Dave Funk, a retired pilot vying for the Republican congressional nomination in Iowa’s 3rd District, doubts claims that the Earth has a limited supply of fossil fuel, saying the country must drill for the boundless supply that could currently exist.

Dave Funk

Dave Funk

In a blog post at TheIowaRepublican.com, Funk discussed a story from the conservative Web Site “The American Thinker.” It argued that the “universally-taught belief that petroleum deposits are derived exclusively from long-dead plants and dinosaurs is about as scientifically sound as the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming.”

He then pointed to the so-called “Climategate” scandal, where hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents were stolen from a computer server at a British university that global warming critics say prove a conspiracy to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change. Funk said when coupled together, the myth of climate change and limited oil supply show “how government interference in our economy has slowed our economic growth, artificially increased our energy costs and allowed a massive transfer of wealth out of our country.”

It is time, he said, that U.S. energy policy is run by “adults in America and not environmental zealots.”

The concept Funk is discussing is called “abiogenic petroleum origin,” a theory that states petroleum was formed from deep carbon deposits dating to the Earth’s origins, as opposed to the prevailing belief that it was formed from ancient biologic material. The concept came to fame in the Soviet Union during the mid-20th Century, but has little support among contemporary geologists. Its proponents argue that if it is proven true it would mean much larger oils reserves than currently predicted.

Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies, said in August that the global oil supply is likely to peak in about 10 years. He warned that oil production has already peaked in non-OPEC countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end.

Birol’s dire predictions are not universally accepted, but all authoritative estimates of the world’s existing energy reserves conclude there is a limit, even if it won’t be reached for many decades.

Funk is running against state Sen. Brad Zaun and former Iowa State University wrestling coach Jim Gibbons for the chance to challenge incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell in 2010.