RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 04/07/18> Tell me again… where does oil come from?
Hmmmm. I tend to buy the bio-mass theory. When the earth was 20 degrees warmer it was a vast producer of plants. If you've ever been in a genuine rain forest (I've spent a fair amount of time in Olympic National Forest) the ground isn't solid, it's springy from all the green stuff that hasn't had time to rot into brown stuff. And the layer just keeps growing. 10x that over 90% of the earth's surface (yes I included water) for a million years and you end up with a pretty good stack of not brown and not green. It could be...
It seems I had a small problem with lessons taught when I was in school. It was where I learned to keep some things to myself. Or take the beatings. Like, I knew when I was very young I knew what happened to Neanderthal. We screwed them out of existence (literally). That was much the best kept to myself :)
Thanks for another provocative and thoughtful post. You keep writing them and I'll keep reading.
That's the thing about all of these: we always have an incomplete understanding of the world around us, but we get better and better and throw out older theories that don't make sense. It's good to question science for sure.
Curious about the old wells refilling, though I think a more likely explanation is that it spilled in from another location. Hey if we ever figure out how to generate it synthetically that would be something eh?
You can go to the auto parts store right now and by totally synthetic oil for your automobile. It is more expensive than conventional refined crude oil but it is available and lasts several thousands of miles longer than the conventional oil in terms of lubrication protection. Filtration is the big issue with oils and that is where more work needs to be done, if an engine filtration system could be made to extract out the dirt and carbons from the oil that contaminate the oil in normal operation you would never have to change the oil in a car. Right now we just trap the big pieces in the canister type filters, the smaller impurities continue to circulate through the system, giving the oil the dark brownish color.
If the filtration system was better, the only need to put more oil in would be because of leaks in the system, like valve cover gaskets or oil pan gaskets leaking.
Ooh, I did not know that. That is interesting stuff!
Pennzoil has a fully synthetic oil that is actually made from natural gas, I don't know the process they use but I think they have a video or at least a commercial on it, you might try their website or youTube if you want more details.
I've never been to a rain forest, I've been in a forest when it was raining if that counts, but if that bio-mass theory works for you I have no problem with that. Your explanation though leaves me with more questions I didn't even think about , if the temperature of the earth was 20 degrees higher in the past and things flourished why is it the people are pitching a fit about climate change and worrying about a half a degree or one degree temperature rise? When the obvious course of action would be to try and gain 20 and get the ecosystem firing on all cylinders.
The other question would be , where did all the water come from if only 10% of the earth's surface was water?
There is no question that plants produce oils, just like humans do as well, but the way I see it both would only continue to produce while living. A dead body produces no oil and a dead plant wouldn't either, only what is in them at the time of death, plus the decaying process would make up the potential availability. I would be curious to know how many barrels of oil have been produced in total globally since oil production has measured and recorded in barrels?
The last time I checked I think the deepest drilling into the surface of the earth was just shy of eight miles in depth, so there is a lot more unknown than is known on how this earth is really put together. Most all we think we know is from theory and guess work.
First off, I'm going to agree that it's long on guess work and even short on good theory :)
I didn't word my post carefully. When I said 90% I meant that there was a lot of biomass produced in the oceans, too. At 20 degrees higher there wasn't any ice, lots of water.
The reason to pitch a fit is that it's happening too fast and most organisms can't adapt if the temp goes up even 10C. Maybe even us. There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth but if you REALLY listen it's about moving. People are going to have to move if the temp goes up much. And the countries that have really good production belts are really worried that the belts are going to move closer to the poles which makes less total land for growing stuff on and some places are going to have production moved outside their borders.
Ever hear of Emanuel Velikosky? He theorized that all our oil came from Venus when it bumped into us in the way back. Worlds in Collision was his epic work. Got a lot of play in the early 70s.
Which is just a way to say I have no good idea where oil comes from. I have no idea if it's still being produced. Neither does anybody else. Know.
Never heard of Eman V, but his theory may be as good as some, but like you said , we really don't know much about it, meaning the oil , other than it has been very useful.