X-Message-Number: 19221
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: No end to oil?
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 20:22:47 -0700

http://www.detroitnews.com/2002/editorial/0205/29/a11-500860.htm

Supplies of oil may be inexhaustible

By Bruce Bartlett

In part this article stated:

"The existence of oil much farther below the surface than it was previously
thought to exist raises new questions about the origins of oil and natural
gas. It has commonly been thought that they are the decayed remains of long
dead plants and animals. However, as hydrocarbons are found at extreme
depths, this explanation becomes increasingly implausible.
   Astronomer Thomas Gold of Cornell University has long been dissatisfied
with the dead dinosaur theory of oil's origins. He argues that oil and gas
are in fact the remains of methane left over from the Earth's origin.
Methane, he points out, is one of the most common minerals in the universe.
When the stars and planets were formed eons ago, it was one of the central
building blocks from which matter formed.
   If Gold's theory is true, then it makes sense that we would continue to
find hydrocarbons everywhere within the Earth's core, and not just at the
surface, where plants and animals exist. Thus the new research is at least
consistent with Gold's theory, even if it remains to be proven.
   The new scientific evidence that energy supplies may be vastly greater
than previously imagined is only the latest blow to the doomsayers. Such
people have been around for 200 years, preaching that mankind has reached
the limit to growth because we have found all the oil there is to be found.
For at least a century, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey has
consistently reported that America had only about 10 years worth of oil
left."

Sounds good to me.

George Smith
CI member and Immortalist

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