Outliars

Apropos of this week's quote, I was reminded of some hokum that was popular when I was much younger. Very much younger. The fantasy was, by way of Russians at that time, that petroleum compounds weren't/aren't entirely (or, at all) the result of decomposing critters. Mostly of the teeny, tiny class. No, according to this mumbo jumbo, petroleum compounds are continuously created. If you're in the fossil fuel bidnezz, this is a very useful bit of fantasy.

Now, of course, even if it's true (it ain't), burning petroleum compounds at an ever increasing rate (after all, petroleum use correlates quite closely to population growth and industrialization) spells doom for the grandkids (fur shur) and likely the kids. Remember: the world is not linear.

Here's a report from much later than when I first ran across it, but still, 20 years ago. There are, naturally, myriad 'reports' demonstrating the continuous generation of petroleum compounds not tied to organic matter. Which would be interesting. But only if this 'other' process proceeds at a much faster pace; leaves behind petroleum compounds in larger volume than is being consumed at that point in time. One report referred to the product of this process as leaving behind the petroleum in pools. Yeah, right.

For the record: the widely acknowledged origin story doesn't require that the critters (flora and fauna) which eventually become fossil fuels are only from some tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. Mother Earth is still making petroleum by Her conventional process. It's just that this petroleum won't be available to this generation, or the next, or the next million after that.