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Oil is NOT a fossil fuel, and CO2 is an innocent victim of green hysteria
Peter J. Morgan B.E. (Mech.), Dip. Teaching
We all grew up believing that oil is a fossil fuel, and just about every day this 'fact' is mentioned in newspapers and on TV, often when quoting supposedly learned scientists who should know better. However, let us not forget what Lenin said — "A lie told often enough becomes truth." Soon after the end of World War II, the Soviet dictator, Stalin, realised that the then Soviet Union needed its own substantial oil reserves and production system if it was ever again called upon to defend itself against an attacker such as Hitler's Germany.
In 1947, the Soviet Union had, as its petroleum 'experts' then estimated, very limited petroleum reserves. Stalin's response was to set up a task force of top scientists and engineers in a project similar to the Manhattan Project – the top-secret US program to develop the atom bomb during WWII — and initially under the same secrecy, and charged them with the task of finding out what oil was, where it came from and how to find, recover and efficiently refine it.
In 1951, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was first enunciated by Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev at the All-Union petroleum geology congress. Kudryavtsev analysed the hypothesis of a biological origin of petroleum, and pointed out the failures of the claims commonly put forward to support that hypothesis. Stalin's team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a 'fossil fuel' but is a natural product of
planet earth — the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide — two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth's crust.
A team consisting of Russian scientists and Dr J. F. Kenney, of Gas Resources Corporation, Houston, USA, have actually built a reactor vessel and proven that oil is produced from calcium carbonate and iron oxide, as detailed on the Gas Resources website www.gasresources.net/AlkaneGenesis.htm
Further, they wrote a paper which was published in 2002 in the prestigious Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Science (PNAS), where they proved that for the alkanes comprising petroleum, except for methane, to be formed from biological matter would be in contravention of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Also see Generation of methane in the Earth's mantle: In situ high pressure–temperature measurements of carbonate reduction).
A US Public Service Radio interview with Dr Kenney may be heard on the Gas Resources website at www.gasresources.net/Kenney-NPR.mp3 Russian and Ukrainian scientists found that a continuous reaction occurs naturally at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the 'death' of planet earth in millions of years' time. The high pressure causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth's crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields.
Oil is still being produced in great abundance by this natural process. Oil is thus a sustainable resource — by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. With this knowledge, Russian and Ukrainian scientists developed geotechnical science to better predict where to drill for oil. This explains why Russia is today one of the world's major oil and gas producers and exporters.
Some may ask "How come all of this isn't public knowledge?" For part of the answer, you are invited to read an excellent article entitled "Cognitive Processes and the Suppression of Sound Scientific Ideas", by J. Sacherman (1997). More of the answer was provided long ago by Russian writer (War and Peace) and philosopher Leo Tolstoi when he wrote:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Some may say "Well, even if oil is a renewable resource, mankind should not burn it because the CO2 so produced causes global warming." My answer to that is that the idea that mankind's production of CO2 causes global warming is merely a hypothesis, and this has been proven to be simply not true, many times and by many different scientists, yet still the believers hang on doggedly with what amounts to religious zeal, displaying cognitive dissonance, as described by both Sacherman and Tolstoi, as mentioned above.
Physics tells us that the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere is absorbing all the infrared radiation that it is possible for CO2 to absorb, and adding more CO2 won't make the slightest bit of difference. (See The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide — The Innocent Source of Life and The Great Global Warming Hoax?)
The current US energy strategy, driven by the erroneous beliefs that oil is a fossil fuel and that its supply will soon be exhausted, is illogical. Given the fact that oil is produced naturally, likely at rates far in excess of what mankind could ever conceivably consume, it makes absolutely no sense for any nation to buy it at exorbitant prices from foreign sources if it is cheaper to find, drill for and pump its own — and that is precisely what the US should be doing immediately, and so should Australia and New Zealand.
If the US switched from being a net consumer in the world oil market to becoming a net supplier, the price of oil would plunge, perhaps to around $US30 per barrel, with the result that the world's economies would boom as never before. Most importantly, people would have confidence to invest in their futures, safe in the knowledge that oil would never run out.
A bonus would be that all subsidies to producers of alternative fuels and energy supplies could be removed, with the result that such production would occur only if it was economically viable, which would mean that most such producers would either cease, or greatly scale down, their businesses.
All development of wind farms would cease forthwith as, apart from being unsightly blots on so many landscapes, they are so hopelessly uneconomic and wind is such an unreliable energy source. Our electricity producers can now burn as much coal and oil (with scrubbers in the smokestacks) as needed to produce all the electricity we can afford to purchase, and each of us in our own small way can now burn as much petroleum product as we can afford to put in our cars and boats, safe in the knowledge that (a) oil is never going to run out and (b) all the extra carbon dioxide so produced will not cause global warming, but will green our planet earth and help plants, and hence food, to grow faster, thus helping to feed the billions! And we can stop clearing virgin rainforests to make way for palm oil plantations,
leaving orangutans' habitats pristine.
Please feel free to contact your local political representative and urge him or her repeal the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation, put a stop to the lunacy of trying to reduce mankind's carbon dioxide 'emissions' and put a stop to talking about oil as a 'fossil fuel'. Let us not forget that whatever happens on planet earth in a physical sense must do so in accordance with the laws of physics.
The sooner people wake up to the non-science of 'global warming' and 'oil is a fossil fuel' and 'burning coal and oil is an environmental sin', the better off we and our children and our children's children (etc.) will be. Then, real environmentalists can get back to focusing on reducing the terrible chemical pollution that is happening all over the world.
I leave you to ponder another quote from Leo Tolstoi:
The one thing that is necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the truth.
Peter J. Morgan can be contacted at forensic.eng@xtra.co.nz
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 31 August 2009