47 thoughts on “Fossil Fuels”

  1. I’d read about this decades ago and strongly suspect it to be true.

    I’m not sure it is such a game changer in the near term (the next hundred years.) I don’t think reason has much to do with current political sides. Politicians just keep using taxpayer funds funneled to groups that return part of the money in contributions. I’d call that a high crime and misdemeanor (felony.) This is why they pack the courts and court the media (and hollywood lunes that want to sound smart.)

    In other words, the truth doesn’t matter… only the result (at least 46% of voters buy what they’re being sold.) Would we have a marxist in the white house if that thoroughly discredited ideology mattered? Would man made climate change still be the accepted newsie talking point if science mattered. Come to that, skepticism isn’t just for scientists; journalists could use a healthy helping themselves.

  2. Let me tell you ’bout a man named Bobby,
    Poor Asian kid, barely paid his college money.
    Just one day servin’ up some fund-raiser food,
    Up on the beach came a-washin-up crude.
    Oil that is. Black sludge. Blowout from BP.

  3. By the way, if you are channeling the late Thomas Gold, you are not following the latest contrarian thought on the origin of oil. Gold seemed to think that there was a vast mantle reservoir of reduced carbon, left over from the accretion of Earth from the solar nebula. I am hard pressed to see that theory compatible with the Impact Hypothesis for how the Moon formed.

    Current thinking promulgated by J. F. Kenney is that carbon recycled back into the mantle by plate tectonic subduction in the form of calcium carbonate reacts with water, and FeO to form methane and the straight-chain saturated hydrocarbons of higher molecular weight, i.e. oil. The stuff gets to the near surface by the same mechanisms that Gold postulated, relating to mobility of fluids through small pores at high pressures and the odd coincidence of the correlation of the biggest oil fields with rift valleys in the Middle East and other plate features.

    There is some hard science to back this up, namely diamond-anvil pressure cell experiments simulating mantle pressure and temperature conditions.

    So, yes, the carbon in hydrocarbon fuels may indeed be organic in origin, but Kenney argues based on consideration of equilibrium chemistry that the narrative of oil forming from buried bio-organics in the crustal “oil window” is a thermodynamic impossibility. It has to form much, much deeper than that. Much like diamonds.

    But the energy in oil is not really solar energy after all but instead it is nuclear energy — the heat of radioactive decay that heats the Earth’s interior and power the chemical reactions that make oil.

  4. This grabbing desperately at flaky theories to argue against inconvenient science is where the rabidly ideological right prove themselves no saner than the rabidly ideological left.

  5. But didn’t Mr. Obumble say we can’t drill our way out of this gasoline / oil mess? So even IF there’s more oil, an UNLIMITED amount of oil, it just doesn’t matter.

    Right?

    (so right in fact, that when the WH ‘leaked’ a memo saying the SOR would be tapped…oil prices dropped) (I’m just not sure,

      1. Why would one have to be “rabidly ideological right” to think unlimited oil a good thing?

        That’s a strawman, it’s not about whether or not unlimited oil is good or bad, it’s whether or not the abiotic theory of oil is supported by the evidence available. If oil originated in the mantle it would be found in volcanically active locations, in fact it’s found in geologically stable areas with sedimentary origins.

        Why would so many of the political right decide that the Abiotic theory of oil must be true, when it’s contrary to the scientific evidence? What’s their motivation to reach that conclusion when there’s no evidence supporting it?

        1. Why would oil be found in volcanically active regions if it’s formed in the mantle through subduction? My understanding was that it was formed in the mantle and came through the rock layers through other types of processes than magma, so why would it be found in the same places as magma?

          Actually, I have heard about this for years and was under the impression that it was dead-on-arrival in academia but that the oil companies used this extensively and that it had led to the discovery oil reserves in a number of places that the dead-dinosaurs theory didn’t predict, like under the Alps (even though it wasn’t cost effective to drill for it there).

          I’m not sure it matters much either way, politically. Oil may be renewable, but it doesn’t renew at the rate we consume it, so it’s effectively non-renewable for us.

          1. Oil may be renewable, but it doesn’t renew at the rate we consume it, so it’s effectively non-renewable for us.

            Nonsense. Oil, coal, etc. are nothing but collections of chemical compounds. You can synthesize them if necessary, given sufficient energy.

            “Irreplaceable nonrenewable resources” is a myth created by the left.

        2. Why would so many of the political right decide that the Abiotic theory of oil must be true

          Again, can you name someone (other than perhaps Gold, though I have no idea what his politics are)? Surely, if there are “so many of them,” you should be able to. Or is this just a continuing straw man?

        3. What’s their motivation to reach that conclusion when there’s no evidence supporting it?

          There’s evidence both ways. What’s your motivation? Why is unlimited oil a bad thing? Spell it out.

      2. That’s a strawman, it’s not about whether or not unlimited oil is good or bad, it’s whether or not the abiotic theory of oil is supported by the evidence available.

