It falls over under even moderate scrutiny, yes, but that doesn't make it a straw man; I was really taught this stuff, in "science" class, by men who were convinced it was true.
I'm very surprised that you were taught that; his is not the definition you would get whilst doing a geology degree.
But on a timescale of decades, rocks are as open a system as trees and lakes
This would come as something of a surprise to the geologists of the world, since rocks (or more correctly, the minerals within) can be experimentally demonstrated to be closed in this respect. Many rock forming minerals (Olivene, Pyroxene, and Plagioclase would be obvious examples) are not actually stable at the earth's surface in the presence of water; they could not exist if minerals were 'open' as you say.
There are forces slowing it down: gravity from the Moon and Sun, friction from the gasses that surround the planet (atmosphere and cosmic). It may take time for those minute forces to stop the Earth, but the eventually should.
And you might be interested to know that we can even measure this; it's in the order of 40,000 tonnes/year. Total mass gain since the end of the late bombardment would come out at 0.0000000027 times the Earth's mass. The estimated time for the Earth/moon system to become tidally locked is 40 billion years, assuming the system still exists. The moon will then get close enough to break up into a ring after another 60 billion years.
There's also the known fact that the Earth's magnetic field changes (swaps) every 250,000 years or so. North becoms South, and vice verca. This change may very well have a significant impact on rotation and orientation of the axis of the planet. (Some scientists say there is evidence that we are in the midst of such a swap now and the event could occur during this millenium)
Right, just one question: How the f**k does a change in the Earth's magnetic field (yes, that field which can tell you which way is north, as long as you are not too close to a bl**dy fridge magnet) have the slightest impact on the rotation axis of a planet the size of the earth? This may sound like a rant, but I've heard that idiocy repeated ad nauseum...
Of course, first you have to define uniformitarianism. If you wish to construct a strawman argument, for example, you would define it as meaning 'everything stays exactly the same forever'. If you wish to use a definition which makes sense, you take it to mean 'The laws of physics are constant and can be used to exalain Earth processes in the past'.
So we can say that stuff changes - but that does not give a carte blanch to insert whatever idea you want.
This is a good summary of the energy returns of various methods of power generation. To summarise: (Figures are the precentage of the energy that you get as a net return)
Take a glance at the summaries of "The Deep Hot Biosphere" and you'll see that oil did indeed come from a living source.
You'll also find quite a lot of basic errors in geology. Deep bacteria are there; but they do not generate petroleum.
But the source is merely single-celled organisms, not mystically processed plants.
There is nothing 'mystical' about it! Do you have even the slightest grasp of the amount of work done in the field of petroleum geology in the last few decades? The generation, migration and accumulation of petroleum is routinely parameterised and modelled in four dimensions; these models are used as a basis for extremely expensive drilling and development work, and validated back using the huge, high quality datasets obtained in mature areas. Source rocks are geochemically and experimentally tied to the generated oil; accurate temperature/time series created from depositional, biostratigraphic and radiometric records; the migration pathways and presence of sealed reservoirs modelled through time. This is the best funded and most heavily researched area in geology.
Thomas Gold is not, of course, in the oil industry.. he's an astronomer. I have had a look through his work; all I can say is that if he wants to get taken seriously, he should take an undergraduate course in Geology first..
Although it has to be said that the existance of a deep, hot biosphere (down to about 3-6 km, depending on the thermal gradient) does seem pretty likely; in some special circumstances in Russia, natural gas deposits appear to be generated by deep bacteria acting on source rocks, and oil will biodegrade if it gets in contact with oxygenated water (see the canadian and venezealean heavy oils/tar sands).
It's also possable to produce oil in the lab by heating the source rocks with water in the absence of oxygen - this is basically what 'oil shale' projects try; this oil is idendical to that found in association with the source rocks.
Oil will also crack fairly quickly to methane under temperatures >150 degrees centigrade. This alone severely limits the depth at which oil can accumulate. Methane will tend to 'crack' to carbon dioxide at greater depths, although a greater problem is the low porosity and permability of the rocks at depth.
And we're supposed to believe that the source of terrestrial petroleum must be organic? We know better now. It's time to revise the old theories.
