The main constituent of Moon rocks are basalts, which are generally made up (to simplify) of Silicon, Aluminium, Magnesium and Iron OXIDES. Oxygen is very abundant on the moon, given enough energy.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, is almost only ever found as water on this planet; this is the big problem.
Well, let's see.. to be generous, consider a 100m thick (uniform) ice sheet. This will have the same mass as a 90m column of water, except that the center of mass of the water will be 45 meters below the surface and the center of mass of the ice will be 40m below the surface. Good luck detecting that anomoly..
In reality, of course, the density of the ice will increase as you go down, so reducing the effect, and the ice will usually be thinner. Then compare this to the effect of continental margins, ocean floor topography, air pressure, etc, etc..
Yes, you do. You made the claim, you back it up. Simple as that. Now, I can back up my claim with fully referenced sites litke this. Can you?
Also, I think you are mistaking my statements as dismissive of global-warming. Try a little balance.
No, I am considering your statements as profoundly lazy; I get the impression that you believe anything that supports what you think you know and reject anything different without bothering to look into it.
I am wondering what changed scientist's minds when they had rock-solid evidence a mere 20 or so years ago that we were going into an ice-age
There was never any 'rock solid' evidence, it was never a consensus, and a couple of pop-science articles about a potential ice age appeared circa 1974, closer to 30 than 20 years ago. I'd suggest here for some more reading; you may still disagree, but at least you might be informed.
Based on that, can we trust that global-warming is real?
Because it is massively backed by several different avenues of scientific research (paleoclamatology, recent measurements, physics calculations, modelling, etc.).
How much of your own global-warming fanaticism (see your previous post as an example) is shaped by the media?
None. I'm a geoscientist and computer modeller by training. I regard most of the mainstream media's science, energy and environmental reporting as criminally underinformed, frequently outright wrong and almost invariably misleading.
I've heard the ozone-hole above the pole has started to shrink... Wasn't that one of the indicators of global-warming?
No.
..bleat on like other sheep..
Wait a minute - you're the one mindlessly repeating the old '1970s ice age prediction. And then accusing me of being a fanatic when I point out just how wrong that statement is on so many levels.
Of course, you realise that if we continue business as usual, we'll probably end up using coal-to-liquirds and gas processes, thus giving us both less net energy and higher GHG emissions all in one.
First, show me the references. How many scientific papers were published predicting global cooling? Name one.
Second, are you saying that Climatology as a science has not moved on, collected more data, used more advanced techniques and more powerful computers sonce the 1970s? This sounds a bit strange.
Third, just because a theory was once accepted (it this case it never was, but let's pretend) in a field of science but was later rejected on new evidence, does that mean that every subsequent theory is equally invalid?
Of course, you'll just ignore all this and say exactly the same thing next time the subject comes up. But I have to try and get something through.
The level of water will not, I repeat, will not rise. Thanks to our old friend Archimedes.
Of course, should the meltimg be followed by an increase in the temperature of the water, then the level WILL rise (salt water does not have the 4C maximum density that fresh water has).
however, no conclusive evidence has been presented that the icecap on the South Pole is melting
Actually, it appears to be increasing in volume due to higher precipitation, which is a Good Thing. However, the Greenland ice cap does appear to be melting; it is only metastable in the current climate (i.e. if you lifted it off today, it would not re-form). That would increase sea level.
that is, that block of ice known as the North Pole pulls water towards it, which causes higher than expected sea levels locally, but lower levels further away.
OUCH!!! And I thought you understood Archemedies..
For one thing, however, the vegetation-crude oil formation theory has still not been conclusively proven.
Yes it has. Geochemically, Experimentally, Practically, through modelling, etc, etc..
Direct chemical formation deep in the earth is tantalizingly possible.
No, it isn't. Conditions have been too oxidising for the past 2.5 Billion years; if the mantle were still as reducing as when the planet formed, there wouldn't be any oxygen in the atmosphere.
Solar electric generation from our roof surfaces may make electricity very cheap and pleniful;
Well, it could give us about 20% of power usage and help reduce air conditioning peaks demand. Cheap and plentiful it won't be.
There are several theories that hydrocarbons come from something else than compressed rotting plants.
'Hypotheses' is the correct term. Since the mainstream theory (backed by a somewhat huge pile of evidence) is that oil comes from a fairly restricted class of algae in only a few rare circumstances during the earth's history, 'rotting plants' is something of a misnomer.
and based on the observation that oil & gas seems to be linked to geographical formations like volcanoes and thin crusts
That would be news to the oil and gas industry. How many volcanoes do you know of in Texas, Saudi Arabia, Northern Alaska, the North sea, West Siberia, Nigeria, etc, etc, etc..
Oil is found in rift basins, especially (indeed almost exclusively) those where ocean circulation was cut off during their formation, thus allowing anoxic conditions to form at the bottom, leading to the preservation of the algae mentioned above. Currently active rift basins (i.e. the Aegean Sea) contain no oil, showing that it forms after active rifting has ceased.
rather than being tied to (e.g.) coal deposits, which would seem more likely.
Why? Coal is a suitable source rock for natural gas (and frequently is), but yields little oil. Oil deposits are tied to suitable source rocks (The Kimmeridge Clay being one of the better known)
Now imagine _really_ large colonies of such bacteria, living in hot porous sulphur-rich rocks, and dying to rot and produce oil and gas.
