So apparently a large-ish contingent of American reactionaries don’t think crude oil is a finite resource. They believe the Earth regenerates it at a faster pace than it can be drilled, and this isn’t a niche conspiracy theory either. I mentioned it off-hand at work after seeing a random tweet about it, then like 5 of my coworkers all nodded and agreed. One even used the term “abiotic oil.”
Is this just cope or what? One of my coworkers literally said, “Well oil is like water, it goes through a cycle and gets replenished.” Something about how crude oil is actually made through some kind of geological process, rather than decomposed algae/animal matter from millions of years ago. I think maybe there’s evidence of abiotic hydrocarbon gasses existing from various chemical reactions with minerals, but I believe there’s never been a convincing source of abiotic petroleum that couldn’t also be explained as biological in origin.
They don’t actually believe this, do they? It’s just a thin kind of security blanket so they don’t have to consider the reality of what fossil fuels truly are?
the important thing is nobody really knows for sure which is the true origin of oil, so we’re going to act as though it’s the really convenient one and be all affronted whenever anyone suggests otherwise.
except… even if it’s the convenient, abiotic regenerative origin… that kinda means we could potentially put more CO2 into the atmosphere than was ever present at any point in the planet’s past. Like, if it were fossil fuels, then even if we burned every last drop there would still be some form of life that could survive the conditions, cus it was life that trapped all that carbon in the first place. But if we’re just pumping an endless supply of complex carbon chains…
That’s assuming that the other things that have changed in that time aren’t important.
Because we’re talking about 500-2000 mya.
very true
pretty sure the leading theory for biotic oil is that nothing could decompose woody bark for a long time, so it just amassed over x mundred blousand years until geologic time and pressure cooked it into the old god’s blood we use to power everything. That alone implies we may never get all the carbon back in the toothpaste tube.