No, it's time for people to learn things like geochemistry, tectonics and petroleum geology. You may be shocked to hear it, but there is this thing called the 'Oil Industry'. It is surprisingly big and quite likes to find oil. The amount of money available to people who can help it find more oil is quite large. And it will happily spend money - serious money - if there is even a small chance of a payoff. Yet it relies entirely on very detailed theories - backed by huge amounts of geochemical evidence, it has to be said - on the origin of oil via the thermal breakdown of a small class of organic deposits. Why do you think this is?
Then there are the dates - this started 3.5 million years before the Mexico impact.
And then you have the minor fact that metorite impacts and flood basalt events do not correlate. This is another case of astronomers forgetting that this science called 'geology' exists...
The main influence of the impact on Mexican oil deposits was the creation of large breccia deposits which act as an excellent reservoir rock. The oil originates from organic rich source rocks.
Cracks would not persist below 10 kilometers down due to the plasticity of the crust below such depths. And the carbon from the mantle is in the form of CO2, and has been for the last 2-3 billion years. Hence we find volcanic carbon dioxide.
Well, the temperatures below the surface would probably be higher; most bodies of that size are capable of maintaining liquid water under a certain thickness of ice through radioactive decay - modelling even suggests that Pluto could have liquid water at depth.
I would also suspect that the interior of Titan still undergoes some form of convection for the same reason, giving rise to hot spots that may have a surface expression.
On the other hand, the atmosphere composition does rule out photosynthetic surface life, or in other words anything really interesting.
"Surface" as in "origin not in deep rock". "Pools of muck" as in "plant and animal matter buried in low-oxygen conditions" (has to be low-oxygen or the long chains with hydrogen will not exist and no long-chain hydrocarbons can appear).
Actually, oil comes from fairly specific algae; these deposits are rare. But that's better than the rhetoric you were using before.
By "stripped", I assume you mean broken down from long chain molecules to simpler structures.
No, I mean escaped to the surface. And if all these hydrocarbons are methane at depth, then why the claim that the isomer mixes represent >60km depth? Can't both be right.
Note that these concentrations are pretty much steady state now.
Carbon in subducted rock has to go someplace. There are five possibilities:
So now it's changed from primordial to subducted.... now you have to explain why most of the world's oil is found in failed rift basins far from subduction zones. Carbon dioxide appears in subduction related volcanoes, yes.
Yup, awful crimes. How was Copernicus punished?
Irrelevant.
I haven't seen him dismissing plate tectonics, although I don't know if he believes that the 4 billion-year-old continental cratons contain carbon from Earth's formation, or if the deep carbon in them is from subducted ocean floor (ocean floor before 200 Ma is gone).
Look at the section entitled 'The Formation Process of the Earth'. Here he asserts that many of the earth's features are formed by impact, heat sources (incorrectly indentified as around the pacific) are the result of chemical reactions, and that the mantle is unmixed
He does state that no gases were incorporated in Earth, so carbon, water, and nitrogen must have come from material within the planet.
That sounds like a direct contradiction to me. As far as the moon impact goes, this would have indeed melted the entire mantle (the core had separated by then); the moon has the same composition as the earth's mantle.
Although perhaps the subduction under the Arabian plate since 650 Ma was more important in carbon sources than the movement.
Or the large scale deposition of an excellent source rock.
The pressures by surrounding plates are interesting, but I don't know if that caused any fractures in the oil-producing areas -- volcanic rock is to the west, not within the oil fields.
Oil and volcanics only show any association under conditions where he stretching factor of a basin exceeds 2 or so. For the gulf, compression-reactivation of deep structural features created many of the traps as anticlines (you should be telling me this stuff..).
Abiogenic theories don't care what kind of rock is near the surface, although obviously an impermeable cap is needed for a reservoir where we tap one.
I've been trying to get this into your head - IF abiogenic theories were correct, THEN we would find oil where there was no source rock, or where the source rock had never been heated, BUT we don't.
There also are issues about the temperature and pressures being insufficient to create biogenic oil in shallow sedimentary rocks.
Care to cite any references? Remember that oil and gas can migrate over hundreds of kilometers laterally from source rocks under good conditions. Downward pressure driven migration is also well known; it is not then a surprise to find commercial oil in basement rocks where conditions are appropriate for this.
Yes, the mid-Atlantic ridge is a spreading zone, so it should have metal-rich magma rather than the silicon-rich lava in a compression zone.
And this is relevant how? I was merely pointing out that gold's claims of a primordial heterogenious mantle were incorrect. I.e. the mantle itself is well mixed.