Now find some hot, porous, sulphur-rich rocks in a suitable location. Given the LACK of association of volcanoes and oil deposits, you can't use volcanic vents. Explain the presence of rocks which can on heating produce oil with the same geochemical characteristics as the oil found.
Seems more likely than (oil = compressed dinosaur bones and cabbage) to me.
Well, you're not a geologist, are you?
Which also implies that oil is a much more massive resource than previously thought, it won't run out soon.
US production peaked in 1970; Indonesia 1973, USSR 1987, Argentina 1998, UK 1999, Norway 2001 (+50 odd more producing countries). Oil does, in fact, run out. We've drilled deeper; we've drilled though pack ice; we've drilled in several kilometers of water; we've drilled practically everywhere in the globe. We've used every possable technique to squeeze oil from the fields found, with exponentially diminishing returns.
If there were great volumes of undiscovered oil out there then, believe me, we would have found it.
1). The headline figure of the amount of prehistoric matter required per gallon/whatever is probably correct; it is also very irrelevant.
2). Thomas Gold's stuff about abiogenic oil is extremely wrong, to put it mildly. I've gone through this exhaustively on/. before; the guy simply operates in complete ignorance of general, let along petroleum, geology. Oil is derived from a small number of source rocks which are in turn rich in a particular type of algae; the sources are routinely traced geochemically. Wells are typically drilled well below the expected limits of oil occurance in the search for natural gas, which in itself consititutes several hundred thousand failed tests of TG's theories. Oil as we know it is distinctly finite, we've used about half, and production will shortly (2-10 years depepding on poitics and investment) start to decline.
3). Oil from waste/turkey guts. It's not a bad idea; having looked at and analysed everything I can find on it, it looks like a great way of a) Producing biodeisel, b) Recycling plastic, and c) Disposing of lots of nasty organic waste. However, given that every feedstock for this process (Turkey food, plastic, grease, etc) is in itself directly or indirectly dependant on oil inputs, this process can only ever recover a fraction of the oil used in the first place. It's a good process, but not a solution.
4) Solutions. This is a two part problem; first, where does your primary energy come from, and second, how do you provide energy for transport. In today's world, primary energy comes from Coal, Natural gas, Nuclear, Hydropower and Oil, but transport energy comes almost entirely from oil.
For primary energy (read: Electricity), the only currently viable long term option is Nuclear, hopefully with renewable contributions. Renewables alone are simply too intermittant; coal is too harsh on the environment, and natural gas is running out.
For transport, options are varied. Essentially we have to switch from having the energy source come out of the ground in a convienient, easily used form into making an energy carrier. This imples that whatever the solution, at least twice (and probably more like three times) the current generating capacity of primary energy will be required.
Hydrogen has been heavily hyped but the practicalities of storing and transporting it are proving very, very difficult. Fuel cell cars are very, very expensive and have limited ranges (50-100 miles).
Electric cars have benefitted strongly from the laptop computer - with the latest batteries, ranges of up to 300 miles are mooted, and they are seriously cheap to run. For some reason, however, no car manifacturer seems willing to introduce one to the general market.
Other energy carriers - Methanol from air, Boron, direct hydrocarbon synthesis - could also be viable given sufficient primary energy.
Bottom line is - we do, currently, face both energy and envionmental crises. The solutions to both are the same, and viable, and quite possibly cheaper than business as usual. Getting people to acknowledge this is, however, the real problem.
Well, as soon as Thomas Gold gets an undergraduate degree in general geology (let alone petroleum geology, of which he clearly hasn't a clue), his opinions might start to carry some weight. Until then, forget it.
I've written elsewhere on this on Slashdot, it's a bit tedious having to re-debunk his stuff every time the subject comes up.
Technically, since the amount of fossil based energy used in the Fertilizer, Tractors, transport, pesticides, conversion, etc, etc. exceed the amount of energy actually in the end result biodiesel, you're not using solar energy (or you are using multimillion-year-old solar energy, anyway). In fact, you're probably using more that if you ran your car on normal diesel.
This sequence of events has been caught on video for a semi submersable oil rig which 'blew out' a gas well. So it can happen artificially..
However, for it to happen naturally is extremely unlikely. First, methane hydrates in quantity sufficient to sink a ship are very rare -most occurs in very dispersed form making up less than 1% of the sedimentary volume. Second, the T/P conditions for a large, continuous deposit would have to change very rapidly indeed to get bubbles at the surface - if you only change the conditions slightly, the methane hydrate just dissolves in the seawater and would take days or weeks to reach the atmosphere. You'd need a mass spectromoeter to detect the stuff.
The only feasable ways for this to happen naturally are a) An undersea volcanic eruption directly into a massive hydrate deposit, or b) An earthquake fracturing a natural gas deposit under the sea (a natural blow out). Both events would happen, at a guess, less than once in a thousand years.
And of course, objects with a sufficently low density (ie inflatable lifeboats) would still float, so you would expect at least these.
The thing about equilibrium is, if you upset it, it tries to reestablish itself.
In terms of the volcanic/erosion flux, adding more CO2 means a higher atmospheric concentration to keep the rate of removal up.
If you make the environment more favourable for quicker plant growth, you get more plant growth, and therefore more CO2 is eaten up.
