Running Into Oil, One Year Later

[jcollins]

Reprinted from Classic Yacht Magazine]

Running Into Oil, One Year Later

A year ago I wrote a piece called "Running Into Oil", after a popular quote by economics professor Peter Odell, assailing the misleading concept of "fossil fuels". For decades it has been understood outside the Western cultural zeitgeist that oil is continually generated by natural processes in the Earth's magma This theory has been widely accepted as far back as the 1960s by Russian geologists who have used this knowledge to build the former USSR into the home of the world's largest hydrocarbons industry. The theory asserts that a glaring violation of the second law of thermodynamics must occur for oil, comprising of highly
reduced hydrocarbon molecules of high free enthalpy (energy content), to somehow evolve spontaneously from plant and animal matter, which are highly oxidized biogenic molecules of low free enthalpy.
That column generated more reader email than any other PenManShip prior or since. Those in agreement hailed from around the world, generally in a common-sense tone. Those who would to attempt to argue the science seemed overtly political and were from the U.S. As the boating season kicks off for much of the Northern Hemisphere, it's worth reviewing the topic as we top off our tanks for another great summer on the water. In the twelve months since
that column appeared, many new oil discoveries have been made around the world. Indeed, as Professor Peter Odell of the London School of Economics puts it, instead of "running out of oil," the human race at every turn seems to be "running into oil".
To wit Brazil's National Petroleum Agency announced a 33 billion-barrel find in late spring 2008. A week later the u.s. Geological Survey announced a massive expansion of the Bakken shale formation oil reserves stretching across Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. Official estimates vary but average a stunning 413 billion barrels, larger than all previously discovered U.S. oil reserves combined. Cuba announced new reserves in October 2008, estimated at more than 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
These are just three examples. Dozens of other, smaller finds have been made around the world in the past twelve months. World markets currently consume 31 billion barrels of oil per year, 7.5 billion of which is used in the U.S. At this rate, these three discoveries in the past twelve months equal the global oil use for fifteen years. It turns out that oil may be as boring and ubiquitous as air, water and reality Tv. If this is the case,who loses? For one, taxing entities who use the scarcity argument to pry further into your wallet at each fill-up (taxes average $9.40 per 20 gallons in the U.S.). Companies who base their prosperity on a finite pricing model don't like this, either. And nosy ideologues with political agendas will fight ever harder to scare us into surrendering our lifestyle and fortunes through "cap and trade" schemes.

Until then, fire up that Atomic 4, that 350 Chevy or those twin diesels and enjoy your summer!

Bill Prince

CLASSICYACHTMAG.COM

[RicM]

Those who would to attempt to argue the science seemed overtly political and were from the U.S.

What would be the other argument? Metaphysics? Is Allah creating oil in the middle east to punish us infidels?

It turns out that oil may be as boring and ubiquitous as air, water and reality Tv.

If anyone thinks air and water is an endless resource, I suggest a drive through the LA basin, or any industrial area of China and a good hard look at the PH of seawater which is rapidly becoming more acidic due to absorbtion of carbon dioxide. Reality TV is a different issue.
While I don't believe we need to feel guilty about consuming resources for both business and pleasure (if we don't burn the fuels the Chinese will and their cars pollute a lot more than ours), let's not all run off and join the flat earth society here. BTW, what, exactly, is the science behind molten rock producing hydrocarbon fuel?

[jcollins]

I was hoping this article would draw some responses. I'm going to get a beer and some popcorn.

[RicM]

Oh John, you naughty, naughty boy! Isn't a little early (8:30 AM) in the day for popcorn?

[jcollins]

Oh John, you naughty, naughty boy! Isn't a little early (8:30 AM) in the day for popcorn?

Maybe...but not beer!

[Mariner]

Most everyone likes the idea of, and will be inclined to latch on to, any theory that leads us to believe that we can continue our lifestyle the way it is without making inconvenient or expensive adjustments for the foreseeable future. I believe this is the only reason that there is still a large contingent of Global Warming skeptics, and other such kooks.

The issue with oil is not that it is running out. Yes, it is running out, but not anytime soon. The problem with oil is that burning it releases poisonous gasses into the atmosphere. This article completely ignores that one glaring flaw with his logic.