Carbon dioxide is not methane
Yes, and this is entirely the point; volcanoes are well known for emitting carbon dioxide, but not for methane. It's a pity Gold didn't put in any references for Hawaii, apart from 'eyewitness accounts'. After all, significant non-biogenic methane emissions from Hawaii would actually give him some evidence.
Of course. Because someone expecting solid rock to have no hydrocarbons under it would stop drilling there..not that we can drill dozens or hundreds of kilometers deep anyway.
Dozens yes, although at high cost.
Gold is pointing out that carbon can be much deeper, and availability at the surface is dependent upon deep geology rather than past surface pools of muck.
No one has suggested that oil avaliability is dependant on 'past surface pools of muck'; I really don't understand where you are getting this from. Why hydrocarbons should have been retained in the mantle when every other volatile has been effectively stripped (due to melting and cycling through oceanic crust) is unexplained.
Gold's ignorance of the last 40 years of geology shines through; dismissing the entire science of petroleum geology is bad enough for a non-geologist, dismissing plate tectonics, standard planet formation theories, basic physics, and in fact anything that gets in the way of his theory is worse.
Middle East has been greatly disrupted by tectonic activity (90 degree rotation is somewhat drastic), and obviously there are many faults to deeper areas. So the search for "source" rock has actually been the search for rock which met expectations near the reservoirs.
90 degree rotation is not very drastic. And the fact that source rocks have been found, with appropriate thermal conditions and migration pathways is pretty strong evidence, especially as when these rocks are NOT found, there is no oil.
This all smacks of special pleading.
If the major volume of the Earth has never been molten, the mantle of the Earth underneath the crust must still contain the diversity of chemistry, the chemical energy sources and the sources of gases and liquids that would be the legacy of an accretion process from diverse and initially cold solids.
Except that mid ocean ridge basalts [which sample the mantle beneath effectively] exhibit an extreme uniformity of compositions. Basic physics also gives us raleigh numbers for the mantle indicating that it is well mixed.
So the same weak points along the Southeast Asia plate edges which cause volcanoes also cause hydrocarbons to become available near the surface.
No, the hydrocarbons are found in the back-arc settings. These are not 'weak points causing volcanoes', it's subducting slab dehydration melting the mantle above. Hawaii is not mentioned by Gold probably for the reason that it is known to have a deep component to it's magma and yet emits little or no methane.
There obviously are rocks which block upward flow. My 300-foot water well isn't producing oil; how deeply were those basins drilled?
To basement. Which is standard practice in frontier areas.
As far as the middle east goes, there is one major source rock and one minor one for the entire region. Gold seems to be under the impresion that oil has to form in situ; it does not. The composition and age of the reservior rock and caprock have nothing to do with oil formation. And it's not 'rotting'; it's thermal decomposition under a known range of parameters.
He also is ignorant of the fact that surface structural trands are invariably controlled by pre existing old trends. he also seems to think that island arc volcanoes are the result of deep heat sources and not subduction, ignoring a huge amount of evidence. And he forgets that the earth has been completely molten and outgassed.
The movement of hydrocarbons along faults is well known and hardly implies that they are refilling significantly. And no, you can't see oil moving on 3D seismic, whatever the wall street journal says.
I remember when the "petroleum is a renewable resource generated by hot/deep-adapted bacteria" theory went around the news a while back.
It's absolute crap. Thomas Gold has no knowledge of petroleum geology (or undergraduate level geology for that matter. His theories fail basic tests (i.e. Basins that lack source rocks are barren; in his model they should contain hydrocarbons). He ignores plate tectonics; his references are often 50 years out of date. The only reason he got any attention was because economists thought his work a good reason to ignore resource depletion.
Also neatly explains why oil appears in so many disparate locations, and why some wells that were *predicted* to run dry decades ago are still pumping away as well as ever.
'Disparate locations?' Oil occurs when you have a suitably cooked source rock, a suitable reservoir rock and an impermiable sealing rock, NEVER when any one of these ingredients is missing. 90% of oil is found in the alucogenic basin setting - hardly 'disparate'. And you will find that oil fields do not refill if you look at stastics instead of anecdotes.
If oil fields refilled on human timescales (let's say 1% of current extraction rate), then the Persian gulf would have had the equivilent of a 270,000 barrel tanker spill every day prior to extraction, since all the trap structures would have filled long, long before.
