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Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

HackneyE9 said:
You know your bonkers, Big Fish. We all know you are. But consider this. Say "our scientists", whoever they might be, are right - and the world is heating up without contribution from man-made emissions. Think about it. We're even more fucked. 'Cos then we really can't stop it.
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Slight problem here; You used the words bigfish and think in the same sentence.
 
rate of increase of known oil reserves is falling. that means every year we find less than we did the year before. every year, we consume more oil than we did the year before. if these trends continnue, we will run out of oil one day. doesn't matter where the oil comes from.
 
elbows said:
Wow it seems there are still some people who believe the world is flat, so I guess I should no longer raise my eyebrows at bigfish's stance!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7540427.stm
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And there are still some people who believe that oil comes from squashed prehistoric zooplankton, even though the H-C molecules that we find in petroleum are chemically identical to the H-C molecules we find in carbonaceous meteorites as old as the Solar System. Generally, the same people also seem to believe that vanishingly small human contributions of a thermally insignificant atmospheric trace gas magically drive Earth's climate, even though the Sun, which is a variable star containing 99.8% of the mass of the solar system, is clearly the primary heat source.
 
Christ, even if your fruitloopery was right, it doesn't matter. Even if oil is being created abiotically it's still being produced slower than we're pumping it out.
 
Bob_the_lost said:
Christ, even if your fruitloopery was right, it doesn't matter. Even if oil is being created abiotically it's still being produced slower than we're pumping it out.
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I gave up trying to point this out a couple of years ago. Best of luck trying to explain this higher maths concept.
 
bigfish said:
the Sun, which is a variable star
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A variable star is a star that undergoes significant variation in its luminosity (otherwise known as a star that is subjected to pulsations). In contrast, most stars have little variation in luminosity, such as the Sun, which undergoes relatively little variation in brightness (usually about 0.1% over an 11 year solar cycle).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star
 
bigfish said:
Sinclair.jpg


Green Energy News



it would only be "unfortunate" for people who are nuts. For people who aren't nuts, it's great news.
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Ill add this incase there are any casual browser unused to bigfish's unique take on science. Oil is normaly constituted or a wide range of hydrocarbons, most of these break down at high temperatures. Bellow about 8000m on conitnental crust land, and alot less on the oceanic crust the temperature is too high for these chemicals to remain intact and they break down into simpler chemicals, such as NH4 and the like which make up natural gas. Aboitic requires oil to be kept at huge pressures and temperatures, way out of the physical envelopes for such chemicals to remain intact and not break down into simpler chemicals, then migrate all the way up into reseviours for the oil which all by total coinsidece are linked to identifyable source rock for the biotic theory of oil generation.

The biotic theory of oil as a fossil fuel is utterly and totaly orthodox science. Like plate tectonics, evolution, the big bang and relativity there are a few dissenting voices on the fringes but these days the theory of oil generation is pretty rock solid with no real gaps in our understanding. Anyone (other than bigfish) who has any questions or wants to know more can ask. I have a great many links although if your a regular in this thread youll have seen most of them before.
 
bigfish said:
LOL! Wikipedia - the calling card of every scoundrel on the internet.

solarcycle_soho_big.jpg


NASA - SOHO images of the Sun during solar cycle #23, from 1996 to 2006, show natural variations in the Sun over one complete, eleven-year cycle
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What point are you trying to make with this. Go on entertain me.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
It's not even basic science, it's doing elementary sums at an infant's school level.
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Ah, the famous "Dr" Gunther. Lets see if they know a bit of basic science over at the American Museum of Natural History.

our sun: living with a variable star

You already know that the Sun makes life possible. Its heat and light drive dynamic processes in the Earth system, from climate and ocean currents to photosynthesis. But were you aware that the Sun is a variable star?

The Sun and everything in its environment — the heliosphere — form an immense, dynamic, and interconnected system. This system is driven by the Sun's radiation, the solar wind, and solar storms. Although the Sun appears constant, it is a variable star that emits constantly-changing energy.
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http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/cosmicguide/sun.html
 
I also love the presupposition that because hydrcarbons have been found somewhere in an environment utterly different from Earth's that had no dinosaurs, it's possible to make the logical leap that it's not made from decaying life on earth (of course, the dino-bones found in the La Brea tar pits would suggest that oil was around at least at the time of the dinos, so clearly can be made abiotically under the right circumstances).

Just this page has reminded me why I avoid anything with bigfish on it like the plague...
 
kyser_soze said:
I also love the presupposition that because hydrcarbons have been found somewhere in an environment utterly different from Earth's that had no dinosaurs, it's possible to make the logical leap that it's not made from decaying life on earth (of course, the dino-bones found in the La Brea tar pits would suggest that oil was around at least at the time of the dinos, so clearly can be made abiotically under the right circumstances).

Just this page has reminded me why I avoid anything with bigfish on it like the plague...
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the time of the dinosaurs was a 50 million ish year period of the earths history though, so it's entirely possible the oil in the tar pits was formed at an earlier time, then some dinosaurs fell into it at a later period.
 
kyser_soze said:
I also love the presupposition that because hydrcarbons have been found somewhere in an environment utterly different from Earth's that had no dinosaurs, it's possible to make the logical leap that it's not made from decaying life on earth (of course, the dino-bones found in the La Brea tar pits would suggest that oil was around at least at the time of the dinos, so clearly can be made abiotically under the right circumstances).
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At the risk of being a nit picker but the La Brea tar pits do not have dinosaur bones, but the remains of Pleistocene and Holocene life. They are from the last few thousand years. The K-T extinction was 65.5 million years ago. The tar pits are fromed from seepage from underground resevoirs of oil, this is how oil was originaly found.
 
free spirit said:
the time of the dinosaurs was a 50 million ish year period of the earths history though, so it's entirely possible the oil in the tar pits was formed at an earlier time, then some dinosaurs fell into it at a later period.
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david dissadent said:
At the risk of being a nit picker but the La Brea tar pits do not have dinosaur bones, but the remains of Pleistocene and Holocene life. They are from the last few thousand years. The K-T extinction was 65.5 million years ago. The tar pits are fromed from seepage from underground resevoirs of oil, this is how oil was originaly found.
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Hmm, yes. But you both get the point I'm making, mm? That hydrocarbons might come from more than just the one source?
 
Increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide does not - indeed cannot - lead to a warming planet
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Oh, of course, I completely forgot that the mechanism that makes this planet habitable doesn't keep it warm. How unbelievably fucking stupid.

So how much further has the gas model of the sun crumbled Bigfish? I suppose next you'll be attempting to show that Saturn is in fact a solid planet, and Jupiter isn't really a planet at all, but a ball of gas and nothing else...
 
kyser_soze said:
Hmm, yes. But you both get the point I'm making, mm? That hydrocarbons might come from more than just the one source?
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I get the point you're making, and yes I suppose it is within the realms of possibility that hydrocarbons could come from more than one source, I was just pointing out that the example you used to demonstrate this doesn't actually demonstrate anything of the sort IMO.
 
d.a.s.h said:
Oh yes it can. The heat-trapping effect of CO2 can even be demonstrated in a lab with fairly simple equipment - I've seen it done.
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Oh no it can't. CO2 only takes a certain amount of energy from one secondary source (Earth's surface is not a primary source of energy) and carries that load of absorbed energy to another system. CO2 molecules reach a higher temperature from the absorption of photons (absoptivity) which are released immediately (emissivity), so CO2 does NOT "trap" or generate heat. If we increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, without changing the load of heat transferred from the surface to the air, we will have a higher number of available microstates to where energy will be dispersed. In which case, the amount of energy absorbed by each molecule will not increase, but will decrease because the energy will be diffused or transferred among a greater number of microstates. The emitted photons are not more energetic than the absorbed photons. They are less energetic because their wavelengths are longer than the wavelengths of the absorbed photons. The longer the wavelength, the less energetic the photon.

<end of derail>
 
Robert Mabro - Simmons is "dangerous"

Pamela Ann Smith interviews Robert Mabro: The Oil Price How Long Can It Go on Rising?

Robert Mabro is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on oil and gas. He is the founder and current honorary president of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and emeritus fellow of St. Antony's College at Oxford University, England.


Robert Mabro: On the supply side, there Is a huge controversy about what Saudi Arabia's reserves really are. There is talk of a peak, very soon, In oil supplies worldwide and that after that, we will have to learn to live with much less oil. It's all irrelevant. It's nonsense. When we talk about reserves, we are talking about oil in the ground. The concepts about reserves are metaphysical concepts. They have never been accurate, and they never will be.

Pamela Ann Smith: So, the distinction between proven and probable reserves is meaningless?

Mabro: No, it's not meaningless. But it is one phony number compared to another phony number. I'll give you an example. I tell my students, do the following exercise. 'Go to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and see what the reserves of the non-Opec countries were 20 years ago. Then, compare them with the reserves of the same countries in the latest issue. Then, they have to make a longer calculation: 'see how much these non-Opec countries have produced in these past 20 years.' Now, if the first estimate is correct, they, the non-Opec countries, would not have a drop of oil left. That's the first point. The second point is, 'Why should I care? Why should anybody on earth care whether Saudi Arabia has 260bn barrels of crude oil reserves, or 100bn?' It doesn't matter, not at all. Because what you can produce today, whether it's 260bn or 100bn, the answer is the same. You cannot produce on the basis of 300bn, or 260bn in reserves. But if you produce at the same rate vis-a-vis reserves that the North Sea has, Saudi Arabia would be now be producing more than the whole world's consumption. Of course, its oil would then run out quickly. So, it's irrelevant unless you are thinking 40 or 50 years ahead. But I will certainly be dead by then...

Smith: And all sorts of things could happen by then?

Mabro: Yes. There is a hysteria about what the reserves are. But there is an even worse hysteria produced by a guy called Simmons. I have met him, he is a fun guy, but he is dangerous.

Smith: You mean Matthew Simmons, the author of Twilight In the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy? The book that is a bestseller In the States?

Mabro: He has said that the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, which is something like 110 miles long and 17 miles wide....

Smith: It's huge. It's the biggest one in Saudi Arabia, isn't it?

Mabro: Yes, and it is well behaved, too. Simmons has said, "It cannot produce anymore. It is declining, and there is water in it." Well, every field has water. If there isn't water in it, the oil doesn't come out! oil is not like a swimming pool, it is in rock, in porous rock. There is water and gas, so when you make the hole, you bring the pressure down, and the water pushes up, so all oil has water in it, and you have to take it out. He claims it's a lot more, and makes a comparison with a field in Oman which is declining. But this is like comparing a calf with an elephant. A small thing with something big. He has written nonsense on Ghawar. Then he said Saudi Arabia has no surplus capacity. In other words, that they don't have the capacity to produce more than they are producing today. Why? I was in Saudi Arabia, and I haven't seen this. Whose leg is he pulling? You can't see any evidence for this. We have lists of the fields that Saudi Arabia has shut down. This is public knowledge. 'Surplus capacity' means that you can produce more, but you keep it in the ground, you shut down certain fields so that you can re-open them when you need it.
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http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1486589/the_oil_price_how_long_can_it_go_on_rising/
 
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