

Not this abiotic oil nonsense again.
What I would really love to see proponents of abiotic oil theory
explain away are
biomarkers. Any attempt would be tantamount
to trying to rationalize away guilt for murder when you have your
bloody fingerprints on the weapon, your skin under the victim's
fingernails, your hair on their garments, and your semen in their
body. Everything we would expect to find if the parsimonious
hypothesis that fits the evidence was true, and evidence that can't
exist if the alternate theory was true. If any attempt to explain
that is forthcoming, it will be apologetic ad-hoc ill contrived
nonsense at best.
Abiotic oil does exist, but it is in
insignifigantly miniscule, noncommercially viable quantities, and
the rate at which is produced hasn't shown to be any faster than
biotic oil, which is around 20 million years.
Most of the time when people really dig into the chemical
composition of crude oils,
they find biomarkers. Things
called
hopanes and phytanes and such. These chemicals can be
traced directly to, say, the lipids that make up cyanobacterial
cell membranes (and only those membranes), or to the wax that coats
the leaves of some extinct tree from Tasmania - and fossils of the
same leaves are found 100 km away in coal of the same age.
The oil we've been using to power our world is a fossil fuel. While
an indigenous origin has been proposed by several notable
geologists, there are things that make this unlikely.
The first clue we find is, of course, that oil is carbon-based,
much like life.
The second is that nitrogen and porphyrins,
found in living things, are found in many petroleum deposits as
well. Porphyrins, FYI, cannot survive temperatures of more than
around 200 degrees Celsius, common deep below the earth's
surface.
A very important clue is the fact most oil occurs in or near
sedimentary rocks of marine origin--if oil was leaking up from deep
within the crust, we would expect most of it to occur in assorted
rock near fault lines instead.
Coastal upwelling, a phenomenon associated with much of the
hypothesized formation of organic oil, embeds larger amounts of
phosphorus in the layers of dead marine plankton it creates, than
the ocean at large. And what do we find in places like California
and Montana, which were formerly coastal and possess oil deposits?
Petroleum with much phosphorus content...
The carbon-12 / carbon-13 isotope ratio in oil deposits is a
nice approximation to that in known living things.
Finally, and this is pretty much decisive,
the molecular
structure of hydrocarbons can often be directly linked to pigments,
chlorophyll, leaf waxes, etc. of species that biology and
paleontology tells us were dominant at those places during times
when oil formed. (Source)
[Information about the various types of identifiable oil kerogens
and the organisms they derive from]
This is not all of the evidence for a biological origin of oil, but
it should be enough. Any of it can be explained with an appropriate
ad-hoc rationalization, but this practice can weaken its
explanatory power compared to the mainstream view.
Now, oil can be formed naturally. This is no secret to
geologists. There are a few known examples of this phenomenon, most
notably a few Russian oil fields. But this oil (1) tends to differ
in identifiable ways from the usual variety, and (2) is by far
miniscule compared to our oil needs and reservoirs of organic
origin.
As in any other field, there have been other challenges to
mainstream views on the formation of oil, with various levels of
incompetency. Among the most hilarious are young-earth creationist
claims that oil and coal are a result of Noah's flood. But these
minority viewpoints are less successful when trying to predict
which areas and/or rocks have most chance of yielding oil, the key
test of any such hypothesis.
Peer-review in a prestigious journal does not entail accuracy;
merely the lack of utterly newbie scientific errors. And then,
there have been rare examples of those in peer-reviewed journals,
too.
Basically, the hypothesis that oil is formed abiotically:
* Cannot readily account for the geology or chemistry of known oil
deposits, both of which render the indigenous origin
implausible;
* Is true on a micro level, since small amounts of various
hydrocarbons, and methane, are demonstrably formed by non-organic
geologic processes;
* Does not, as of yet at least, match the predictive power of
mainstream geology, which consistently and successfully tells us,
in advance, which rocks are most likely to contain oil. In other
words, the fact that oil is produced by non-organic processes deep
within the earth's crust in miniscule quantities is something no
geologist will debate. Sure, they exist, but they are
infintessimally minute and null for all practical intents and
purposes reguarding future sustainability.
The theory of all petroleum being abiotic, or even a large quantity
of it, is not well-established and is currently considered inferior
to the mainstream view for obvious reasons. It's
ideologically-sponsored and demonstrably "crank" science like many
such "alternative theories" ("HIV doesn't cause AIDS," "global
warming isn't happening," various forms of creationism, etc.).
Confidently asserting commercial reserves of oil aren't fossil
fuels is as ridiculous as it gets.
The "Abiotic Oil" Controversy
Richard Heinberg explains why this theory is nonsense at best,
delusional thinking at worse.
Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?
Professor of Chemistry Ugo Bardi offers a simple assessment of the
abiotic theory. His logic is so clear, and the culmination of his
argument is so cogent, that even a child could understand it. The
conclusion is inescapable one to any honest enquiry - abiotic
theory is false, or at best irrelevant.
A Challenge to the Flat-Earth, Abiotic Oil Advocates and
Cornucopian Economists - It's Now or Never
Quote:
The G7 has just admitted that the world economy is threatened
today, not tomorrow. How does it benefit oil companies or markets
if no one can buy their goods and services, or if there is no power
to use them with? Now is the time for these critics to produce
their vast limitless energy resources, because the G7 has just
admitted that everything's falling apart. (As if we hadn't
noticed.) That's what these "critics" argued would happen when the
time came: there would be some magic switcheroo, and a new energy
source would be unveiled.
Quote: One cannot materialize a hot dog in a bank vault no matter
how much money is there. The earth is a bank vault and we are all
collectively locked inside it.
Show us the oil! People are dying now. The G7 has done everything
but state that this is just the beginning unless more oil is found.
Remember that it can take three years to bring a new oil field
(once found) online. Don't attack us anymore. You have said there
is an easy solution. Produce it for us all, even for yourselves.
For you are not immune to what is coming. We have tried to warn
even you. As FTW's energy editor Dale Allen Pfeiffer once wrote to
me, "Peak Oil will defend itself quite nicely."
Put up or shut up.
It's unquestionably apparent that this delusional fantasy of
abiotic oil has been put to rest once and for all, so "nuff' said"
on that.
Dies ist ein Abschnitt aus
http://www.oilempire.us/abiotic.html
Lesenswert!!!
Die Ammis stehen unheimlich auf solche Geschichten wie abiotisches
Erdöl. Leider ist es kein Spaß, sondern wird von politisch
motivierter Seite gezielt eingesetzt. Das ist alles andere als
harmlos...

MissCash