Frex, imagine if a bacterial culture in your gas tank could be fed random garbage, and would output good quality fuel for your car. That's probably wildly optimistic, but you get the idea -- more practically, how about turning a garbage dump into a petroleum factory, by applying the appropriate conditions to the right bacterial culture.
Methane from landfill is already used to generate power.
Significant contamination or atmospheric exchange would be detectable in the mineral structure of the skulls independantly of carbon dating. Additionally, the fact that five skulls all gave the same age in strong evidence against contamination, and shows that good techniques were used thoughout.
Atmospheric carbon does not exchange with bone minerals on these time scales.
The skulls had not previously been dated, unless you wish to show a link for that.
I wonder if you will ever learn... and I wonder if you realise that in any course on radiometric dating in universities, at least 80% of the time is spent on things like sample preparation, the elimination of sources of error, and where to expect alnomonous results.
You are of course aware that these 'problems' are no such thing; it has been explained to you countless times. The C14 content of the atmosphere at present day has been disturbed by nuclear testing; the level in the past is calabrated by dendrochronology; it is - as you well know - not assumed to be constant.
A sea organism will give the radiocarbon age of the water it lives in. Which you have been told many times. An organism buried in permafrost may partially thaw, and those thawed parts will exchange carbon with the atmosphere, thus giving a different age. Which you have been told many times.
Of course, in this case, none of these problems apply. The carbon in your bones is in equlibrium with your body - and hence the atmosphere - until death, when it is convienently locked in. Inorganic remains don't suffer from bacterial carbon transfer, which eliminates that problem, and 13000 years is within the range of dendrochronology, which means the timescale is well calibrated.
I think the original poster was claiming that there are few-to-no oil-fired power plants in the US, which is correct; they were phased out post-1973.
Of course, this means that the easiest way to adjust to an oil shortage has now been used.
Most new generation in the US in the last 10 years is gas-fired. Natural gas is quickly reaching the end of the line in the US; shortages will appear within the next 1-5 years.
Hence the energy policy of coal and nuclear..
But the points about solar cells not giving a net energy are incorrect; they are based on 1970s calculations, IIRC. Solar installations should be mandated for new housing - costs are reduced if you are already building a roof.
..which has sustained massive volanic releases thousands of times as much carbon dioxide what we have released in a century...
I keep hearing this. However, I've never seen anyone saying it bother to quantify it. Volcanic CO2 emissions are around 110 million tonnes anually; Human around 10 Billion. Please check your figures.
On some of this, I'd agree with you. According to my estimates for the UK to use wind power would take 10% of the land area of the country, which is a lot, and there are probably not enough sites.
Photovoltaics (for the US) would need an array about 200km to a side.
Of course, taking measures like building wind plants in all the best places, and making all roofs out of photovoltaics are good, since they are pretty efficient and could provide a decent chunk of base load. Same for tidal; just using the best sites can make a decent contribution without too much intrusion.
But as far as natural gas goes, it is not a viable long term source. Certainly the US is already facing supply shortfalls - the 400% natural gas price spike in 2000 was a major factor behind the california energy crisis. Europe - and everyone else - is going to face similar problems within 15 years at current rates. And yes, that assumes a lot of new discovery.
What needs to be done is to get the message through to the general public that nuclear power is in fact safe and environmentally friendly. Any volunteers?
1: Long term climate change, over 10 million years or so; a fairly gradual cooling with changes in sea level. Makes the dinosaurs less energy efficient.
2: Medium term, repeated massive volcanic events in the Deccan Traps. These would cause repeated climatic fluctuations; again this is bad for the big animals.
3: Short term, one or more asteroid collisions causing a very severe short term climatic shock.
It's worth pointing out that if you have any one of these in isolation - which has happened many times - you do NOT get an extinction on the KT scale. Personally I go for the 'It was everything at once what diddit' theory.
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It falls over under even moderate scrutiny, yes, but that doesn't make it a straw man; I was really taught this stuff, in "science" class, by men who were convinced it was true.
I'm very surprised that you were taught that; his is not the definition you would get whilst doing a geology degree.
But on a timescale of decades, rocks are as open a system as trees and lakes
This would come as something of a surprise to the geologists of the world, since rocks (or more correctly, the minerals within) can be experimentally demonstrated to be closed in this respect. Many rock forming minerals (Olivene, Pyroxene, and Plagioclase would be obvious examples) are not actually stable at the earth's surface in the presence of water; they could not exist if minerals were 'open' as you say.