And therefore more plant matter to decay and release CO2. Now, it appears that around half of manmade CO2 is currently being stored as extra biomass. Should this process stop or reverse as a result of higher temperatures moving ecosystems to different areas, this stored CO2 will be released.
Because most basins do not happen to have deep flaws underneath which let carbon leak up?
All basins, pretty much by definition, contain faults down to the brittle/ductile transition at cf. 10-15km. In general, ductile rocks do not have the porosity or permability to allow 'carbon to leak up'. In modern areas of basin formation such as Greece or the Basin and Range province in the US, we do not observe 'carbon leaking up'.
The simple reasons why these basins are not prospective is that source rocks are either absent or have not been sufficiently heated to produce oil. Borehole and seismic data confirms this. Where oil is present, its composition ties it to highly specific source rocks, and it's location ties it back to migration pathways from areas where this source rock has been sufficiently heated to produce oil; the kinetic parameters of this are routinely measured in the lab, as is the generation of oil of the same composition as that found in the traps.
Because "most" basins leak?
No, because of the above.
Examples?
the enormous quantities of hydrocarbons in the Athabasca tar sands in Canada would have required vast amounts of source rocks for their generation in the conventional discussion, when in fact no source rocks have been found.
This consideration is irrelevant now that we know that a cold formation process assembled the Earth and that hydrocarbons could have been maintained, and could be here for the same reasons as they are on the other planetary bodies.
Unfortunately, TG is unaware that the mantle has been in vigourous convection for 4.5 billion years and has been entirely cycled through partial melting zones (and completely mixed). The progressive oxidation of the mantle was completed at around 2.5 billion years ago, after which CO2 instead of methane has been the dominant mantle carbon phase.
Suppose that in the depth range between 100 and 300 kilometers we have a patchwork in which the carbonaceous chondrite material comprises 20 percent on an average. In this material, carbon amounts to 5 percent.
...then the OBSERVED seismic properties of that layer would be *dramatically* different
[On the persian gulf] There is no feature that the geology or the topography of this entire large region has in common, and that would give any hint why it would all be oil and gas rich.
The persian gulf has pretty unique geology - a highly stable platform for a long period of geological time, widespread prolific source rocks, and a very simple structural style. This last feature is very important; a small number of large scale geological structures can trap far more oil than the large number of small structures more normally found. To say there is 'no feature that makes it oil rich' is simply wrong.
When it comes to deliberate half-truths, you have to hand it to the anti-global-warming crowd, they know how to use them.
Of course, you know that natural CO2 emissions are effectively closed circuit - under normal conditions, a rainforest will take up the same amount of CO2 as it releases through resparation. The fluxes involved may be large, but they are balanced, and so have no net effect on atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Over long time periods, the CO2 concentration is set by the balance of CO2 release by volcanoes and CO2 uptake by silicate weathering. This flux is much smaller then biological fluxes at around 120 million tonnes/year, and is completely dwarfed by human inputs. Strange that your article didn't mention that.
The estimate for the costs is also quite amazing - at $400 Billion a year, you cound make the entire US electric grid run on Nuclear in about 5 years, and build a new grid with the spare change. This would vastly enhance US energy security, lower electricity prices AND break the Kyoto targets by a mile.
He also points out magnetite found around oil deposits, indicating iron-using bacteria eating methane and creating oil. So there's a lot of that going on in this planet already.
Yeah, right.. Thomas Gold might be completely ignorant of mantle convection, modern isotope geology, petroleum geology, crustal fluid dynamics. He may be completely unable to explain why most basins do not contain commercial hydrocarbons, he may tell outright lies about modern petroleum geology, but he's got an alternative theory, so he must be right..
This was part of my PhD.. the numbers are correct.
Remember that at these temperatures, the process is pretty slow (as in 'over a period of millions of years' slow). Plus it only works on fairly specific source rocks based on algal blooms in anoxic basins. If you take a present day source rock (i.e. 'oil shale'), and cook it with water at a higher temperature, you get oil a lot faster. But there is no geological way to do this on a regional scale, and at temperatures >150-200C, oil rapidly (cf. 100,000 years) cracks into methane in the presence of iron oxides, which are themselves virtually ubiqitous underground.
People have tried oil-shale-to-oil projects; however, the energy required to process, heat, add water, refine, and dispose of waste comes out around the same as the energy in the oil, which is why it's never worked commercially.
Re:How about petroleum?
on
The Diamond Age
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Whenever you like; there is nothing particularly difficult about (for instance):
CO2+4H2-> 2H2O + CH4
But now calculate how much methane you need to provide the hydrogen and the energy to drive the reaction..
Out of interest, the formation of oil happens at temperatures of 100-140 degrees celcius (pressure is virtually irrelevant), which trandlates to 2000-5000 meters underground depending on local thermal gradients. Gas is generated at higher temperatures.
If you wanted to make a liquid fuel, I would strongly reccomend a partial version of the above reaction:
3H2 + CO2 -> CH3OH (methanol) + H2O
You would need to build a nuclear power station or two (or a very large wind farm) to run the process, but this would give you a direct petrol replacement.
