Vainty: We may never run out of oil!

Thomas Gold And The Deep, Hot Biosphere ^ | 2/2/02 | mfulstone

[mfulstone]

Thomas Gold & The Deep, Hot Biosphere

Thomas Gold has suggested that perhaps petroleum production might be an ongoing process that is occuring all the time.

We probably learned in high school that our cars were running on the carcases of dead dinosaurs. Mr Gold refutes that notion and does it eloquently.

I have asked him to join us at Jabberwoq and discuss his concept.

You may wish to read up on his ideas here: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/DHB.html

Then come and ask him questions at http://pub57.ezboard.com/fjabberwoqfrm1.showMessage?topicID=7.topic

[mfulstone]

One Vanity Bump.

[Free the USA]

Here are a couple of threads on the subject posted a while ago.
Oil and Gas May Be Renewable Resources
Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable

[weikel]

bump good post.

[weikel]

Ping what do you think about this.

[StriperSniper]

BTTT

[Red Jones]

the geologist community hasn't agreed with this new theory yet, but I hope this theory is accepted. I always thought the old theory about it being from the decay of jungles & dinosaurs as being suspect. Even if oil is being produced constantly, we are still most certainly using it faster than it is being produced.

[mfulstone]

Well, here's everybody's chance to grill Mr Gold on the topic. Give him a chance, though. He also confessed that he is not quite up on much online activity. Let's break him in! Maybe we can even get him as a FR regular! :)

[Physicist]

Ping what do you think about this.

How does he explain the existence of shale oil? If his theory is correct we would only expect to find oil in association with igneous or metamorphic rock.

That being said, I have long suspected that the biosphere extends much farther down into the crust of the Earth than anyone would ever believe.

I once wrote a science fiction story (unpublished and unpublishable) wherein, billions of years from now, the Earth is a frozen lump circling around the white dwarf star that Sol will become. Several teams of hyperevolved humans come and drill through the thick ice, and then through the cooling crust, to create geothermal vents that will melt small regions in the deep ice, where they can nurture designed ecosystems. The idea is that, after the ecosystems have evolved for a time, enough vents will be drilled to create a single ocean under the deep ice, in which the ecosystems will duke it out for supremecy. The team whose designs prevail will win the planet.

You can probably guess the ending. One of the vents goes deep enough to reach living native organisms, still reproducing in the dwindling warmth of the Earth's core. The native organisms outcompete all of the candidate designs, and the Earth, itself triumphant, is left to evolve on its own.

[weikel]

How is his theory mutually exclusive with the existence of shale oil?

[Aurelius]

BUMP

[Old Professer]

Sounds like a hit movie to me.

[John H K]

I always thought the old theory about it being from the decay of jungles & dinosaurs as being suspect

There never WAS such a theory...popular science myth, particularly the "dinosaurs" garbage.

The generally accepted process of petroleum formation is from dead microscopic marine organisms. I have no idea how the dinosaur business got started. Oil doesn't form from land organisms at all.

COAL is formed from decaying "jungles"....or any sort of plant life that dies and then is buried under high pressure. And that is beyond dispute...there's a spectrum from Anthracite to Bituminous Coal to Lignite (brown coal) to Peat, in terms of heat and pressure in coal formation, and as you get to Lignite and Peat you can easily find the remains of the plants forming the coal.

[Physicist]

The point is that shale is a sedimentary rock. It doesn't form deep in the Earth. It's produced from the top down, and yet it often contains petroleum. Since that petroleum comes from a different source from the one he proposes, I don't see the advantage of the new theory. In the absence of evidence, new theories should at least have more explanatory power than the models they are supposed to replace. Now, that doesn't mean his idea is wrong, but he does need to provide some compelling evidence.

[weikel]

BTW you would be surprised whats publishable. It can't be much worse than most of what passes for science fiction these days.

[Free the USA]

In the process of formation couldn't shale have acted like a sponge absorbing oil that was moving towards the surface from below?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Geologists have suggested to me that the lack of oil in the Canadian shield and other very old rocks is evidence against Gold's theory.

[mfulstone]

Shale?

We have critters in the ocean that would die without petrochemicals to eat. The oil bubbles up from naturally occurring deposits.

In vietnam, off the Mekong delta, the USS Iwo Jima's Avgas fuel cells were invaded by a microbe that turned the purple 115/145 avgas brown. They were eating high octane leaded gas. These fuel cells had to be purged and disinfected at Sasebo, Japan. This gave me a month of virtual R&R in Subic Bay while we waited for the ship to return.

Want to see petrochemical microbes at work? Add a tablespoon of water to a gallon of diesel fuel and watch it turn into sludge.

There is a broad spectrum of life that is dependent on hydrocarbons and able to metabolize it into an even broader spectrum of other chemicals.

[Accountable One]

"You can probably guess the ending"

God knows the ending...the beginning...the reason. Not us.

"...the Earth, itself triumphant, is left to evolve on its own."

HAH! I don't think so...

[mfulstone]

Ahhh...

So God enters the equation.

Don't get me wrong, I think God is way kewl! BUT: until you can quantify and identify God, it is not science - it is not "fact found out." Science will probably never apply the God factor in our lifetimes. If God can be measured by man and assigned a mathematical constant, then God will cease to be God.