There are forces slowing it down: gravity from the Moon and Sun, friction from the gasses that surround the planet (atmosphere and cosmic). It may take time for those minute forces to stop the Earth, but the eventually should.
And you might be interested to know that we can even measure this; it's in the order of 40,000 tonnes/year. Total mass gain since the end of the late bombardment would come out at 0.0000000027 times the Earth's mass. The estimated time for the Earth/moon system to become tidally locked is 40 billion years, assuming the system still exists. The moon will then get close enough to break up into a ring after another 60 billion years.
There's also the known fact that the Earth's magnetic field changes (swaps) every 250,000 years or so. North becoms South, and vice verca. This change may very well have a significant impact on rotation and orientation of the axis of the planet. (Some scientists say there is evidence that we are in the midst of such a swap now and the event could occur during this millenium)
Right, just one question: How the f**k does a change in the Earth's magnetic field (yes, that field which can tell you which way is north, as long as you are not too close to a bl**dy fridge magnet) have the slightest impact on the rotation axis of a planet the size of the earth? This may sound like a rant, but I've heard that idiocy repeated ad nauseum...
Of course, first you have to define uniformitarianism. If you wish to construct a strawman argument, for example, you would define it as meaning 'everything stays exactly the same forever'. If you wish to use a definition which makes sense, you take it to mean 'The laws of physics are constant and can be used to exalain Earth processes in the past'.
So we can say that stuff changes - but that does not give a carte blanch to insert whatever idea you want.
This is a good summary of the energy returns of various methods of power generation. To summarise: (Figures are the precentage of the energy that you get as a net return)
Hydro: 98%
Nuclear fission: 90-98%
Coal: 95%
Natural gas, piped: 96%
Natural gas, LNG imports: 83%
Solar: 73-90%
Wind: 83-98%
Luckily, we don't live in a Newtonian universe, otherwise that statement might be true.
You could go to Saudi Arabia - 75% of degrees there are in Theology.
No, they'd have to find 220 computer specialists telling the world that windows was good. The $220 million cost would probably be OK for Mr Gates.
Take a glance at the summaries of "The Deep Hot Biosphere" and you'll see that oil did indeed come from a living source.
You'll also find quite a lot of basic errors in geology. Deep bacteria are there; but they do not generate petroleum.
But the source is merely single-celled organisms, not mystically processed plants.
There is nothing 'mystical' about it! Do you have even the slightest grasp of the amount of work done in the field of petroleum geology in the last few decades? The generation, migration and accumulation of petroleum is routinely parameterised and modelled in four dimensions; these models are used as a basis for extremely expensive drilling and development work, and validated back using the huge, high quality datasets obtained in mature areas. Source rocks are geochemically and experimentally tied to the generated oil; accurate temperature/time series created from depositional, biostratigraphic and radiometric records; the migration pathways and presence of sealed reservoirs modelled through time. This is the best funded and most heavily researched area in geology.
Thomas Gold is not, of course, in the oil industry.. he's an astronomer. I have had a look through his work; all I can say is that if he wants to get taken seriously, he should take an undergraduate course in Geology first..
Although it has to be said that the existance of a deep, hot biosphere (down to about 3-6 km, depending on the thermal gradient) does seem pretty likely; in some special circumstances in Russia, natural gas deposits appear to be generated by deep bacteria acting on source rocks, and oil will biodegrade if it gets in contact with oxygenated water (see the canadian and venezealean heavy oils/tar sands).
It's also possable to produce oil in the lab by heating the source rocks with water in the absence of oxygen - this is basically what 'oil shale' projects try; this oil is idendical to that found in association with the source rocks.
Oil will also crack fairly quickly to methane under temperatures >150 degrees centigrade. This alone severely limits the depth at which oil can accumulate. Methane will tend to 'crack' to carbon dioxide at greater depths, although a greater problem is the low porosity and permability of the rocks at depth.
And we're supposed to believe that the source of terrestrial petroleum must be organic? We know better now. It's time to revise the old theories.