To be fussy, the gravity anolalies are more to do with out-of-equlibrium crust than simple highs and lows. So the East pacific rise (a mid ocean ridge) barely shows up at all, but the ridge over a hotspot at Iceland shows up a mile. In a similar way, the Plateaus of Tibet and S. America, which are currently undergoing gravitational collapse, show up strongly.
On a larger scale (see the Indian ocean), the really large scale anomolies are hypothesised to be the result of deep mantle convection.
You said one out of place well documented fossil would falsify evolution
Note the phrase 'well documented'.
(evolution that teaches simple life=>complex forms).
Well, that's not what it teaches, and shows you could do with educating yourself about evolution from some non-creationist sources.
I gave you an example, and you picked on unfair details.
If you are going to disprove a very long standing scientific theory in daily use, which usefully explains a literal mountain of evidence, your examples *must* be absolutely rock solid. It is most certainly not unfair to pick on details.
So I reasoned with myself, if he's just going to pick on every detail, I'll post the necessary steps to find many examples - if he's interested, then he can see them right there. If he's not, well maybe another reader will see something there
There are huge numbers of poorly documented UFO sightings, Miracle healings, Past-life experiences, Government consprircies, antigravity machines, Elvis sightings, etc, etc, etc... does this mean that it is my responsability to track down and disprove every one? Absolutely not - it is the responsability of the person proposing that these things exist/happen to track down and fully document real cases. They cannot say 'there are hundreds of vague reports, some must be true'.
For example, having looked through the first 60 results of such a google search, I haven't found anything even vaguely approaching properly documented. Lots of vague or very old references, quite a few deliberate misunderstandings, some outright lies, but nothing solid.
Yet that means you are unwilling to accept anything but natural causes. That bias indicates you have a mind closed in some areas, which is unfortunate.
The whole point of science is that supernatural explanations are not allowed! This is not closed mindedness, it is part of the whole process - and if you wish to participate in it, you are bound by the rules.
Your claim that the halos of Rn222 and Po210 are indistinguishable due to equipment limitations is obviated by the lack of response to the original papers.
Actually, the lack of response was probably more due to apathy and lack of time than anything else. Plus these papers were not published in the geological journals; journals like Science and Nature tend to have a less specialist set of revewers.
But as far as the thin sections go, I've done a LOT of thin section work in my time. Geological specimens - especially in rocks with large crystals - are very difficult to get thin enough (the crystals tend to break along cleavage planes, and the harder parts will resist polishing). This limits the resolution you can get, and means you are always looking at a 3D picture. There is no way you could distinuish rings so close together under these conditions.
For an instantaneous creation hypothesis to be correct, the following would have to follow:
a) The haloes would have to be present in association with Te or Se minerals; the lower O group elements would be expected to occur together. Instead, they are only found in association with U cointaining minerals.
b) We would expect to see haloes indiciating the presence of all isotopes of Po; the fact that all of those present are from the decay chains of long lived isotopes is storng evidence against a supernatural origin.
c) We would would also expect to find evidence of other related elements (At, Fr, etc..). Indeed, if we assume that all isotopes of all elements were 'created' with abundances in proportion to the stable isotopes we see today, we should see literally dozens of such isotopes. But we don't - we only detect those isotopes that have either very long half-lives (U, Th, etc), exist in the decay chains of these isotopes, or are made by cosmogenic processes.
The hypothesis fails because the predictions that come from it (as above) fail. And this is science; you can't ignore failures in prediction.
It's really up to you - I gave you the search terms to use in google, go look for yourself if you really care.
So now *I* have to look for evidence to support your case...
Actually, it is surely more important to you, if you wish to build a solid case against evolution. I've done the field work; I've seen the evidence. I'm happy with it. I strongly suspect you haven't bothered with any of this - it's hard work and takes years. Reading a few creationist web sites is much easier, I'm sure.
Is in error. See, God made us in His image; when you start to dictate how He should have made the world, that's you making Him in an image you constructed.
Once you invoke the supernatural as an explanation, you are of course abandoning any semblance of being scientific. You can assert anything supernatural you like, but it's not a valid answer.
You claim the Rn222 halos would not be visible is obviated by the papers.
I didn't claim that - I pointed out that they could not be distinguished from polonium haloes due to the inherent limitations of thin section technique. Assuming that Gentry has chosen to publish the best, hand picked specimens to try and make his case, the evidence is simply lacking.
You claim that Po-209 being the most stable Po isotope is a show stopper; yet from the reference you provided a couple of posts ago Po-209 is NOT on the decay chain of U->Pb. So why are you making Po-209 the "showstopper" when your own background data shows it's not relevant?
IF fiat creation was the answer, we would expect to see Po-209 haloes. It's not a show stopper for the hypothesis that the Po is a result of Rn-222 decay, but it is for fiat creation.
Also Po halos are not smeared as they would be by Rn migration along fault and crack lines; instead the published (in peer-reviewed journals) pictures clearly show point sources.
Problem is, of course, that the pictures are available on line, and they are blurred. Plus, what does a section through a cylinder look like?
And since the Rn222 halo would be roughly 2 microns wider than the Po210 halo, it would be quite clear if Rn222 had been the parent of the Po218. But many halos have been published which have the Po and not the Rn halos.
Certainly not in the papers you cite. There's a danger of sending people to look at papers. You do realise that 2 microns is right at the edge of resolution for a geological microscope on a thin section, don't you?
