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36 comments on Waiting for the lights to go out...

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mfs2 on October 16, 2005 - 1:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
While reading "Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse" at
http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn10152005.html

I see the following quote down a bit in the article under the heading of
"The Virtues of Gas Guzzling:
Why I Don't Believe in "Peak Oil"

The quote is:

"And increasingly, I don't believe we're about to run out of oil. I hang my hat on the views of Dr.Thomas Gold (founding director of Cornell University Center for Radiophysics) as outlined in his 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere.

Gold's view, supported by many well qualified people, is that oil doesn't come from dead dinosaurs and kindred organic matter. Gold argues strongly that oil is a "renewable, primordial soup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attached by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs."

I know a scant amount about these subjects and have never heard of Dr Thomas Gold. Have any of you better informed folks ever heard of him?

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mikeB on October 16, 2005 - 1:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
My term for this is "oil creationism."

http://www.peakoil.com/contentid-25.html

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SW on October 16, 2005 - 1:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Tommy Gold is a great guy.  He is a professional contrarian.  Science needs such people.  They are entertaining and every once in a blue moon they are right.  But Tommy is usually wrong.  In fact, Tommy was famously wrong about literally everything.  How can I say that?  He was for many year (perhaps still?) a proponent of "The steady state theory of the Universe".  That is, Tommy didn't believe in the Big Bang.  We should check with him.  I think he has abandoned the Steady State Universe at this point.  One can only hope.  But ask yourself.  After having literally gotten the entire universe wrong, why do you think that his goofy idea about oil, a subject he knows nothing about is any closer to the mark?
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sekiyu on October 16, 2005 - 1:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Unfortunately, the wiki people list Dr Gold as having died on June 22 of last year. They have an interesting little section on his oil ideas as well. Some of the people on this list likely have informed criticisms of the wiki piece's somewhat supportive comments on Gold's theories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold

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LJR on October 16, 2005 - 1:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Read all about him here.  Use google for more.

search term: "Thomas Gold" abiotic

http://www.museletter.com/archive/150b.html

I personally put Gold right up there with the Intelligent Design folks.

The killing argument for me is that the pressure and heat is too great for oil to exist in the earth's core sixty miles down.  It would be methane.  How in the world does methane transmogrify into long hydrocarbon chains as it percolates up?

Voodoo, I guess.

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sekiyu on October 16, 2005 - 1:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The wikipedia has a good section on oil abiogenesis at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

There appears to be some evidence that oil - or at least some oil - is produced through the processes described in the theory. Even if the theory accumulates more empirical support, it seems we'd still have to wait an awfully long time for the manna to seep up from the underworld. And I doubt if even the economists see us quickly developing the technology to spot deep oil accumulations and drill tens of kilometres down to get at them. So that seems to leave us back at the fact that we're using far more oil than we're discovering. Yet this theory is making the rounds again, accompanied by claims we don't need to worry about finite supplies of oil. That just proves the man was right when he said humankind cannot bear very much reality.

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reno on October 16, 2005 - 3:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Perhaps because of websites like this: http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm with stories like "The Myth Of Peak Oil" we get people believing in things that haven't been proven..
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step back on October 17, 2005 - 10:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Reno,
Good find.
I wish it were true.
I WISH THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY TO INFLATE OIL PRICES.

Because that would prove that some Intelligent Force is in charge.
It would show that we are not passengers on an aimless Titatnic planet heading for the end-of-oil shoals.

Regretably, there is no conspiracy.
No one is in the steering house of our boat.
We are heading for the cliff.
Some people claim a magical, mystical "Invisible Hand" is guiding our collective boat in the right direction.
I don't believe it.
I wish there was a conspiracy.

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