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F. William Engdahl is scientific quack, who believes in abiogenic petroleum. He has also revealed his kook leanings in other writings. However, he serves a useful function--which is to provide cover for those who remain totally uninvested in legacy energy, and new energy. Thus, giving us who do invest more time. As always, I want to thank Mr. Engdahl and others like him.
Gregor
The odd thing is that he used to be a peak oiler.
Yes he once was a peak oil believer but that was before he figured out that the earth has a creamy nougat center of oil:
Obviously the man is a complete nut.
Ron Patterson
The abiotic oil theory is irrelevent anyway, since even if it is right the oil produced will not be relaced on a human timescale.
I am actually friendly to abiotic hypotheses. It has been noted, for example, that petroleum-like substances have been produced spontaneously upon the combination of volcanic emissions and oxygen in the air. It is fairly clear that coal comes from biotic material, plant matter, because you can see the imprints of fossilized leaves and so forth in the coal. However, his computations are not irrelevant, since if you compute the amount of plant matter it would take to make, for example, a 17ft coal seam, the conclusions are rather daunting.
There are hypotheses, for example, that some oil deposits have been created during catastrophic events, in which there are huge volcanic eruptions. In some cases, the volcanic gases combine with the air and petroleum falls from the sky, and perhaps sinks into the earth. Normally, this would evaporate or degrade quickly, but during these cataclysmic events, tidal waves wash over the area, putting down a layer of sediment and, ultimately, a layer of dried salt.
As for the coal deposits, there are cataclysmic explanations for these as well. Velikovsky (try Earth in Upheaval) did similar calculations regarding what would be necessary to deposit a sufficient number of tree or plant matter to generate observed coal seams, and then cover it with sediment so that it wouldn't decay by the usual processes. Basically, you need a tidal wave of huge proportions to do it. Although you can burn peat, or just downed wood for that matter, it is difficult to identify a single place in the world today where coal is being created.
Ultimately, however, the question of where it comes from is somewhat irrelevant.
Got any references for this fantasy?
It is certainly possible to make oil abiotically. The question is whether abiotic oil exists naturally in "economically interesting accumulations." The answer to that is no, at least on this planet.
A geologist explains how they know oil is biotic here.
I believe in abiotic helium. And could easily be convinced that comparable quantities of abiotic methane might be found in analogous situations -- which is to say, an extremely tiny fraction of our otherwise biotic reservoirs.
DIYer, all helium is abiotic! Helium is an element therefore there is no such thing as biotic helium. And of course there is abiotic methane. There are oceans of it on Titan and other moons and planets. Most methane on earth however is of biotic origin. Farts are methane and are definitely of biotic origin.
All this has nothing to do with long strings of hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbon strings are of biotic origin unless you can explain how they could be created deep in the earth. Heat breaks down long hydrocarbon strings, it does not build them.
Methane is not a "string" as it has only one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. Ethane is a string of two carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms. The term "string" implies strings of carbon atoms.
Ron Patterson
Like I said, it would be plausible for abiotic methane to exist. In quantities comparable to helium, which is to say a microscopic fraction of otherwise organically grown natural gas.
I didn't recall mentioning polymers.
There are two relevant projections from Abiotic oil. One, is it sounds like we should wait for cataclysmic events to help replenish our our oil inventory. A massive volcano eruption anyone?
The second more germain point is it looks like the volumes produced and our ability to extract those deposits are minuscule in comparison to our exploitation of biotic oil. Abiotic may not even be the little sprinkles on the donut.
Therefore, whether one is right or not is immaterial in the face of the problem, and hence crisis. Thank God for time to edit - here's the long and short of it; Abiotic is a non-sequitur. That's it, move on.
If you find yourself in some remote area with a freakish easy access to some Abiotic oil reserve, more power to you. Now, is this what paid for Jed's "cement pond"??
Bullshit.
".....it is difficult to identify a single place in the world today where coal is being created."
you are mistaken, coal is being "created" in northwest wyoming, along the teton mntn range. and, i might add on an extremely long time scale, subsidence works that way.
now that wasnt so hard, was it ?
oh your behalf, i hope your post was tonge in cheek. otherwise, my recommendation is to keep your postings in a comic book fantacy world where all is cataclismic and conflagurations.
you dont happen to have a geologic theory about the big flood, now do you ?
Gee .. it's the first time I've seen Velikovsky being cited with a straight face for perhaps 30 years. Nice flashback!
Ron,
Anyhow one can 'black box' Engdahl's hypothesis by putting the American Question:
If his idea is so smart, how come he hasn't managed to convince Big Oil, or Small Oil, or Middle-Sized Oil, to invest in it?
For all we know, perhaps they are out there, drilling away ....
10 trillion barrels of oil discovered 10 000 000 leagues under the sea, BP claims ...
Until the enormity of it hit him.
On a similar note I find myself reading jr wakefields posts that contradict GW, praying there's some truth in them.
As devastating as PO will be it truly is nothing compared to Lovelocks assertions.
