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What If Oil Lasts Forever? Fossil fuels may not be finite. This'd be a miracle—and a nightmare
National Journal ^ | April 25, 2013 | Charles C. Mann, The Atlantic

Posted on 04/25/2013 1:38:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be closing the door on Winston Churchill’s world. Their lack of knowledge is unsurprising; beyond the ranks of petroleum-industry historians, Churchill’s outsize role in the history of energy is insufficiently appreciated.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. With characteristic vigor and verve, he set about modernizing the Royal Navy, jewel of the empire. The revamped fleet, he proclaimed, should be fueled with oil, rather than coal—a decision that continues to reverberate in the present. Burning a pound of fuel oil produces about twice as much energy as burning a pound of coal. Because of this greater energy density, oil could push ships faster and farther than coal could.

Churchill’s proposal led to emphatic dispute. The United Kingdom had lots of coal but next to no oil. At the time, the United States produced almost two-thirds of the world’s petroleum; Russia produced another fifth. Both were allies of Great Britain. Nonetheless, Whitehall was uneasy about the prospect of the Navy’s falling under the thumb of foreign entities, even if friendly. The solution, Churchill told Parliament in 1913, was for Britons to become “the owners, or at any rate, the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require.” Spurred by the Admiralty, the U.K. soon bought 51 percent of what is now British Petroleum, which had rights to oil “at the source”: Iran (then known as Persia). The concessions’ terms were so unpopular in Iran that they helped spark a revolution....

(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abiogenic; energy; gas; gasoline; infiniteoil; oil; thomasgold
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Long but interesting.
1 posted on 04/25/2013 1:38:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

So... what’s the “nightmare”?


2 posted on 04/25/2013 1:40:06 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Suuuure it’s all “dead dinosaurs”.

Suuuure.


3 posted on 04/25/2013 1:41:56 PM PDT by gaijin
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To: MrB
So... what’s the “nightmare?”

We won't be able to starve the peasants and tell them it's because we ran out of oil.

We'll just have to do it au naturel.

4 posted on 04/25/2013 1:42:17 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum ("Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." --Alan Greenspan)
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To: MrB

Basically that we’ll never need solar, wind power and unicorn toots as a viable energy source, since petroleum appears to be infinite here on Earth. Al Gore wept, so to speak.


5 posted on 04/25/2013 1:42:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (I'll raise $2million for Sarah Palin's presidential run. What'll you do?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Yeah, we always knew it was about denying “commoners” access to energy.


6 posted on 04/25/2013 1:44:20 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

It’s been known for quite a while now that oil is produced from ROCK. Most likely, deep coal deposits heated by the core.


7 posted on 04/25/2013 1:45:11 PM PDT by DownInFlames
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Blame the Earths Core ,it’s cooking it up and sending it to us


8 posted on 04/25/2013 1:47:37 PM PDT by molson209
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The USA had more carbon based energy than anyone on earth. We can even make crude out of garbage. The nightmare is that the religion of Environmentalism can not control the earth through energy blackmail.


9 posted on 04/25/2013 1:50:38 PM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“Basically that we’ll never need solar, wind power and unicorn toots as a viable energy source, since petroleum appears to be infinite here on Earth. Al Gore wept, so to speak.”

A Swede who noticed hydrocarbons in spectral analysis of clouds in space (where there were never any dinosaurs)that oil is a naturally occurring fuel. He convinced the Swedish government to dig 5 miles down, WAY passed any dinosaur remains. They found oil. Turns out they find it almost anywhere they did that deep. It occurs naturally; without fossils.


10 posted on 04/25/2013 1:51:34 PM PDT by Gen.Blather
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To: Gen.Blather

They’ll find it as long as they drill in old sea basins where it began it’s creation.


11 posted on 04/25/2013 1:56:25 PM PDT by Dusty Road
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To: Gen.Blather
Saturn's moon, Titan, is loaded with light hydrocarbons, including methane and ethane. It rains methane on Titan.

/johnny

12 posted on 04/25/2013 2:00:02 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Not too many years ago the oil people drilling in the gulf found that the reserves are NOT depleting. They felt that there is oil still being made and of course one or two barrels not yet discovered.


13 posted on 04/25/2013 2:01:34 PM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Think about the power shift this admission would cause. The Middle East would go back to being the godforsaken wasteland it has been for millennia; Arabs and muslimes would go back to being bearded warblers with prayer rugs; the US could withdraw from a lot of murderous foreign entanglements and clean up our own back yard. And countries like Venezuela, Brazil, and Nigeria could return to chasing each other around with pointed sticks. our trade deficit would all but disappear and the dollar would be good as gold. we would retake our place at the top of the civilization heap and let the barbarians hack each other into chum.

Which is why the Globalist kumbaya crowd cannot let it happen.


14 posted on 04/25/2013 2:01:37 PM PDT by IronJack (=)
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To: Gen.Blather

it is the result of Methane rising from the earths core as a gas and condensing as it cools.


15 posted on 04/25/2013 2:01:40 PM PDT by Rumplemeyer (The GOP should stand its ground - and fix Bayonets)
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To: Rumplemeyer

http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Thomas-Gold/dp/0387985468

Suppose someone claimed that we are not running out of petroleum? Or that life on Earth began below the surface of our planet? Or that oil and gas are not “fossil fuels”? Or that if we find extraterrestrial life it is likely to be within, not on, other planets? You might expect to hear statements like these from an author of science fiction. But what if they came from a renowned physicist, an indisputably brilliant scientist who has been called “one of the world’s most original minds”? In the The Deep Hot Biosphere, Thomas Gold sets forth truly controversial and astonishing theories about where oil and gas come from, and how they acquire their organic “signatures.” The conclusions he reaches in this book might be at first difficult to believe, but they are supported by a growing body of evidence, and by the indisputabel stature and seriousness Gold brings to any scientific enterprise. In this book we see a brilliant and boldly orginal thinker, increasingly a rarity in modern science, as he developes a revolutionary new view about the fundamental workings of our planet. Thomas Gold is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an Emertius Professor at Cornell University. Regarded as one of the most creative and wide-ranging scientists of his generation, he has taughtat Cambridge University and Harvard, and for 20 years was the Director of the Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research.


16 posted on 04/25/2013 2:03:20 PM PDT by Gen.Blather
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Miracle for Republicans, nightmare for Democrats.


17 posted on 04/25/2013 2:07:24 PM PDT by Steely Tom (If the Constitution can be a living document, I guess a corporation can be a person.)
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To: DownInFlames

Hitler had his scientists produce synthetic oil so why should the Earth not do the same?


18 posted on 04/25/2013 2:09:49 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, IÂ’m a conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: JRandomFreeper

“Saturn’s moon, Titan, is loaded with light hydrocarbons, including methane and ethane. It rains methane on Titan.”

It has been recently discovered that thermophilic bacteria, in the sea bottom and in cooling magma, produce methane and hydrocarbon gases,[4][5] but studies indicate they are not produced in commercially significant quantities (i.e. in extracted hydrocarbon gases, the median abiogenic hydrocarbon content is 0.02%, or 1 part in 5,000).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin


19 posted on 04/25/2013 2:14:38 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, IÂ’m a conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Remeber Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Uncle Sugar needed the area 2b clear, so they made up this huge lie about a baaaad nerve gas spill. Everyone is fleeing, terrified, and in gas-masks.

Everyone but Richard Dreyfuss, who understands the air is clear, and to the amazement of all, dramatically takes off his mask. And then —NOTHING.

The air was FINE —the emergency was simply a handy government tool.

That would never really happen.

Right?


20 posted on 04/25/2013 2:14:41 PM PDT by gaijin
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