Slashdot Mirror
The main constituent of Moon rocks are basalts, which are generally made up (to simplify) of Silicon, Aluminium, Magnesium and Iron OXIDES. Oxygen is very abundant on the moon, given enough energy.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, is almost only ever found as water on this planet; this is the big problem.
Show me the stastics or shut up, moron.
Well, let's see.. to be generous, consider a 100m thick (uniform) ice sheet. This will have the same mass as a 90m column of water, except that the center of mass of the water will be 45 meters below the surface and the center of mass of the ice will be 40m below the surface. Good luck detecting that anomoly..
In reality, of course, the density of the ice will increase as you go down, so reducing the effect, and the ice will usually be thinner. Then compare this to the effect of continental margins, ocean floor topography, air pressure, etc, etc..
Do I have to find you the references? No.
Yes, you do. You made the claim, you back it up. Simple as that. Now, I can back up my claim with fully referenced sites litke this. Can you?
Also, I think you are mistaking my statements as dismissive of global-warming. Try a little balance.
No, I am considering your statements as profoundly lazy; I get the impression that you believe anything that supports what you think you know and reject anything different without bothering to look into it.
I am wondering what changed scientist's minds when they had rock-solid evidence a mere 20 or so years ago that we were going into an ice-age
There was never any 'rock solid' evidence, it was never a consensus, and a couple of pop-science articles about a potential ice age appeared circa 1974, closer to 30 than 20 years ago. I'd suggest here for some more reading; you may still disagree, but at least you might be informed.
Based on that, can we trust that global-warming is real?
Because it is massively backed by several different avenues of scientific research (paleoclamatology, recent measurements, physics calculations, modelling, etc.).
How much of your own global-warming fanaticism (see your previous post as an example) is shaped by the media?
None. I'm a geoscientist and computer modeller by training. I regard most of the mainstream media's science, energy and environmental reporting as criminally underinformed, frequently outright wrong and almost invariably misleading.
I've heard the ozone-hole above the pole has started to shrink... Wasn't that one of the indicators of global-warming?
No.
Wait a minute - you're the one mindlessly repeating the old '1970s ice age prediction. And then accusing me of being a fanatic when I point out just how wrong that statement is on so many levels.
Of course, you realise that if we continue business as usual, we'll probably end up using coal-to-liquirds and gas processes, thus giving us both less net energy and higher GHG emissions all in one.
First, show me the references. How many scientific papers were published predicting global cooling? Name one.
Second, are you saying that Climatology as a science has not moved on, collected more data, used more advanced techniques and more powerful computers sonce the 1970s? This sounds a bit strange.
Third, just because a theory was once accepted (it this case it never was, but let's pretend) in a field of science but was later rejected on new evidence, does that mean that every subsequent theory is equally invalid?
Of course, you'll just ignore all this and say exactly the same thing next time the subject comes up. But I have to try and get something through.
The level of water will not, I repeat, will not rise. Thanks to our old friend Archimedes.
Of course, should the meltimg be followed by an increase in the temperature of the water, then the level WILL rise (salt water does not have the 4C maximum density that fresh water has).
however, no conclusive evidence has been presented that the icecap on the South Pole is melting
Actually, it appears to be increasing in volume due to higher precipitation, which is a Good Thing. However, the Greenland ice cap does appear to be melting; it is only metastable in the current climate (i.e. if you lifted it off today, it would not re-form). That would increase sea level.
that is, that block of ice known as the North Pole pulls water towards it, which causes higher than expected sea levels locally, but lower levels further away.
OUCH!!! And I thought you understood Archemedies..
For one thing, however, the vegetation-crude oil formation theory has still not been conclusively proven.
Yes it has. Geochemically, Experimentally, Practically, through modelling, etc, etc..
Direct chemical formation deep in the earth is tantalizingly possible.
No, it isn't. Conditions have been too oxidising for the past 2.5 Billion years; if the mantle were still as reducing as when the planet formed, there wouldn't be any oxygen in the atmosphere.
Solar electric generation from our roof surfaces may make electricity very cheap and pleniful;
Well, it could give us about 20% of power usage and help reduce air conditioning peaks demand. Cheap and plentiful it won't be.
There are several theories that hydrocarbons come from something else than compressed rotting plants.
'Hypotheses' is the correct term. Since the mainstream theory (backed by a somewhat huge pile of evidence) is that oil comes from a fairly restricted class of algae in only a few rare circumstances during the earth's history, 'rotting plants' is something of a misnomer.
and based on the observation that oil & gas seems to be linked to geographical formations like volcanoes and thin crusts
That would be news to the oil and gas industry. How many volcanoes do you know of in Texas, Saudi Arabia, Northern Alaska, the North sea, West Siberia, Nigeria, etc, etc, etc..
Oil is found in rift basins, especially (indeed almost exclusively) those where ocean circulation was cut off during their formation, thus allowing anoxic conditions to form at the bottom, leading to the preservation of the algae mentioned above. Currently active rift basins (i.e. the Aegean Sea) contain no oil, showing that it forms after active rifting has ceased.
rather than being tied to (e.g.) coal deposits, which would seem more likely.
Why? Coal is a suitable source rock for natural gas (and frequently is), but yields little oil. Oil deposits are tied to suitable source rocks (The Kimmeridge Clay being one of the better known)
Now imagine _really_ large colonies of such bacteria, living in hot porous sulphur-rich rocks, and dying to rot and produce oil and gas.