No, it's time for people to learn things like geochemistry, tectonics and petroleum geology. You may be shocked to hear it, but there is this thing called the 'Oil Industry'. It is surprisingly big and quite likes to find oil. The amount of money available to people who can help it find more oil is quite large. And it will happily spend money - serious money - if there is even a small chance of a payoff. Yet it relies entirely on very detailed theories - backed by huge amounts of geochemical evidence, it has to be said - on the origin of oil via the thermal breakdown of a small class of organic deposits. Why do you think this is?
Sorry, but the idea that the deccan traps were caused by a metorite impact are daft to say the least.
Firstly, there is the geochemical evidence:
Then there are the dates - this started 3.5 million years before the Mexico impact.
And then you have the minor fact that metorite impacts and flood basalt events do not correlate. This is another case of astronomers forgetting that this science called 'geology' exists...
The main influence of the impact on Mexican oil deposits was the creation of large breccia deposits which act as an excellent reservoir rock. The oil originates from organic rich source rocks.
Cracks would not persist below 10 kilometers down due to the plasticity of the crust below such depths. And the carbon from the mantle is in the form of CO2, and has been for the last 2-3 billion years. Hence we find volcanic carbon dioxide.
And Ford will be suing CarSter for offering free downloads of the latest model..
Well, the temperatures below the surface would probably be higher; most bodies of that size are capable of maintaining liquid water under a certain thickness of ice through radioactive decay - modelling even suggests that Pluto could have liquid water at depth.
I would also suspect that the interior of Titan still undergoes some form of convection for the same reason, giving rise to hot spots that may have a surface expression.
On the other hand, the atmosphere composition does rule out photosynthetic surface life, or in other words anything really interesting.
"Surface" as in "origin not in deep rock". "Pools of muck" as in "plant and animal matter buried in low-oxygen conditions" (has to be low-oxygen or the long chains with hydrogen will not exist and no long-chain hydrocarbons can appear).
Actually, oil comes from fairly specific algae; these deposits are rare. But that's better than the rhetoric you were using before.
By "stripped", I assume you mean broken down from long chain molecules to simpler structures.
No, I mean escaped to the surface. And if all these hydrocarbons are methane at depth, then why the claim that the isomer mixes represent >60km depth? Can't both be right.
Mantle volatile concentrations
Note that these concentrations are pretty much steady state now.
Carbon in subducted rock has to go someplace. There are five possibilities:
So now it's changed from primordial to subducted.... now you have to explain why most of the world's oil is found in failed rift basins far from subduction zones. Carbon dioxide appears in subduction related volcanoes, yes.
Yup, awful crimes. How was Copernicus punished?
Irrelevant.
I haven't seen him dismissing plate tectonics, although I don't know if he believes that the 4 billion-year-old continental cratons contain carbon from Earth's formation, or if the deep carbon in them is from subducted ocean floor (ocean floor before 200 Ma is gone).
Theory outline
Look at the section entitled 'The Formation Process of the Earth'. Here he asserts that many of the earth's features are formed by impact, heat sources (incorrectly indentified as around the pacific) are the result of chemical reactions, and that the mantle is unmixed
He does state that no gases were incorporated in Earth, so carbon, water, and nitrogen must have come from material within the planet.
That sounds like a direct contradiction to me. As far as the moon impact goes, this would have indeed melted the entire mantle (the core had separated by then); the moon has the same composition as the earth's mantle.
Although perhaps the subduction under the Arabian plate since 650 Ma was more important in carbon sources than the movement.
Or the large scale deposition of an excellent source rock.
The pressures by surrounding plates are interesting, but I don't know if that caused any fractures in the oil-producing areas -- volcanic rock is to the west, not within the oil fields.
Oil and volcanics only show any association under conditions where he stretching factor of a basin exceeds 2 or so. For the gulf, compression-reactivation of deep structural features created many of the traps as anticlines (you should be telling me this stuff..).
Abiogenic theories don't care what kind of rock is near the surface, although obviously an impermeable cap is needed for a reservoir where we tap one.
I've been trying to get this into your head - IF abiogenic theories were correct, THEN we would find oil where there was no source rock, or where the source rock had never been heated, BUT we don't.
There also are issues about the temperature and pressures being insufficient to create biogenic oil in shallow sedimentary rocks.
Care to cite any references? Remember that oil and gas can migrate over hundreds of kilometers laterally from source rocks under good conditions. Downward pressure driven migration is also well known; it is not then a surprise to find commercial oil in basement rocks where conditions are appropriate for this.