        Fair enough, but why does the discussion of the theory draw an absurd label of “rabidly ideological right”? Or did you not understand Rand’s question? See, rabid is considered a bad thing by most people. If you are going to drop this label, then perhaps you might want to answer Rand’s question rather than suggesting he’s the one making a strawman. I’ll admit you gave reasonable arguments on the merits or lack thereof in regards the abiotic theory, but no arguments to support your own strawman.

        Or is your argument for the label rely on the article being posted in “American Thinker” with a title beginning “What if” as evidence that they “decide that the Abiotic theory of oil must be true”? In which case, I’m back to Rand’s concern about your logic.

  7. I know that most oil experts think the abiotic theory is nonsense, but it remains tantalizing.

    If life is required to create liquid hydrocarbons, how do they explain their presence in vast quantities on Titan?

    1. Life is not required to create hydrocarbons, the deeper you go into the Earths crust the warmer it gets, oil is naturally cracked into gas below 12 -15 thousand feet. So only gas deep in crust, no complex hydrocarbons.

      The hydrocarbons in space is actually where Gold (an astronomer) got his abiotic oil theory from.

      1. Life is not required to create [hydrocarbons]

        Isn’t that the definition of abiotic (one word to replace six, now that’s the efficiency of the english language.) So we’re now getting someplace. Abiotic hydrocarbons do exist. Does this then make you part of the “rabidly ideological right?”

        So what do you mean by…

        …only gas deep in crust, no complex hydrocarbons

        …and why is there no process that might result in the oil we do find?

        I hadn’t heard about this at all in the western press when I’d heard of it decades ago. It was Russians putting this forth as the article points out. So if we drop the name calling this could be a very educational discussion. Andrew, you have much to offer in that regard. Personally, I’m rabidly ideologically concerned with truth and independent thought rather than any particular political spectrum.

        Rand attracts a lot of intelligent commentary. Let’s stick with that.

  8. As a geologist, I’ve obviously been trained to the biotic origin paradigm. That said, the abiotic theory doesn’t work for me because hydrocarbons migrating upward from the mantle would logically be found in all types and of rocks and geologic structures. This very clearly isn’t the case. Petroleum is only found in any quantity in sedimentary basins, as far as I know, with carbonaceous shales as the source, and porous, permeable formations nearby acting as traps holding the petroleum in producable volumes. Of course, hydraulic fracturing technology has made possible the alteration of tight shales into producing formations, economically speaking.

  9. I should have added that the accepted biotic source of hydrocarbons is NOT dinosaurs or higher plants, but single celled organisms (plankton, algae, diatoms, etc) constantly falling to the sea floor upon death in unimaginably large volumes. Deep ocean basins collect thousands of feet of these carbonaceous sediments that are subsequently altered by heat and pressure (from the overburden of more thousands of feet of sediments) into the hydrocarbons we know and love. Given the scale of this process in time (hundreds of millions of years) and physical dimension, it’s not too hard for a thinking person to understand how we can be blessed with such an extraordinary resource.

    Petroleum is in essense solar energy collected, processed, and stored in fantastic quantities, without government subsidies or green activism.

  10. If Thomas Gold was right, then there would be oil on Mars, too. Assuming life never developed on Mars, such a finding would add lots of strength to the Gold hypothesis. If life did evolve on Mars, then it wouldn’t help Gold so much but it would be awesome on its own.

    Imagine, an oil company on Mars…

      1. That was one of the points Pournelle made in ‘A Step Farther Out.’ Paraphrasing: Petroleum is much too valuable for plastics to burn. I don’t remember if he suggested any power storage with as much density though?

        1. Petroleum is, as you say, an excellent fuel due to its energy density. However, I read somewhere that the energy density of metastable helium (H-IV-A) would be someething like .48 GJ/kg, higher than petroleum — rivaling that of a fissionable fuel, in fact. Any truth to this?

  11. Hmm. Well we know that methane hydrates are biological. We know coal is mostly composed of vegetation [peat bogs/forests]. And we know there is biological activity [a lot of it] beneath the surface. And we know we don’t know much about the “biosphere” beneath surface. And we know there are living organisms in “fossil fuels”.

    It seems to me methane hydrates might a better thing to cultivate [farm] than “fossil fuels”. Why grow some crops of methane hydrates?

  12. Seems to me there’s a simple way to test this hypothesis; try to reactivate some oil wells in long-dry fields. If they have refilled to any degree, it would lend credence to the Gold theory.

    1. Seems to me there’s a simple way to test this hypothesis; try to reactivate some oil wells in long-dry fields. If they have refilled to any degree, it would lend credence to the Gold theory.

      Oil fields are never “dry” they just become uneconomic, typically only around a third of the oil can presently be economically extracted, and if you “spell” a field for a few years some of the remaining oil will percolate through the porous reservoir rock to the well bore.