Go ahead and enjoy your gas or diesel powered boat relatively guilt-free. But it's time to start thinking about new options for the big polluters like power generation and automobiles.

[RicM]

Interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal about generating electricity from burning bio-mass. All carbon released by burning is removed by growing new bio-mass for fuel.

[furball]

I can't resist this any longer. I tried but I can't.
First, Let's keep pollution and global warming separate. I think we all want a cleaner environment, agreed? We could poison ourselves out of existence I suppose. I don't see this happening. Our prosperity has allowed us to consume resources in a more environmentally friendly way than any other nation. As other nations become wealthy, they also become more responsible. We continue to get clearer as technology improves. Our wealth enables that, nothing else. The poorest nations pollute much more than we do as a nation. India, China, Russia as examples and the others which don't have industry or large population centers have living standards that I don't believe anyone here wants to experience long term. The goal should be to help develop more wealthy nations. A large part of that wealth comes from the ability to produce huge quantities of cheap power. We took advantage of that in this country for the last 100 years. It made us wealthy. Should we now do everything we can to prevent the rest of the world from becoming prosperous through the use of cheap power /oil / natural gas? We refuse to develop our resources in order to lower world prices and we use the environment as an excuse. We could produce nearly all our electricity needs through nuclear power, we choose instead to burn coal and NG. Our choice, bad choice but still a choice we make with each election. One day we'll figure out how to produce energy with zero pollution but we'll do it with the wealth and power we get from cheap fuel today and that fuel is still oil. Hell, most everything we value comes to us because we use the power of cheap fuel. Longer, better lives for us and our families. DRILL MORE OIL. We'll have the next step figured out in time, we're ingenious people.
As far as the Global warming thing goes, the globe has been warming for the last several thousand years. Since the end of the last ice age anyway. No-one has produced any reasonable evidence that we have any measurable effect on it. We've only have truly valid data for the last 30-40 years with the age of satellites. That certainly isn't enough data to predict out any relevant distance into the future. We're talking fractions of degrees over hundreds of years based on 30 years of data. Theories we can't test over time frames we won't be around to see. Why is this so urgent when we could just as easily have a huge rock fall from the sky and end everything. When will government try to protect us from that at the small cost of the rest of our wealth... just give them time.
Boy, that was fun...
Last thought before I go, A man telling me I'll have to sacrifice my wealth and choices for a cleaner environment just burned more gas for his date night than I probably burn in 6 months.... and good for him. But don't tell me I can't while acting like the world's your oyster.
John

[RicM]

I don't materially disagree with anymore than a few minor points with the last post, right down to the fact that the earth has been warming somewhat on it's own. The assertion that there are no verifiable measurements of climatic conditions before 30-40 years ago is not accurate however. There are many ways of arriving at reasonably accurate estimates of the chemical content of the atmosphere such as core samples of arctic ice that can show us change in our eco-system over time. PH change in oceans can also be determined over long periods of time via sediment samples and clearly show increases in acidity. I also do not attach any moral baggage to the use of resources or even the despoiling of the earth for our comfort or wealth. The earth will survive quite nicely with or without us thank you very much. I have no doubt that we will continue to have effective energy sources far into the future, but we will always "burn" whatever is the cheapest and easiest fuel available to us at that moment.

To excuse unexamined despoiling of the environment with the possibility of a catastrophic natural or man-made event is, however, a rather cynical exercise. Obama's use of natural resources is no more or less moral than our collective use of fossil fuels to go out and poop around in our Albins spending hundreds of dollars to catch $20 worth of fish or just ride around aimlessly for that matter. It is a measure of our wealth and power that we can entertain ourselves in this way. I do think we have the responsibility to be aware of (not necessarily feel " bad" about) how to best use the resources available to us in the best way possible, and cause the least damage possible along the way.

This "argument" strikes me as similar in some respects to other culture war debates that too often try to demonize the "other" point of view with extreme extrapolations to win debating points rather than find solutions or common ground.

