Apparently some people think most or all crude petroleum isn't biological in origin?

So apparently a large-ish contingent of American reactionaries don't think crude oil is a finite resource. They believe the Earth regenerates it at a faster pace than it can be drilled, and this isn't a niche conspiracy theory either. I mentioned it off-hand at work after seeing a random tweet about it, then like 5 of my coworkers all nodded and agreed. One even used the term "abiotic oil."

Is this just cope or what? One of my coworkers literally said, "Well oil is like water, it goes through a cycle and gets replenished." Something about how crude oil is actually made through some kind of geological process, rather than decomposed algae/animal matter from millions of years ago. I think maybe there's evidence of abiotic hydrocarbon gasses existing from various chemical reactions with minerals, but I believe there's never been a convincing source of abiotic petroleum that couldn't also be explained as biological in origin.

They don't actually believe this, do they? It's just a thin kind of security blanket so they don't have to consider the reality of what fossil fuels truly are?

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- No lie I was literally taught in school about fossil fuels being from fossils, and it wasn't until more recently as an adult I learned the real science. We don't need reeducation for people...we need straight up education.
- it's also that no one trusts one another unless they instantly vibe with whatever inner delusion unites them. Everyone's split into little islands of soothing fun little stories
  I mean I can sympathize with mistrust of institutions and expertise, but this is a level of skepticism beyond anything I've heard before. Like this baffles me more than flat earthers somehow. It's just naked cope is what it is.
- I think I've been noticing decline in myself. Never even had covid (as far as I know)
  
  I would really love to see data on pre-covid cognitive tests compared against the same demographics now. With so much covid denial and weirdness going on it's hard to even assess which information to pay attention to.
- I've noticed previously smart people I know go through some weird cognitive decline in the last 5 years. It's actually really scary.
  There's also the rising CO2 levels which may be contributing to mass mental impairment, and it's not going to get better.
  
  Not quite there, i think heat and related stresses will get us first
"oil cycle" is a good bit
If oil could be cheaply manufactured without mining, there would be a solid three dozen people in most Gulf states.
Well y'see, oil comes from dinosaur bones, and satan places dinosaur bones to trick us into thinking evolution is real, and since there are more and more excavations, satan needs to plant more fake dinosaur bones to keep up. The only thing stopping this from having no limit is that eventually satan will get tired.
- The problem with capitalism is that you eventually run out of Satan's dinosaur bones
- Keep up the fight against Satan, consume more oil
they read about Mystery Flesh Pit National Park and thought it was a real thing that existed and there are real slumbering elder gods that poop oil
- I thought that the Permian Basin Superorganism ate oil
  
  Sort of, but also it eats nucleotides and mantle heat
  
  oh yeah my bad you are right. eats oil and poops out cool MDMA-like sex goo
I think there was some peak oil cope back in the day that was something along the lines of "we dont really know where oil comes from, it could come from the earth's mantle!"
I remember hearing some theory that oil might be produced by extremophile bacteria deep in the crust, which doesn't make much sense, but it's more plausible than the idea that oil spontaneously generates out of rocks, WTF.
Coal miners regularly find fossils in coal mines, and oil companies often employ paleontologists who study microscopic fossils brought up from oil wells to learn about the layers of rock they're drilling through: https://wiki.aapg.org/Microfossils_in_exploration
We’re so cooked
This is what that billions of Koch ~~blood~~ lobbying money paid to accomplish.
Who was consuming this oil in the cycle before humans existed.
If anyone wants some brain damage I've never even heard of abiotic oil before. We're cooked if there are people that think this is real...
- Oil from younger rocks contains compounds linked to flowering plants, but oil from older rocks formed before flowering plants existed contains only more primitive organic compounds.
  This was an interesting little detail
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- Isn't it funny how easily recycled holocaust denialism is used to defend oil barons. Muh "the numbers just don't add up, (((they))) must be lying about it" bullshit right off the bat.
the important thing is nobody really knows for sure which is the true origin of oil, so we're going to act as though it's the really convenient one and be all affronted whenever anyone suggests otherwise.
except... even if it's the convenient, abiotic regenerative origin... that kinda means we could potentially put more CO2 into the atmosphere than was ever present at any point in the planet's past. Like, if it were fossil fuels, then even if we burned every last drop there would still be some form of life that could survive the conditions, cus it was life that trapped all that carbon in the first place. But if we're just pumping an endless supply of complex carbon chains....
- That's assuming that the other things that have changed in that time aren't important.
  Because we're talking about 500-2000 mya.
  
  very true
  pretty sure the leading theory for biotic oil is that nothing could decompose woody bark for a long time, so it just amassed over x mundred blousand years until geologic time and pressure cooked it into the old god's blood we use to power everything. That alone implies we may never get all the carbon back in the toothpaste tube.
crude petroleum (literally plant medicine)
They don't actually believe this, do they? It's just a thin kind of security blanket so they don't have to consider the reality
Both, I'm afraid.
https://thespouter.substack.com/p/to-dispense-with-abiotic-oil
recommend a bit of "investigation" prior to right to speak. It has an interesting history. Mao and Stalin were abiotic oil guys for a time!
- There is a difference between people believing retrospectively dumb shit in the past versus believing dumb shit today. I'm not going to call some 16th century natural philosopher dumb for believing in elan vital or whatever.
  
  the casual dunking from people with no idea of its historical background was more the point here. an interesting idea with a history in socialist science and instead reduced to the lowest common denominator for a cheap dunk is reddit culture for better or worse. Hence investigate...then dunk.
- “Some Russian scientists investigated it in the 50s” and “Stalin was an abiotic oil guy” seems like a massive equivocation since Stalin wasn’t a geologist nor was he involved in geological research so far as I am aware aside from funding research into how to close the oil-production gap with the US.

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