I would expect that a biogenic origin for oil would be provable by looking at the isotope rations in it.
Is there evidence for this? (I think there is, but its been a long time since I studied this subject. I did geology at university, but that was 7 years ago, and I ended up getting a job in a different field).
I think its well established/provn that oil
can be formed by both biogenic and abiogenic processes. The question would be to what extent each process occurs on earth.
Well the problem is, those people in question did not ask the question "where does oil come from" and work from there. They started with the goal "we need people to stop using oil", and the worked back from there. The "peak oil" hypothesis is what they came up with, and the alleged "certainty" of oil coming from dinosaurs is what they came up with to explain it.
Now, I may be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that the geologists who investigated the origin of oil and concluded that it was the result of "cooking" algae (not dinosaurs) were not motivated by a desire to find a reason for restricting/condemning oil use. In fact, many of them would have been working on behalf of the oil companies, in order to help find more oil to be used.
I also think it is the height of hubris to expect that ... we can consume more oil in a year than the mass of objects which die and decompose on the Earth (if biogenic oil production is true).
Not all objects that die, just those that die without being eaten before being buried in a place where they can stay until plate motion moves them to a depth that the temperature is high enough to convert them to oil (but not too high, because that will destroy it), and which is also in the right place to allow the oil to leak into a rock layer that is porous enough to hold lots of oil, permiable enough to allow it to be extracted, and with a sufficiently impermiable cap rock to keep it there until someone finds it and tries to extract it.
Good G*d, just think of how much plankton, algae and coral in the ocean must die and settle into its black depths, drifting to the anaerobic wastelands down below the crush line! Every year! How many tons? How many billions of barrels can you fill with that detritus? Let alone plant life and animal life.
I don't know. Undoubtedly a great deal. But dead plankton sinks very slowly, lots of things will try to eat it on the way down, and most of the ocean floor isn't anerobic, so there will be more things waiting down there to eat whet does get there.
And yet we're supposedly capable of using ALL THE HYDROCARBONS the Earth has produced over 500 million (or 5 billion, depending on your math and viewpoint) years within 400 years of consumption? Do these people have any idea of just how massive the Earth is and the capabilities its ecosystems and geothermic processes?
As has been mentioned previously, "all" isn't what's important. "All that can easily be got to" is what matters. Additionally, the earth hasn't sat still for 5bn (or even 500M) years. Most ocean basins are only a few 10s of millions of years old. Continents are older, but not necessarily stable. Oil that formed 500M years ago may have been naturally burned up or leaked to the surface 400M years ago.
Now, the fact that the Russians generally accept an abiogenic origin theory is very interesting, both for scientific reasons ("Where does oil come from?"), and probably also for social/political reasons ("Why has the West settled on one theory, and Russia on another?"). I suppose it could be possible that both theories are equally right, and oil is formed equally by both processes. So Westerners go looking for it where the biogenic theory says it should be, and find it, thereby confirming their theories. And the Russians go looking where the abiogenic theory says they should find oil, and they do.
Of course, remember that
