So apparently a large-ish contingent of American reactionaries don’t think crude oil is a finite resource. They believe the Earth regenerates it at a faster pace than it can be drilled, and this isn’t a niche conspiracy theory either. I mentioned it off-hand at work after seeing a random tweet about it, then like 5 of my coworkers all nodded and agreed. One even used the term “abiotic oil.”

Is this just cope or what? One of my coworkers literally said, “Well oil is like water, it goes through a cycle and gets replenished.” Something about how crude oil is actually made through some kind of geological process, rather than decomposed algae/animal matter from millions of years ago. I think maybe there’s evidence of abiotic hydrocarbon gasses existing from various chemical reactions with minerals, but I believe there’s never been a convincing source of abiotic petroleum that couldn’t also be explained as biological in origin.

They don’t actually believe this, do they? It’s just a thin kind of security blanket so they don’t have to consider the reality of what fossil fuels truly are?

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    15 hours ago

    The education system is fucked lol.

    Even people who correctly understand that it’s biological, think it comes from dinosaurs. It’s like they heard the term ‘fossil fuel’ and just filled in the gaps.

    A lot of our oil comes from long, long before dinosaurs existed. I believe it’s mostly pressurized plankton and plants/diatoms/algae/seaweed?

    But yeah, if I am to get a bit tin foil: even if the education system wasn’t fucked, I think most people are suffering from some kind of severe trauma and/or propaganda induced psychosis. Also repeated COVID infections fucked up a lot of people’s brains. Everyone is very sick and very depressed.

    I’ve noticed previously smart people I know go through some weird cognitive decline in the last 5 years. It’s actually really scary.

    • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      13 hours ago

      I’ve noticed previously smart people I know go through some weird cognitive decline in the last 5 years. It’s actually really scary.

      There’s also the rising CO2 levels which may be contributing to mass mental impairment, and it’s not going to get better.

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      15 hours ago

      No lie I was literally taught in school about fossil fuels being from fossils, and it wasn’t until more recently as an adult I learned the real science. We don’t need reeducation for people…we need straight up education.

      • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        14 hours ago

        I might get in trouble for anti-religious sectarianism for saying this, but people underestimate how much damage US Christianity has done to peoples understanding of reality. I literally just tried to google about the origins of oil, and any of the websites on it that allowed comments were flooded with people commenting things like “WRONG: evolutionists want you to believe that oil is organic and finite so they can keep prices high! Why would organic material be found so far under the crust? Wake up!”

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          11 hours ago

          If the site policy is that protective of the intellectual influence of Evangelicalism, the site should be shut down because it has lost the plot.

        • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          12 hours ago

          AmeriKKKan evangelicals are a cancer. Few things aggravate me more than the fact that when Norwegian black metal musicians decided to start burning down churches, they stayed in Norway and torched old pre-Christian “heathen” churches built by Norse pagans. If they could have just come over to the US, they could have had a grand old time with some of the evangelical megachurches out here, many of which aren’t built or wired up to code because in spite of somehow being able to afford $2M in real estate, the clergy are still penny-pinching chodes.

          • Lemister [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            4 hours ago

            Its worse because he burned the traditional stave churches build by norwegian CHRISTIANS - but since evangelicals think that catholicism is paganism because it preserved some pagan remnants- it was a pagan church in their eyes.

            • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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              2 hours ago

              Ah, fuck me, you’re right; the version I always heard was that the stave churches were from before Catholicism spread to Norway. I didn’t realize they were mostly medieval construction. And yeah, I grew up Catholic and fucking hated that evangelicals thought that meant I wasn’t “Christian.”

          • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            8 hours ago

            I have had that same thought so many times. The history of church burnings in the US is fraught with race crime history because the KKK and others firebombed black churches because they used them to organize for civil rights.

            It would be nice if it was just bored Satanist teens who thought it would be funny if they burned down evangelical mega churches over and over

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          14 hours ago

          I sincerely hope every here recognized Christian Fascism as being the American 21st century form of fashion and doesn’t try to stand up for it as a relgion.

          There are a lot of Christian sects in the US that wield or or less political and cultural power, but American Fascism is based in the Christian Fascist sect that grew out of slave state protestantism.

          Religious Tolerance and Christian Fascism is very much a “paradox of tolerance” thing. Christian Fascism must be destroyed because it’s a threat to everyone and everything else.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      15 hours ago

      it’s also that no one trusts one another unless they instantly vibe with whatever inner delusion unites them. Everyone’s split into little islands of soothing fun little stories

      I mean I can sympathize with mistrust of institutions and expertise, but this is a level of skepticism beyond anything I’ve heard before. Like this baffles me more than flat earthers somehow. It’s just naked cope is what it is.

    • Aradina [She/They]
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      15 hours ago

      I think I’ve been noticing decline in myself. Never even had covid (as far as I know)

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        14 hours ago

        I would really love to see data on pre-covid cognitive tests compared against the same demographics now. With so much covid denial and weirdness going on it’s hard to even assess which information to pay attention to.