Yes, the mid-Atlantic ridge is a spreading zone, so it should have metal-rich magma rather than the silicon-rich lava in a compression zone.
And this is relevant how? I was merely pointing out that gold's claims of a primordial heterogenious mantle were incorrect. I.e. the mantle itself is well mixed.
Carbon dioxide is not methane
Yes, and this is entirely the point; volcanoes are well known for emitting carbon dioxide, but not for methane. It's a pity Gold didn't put in any references for Hawaii, apart from 'eyewitness accounts'. After all, significant non-biogenic methane emissions from Hawaii would actually give him some evidence.
Of course. Because someone expecting solid rock to have no hydrocarbons under it would stop drilling there..not that we can drill dozens or hundreds of kilometers deep anyway.
Dozens yes, although at high cost.
Gold is pointing out that carbon can be much deeper, and availability at the surface is dependent upon deep geology rather than past surface pools of muck.
No one has suggested that oil avaliability is dependant on 'past surface pools of muck'; I really don't understand where you are getting this from. Why hydrocarbons should have been retained in the mantle when every other volatile has been effectively stripped (due to melting and cycling through oceanic crust) is unexplained. Gold's ignorance of the last 40 years of geology shines through; dismissing the entire science of petroleum geology is bad enough for a non-geologist, dismissing plate tectonics, standard planet formation theories, basic physics, and in fact anything that gets in the way of his theory is worse.
Middle East has been greatly disrupted by tectonic activity (90 degree rotation is somewhat drastic), and obviously there are many faults to deeper areas. So the search for "source" rock has actually been the search for rock which met expectations near the reservoirs.
90 degree rotation is not very drastic. And the fact that source rocks have been found, with appropriate thermal conditions and migration pathways is pretty strong evidence, especially as when these rocks are NOT found, there is no oil. This all smacks of special pleading.
Have a read of this:
Petroleum geology, Saudi Arabia.
To read from Gold's site:
If the major volume of the Earth has never been molten, the mantle of the Earth underneath the crust must still contain the diversity of chemistry, the chemical energy sources and the sources of gases and liquids that would be the legacy of an accretion process from diverse and initially cold solids.
Except that mid ocean ridge basalts [which sample the mantle beneath effectively] exhibit an extreme uniformity of compositions. Basic physics also gives us raleigh numbers for the mantle indicating that it is well mixed.
So the same weak points along the Southeast Asia plate edges which cause volcanoes also cause hydrocarbons to become available near the surface.
No, the hydrocarbons are found in the back-arc settings. These are not 'weak points causing volcanoes', it's subducting slab dehydration melting the mantle above. Hawaii is not mentioned by Gold probably for the reason that it is known to have a deep component to it's magma and yet emits little or no methane.
I mean does anyone seriously think that all that oil in the ground came from prehistoric vegetation??
BP, Amaco, Exxon, Shell, etc, etc... Indeed, they bet billions on it.
Source rocks for petroleum.
There obviously are rocks which block upward flow. My 300-foot water well isn't producing oil; how deeply were those basins drilled?
To basement. Which is standard practice in frontier areas.
As far as the middle east goes, there is one major source rock and one minor one for the entire region. Gold seems to be under the impresion that oil has to form in situ; it does not. The composition and age of the reservior rock and caprock have nothing to do with oil formation. And it's not 'rotting'; it's thermal decomposition under a known range of parameters.
He also is ignorant of the fact that surface structural trands are invariably controlled by pre existing old trends. he also seems to think that island arc volcanoes are the result of deep heat sources and not subduction, ignoring a huge amount of evidence. And he forgets that the earth has been completely molten and outgassed.
The movement of hydrocarbons along faults is well known and hardly implies that they are refilling significantly. And no, you can't see oil moving on 3D seismic, whatever the wall street journal says.
I remember when the "petroleum is a renewable resource generated by hot/deep-adapted bacteria" theory went around the news a while back.
It's absolute crap. Thomas Gold has no knowledge of petroleum geology (or undergraduate level geology for that matter. His theories fail basic tests (i.e. Basins that lack source rocks are barren; in his model they should contain hydrocarbons). He ignores plate tectonics; his references are often 50 years out of date. The only reason he got any attention was because economists thought his work a good reason to ignore resource depletion.
Also neatly explains why oil appears in so many disparate locations, and why some wells that were *predicted* to run dry decades ago are still pumping away as well as ever.
