Abiotic theory
For awhile now someone has been trying to convince me of the abiotic theory of never-ending petroleum supplies.
Today I e-mailed the (now slightly touched up) text below to this person in response to a forwarded e-mail about the abiotic theory:
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I'm not interested in this abiotic petroleum perspective. You present it as truth, but it's actually just hopes and guesses. It could be true, but no one can be sure until they drill a bunch of it up. You've mentioned one or a few examples of supposed abiotic extraction to me, but these cases--even if they are instances of abiotic petroleum--aren't proof that there's remotely enough of the stuff to support rising demands for oil and gas, so I'm just not interested.
You might as well be sending me articles and web links about alien space ships or mind control rays as far as I'm concerned. Those might exist too (the space ships, anyway), and there's material on the Internet that suggests that they do, but I'm not interested in it either.
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After sending that message it occured to me to ask:
If the abiotic theory is true, why is the U.S. so dependent on Middle Eastern oil? Why don't they just rely on and sell abiotic American oil instead?
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September 26th, 2007
Asking questions
Hey Toban,
Thanks for posting this. I had a quick scan of the wikipedia article that you linked to.
What comes to mind for me reading it (and any article about alleviating supply issues) is the importance of thinking about climate change, and how peak oil activists and climate activists should really be working together. Yes, one focuses on inputs and the other on outputs, but it hardly makes sense to think of one in isolation of the other.
Which brings me to my point, even if we have enough cheap petroleum to last us for centuries to come and fuel our present level of consumption, we shouldn't be burning it.
Richard Heinberg has written about the interaction between climate change and peak oil on GlobalPublicMedia:
Museletter #177: Bridging peak oil and climate change activism
cheers,
shelby
Relocalization Network Coordinator
September 26th, 2007
The bigger picture
Right. Of course. Clearly I was only using the "peak oil" part of my brain when I posted that.
So many issues are approached in isolation today, which can be counter-productive, if not the root of huge huge problems.
Petroleum has been associated with tyranny, obesity, and many other negative trends too.
Climate change definitely should be highlighted though.