Just curious...

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Sep 18, 2012
Messages
6,145
Location
DFW
Does anyone here think, or has anyone ever thought that "dino" oil has anything to do with dinosaurs?
 
I try to buy only oil oil that came specifically from the Brontosaurus. I figure with all of that body fat, there has to be a lot of energy there during combustion.
 
I figured that everybody just used it as a nickname. I read the Sinclair site info. I'm just thinking that somewhere out there somebody thinks that crude oil came from decomposed dinosaurs. I am such a accuracy fanatic I have to keep calling it conventional oil.
 
I call it conventional oil too, because all oils through Group IV and some Group V are made of molecules whose atoms have stewed for millions of years underground, then later manipulated by humans.

And with all the fossil fuel consumption, even bio-based oils must contain somne 'dino' atoms in the food chain - this would be true even without fossil fuel combustion, but to a larger degree with such combustion.
 
Last edited:
You just reminded me of the show I watched on H2 yesterday, "Prophets of Doom." They basically restated what I think we all know; that there are still no viable alternatives to fossil fuels as of yet. The represent the stored energy from a period on this planet when life was more abundant than it is now. It was also stated that humans tend to wait until something absolutely must be done before they do it.

There were obvious uses mentioned, such as energy for transportation and electricity, but also food - not just farm implements, but also the fertilizer. Then, you add plastics and pharmaceuticals. The amount of time we've been using petroleum represents a tiny fraction of the history of humans, too.

I'm not soap-boxing. It just made me think.
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
...It was also stated that humans tend to wait until something absolutely must be done before they do it...

Yes, humans have not evolved sufficiently to be concerned with anything more than our immediate survival, barely past being cave dwellers. Perhaps in a further 10,000 years we will be smart enough to care about the survival of future generations.
 
Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME
DBMaster said:
...It was also stated that humans tend to wait until something absolutely must be done before they do it...

Yes, humans have not evolved sufficiently to be concerned with anything more than our immediate survival, barely past being cave dwellers. Perhaps in a further 10,000 years we will be smart enough to care about the survival of future generations.

That seems to be the new age approach to worry about future generations. Any thoughts that future generations wont even have use for what we are using. How ridiculous would you have sounded to put limits on blacksmiths in the 1700's so future generations would have iron for their wagon wheels or stopped the industrial revolution due to the smoke from all the coal fired factories destroying the planet. No one did anything and guess what, we are still here. Regardless of the what we are using, we can use it and when we use all of it (Which I never think we will), we will probably be ready to want something else better anyway. Man will never hinder future generations. The planet and its might such as natural disasters, now that might put a kink in our progress as humans. Something else to consider, no matter how much trash we make, it all was from here. All the plastic. all the steel, all the trash. We imported none of it from other planets. We just changed its form to suit our needs. It will go right back to what it was in the end.
 
Last edited:
Hello, I have forever used the term "dino" for conventional oils.
I think it's lighthearted and short without being too hep or condescending sounding-I too like words.

I read somewhere that oil didn't develop from decomposing dinosaurs but rather from great pools of algae.

I'd always prefer "jug dino" to "jug algae". Wouldn't you?

My younger brother got a Mold-a-Rama dinosaur (see the bottom of Nyogtha's link) at the 1964 World's Fair.
It was still warm and flexible when it came out of the machine. Kira
 
Oil was formed from organic remains from a time period long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was predominantly formed in regions that were under water as the oceans contained the bulk of life on the planet at the time. Coal was formed primarily from remains of ancient forests that produced a lot more plant matter than what we see today. You can see that process at work in peat bogs. Given enough time, peat will eventually be buried deeply enough and subjected to great enough heat and pressure to become coal.
 
It is said that the oozing, mud-like substance under the salt crust of the Makgadikgadi Pan in Botswana (made famous by the Top Gear team crossing it in three cars) is a precursor to crude oil.
 
^Perhaps whatever species dominates the planet in a few million years can use the remains of our period on the planet as energy. LOL
 
Originally Posted By: Panzerman
Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME
DBMaster said:
...It was also stated that humans tend to wait until something absolutely must be done before they do it...

Yes, humans have not evolved sufficiently to be concerned with anything more than our immediate survival, barely past being cave dwellers. Perhaps in a further 10,000 years we will be smart enough to care about the survival of future generations.

That seems to be the new age approach to worry about future generations. Any thoughts that future generations wont even have use for what we are using. How ridiculous would you have sounded to put limits on blacksmiths in the 1700's so future generations would have iron for their wagon wheels or stopped the industrial revolution due to the smoke from all the coal fired factories destroying the planet. No one did anything and guess what, we are still here. Regardless of the what we are using, we can use it and when we use all of it (Which I never think we will), we will probably be ready to want something else better anyway. Man will never hinder future generations. The planet and its might such as natural disasters, now that might put a kink in our progress as humans. Something else to consider, no matter how much trash we make, it all was from here. All the plastic. all the steel, all the trash. We imported none of it from other planets. We just changed its form to suit our needs. It will go right back to what it was in the end.

Do some reading about Easter Island, or even soil nutrient depletion with conventional industrial agriculture.
There are plenty of limits to natural systems that we rely on, and duplication of many natural systems using technology is a waste of money and natural resources.
 
^Funny you should mention Easter Island. The "Prophets of Doom" special included a segment about that. The "experts" on the show seemed to agree that there were more humans on the planet than the planet could truly sustain. Thus, the need for all the technological intervention.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. I've never seen the owner's manual for planet Earth that states what the maximum occupancy is.
 
Well I'm sure we could sustain a lot more people, but its a question of how they live.
Personally I'd rather see humanity trim out to much less people, maybe a billion, and have that group live well and keep much of the planet wild and unmanaged. But even in the west, we can't seem to cure the "constant growth" financial disease, and we still promote population growth with immigration.

We could easily feed 12-15 billion for a while with our current food production, but most of us would have to give up grain fed meat, and to do so we are burning through our easily accessible fossil fuels and mined resources. Its really pure insanity to allow exponential human population growth and exponential financial growth to continue as it just trashes our planet with no benefit to the average person.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
But even in the west, we can't seem to cure the "constant growth" financial disease, and we still promote population growth with immigration.


Since I have been living in Texas for the last forty years I see this painfully clearly. Since when is continuous growth a good thing? I don't want to get into another argument with people who think Texas is El Dorado, Utopia, and the land of milk and honey, though. It's just a place with too-rapid growth, like many others.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top