  13. We can make oil from coal and shale (and more things as time goes by) so the variables of interest for asking how long we can mine carbon to use oil are carbon prevalence, accessibility and price. The prevalence is somewhere between 0.2% and 0.02% of the Earth’s crust and current production is 9×10^9 mt. Accessibility has been increasing over time and increases faster after price trends or spikes up so I’ll assume accessibility permits a constant level of extraction over time. Price falls as a percent of personal income, but spikes up from time to time. The crust is 0.6% of the Earth’s weight. Earth weighs 6×10^21 mt. That gives us 800 thousand to 7 million years at current production rates assuming no replenishment of any sort.

  14. There are several problems with the abiotic oil theory.

    1) We see methane on other planets, not long-chain hydrocarbons. Methane is just hydrogen and carbon, and can form a number of different ways.

    2) Coal, oil and methane are frequently found in the same geological stratum. The oil business got started in Pennsylvania, right next to coal mines. Logic would suggest that whatever processes created coal also created the oil sitting right next to it.

    3) The actual rocks in which we find coal and oil have fossils embedded in them. These are usually leafs or other easily-identifiable plant remains, but can include other animals.

    In short, deduction leads to the conclusion that oil, coal and the vast majority of methane on Earth is from plant decay.

    1. Very reasonable, except it says nothing about whether or not ALL oil comes from plant decay.

      1. It’s hard to prove a negative – the negative in this case being oil never comes naturally from anything but plant decay.

        But the fact that in over 100 years of looking for oil we’ve only found it in places consistent with plant decay is a pretty strong clue.

    2. Finding fossils in coal beds is actually a conundrum. What made some plants “magic”, so that they mineralized instead of turning into coal? When I was small I used to have a very nice tree fossil my dad found in one of the coal seems he was mining. Creationists point out quite a few such odd quirks of coal seems to attack evolution, and there are a few red flags in that particular attack, such as the coal beds in Precambrian strata which conventional theories claim were formed from thick algal mats. If algae can form coal seams, why wouldn’t they always do so instead of forming oil?

      Thomas Gold’s hypothesis was that coal seams are actually oil reservoirs that outgassed their hydrogen, since oil is thermodynamically unstable at atmospheric pressures. That might explain why coal has so much mercury, thorium, and other odd elements you wouldn’t expect in high concentration in plants, but doen’t really explain why the oil keep squeezing itself into thick layers between beds of limestone.

      Perhaps we’ll come up with a simplier theory, such as that most of the oil comes from the long, long pre-cambrian period, the result billions of years of abundant algae and no grazers. Suppose this oil later seeped up into highly porous peat beds, protecting them from mineralization but eventually outgassing most of the hydrogen.

      1. That might explain why coal has so much mercury, thorium, and other odd elements you wouldn’t expect in high concentration in plants, but doen’t really explain why the oil keep squeezing itself into thick layers between beds of limestone.

        As to the first thing, coal, especially impure coal, is a great chemical environment for trapping heavy metals transported by deep, hot, high pressure water (“hydrothermal systems”). Second, stromatolites (a type of algae colony) can build up layers of calcium carbonate and organic matter, duplicating the observed layers of coal and limestone you mention.

    3. 1) We see methane on other planets, not long-chain hydrocarbons. Methane is just hydrogen and carbon, and can form a number of different ways.

      We haven’t looked at other planets where this would be relevant. Mars is the closest chemically and temperature-wise, but we haven’t done any significant drilling there.

      1. Maybe the next Mars orbiter should drop thousands of “rods from God” containing seismic sensors. Then send a nuke or three to Mars and record the crust ringing from the big kabooms.

        2. Seconded.

          Actually, I would think that would be a good bit of science just for mapping the interior regardless of any oil deposits.

  16. Any of you folks actually read Gold’s “The Hot Deep Biosphere”? I have. Gold is very reasonable putting forward his hypothesis and suggests various experiments to test it.
    You can get it at Amazon in Kindle edition.

  17. 1) We see methane on other planets, not long-chain hydrocarbons.

    So you don’t believe life happened through some spontaneous reactions? 😉

    Carbon is just a chemical element that happens to be required for life if you’re not a Horta. Wikipedia tells me it’s the tenth most abundant element in the earths crust with hydrogen the eleventh (Oxygen first.)

    This suggest to me the crust has more carbon than life can account for. This doesn’t lead me to any particular conclusion one way or the other.

    I guess I’m just very suspicious of authority and it tickles me that the experts could have it wrong. History is one example after another of the experts being wrong.

    This of course is no hindrance to politicians binding us all with their laws.

  18. A problem with abundant natural gas: The formerly-absurd environmentalist worry of running out of oxygen might not be absurd after all. As long as it looked like fossil fuels could only have been created by photosynthetic life millions of years ago, any fossil fuel would be matched by the oxygen in the atmosphere (and some of that fossil fuel would be too deep to be reachable). In other words, we would run out of fuel before we ran out of oxygen. If Thomas Gold was right and there’s far more fuel than was created by photosynthesis, we might run out of oxygen first.

Comments are closed.