Now find some hot, porous, sulphur-rich rocks in a suitable location. Given the LACK of association of volcanoes and oil deposits, you can't use volcanic vents. Explain the presence of rocks which can on heating produce oil with the same geochemical characteristics as the oil found.
Seems more likely than (oil = compressed dinosaur bones and cabbage) to me.
Well, you're not a geologist, are you?
Which also implies that oil is a much more massive resource than previously thought, it won't run out soon.
US production peaked in 1970; Indonesia 1973, USSR 1987, Argentina 1998, UK 1999, Norway 2001 (+50 odd more producing countries). Oil does, in fact, run out. We've drilled deeper; we've drilled though pack ice; we've drilled in several kilometers of water; we've drilled practically everywhere in the globe. We've used every possable technique to squeeze oil from the fields found, with exponentially diminishing returns. If there were great volumes of undiscovered oil out there then, believe me, we would have found it.
Well, perhaps no so silently..
A number of comments in one.
1). The headline figure of the amount of prehistoric matter required per gallon/whatever is probably correct; it is also very irrelevant.
2). Thomas Gold's stuff about abiogenic oil is extremely wrong, to put it mildly. I've gone through this exhaustively on /. before; the guy simply operates in complete ignorance of general, let along petroleum, geology. Oil is derived from a small number of source rocks which are in turn rich in a particular type of algae; the sources are routinely traced geochemically. Wells are typically drilled well below the expected limits of oil occurance in the search for natural gas, which in itself consititutes several hundred thousand failed tests of TG's theories. Oil as we know it is distinctly finite, we've used about half, and production will shortly (2-10 years depepding on poitics and investment) start to decline.
3). Oil from waste/turkey guts. It's not a bad idea; having looked at and analysed everything I can find on it, it looks like a great way of a) Producing biodeisel, b) Recycling plastic, and c) Disposing of lots of nasty organic waste. However, given that every feedstock for this process (Turkey food, plastic, grease, etc) is in itself directly or indirectly dependant on oil inputs, this process can only ever recover a fraction of the oil used in the first place. It's a good process, but not a solution.
4) Solutions. This is a two part problem; first, where does your primary energy come from, and second, how do you provide energy for transport. In today's world, primary energy comes from Coal, Natural gas, Nuclear, Hydropower and Oil, but transport energy comes almost entirely from oil.
For primary energy (read: Electricity), the only currently viable long term option is Nuclear, hopefully with renewable contributions. Renewables alone are simply too intermittant; coal is too harsh on the environment, and natural gas is running out.
For transport, options are varied. Essentially we have to switch from having the energy source come out of the ground in a convienient, easily used form into making an energy carrier. This imples that whatever the solution, at least twice (and probably more like three times) the current generating capacity of primary energy will be required.
Hydrogen has been heavily hyped but the practicalities of storing and transporting it are proving very, very difficult. Fuel cell cars are very, very expensive and have limited ranges (50-100 miles).
Electric cars have benefitted strongly from the laptop computer - with the latest batteries, ranges of up to 300 miles are mooted, and they are seriously cheap to run. For some reason, however, no car manifacturer seems willing to introduce one to the general market.
Other energy carriers - Methanol from air, Boron, direct hydrocarbon synthesis - could also be viable given sufficient primary energy.
Bottom line is - we do, currently, face both energy and envionmental crises. The solutions to both are the same, and viable, and quite possibly cheaper than business as usual. Getting people to acknowledge this is, however, the real problem.
Well, as soon as Thomas Gold gets an undergraduate degree in general geology (let alone petroleum geology, of which he clearly hasn't a clue), his opinions might start to carry some weight. Until then, forget it.
I've written elsewhere on this on Slashdot, it's a bit tedious having to re-debunk his stuff every time the subject comes up.
Technically, since the amount of fossil based energy used in the Fertilizer, Tractors, transport, pesticides, conversion, etc, etc. exceed the amount of energy actually in the end result biodiesel, you're not using solar energy (or you are using multimillion-year-old solar energy, anyway). In fact, you're probably using more that if you ran your car on normal diesel.
This sequence of events has been caught on video for a semi submersable oil rig which 'blew out' a gas well. So it can happen artificially..
However, for it to happen naturally is extremely unlikely. First, methane hydrates in quantity sufficient to sink a ship are very rare -most occurs in very dispersed form making up less than 1% of the sedimentary volume. Second, the T/P conditions for a large, continuous deposit would have to change very rapidly indeed to get bubbles at the surface - if you only change the conditions slightly, the methane hydrate just dissolves in the seawater and would take days or weeks to reach the atmosphere. You'd need a mass spectromoeter to detect the stuff.
The only feasable ways for this to happen naturally are a) An undersea volcanic eruption directly into a massive hydrate deposit, or b) An earthquake fracturing a natural gas deposit under the sea (a natural blow out). Both events would happen, at a guess, less than once in a thousand years.
And of course, objects with a sufficently low density (ie inflatable lifeboats) would still float, so you would expect at least these.
The thing about equilibrium is, if you upset it, it tries to reestablish itself.
In terms of the volcanic/erosion flux, adding more CO2 means a higher atmospheric concentration to keep the rate of removal up.
