More Additions to the No Peak Oil Crowd

Hmm... This week, Alexander Cockburn, editor of Counterpunch came out against Peak Oil and in favor of the Abiotic theory.

Today, Rense links to an article published last spring in the Harvard Review supporting the Abiotic Theory, which holds that hydrocarbons are created out of minerals under high pressure, not decayed organic matter:

But new research coauthored by Dudley Herschbach, Baird research professor of science and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, questions that thinking. Published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study describes how investigators combined three abiotic (non-living) materials -- water (H2O), limestone (CaCO3), and iron oxide (FeO) -- and crushed the mixture together with the same intense pressure found deep below the earth's surface. This process created methane (CH4), the major component of natural gas. Herschbach says this offers evidence, although as yet far from proof, for a maverick theory that much of the world's supply of so-called fossil fuels may not derive from the decay of dinosaur-era organisms after all.

David McGowan has been getting attacked by the Peak Oil crowd for years for holding these positions. For more on the ramifications of this debate see my earlier post.

Could it be that there is no shortage of oil, just well-placed wars in high production regions like Iraq and manufacturing bottlenecks (lack of refinery capacity) in the United States? Could the high prices have been set artificially by those means in order to suck wealth out of the world and into a few hands? Are they using Peak Oil scares to condition people to accept martial law and population controls?