'Disparate locations?' Oil occurs when you have a suitably cooked source rock, a suitable reservoir rock and an impermiable sealing rock, NEVER when any one of these ingredients is missing. 90% of oil is found in the alucogenic basin setting - hardly 'disparate'. And you will find that oil fields do not refill if you look at stastics instead of anecdotes.
If oil fields refilled on human timescales (let's say 1% of current extraction rate), then the Persian gulf would have had the equivilent of a 270,000 barrel tanker spill every day prior to extraction, since all the trap structures would have filled long, long before.
Frex, imagine if a bacterial culture in your gas tank could be fed random garbage, and would output good quality fuel for your car. That's probably wildly optimistic, but you get the idea -- more practically, how about turning a garbage dump into a petroleum factory, by applying the appropriate conditions to the right bacterial culture.
Methane from landfill is already used to generate power.
Significant contamination or atmospheric exchange would be detectable in the mineral structure of the skulls independantly of carbon dating. Additionally, the fact that five skulls all gave the same age in strong evidence against contamination, and shows that good techniques were used thoughout.
Atmospheric carbon does not exchange with bone minerals on these time scales.
The skulls had not previously been dated, unless you wish to show a link for that.
I wonder if you will ever learn... and I wonder if you realise that in any course on radiometric dating in universities, at least 80% of the time is spent on things like sample preparation, the elimination of sources of error, and where to expect alnomonous results.
You are of course aware that these 'problems' are no such thing; it has been explained to you countless times. The C14 content of the atmosphere at present day has been disturbed by nuclear testing; the level in the past is calabrated by dendrochronology; it is - as you well know - not assumed to be constant.
A sea organism will give the radiocarbon age of the water it lives in. Which you have been told many times. An organism buried in permafrost may partially thaw, and those thawed parts will exchange carbon with the atmosphere, thus giving a different age. Which you have been told many times.
Of course, in this case, none of these problems apply. The carbon in your bones is in equlibrium with your body - and hence the atmosphere - until death, when it is convienently locked in. Inorganic remains don't suffer from bacterial carbon transfer, which eliminates that problem, and 13000 years is within the range of dendrochronology, which means the timescale is well calibrated.
I think the original poster was claiming that there are few-to-no oil-fired power plants in the US, which is correct; they were phased out post-1973.
Of course, this means that the easiest way to adjust to an oil shortage has now been used.
Most new generation in the US in the last 10 years is gas-fired. Natural gas is quickly reaching the end of the line in the US; shortages will appear within the next 1-5 years.
Hence the energy policy of coal and nuclear..
But the points about solar cells not giving a net energy are incorrect; they are based on 1970s calculations, IIRC. Solar installations should be mandated for new housing - costs are reduced if you are already building a roof.
I keep hearing this. However, I've never seen anyone saying it bother to quantify it. Volcanic CO2 emissions are around 110 million tonnes anually; Human around 10 Billion. Please check your figures.
On some of this, I'd agree with you. According to my estimates for the UK to use wind power would take 10% of the land area of the country, which is a lot, and there are probably not enough sites.
Photovoltaics (for the US) would need an array about 200km to a side.
Of course, taking measures like building wind plants in all the best places, and making all roofs out of photovoltaics are good, since they are pretty efficient and could provide a decent chunk of base load. Same for tidal; just using the best sites can make a decent contribution without too much intrusion.
But as far as natural gas goes, it is not a viable long term source. Certainly the US is already facing supply shortfalls - the 400% natural gas price spike in 2000 was a major factor behind the california energy crisis. Europe - and everyone else - is going to face similar problems within 15 years at current rates. And yes, that assumes a lot of new discovery.
What needs to be done is to get the message through to the general public that nuclear power is in fact safe and environmentally friendly. Any volunteers?
Events at the KT boundary:
1: Long term climate change, over 10 million years or so; a fairly gradual cooling with changes in sea level. Makes the dinosaurs less energy efficient.
2: Medium term, repeated massive volcanic events in the Deccan Traps. These would cause repeated climatic fluctuations; again this is bad for the big animals.
3: Short term, one or more asteroid collisions causing a very severe short term climatic shock.
It's worth pointing out that if you have any one of these in isolation - which has happened many times - you do NOT get an extinction on the KT scale. Personally I go for the 'It was everything at once what diddit' theory.