[RGBVideo]

If hydrocarbons are renewable- then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?

Yes. Old news.

Nazis manufactured artificial petroleum products already in the 30s. It demands insane amounts of energy, but it can be done.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by CerberusIV


I notice his theory doesn't address what happened to all the CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere if it didn't get absorbed by plants and animals and turned into coal and oil.

It dosen't have to. The amount of carbon in fossil fuel is tiny compared to the amount of carbon locked in calcite and other carbonates.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: If hydrocarbons are renewable - then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?

Originally posted by Cort Haus
If hydrocarbons are renewable- then is "Peak Oil" a fraud?
by Joel Bainerman

Hydrocarbons != crude oil
Having abiogenic origins != renewable

I am not sure who is more confused here.

Hydrocarbons are of course renewable. You can get lots of methane from animal wastes, and that's a hydrocarbon. In fact, many poorer regions use this method to generate methane as fuel.

However, methane is a far cry from crude.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk

It dosen't have to. The amount of carbon in fossil fuel is tiny compared to the amount of carbon locked in calcite and other carbonates.

I know. My point was that current geological theories provide a reasonably consistent model of how the relatively fixed amount of carbon the planet Earth possesses moves from one form and place to another. Deep abiotic hydrocarbons need to come from somewhere other than someone's imagination.

And right or wrong it still doesn't mean that burning fossil fuels at current rates is a good idea.

[The Mad Monk]

The amounnt of carbon in the planet may be fixed, but it is also immense. While the CO2 released by subduction-driven volcanoes is likely "recycled", the prodigious amounts of CO2 released by rift and plume driven volcanoes is "fresh" -- it has never seen the light of day, at least since the planet formed.

Abiotic formation may have problems, but a lack of raw material is not one of them.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Do you really want to create something more intelligent than the human race which at the same time has the emotional capacity of an insect?

of course! I can hardly wait.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Abiotic formation may have problems, but a lack of raw material is not one of them.

One big one is, if you put things in a high temperature and pressure environment with oxygen present, it is nigh impossible for these things (carbon, etc.) not to react with oxygen. This seems to be basic chemistry.

[chequita guevara]

True, but free oxygen is rather lacking underground.