1/22/01
George wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of george murphy
>Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 5:35 PM
> The total volume of oil, natural gas, and coal in the earth is less
>than 1.1 x 10^21 m^3 - that being the volume of the earth itself.
>Obviously
>that bound can be imprioved considerably. This is
>simply a way of pointing out the elementary fact that our supply of these
>resources is limited - i.e., finite - and that we'll run out of them
>sometime. Of course the difficult question is, "When?" But rhetoric like
>"the more oil we remove from the ground the more oil we find" whose primary
>effect is to lull people into thinking that we'll never run out, is
>irresponsible.
Here is one way to measure petroleum in the earth's crust. The nonreservoir
petroleum is dispersed so that no one can possibly produce it. Only the
reservoir petroleum is of any economic value.
petroleum nonreservoir 200 x 10^18 g carbon
Petroleum reservoir 1 x 10^18 g carbon
Coal 15 x 10^18 g carbon
Carbonate rocks 51,000 x 10^18 g carbon
living things .3 x 10^18 g carbon
J.M. Hunt, "Distribution of Carbon in Crust of Earth," Bull. AAPG, Nov.
1972, p. 2273-2277. p.2274
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 22 2001 - 15:56:19 EST