[Russell]

If you want to read some good information and data on global warming check out this site: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html Although I am a life scientist I know enough about statistics, computer models and the politics of science to have grave doubts about the models showing that human activity is the cause of global warming. Look at the graphs of the global temperatures and the graph of changes in carbon dioxide. To correlate the two in a computer model you must use multiple proportionality constants and give relative weights to the many factors that influence the temperature. All of these are educated guesses but guesses nevertheless. When they first did this around 1981 they predicted global cooling and investors were advised to get rid of all investments in orange groves and tourist sites in Florida. Further adjustments of the model changed it to predicting global warming. The other thing to remember is although this is a type of science it does not use the scientific method where one sets up a hypothesis and tests it in an experiment. They cannot do the experiment so they use computer models that are subject to the biases of the people building the model. In science there is also a bandwagon effect where a new idea comes along and everyone jumps on it. If you do not agree you find it hard to get funding for your work and the dean does not invite you to his parties. So the majority goes along until the idea is either proved correct or disproved. In the meantime I am not inclined to pay the government increased taxes for CO2 emissions or to consider it pollution that must be regulated by the EPA.

[RicM]

Russ,

I did a speed read on that link and some of the background information cited, most of which seems to 14-15 years old. I do agree however, that these "trends" in science seem to take on a life of their own after a while and become self perpetuating. It's a similar experience in the business world. Remember when the Japanese were "Taking Over The World!". They were buying golf courses and office buildings in the US as fast as they could close on them. That didn't last. Now it's the hispanics that are going to swamp the US and take the southwest back to Mexico with them. The recession seems to have stopped that boogieman. Any trend extrapolated to infinity will lead to the destruction of the world as we know it.

I also understand that 2 different parties with different agendas can interpret the same set of statistics in vastly different ways. I guess my point is let's distinguish between the scientific and factual part of the debate and the cultural/political subtext. Is using energy to attend a Broadway show moral? How much energy is it moral to use? Does the morality of energy use change if Obama uses energy to take his wife to a dinner and show versus Bush jetting to Crawford to clear brush for a weekend (just what does it mean to "clear brush" and couldn't the president get someone else to do that for him?).

[furball]

Ric,
Core samples and ocean PH only demonstrate that warming and cooling have been the constant from long before our industrial revolution. The highest CO2 levels occurred during an ice age, not prior to it. It's unbelievable to me that we as a people allow our freedoms to be restricted based on this junk science. Consensus science is by definition, not science, it's speculation.
I do not excuse anyone who intentionally pollutes the environment. The largest polluter of the Chesapeake bay is the government. Waste water treatment plants pour more nutrients into the bay than any other source but somehow government is never held accountable. Politicians want credit because they care, but don't look at the results of their actions, just their good intentions.
This argument IS made to demonize the other side. Compromise simply means I give in to their way of thinking. If I continue to compromise, over time they get everything they want and I end but loosing everything I believe in. When does the other side compromise to my way of thinking. Never. Can you name any substantial government program that has been ended? Have they started drilling for oil? No. The only budget cuts are cuts to the military because that works with the current agenda. I still pay a rural utility tax to run electric to rural western towns. Do we still have towns without electricity? When does compromise come in my direction? I have seen the fallacy of being the "good guy" and I refuse to be their stooge any longer. We continue to elect the very people who are responsible for this while letting them dictate that I need to drive a vehicle that risks my families safety on the highway in order to be more environmentally friendly. I call BS.
Just to be clear, I think it's great that this country can afford to fly the President of the United States to New York for dinner and a show or GWB to Texas to do yard work. Just don't tell me I have to cut back, sacrifice, drive a piece of s#@* for the "common good" at the same time. I can't stand hypocrites.

But I do like having the debate.
John

[jcollins]

I knew this was going to get good.

Now, where is that beer?

[Mariner]

I don't care what you all say... we can't keep fueling our cars and power plants with oil forever. Even IF the global effects were negligible (which they are not), the local effects are severe and clearly evident. Have any of you ever stood atop a mountain and seen the cloud of smog that surrounds a big city on a clear, still day? It's disgusting and makes you wish you never had to go back.

And again, oil may last a long time, but it won't last forever, no matter what some guy who is paid by the oil compaines to push their theories and agendas says.