Comment 51941

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted November 19, 2010 at 13:32:03

Gold's theories are just another re-hashing of the old abiotic oil theory. It's not some revolutionary new view - it was actually quite common in the USSR - until their oil peaked and their empire collapsed within a year or two.

Wikipediarticle

As much as I love scientific contrarians like Gold and Dyson, it's important to recognize their role in the scientific community. They bring a lot of unconventional ideas to the table (like the mythic "Dyson-Sphere" built around a sun), but also spout numerous nonsensical ideas, seemingly for the fun of it. Whether or not some oil, or even all, was created by underground microbes (one way or another, it's mostly heat/pressure), that doesn't mean that there's enough being generated in places we can recover it to meet our current demand. American oil production (at least in the lower 48) peaked decades ago, and despite money and technology most countries could only dream of, it's been falling ever since.

Maybe the oil was put there by god. Or aliens. Or Satan. Unless we come across some evidence that it's being put there again, as we use it, at a similar rate, we're still in trouble.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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