RE: "Oil, natural gas, and coal WILL run out." Swarf_maker

NOT IN THOUSANDS OF YEARS! THERE is no Peak Oil crisis. Read the literature on oil exploration. Have you heard of the Norwegian oil firm Statoil's two recent discoveries. Havis has at a minimum 200 million barrels of oil equivalent and Skurgard 400 minimum. The more optimistic estimates ( nearly always exceeded in time ) are 900 million barrels. These discoveries are on going around the world as petroleum geologists are accelerating in their being able to 1) drill to smaller and smaller targets miles and miles deep and 2) thanks to computer analysis refining their ability to map accurately smaller and smaller details from seismic data. These two ongoing developments are of such importance that will accelerate the finding of New fields and permit the reexamination of previously studied areas to find missed pools. If permitted by politicians the world will be swimming in oil. Methane discoveries are increasing as well.

Be that as it may, the really big news for most individuals is that Oil is abiotic in origin and appears to be in vast quantities the deeper drilling is made which makes no sense if oil is a fossil fuel. As an aside, consider the Earth to be an 800 page book. ( Ok, I was almost a Physicist before turning toward engineering. ) The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter so each page represents 10 miles. Since the crust below the oceans ranges from 3 miles to 6 miles thick and the continental crust is 20 miles to 30 miles thick, the book shows that the crust represents one to three of its pages. To reach the center of the earth as represented by the book one would have to turn three hundred and ninety seven more pages. Moral, we don't know s**t about what is going on below our feet.

I am, btw, a fan of thorium and have been since college. My physical chemistry professor was a nuclear chemist and waxed eloquently about the "chemist's reactor" and disparaged other designs in comparison. The professor as a young Ph.D. had worked on the design of reactor for the Nautilus submarine.

Dan Kurt