Re: [asa] Global Warming Stats

David wrote: "...'Oil is not a finite resource because it is created by decaying plant and animal matter.' I responded that may be so, but the process takes millions of years at best."

It's true that oil is being continuously generated from organic matter. It's also being continuously destroyed. Both facts are irrelevant for current world energy use.

The oil that's commercially valuable has accumulated in subsurface deposits. It's of many different ages; age is far less important than temperature, pressure and seal, where seal is the geologic feature that traps oil and keeps it from leaking out. Without the traps oil would diffuse throughout rock masses, eventually to the surface, and be recoverable only with difficulty and great expense if at all. The seals are geologic accidents. There's little chance that any of the oil currently being generated will find its way into a trap in sufficient quantity to make recovery practical within a human lifetime. In effect this means that all commercially valuable accumulations were in place a long time ago.

As the price goes up, smaller and smaller accumulations of poorer and poorer quality get more and more valuable and hence become subject to commercial exploitation.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck<mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>
  To: Lynn Walker<mailto:lynn.wlkr@gmail.com>
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 11:10 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Global Warming Stats

  Thanks Lynn. Comments from advocates of the IPCC reports?

  Here is something else the person said to me: "oil is not a finite resource because it is created by decaying plant and animal matter." I responded that may be so, but the process takes millions of years at best. He suggested that no one really knows how long it takes because no one was there to observe it happening. Is this a position some YECs take about oil resources?

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Received on Mon May 26 05:33:11 2008