If you make the environment more favourable for quicker plant growth, you get more plant growth, and therefore more CO2 is eaten up.
And therefore more plant matter to decay and release CO2. Now, it appears that around half of manmade CO2 is currently being stored as extra biomass. Should this process stop or reverse as a result of higher temperatures moving ecosystems to different areas, this stored CO2 will be released.
Because most basins do not happen to have deep flaws underneath which let carbon leak up?
All basins, pretty much by definition, contain faults down to the brittle/ductile transition at cf. 10-15km. In general, ductile rocks do not have the porosity or permability to allow 'carbon to leak up'. In modern areas of basin formation such as Greece or the Basin and Range province in the US, we do not observe 'carbon leaking up'.
The simple reasons why these basins are not prospective is that source rocks are either absent or have not been sufficiently heated to produce oil. Borehole and seismic data confirms this. Where oil is present, its composition ties it to highly specific source rocks, and it's location ties it back to migration pathways from areas where this source rock has been sufficiently heated to produce oil; the kinetic parameters of this are routinely measured in the lab, as is the generation of oil of the same composition as that found in the traps.
Because "most" basins leak?
No, because of the above.
Examples?
the enormous quantities of hydrocarbons in the Athabasca tar sands in Canada would have required vast amounts of source rocks for their generation in the conventional discussion, when in fact no source rocks have been found.
Yes they have
This consideration is irrelevant now that we know that a cold formation process assembled the Earth and that hydrocarbons could have been maintained, and could be here for the same reasons as they are on the other planetary bodies.
Unfortunately, TG is unaware that the mantle has been in vigourous convection for 4.5 billion years and has been entirely cycled through partial melting zones (and completely mixed). The progressive oxidation of the mantle was completed at around 2.5 billion years ago, after which CO2 instead of methane has been the dominant mantle carbon phase.
Suppose that in the depth range between 100 and 300 kilometers we have a patchwork in which the carbonaceous chondrite material comprises 20 percent on an average. In this material, carbon amounts to 5 percent.
...then the OBSERVED seismic properties of that layer would be *dramatically* different
[On the persian gulf] There is no feature that the geology or the topography of this entire large region has in common, and that would give any hint why it would all be oil and gas rich.
The persian gulf has pretty unique geology - a highly stable platform for a long period of geological time, widespread prolific source rocks, and a very simple structural style. This last feature is very important; a small number of large scale geological structures can trap far more oil than the large number of small structures more normally found. To say there is 'no feature that makes it oil rich' is simply wrong.
When it comes to deliberate half-truths, you have to hand it to the anti-global-warming crowd, they know how to use them.
Of course, you know that natural CO2 emissions are effectively closed circuit - under normal conditions, a rainforest will take up the same amount of CO2 as it releases through resparation. The fluxes involved may be large, but they are balanced, and so have no net effect on atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Over long time periods, the CO2 concentration is set by the balance of CO2 release by volcanoes and CO2 uptake by silicate weathering. This flux is much smaller then biological fluxes at around 120 million tonnes/year, and is completely dwarfed by human inputs. Strange that your article didn't mention that.
The estimate for the costs is also quite amazing - at $400 Billion a year, you cound make the entire US electric grid run on Nuclear in about 5 years, and build a new grid with the spare change. This would vastly enhance US energy security, lower electricity prices AND break the Kyoto targets by a mile.
He also points out magnetite found around oil deposits, indicating iron-using bacteria eating methane and creating oil. So there's a lot of that going on in this planet already.
Yeah, right.. Thomas Gold might be completely ignorant of mantle convection, modern isotope geology, petroleum geology, crustal fluid dynamics. He may be completely unable to explain why most basins do not contain commercial hydrocarbons, he may tell outright lies about modern petroleum geology, but he's got an alternative theory, so he must be right..
This was part of my PhD.. the numbers are correct.
Remember that at these temperatures, the process is pretty slow (as in 'over a period of millions of years' slow). Plus it only works on fairly specific source rocks based on algal blooms in anoxic basins. If you take a present day source rock (i.e. 'oil shale'), and cook it with water at a higher temperature, you get oil a lot faster. But there is no geological way to do this on a regional scale, and at temperatures >150-200C, oil rapidly (cf. 100,000 years) cracks into methane in the presence of iron oxides, which are themselves virtually ubiqitous underground.
People have tried oil-shale-to-oil projects; however, the energy required to process, heat, add water, refine, and dispose of waste comes out around the same as the energy in the oil, which is why it's never worked commercially.
Whenever you like; there is nothing particularly difficult about (for instance):
CO2+4H2-> 2H2O + CH4
But now calculate how much methane you need to provide the hydrogen and the energy to drive the reaction..
Out of interest, the formation of oil happens at temperatures of 100-140 degrees celcius (pressure is virtually irrelevant), which trandlates to 2000-5000 meters underground depending on local thermal gradients. Gas is generated at higher temperatures.
If you wanted to make a liquid fuel, I would strongly reccomend a partial version of the above reaction:
3H2 + CO2 -> CH3OH (methanol) + H2O
You would need to build a nuclear power station or two (or a very large wind farm) to run the process, but this would give you a direct petrol replacement.
