Petroleum Is Infinite In Quantity

[Tenacity]

First point. Why would you feel afraid of the the article or simply what made you feel "afraid" ?

Second point. So anything that makes a fear response should be categorized as not being a trustworthy source of information ? I don't think thats a good response. Things should be categorized as not being a trustworthy source of information when there is no evidence to back up the claims. Having a false sense of security it probably more damaging then being one hundred percent wrong.

I don't think anyone has really gone off the deep end with trying to tie it to conspiracy. Someone posted the possibility of Russia having access of the knowledge pertaining to Abiogenetic petroleum. It's possible but not very clear. Your not really being specific on what you are referring to.

I mentioned at the bottom of the post that it wasn't this particular article in question, but whoever is hosting that article has posted some interesting albeit fear-mongering articles on things such as trans-humanism.

I should have elaborated that such a response indicates that it is less likely to be a trustworthy source. Fear is only induced when a certain agenda is put forth. Scientifically testable facts aren't scary. Agenda-driven information is more biased than non-agenda-driven information, and thus the latter is more trustworthy than the former. This has nothing to do with whether the information itself is actually correct. We should not have a false sense of security of scientifically testable facts, you're right. But I prefer not to be kept up at night fretting over whether or not the government is trying to hack my brain or enslave me (again, not in this article, but in the articles on the site this article is hosted).

If you read the articles I've mentioned thus far you'll see conspiracy. I apologise that I came across as non-specific, but I did say at the beginning of my post that it did not necessarily pertain to the topic at hand. I was trying to explain why 3ball seemed to trust Peat more than threads posted in this particular sub-forum - and when the sub-forum's name is 'conspiracy theories', can you really blame them?

 

[Richiebogie]

@Tenacity You suggest that conspiracy theories are all false.

Ray Peat writes a lot about conspiracy theories. Eg.

- Doctors are least likely to be sued if they give standard explanations, treatments and dosages.
- Agricultural interests market PUFA laden seed crop oils as healthy and pay journals to keep any contrary evidence out of article headings and abstracts
- Pig farmers feed their animals PUFA laden seed crops since it is cheap and causes their animals to grow large despite poor health
- Red meat producers soak the meat in liquid chemical mixes to increase weight
- Pharmaceutical companies market estrogen as healthy for women and ignore data to the contrary due to high profits

Are these all false too, or are conspiracy theories only false until it is discussed in a cold calm way by Ray Peat?

 

[Tenacity]

@Tenacity You suggest that conspiracy theories are all false.

Ray Peat writes a lot about conspiracy theories. Eg.

- Doctors are least likely to be sued if they give standard explanations, treatments and dosages.
- Agricultural interests market PUFA laden seed crop oils as healthy and pay journals to keep any contrary evidence out of article headings and abstracts
- Pig farmers feed their animals PUFA laden seed crops since it is cheap and causes their animals to grow large despite poor health
- Red meat producers soak the meat in liquid chemical mixes to increase weight
- Pharmaceutical companies market estrogen as healthy for women and ignore data to the contrary due to high profits

Are these all false too, or are conspiracy theories only false until it is discussed in a cold calm way by Ray Peat?

I understand why you'd think I was suggesting that, but nowhere in my post do I explicitly state that all conspiracy theories are false.

If conspiracy is defined as 'a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful', then I don't believe any of those things you mentioned are conspiracies - otherwise these groups are not doing a good job guarding their secrets if anybody can discover it! The last three especially I'd describe as 'sneaky' rather than conspiratorial. None of those things give me the same sinister feeling either. The examples you gave all pertain to the preservation of establishment, or to creating profit. Both endeavours fail if people educate themselves. Not so with the implications I was trying to explain in my earlier posts.

Here's a more concrete example, the article I mentioned on trans-humanism: Post-Humans – let’s not go there

"But now biotech is rapidly moving in the direction that is a threat to all humans that live on planet earth. Using biotechnology, nanotechnology and the genome project to ‘modifiy man’ is the current goal of the global elites. They believe themselves to be superior and as such it is their ‘duty’ to manage ‘man’s evolution’ – to their own advantage of course."

How can they possibly know this (the bolded sections), and why do they not provide concrete evidence? This is blatant fear-mongering to induce the fear response and manipulate people.

I don't hold Peat to an uncritical standard.

I suppose, psychologically, I dislike when people claim to know the unknowable.

 

[arien]

Before hearing Dr. Peat speak approvingly of Prof. Thomas Gold's aforementioned work on abiogenic petroleum (IIRC, in the Politics and Science episode on the origin of life), I had seen the following clip, which intrigued me:


Of course, Col. Prouty was an important intelligence officer with some suspicious connections, so I've never been sure what to make of his statements in general. Is he engaged in some subtle disinfo? I'm not sure.

In the same episode of Politics and Science, Dr. Peat also cited A.I. Oparin's work 'Origin of Life', which discusses Mendeleev's, Vernadksy's and other 19th century scientists' views and related experiments on the abiogenic formation of hydrocarbons (pp. 98-102). Experiments producing hydrocarbons by the treatment of carbides of iron and other metals with dilute acids, salt solutions and superheated steam are enumerated. Oparin summarises that "hydrocarbons must have originated on the Earth by a similar process during the remote past of its existence, when carbides were erupted onto its surface and were acted upon by the superheated aqueous vapor of the atmosphere of that epoch." Further, he concludes (based also on other considerations which I have not here presented) that "carbon made its first appearance on the Earth's surface not in the oxidized form of carbon dioxide but, on the contrary, in the reduced state, in the form of hydrocarbons."

Prof. Gold argued that hydrocarbons are produced by the oxidation of methane by bacteria, as it rises from the depths of the earth. Perhaps there it is formed by the processes which Oparin discusses. Interestingly, Gold's approach fits perfectly with Sidney W. Fox's experiments producing microspheres under volcanic conditions, which Dr. Peat cited in the same episode of Politics and Science. Kozyrev's theorisation on time's production of energy in rotating celestial bodies and its relation to volcanic energy may be profoundly relevant here, too.

 

[facesavant]

I believe free markets regulate themselves. People always point to the whole story about the Chicago stock yards and the book "The Jungle" and say we need the gov't to regulate everything. Well the writing of that book was a free market private endeavor and that one book caused everyone to demand change from the stock yards... problem solved. Then the FDA came in after that and look at what they have done to the food and drug industries in America. The FDA is a one stop shop for bribes. All a company has to do is get all the important officials there bribed, then they can pass regulations that cause their competition to go out of business. These alphabet soup agencies like the FDA allow big business to thrive while the small guys get squeeze, and we all end up suffering. I think it was in 2001, George Bush made a speech saying every American should own a home... then look what happened... and now their are so many rediculous regulations that there are no small or medium banks at all, just a few gigantic monstrosities that don't give anyone interest on the deposits and get bailed out etc.

This is best paragraph in this link that explains today as well.
Just wondering where people who commented here stand with the environment and politics of today?

 

[Peater]

What about coal?

 

[Pete Rey]

I don't think anyone truly has a good handle of how renewable oil is or how exactly it is comes to be. You can't run experiments on a geological time scale so all good theories must be considered. One thing is for sure, the rate-limiting factor is geopolitics, not availability. Peak oil theory was propaganda 70 years ago and still is.

 

[Giraffe]

'The deep hot biosphere', the book discussed above.