The Integrative Stream

Random Oil Policy Notes

I have a Google Alert set up on the word “Biomarker”. Google scans new materials and sends me an email once a day with the latest news stories and web site clippings containing the word. I have a bunch of alerts like this set up, and I use them to follow various technology developments.

Sometimes this service turns up some real gems. Today was an article entitled ‘Biomarkers’: Bogus hypothesis of ‘fossil fuel’, from WorldNetDaily, a conservative webzine with a pronounced tilt towards the religious right. The article suggests that biomarkers found in oil aren’t left over from decomposed dinosaurs (which, in creationist speculation, never existed) but from an ill-defined process constantly taking place somewhere underground.

The spontaneous generation theory of oil production is, to say the least, not well supported. It’s one guy from Houston and some Russians against everybody else. It would be nice if it was true – the process is supposedly ongoing, so new oil would replace what we use every day – but it’s almost certainly not. It’s certainly not well enough supported to be a rational base for policy decisions.

And that’s the real danger here. Buy into this theory, and you buy out of oil scarcity. The author is peddling a book on the idea. Again, it would be great if he’s right and oil reserves were regenerating, but if he’s wrong, I can hardly think of a worse assumption to underly national decision making.