Scientist stirs the cauldron: oil, he says, is renewable

Boston Globe | May 22, 2001 | David L. Chandler

[Aurelius]

If this was posted before, I couldn't locate it. I have no idea if this guy is right or not. If he is, the implications are enormous.

For me, it will be almost as gratifying to see another case where the expert consensus of the experts in their area of expertize is shown to be so much bovine fertilizer. And if this isn't such a case? Well, we'll just have to wait till another one does come along.

This article also appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 11, 2001, under the title "Oil forever"

[dirtboy]

ping

[spycatcher]

PETROLEUM RESERVES EVALUATED WITH MODERN PETROLEUM SCIENCE

Another Washington Post article here

[FairWitness]

"It's life Jim, but not as we know it"! (Dr. McCoy, Star Trek

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

BTTT for later reading!

[ChemistCat]

My geology professor at OU maintains that the evidence suggests that oil and natural gas may very well be formed continuously, and that we're not any more likely to run out of petroleum than we are to run out of water or basalt. Could be, could be.

[Aurelius]

Thanks very much for the additional links. The article that I posted was the only thing that I had seen.

[LibWhacker]

I remember reading about this guy's theory WAY BACK. In the 70s, I think. Problem was, back then, nobody was willing to pay the enormous costs associated with drilling such deep wells without at least some prospect that they could recoup their investment. And one man's word wasn't good enough.

Laser drilling may be the answer as it can be done for a fraction of the cost of conventional drilling.

I don't know if there is anything to Gold's theory, either. But I sure as heck want to find out. If true, it would put those corrupt, murderous Bedouin creeps in the Middle East out of business real fast, and they'd soon find themselves riding around on camels again, living their traditional nomadic life.

[TXBubba]

Oil wells that are pumped dry will simply refill themselves as more methane and petroleum works its way upward to fill the emptied spaces in the rock. This has already happened in a few places, geologists agree - something that is hard to explain by the conventional theory, but lends support to Gold's unorthodox view.

If it has already happened in a few places then his theory can't be totally off the wall can it?

[Richard Axtell]

This is about science, not politics or economics, and so... the scientific method should offer a clue. It should be possible to conduct experiments, both in the field and the lab, that would either support or discount the basis of this theory. For instance, has any of his theorized "deep hydrocarbon fixing microbes" been collected via deep drilled core samples? If so, what do they do in experimental conditions in the laboratory? Plus, I've always heard and read that coal is the result of millions of years of terrestrial plant life, not petroleum. The billions and billions of tons of plant-biomass material being accumulated and compressed in bogs and swamps became metamorphosed into peat, then lignite, bituminous, and finally anthracite coal. This makes sense as I have personally collected fern and plant fossils associated with coal mines in Illinois. As I remember it, oil and petroleum hydrocarbons are the result of accumulation, compression, and metamorphization of sea plankton, or diatoms. Former college buddies of mine, who studied geology and paleontology, were hired by oil companies to study fossil diatoms found in seabed cores, to determine the best offshore oil drilling locations. Anyone have more to add that might enlighten us as to where this all fits in?

[biblewonk]

This guy reminds me of Ranger Gord from the Red Green show. Notice that his name is Gold.

[spycatcher]

Thanks for posting the original and reminding me of the subject. Nice to see oil prices dropping with the Russians pumping oil like crazy. We need to tap that Arctic reserve quick and get that pipeline across Afghanistan and oil will be down to $5 a barrel.

Here's a link to Thomas Gold's website

[HopeSprings]

Gold is the P. T. Barnum of the oil industry. Same old stuff that he's being touting for years. Don't believe it.

[The Great RJ]

I always wondered why all the dinosauers went to Saudi Arabia to die.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

Fascinating article. The theory that oil is the product result of ancient decayed organic matter has serious problems. Just a few... How could so much organic matter gather in one place before being decomposed? How come scientists can't make oil from organic material by subjecting it to heat and pressure? This man has shaken off the preconceptions of a believed theory and developed one that fits experience better. Rather than adjusting facts to support the theory, he changes the theory to support the facts.

[Mark]

Didn't Algore invent this theory?

[spycatcher]

It usually takes science a while to catch up to Thomas Gold and prove him correct...

From the Wash Post link:

"...Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould has labeled Gold "one of America's most iconoclastic scientists." Says Gold himself: "In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid ... [but] I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age."

In 1947, fresh from pioneering wartime work on the development of radar, he used his research into high-frequency receptors to publish an entire new theory of mammalian hearing. Physiologists shrugged it off for 30 years. Until auditory technology evolved enough to prove him correct.

In 1959, when everybody thought the surface of the moon was frozen lava, Gold decided it was covered with dust from meteor impacts. Footprints of the Apollo astronauts will testify eternally that he was was right about that, too.

In 1967 astronomers trashed his suggestion that energy pulsating in the distant universe was the signature of collapsing stars. The subsequent observation of pulsars won two other scientists a Nobel Prize. And proved Gold correct.

In 1992 he predicted that Martian meteorites might contain fossilized microbes. Four years later NASA announced the same thing.

Now in a new book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," Gold says the origin and bulk of biological life is not on the surface of the Earth where the birds and bunnies are, but deep within it. Moreover, that microscopic life force is fueled by an inexhaustible supply of petroleum constantly migrating outward from our planet's volcanic core."

[Abcdefg]

I agree. The theory doesn't make sense.