Lovelock's assertions are just that--assertions. You can try to predict climate change with models, intuition, or ESP--and the models aren't saying what Lovelock is saying. Furthermore, I don't think any period in the paleo record corresponds with the conditions Lovelock describes--even the Carboniferous.
And the data is not saying what the models are saying either. The data is uniformly worse than the IPCC's models. This has happened to every single IPCC report - the data within a year or two obsoletes the entire report.
There was an article in this weeks New Scientist warning against apocolyptic predictions of climate change, since they could damage the credability of the idea. They did say also that all predictions, including the IPCC's are basically guesswork. Far from the data bieng uniformly worse for the last decade the warming has been less than predicted. Infact since the millenium temperitures have been fairly stable.
From the NASA GISS temperature set:
Global Land+Ocean Surface Temperature Anomaly (C) (Base 1951-1980)
End of millenium
1999 0.33
2000 0.33
Most recent annual temperature
2007 0.57
Looks like quite a rapid rate of warming, and on this data is even more rapid than the trend of 0.2C per decade - unless you want to complain about cherry picking data points that is.
Jeremy
Really?
Some more on Global Warming / Cooling / Warming /Cooling /whatever.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do...
‘’A notable stories of recent months should have been the evidence pouring in from all sides to cast doubts on the idea that the world is inexorably heating up. The proponents of man-made global warming have become so rattled by how the forecasts of their computer models are being contradicted by the data that some are rushing to modify the thesis’’.
‘’The most dramatic evidence, however, emerged last week with an announcement by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that an immense slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly shifted into its cool phase, something which only happens every 30 years or so, ultimately affecting climate all over the globe.
Discussion of this on the invaluable Watts Up With That website, run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts, shows how the alternations of the PDO between warm and cool coincided with each of the major temperature shifts of the 20th century - warming after 1905, cooling after 1946, warming again after 1977 - and how the new shift to a cool phase could have repercussions for decades to come.
It is notable that the German computer predictions published last week by Nature forecast a decade of cooling due to deep-ocean movements in the Atlantic, without taking account of how this may now be reinforced by a similar, even greater movement in the Pacific.
Mr Watts points out that the West coast of the USA might already be experiencing these effects in the recent freezing temperatures that have devastated orchards and vineyards in California, prompting an appeal for disaster relief for growers who fear they may have lost this year's crops’’.
What is not said in your post is that these are regional variations that do not reduce the overall amount of energy being taken in by the planet. Not only that, but these variations are typically balanced. For example, when you have a La Nina (the cold pulse) there is warming in the Western Pacific in the areas of the coasts of China, Korea and Japan.
These shifts may mask the increasing heat for a time, but, just as we often see with oil production curves, a big disruption is usually balanced by a rapid re-balancing later as the "hidden" energy taken into the system presents in ways more obvious to us.
Attenuating all of this may well be the warming of the Arctic. With an 80% mass loss over recent decades and so much of the ice so thin, low minimums in the summer are almost a guarantee. A few winters of exceptional snowfall, a change in wind patterns, etc., may allow the ice to regrow, but it is not looking likely now. If there is another 10 or 20% loss this summer - predicted - it will likely ensure the trend of rapid loss continues to a point where the ice melts every summer. Long-term, the energy absorbed in the Arctic waters will put that energy into the overall system and make a "rebound" in global temps a virtual certainty.
Cheers
PS. Someone else was right above: overall, climate change is more dangerous than PO. I've no doubt we can create sustainable energy systems if properly motivated and with enough time. We have precious little chance of slowing climate change once a key tipping point occurs. (I hope to hell we haven't already...) And, climate change *can* happen in a single decade.
I dont agree.
I think PO can get us a lot harder and faster than GW - Man made or not. (we are still living in an Interglacial. Temperatures and Ice cover will vary)
You seem to have missed my saying, "Overall,..."
My post is accurate. The end of the oil age is not going to end humanity, but Climate Change might. The long-term risk of the latter is far and away greater than that of PO. I generally agree that PO is **probably** the greater short-term risk, but that assumption is a dangerous one. As I sated, and the geological record plainly shows, climate flips of 5C can occur over the period of a decade. Now, over the time span of relatively modern humans - say, 20,000 years - these have all been drops in temperature. The Older and Younger Dryases for example. What we are facing now is the possibility of rises in temperature of 5 or 6 degrees. (For us Americans, this is a LOT of F.) Now, 5 degrees doesn't sound like much, but that's an avg. The highs become some multiple or fraction of a multiple higher than that 5 degrees. (Think temperature tsunami.)
We are not currently designed to live well in temps of 110, 120, etc., degrees F. More importantly, our food plants aren't.
Cheers
Michael Tobis nicely summed this up the other day in his blog:
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/05/falsifiability-question.html
Thanks, that's a great link. Gotta bookmark that one.
Here is an interesting argue...which argues that even if there is abiotic oil...it doesn't matter.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml