Pet Peeve of the Day

People who get on the train and then pause just inside the door to find a good seat.

Just get in and let others in as well! They just stand there blocking the way while they decide where the best seat is. Who cares. Just grab any seat! Almost all of them look like they've been sitting at a desk all day as well, so why not stand for a while?!?

Pet Peeve of the Day

Those mobile-phone-bluetooth-in-ear-thingies.

No, I don't care what they're really called; they give me the shits! Yeah, I know, they're practical, you get your hands free, you're always connected, blah blah blah. To me they just classify you as either pretentious and wanting to look professional and important; or you are so afraid of not being constantly reachable that even just having your mobile in your pocket is to far away.

Can you say "Borg"?

And what about the extra battery consumption? Must be a whole power plant worth each day.

Less cancer risk? You'll probably get an ear infection from stopping fresh air getting to it all day.

Skeptic or Conspiracy Theorist?

Couldn't let this Peak Oil skeptic go without a comment. I'll repost it here, most of it should make sense even without the actual article:

This Engdahl instantly lost all credibility by stating that geology textbooks claim that petroleum comes from dinosaur remains. I have a phD in Geology and Palaeontology and I know for a fact that not a single scientific publication claims such an origin. For petroleum the source organic matter comes from marine algae and plankton trapped in carbonaceous sediments. Coal comes from terrestrial plant remains. Animals do not constitute a big enough biomass to make any contribution.

As for deep oil? Physics and chemistry both show that carbonaceous material of organic origin subjected to some heat and pressure at depth will reorganise to form the complex molecules found in petroleum. But if it goes too deep (i.e. the depth where deep oil should come from), the cemical bonds start getting increasingly cracked, and the resulting molecules get smaller and simpler until eventually all thats left are gases such as methane. finally all you get is graphite or maybe diamond, the only stable form of carbon at great depth. And no, you can't bring these materials up the other way and expect the process to reverse.

'Primorial' gives the impression that it's of similar composition as the material that gave rise to life. But after billions of years underground it would have been extensively altered to mineral form.

Another problem is presented by the view that reservoirs are continuously replenished from depth. If the rate is sufficient to keep up with our rate of extraction, then in the past we should have been drowning in tar pits, which occur where petroleum seeps through cracks in the cap rock above the reservoir. Over time this will happen due to tectonic activity, and bacteria can't decompose all of it if it bubbles out too fast. If the rate is slow enough that it doesn't cover the earth's surface, then it has no impact on replenishing reservoirs on human time-scales.

Many of the Russian wells with oil shows are still no convincingly proven to not simply recycled the drilling oil.

The Ghawar field certainly has a source rock, the Tuwaiq Mountain Formation, which under different circumstances may not have produced a super-field, but because of the unique tectonic history and structure of the Arabian Peninsula, the circumstances created an extremely efficient system.

And Engdahl is trying to have it both ways. He asserts there's a conspiracy by the oil industry to not explore according to deep oil hypothesis (it's not a theory - look up the scientific definition of 'theory') so they can have huge profit margins, but on the other hand the Middle East was invaded because there's no more oil to be found. The oil exploration industry is composed of hundreds of independent smaller companies that all want to hit pay dirt. If there is the slightest inkling that deep oil would give one of them a better chance than all the others, they would jump on it without hesitation. Finding the first super-field in almost half a century would have greater appeal than trying to raise profits on ever diminishing reserves.

Wegener? yeah there is generally some inertia before a paradigm shift, but that's what science is about, accepting the best explanation for ALL observations, even if it totally invalidates your past career."