To be fussy, the gravity anolalies are more to do with out-of-equlibrium crust than simple highs and lows. So the East pacific rise (a mid ocean ridge) barely shows up at all, but the ridge over a hotspot at Iceland shows up a mile. In a similar way, the Plateaus of Tibet and S. America, which are currently undergoing gravitational collapse, show up strongly.
On a larger scale (see the Indian ocean), the really large scale anomolies are hypothesised to be the result of deep mantle convection.
You said one out of place well documented fossil would falsify evolution
Note the phrase 'well documented'.
(evolution that teaches simple life=>complex forms).
Well, that's not what it teaches, and shows you could do with educating yourself about evolution from some non-creationist sources.
I gave you an example, and you picked on unfair details.
If you are going to disprove a very long standing scientific theory in daily use, which usefully explains a literal mountain of evidence, your examples *must* be absolutely rock solid. It is most certainly not unfair to pick on details.
So I reasoned with myself, if he's just going to pick on every detail, I'll post the necessary steps to find many examples - if he's interested, then he can see them right there. If he's not, well maybe another reader will see something there
There are huge numbers of poorly documented UFO sightings, Miracle healings, Past-life experiences, Government consprircies, antigravity machines, Elvis sightings, etc, etc, etc... does this mean that it is my responsability to track down and disprove every one? Absolutely not - it is the responsability of the person proposing that these things exist/happen to track down and fully document real cases. They cannot say 'there are hundreds of vague reports, some must be true'.
For example, having looked through the first 60 results of such a google search, I haven't found anything even vaguely approaching properly documented. Lots of vague or very old references, quite a few deliberate misunderstandings, some outright lies, but nothing solid.
Yet that means you are unwilling to accept anything but natural causes. That bias indicates you have a mind closed in some areas, which is unfortunate.
The whole point of science is that supernatural explanations are not allowed! This is not closed mindedness, it is part of the whole process - and if you wish to participate in it, you are bound by the rules.
Your claim that the halos of Rn222 and Po210 are indistinguishable due to equipment limitations is obviated by the lack of response to the original papers.
Actually, the lack of response was probably more due to apathy and lack of time than anything else. Plus these papers were not published in the geological journals; journals like Science and Nature tend to have a less specialist set of revewers.
But as far as the thin sections go, I've done a LOT of thin section work in my time. Geological specimens - especially in rocks with large crystals - are very difficult to get thin enough (the crystals tend to break along cleavage planes, and the harder parts will resist polishing). This limits the resolution you can get, and means you are always looking at a 3D picture. There is no way you could distinuish rings so close together under these conditions.
For an instantaneous creation hypothesis to be correct, the following would have to follow:
a) The haloes would have to be present in association with Te or Se minerals; the lower O group elements would be expected to occur together. Instead, they are only found in association with U cointaining minerals.
b) We would expect to see haloes indiciating the presence of all isotopes of Po; the fact that all of those present are from the decay chains of long lived isotopes is storng evidence against a supernatural origin.
c) We would would also expect to find evidence of other related elements (At, Fr, etc..). Indeed, if we assume that all isotopes of all elements were 'created' with abundances in proportion to the stable isotopes we see today, we should see literally dozens of such isotopes. But we don't - we only detect those isotopes that have either very long half-lives (U, Th, etc), exist in the decay chains of these isotopes, or are made by cosmogenic processes.
The hypothesis fails because the predictions that come from it (as above) fail. And this is science; you can't ignore failures in prediction.
It's really up to you - I gave you the search terms to use in google, go look for yourself if you really care.
So now *I* have to look for evidence to support your case...
Actually, it is surely more important to you, if you wish to build a solid case against evolution. I've done the field work; I've seen the evidence. I'm happy with it. I strongly suspect you haven't bothered with any of this - it's hard work and takes years. Reading a few creationist web sites is much easier, I'm sure.
Is in error. See, God made us in His image; when you start to dictate how He should have made the world, that's you making Him in an image you constructed.
Once you invoke the supernatural as an explanation, you are of course abandoning any semblance of being scientific. You can assert anything supernatural you like, but it's not a valid answer.
You claim the Rn222 halos would not be visible is obviated by the papers.
I didn't claim that - I pointed out that they could not be distinguished from polonium haloes due to the inherent limitations of thin section technique. Assuming that Gentry has chosen to publish the best, hand picked specimens to try and make his case, the evidence is simply lacking.
You claim that Po-209 being the most stable Po isotope is a show stopper; yet from the reference you provided a couple of posts ago Po-209 is NOT on the decay chain of U->Pb. So why are you making Po-209 the "showstopper" when your own background data shows it's not relevant?
IF fiat creation was the answer, we would expect to see Po-209 haloes. It's not a show stopper for the hypothesis that the Po is a result of Rn-222 decay, but it is for fiat creation.
Also Po halos are not smeared as they would be by Rn migration along fault and crack lines; instead the published (in peer-reviewed journals) pictures clearly show point sources.
Problem is, of course, that the pictures are available on line, and they are blurred. Plus, what does a section through a cylinder look like?
And since the Rn222 halo would be roughly 2 microns wider than the Po210 halo, it would be quite clear if Rn222 had been the parent of the Po218. But many halos have been published which have the Po and not the Rn halos.
Certainly not in the papers you cite. There's a danger of sending people to look at papers. You do realise that 2 microns is right at the edge of resolution for a geological microscope on a thin section, don't you?