THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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R: #965, Bob_FJ
I’ll look at this and come back to you.
I hope I’m not behind the times, but I just spotted something for the first time, a la Monckton:
And Brute, although you may not (?) be best amused by this, I feel I should direct it towards you, because although it is fwitefully fwitefully British-silver-spoon-in mouth stuff, I suspect that you might yet verily enjoy it.
It gave me many a chuckle and smile anyway! (Sorry PeterM, thou peero-phobic)
For the full hilarity of it go to:
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=178&Itemid=1
I hope I’m not behind the times, but I just spotted something for the first time, a la Monckton:
Brute, although you may not (?) be best amused by this, I feel I should direct it towards you, because although it is fwitefully fwitefully British-silver-spoon-in mouth stuff, I suspect that you might verily enjoy it.
It gave me many a chuckle anyway! (Sorry PeterM)
Bali diary
Fortnight Of The Undead
By Christopher Monckton in Nusa Dua, Bali
Down the Poxy, our local fleapit [= Proxy cinema] late on a Saturday night, voodoo flicks like Night Of The Undead were always popular when I was a lad. To shrieks of scornful merriment from the teenage audience, mindless zombies would totter aimless across the clumsily-constructed sets with lugubrious expressions frozen on their messily-made-up death-masks until the hero, with the lurv interest wrenched screeching from the clutches of the late Baron Samedi and draped admiringly on her rescuer’s extravagantly-muscled arm, triumphantly saved the day.
Thus it was in Bali during the Fortnight Of The Undead. ……………..
For the full hilarity go to:
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=178&Itemid=1
PeterM 968
I don’t know why I bother, but:-
If you do a simple Google search on the following word group: ‘Oil carbon dating’, the first regular entry at this moment contains the following extract in its chapter 12:
If you are not satisfied with this particular entry, there are others, and of course you could try different search-word combinations.
There’s a good boy, go for it, it’s not too hard! (You do know how to do a search on Google?)
I find it odd that you get on your high-horse and hammer away over such a trivial matter, when I informed you where to go in the first instance, and which was so very easily solvable by you. This is in contrast to you ignoring repeatedly, still unanswered, but far far more significant issues.
The rest of your comments in 968 are not worthy of comment. (BTW, the above was barely considerable for response)
In my 978, please note that in the language protocol transfer, there is some confusion between isotope signature nunmbers and the reference nunmbers in the credits, which unfortunately hover near the C14 number.
I think it’s called sod’s law! (Murphy)
Bob_FJ,
I was wondering why you were being so coy, and so reluctant to name the website you were quoting. My initial thought was someone like conservativeamerica.com but, even beter, it was detectingdesign.com a ‘creationist’ website’. If you remember, I did ask for a scientifc reference. These guys don’t count at all.
Is this a marriage made in heaven? Or maybe I should say a menage a trois? Creationists, Abiotic Oil advocates, and climate sceptics all sharing the same bed!
Bob,
Re: # 977
Yes, I’m certain that it was an environmentalist freak show at Bali.
As I stated previously, the same type of behavior can be observed at any Star Trek convention……knuckleheads with WAY too much time on their hands spending thousands of dollars on the latest Klingon fashion gear and taking the time to learn the language of imaginary space aliens from distant galaxies.
http://www.kli.org/
The very sad part of this entire freakish sideshow was that you and I paid for this
The very sad part of this entire freakish sideshow was that you and I paid for this “excursion”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihsSmJNsDX8
Pretty funny………….
Bob_FJ,
Regarding your 971, while the idea of abiotic oil seems a bit crackpot to me, I’m sure my thinking is based mostly on the fact that for my entire lifetime no one has, to my knowledge, ever questioned the origins of oil beyond the ‘biotic’ one (other than my recent discovery of the theory of abiotic oil). To be honest, I have no idea how the theory of biotic oil came about, nor the quantity or quality of any supporting science. I have always just accepted it as fact since all through school and everywhere else it is taught as unimpeachable fact.
To be honest, I have for a long time questioned (only in my mind) how so much mashed up trees, dinosaurs, and other biological matter could have been squashed and pressed into oil. Wouldn’t it have had to be ‘processed’ soon after death, or possibly while these creatures were still alive? What mashed them down all over the earth at the same time… all alive or soon after death. Is all the oil on earth the result of a single cataclysmic event like a comet impact 165 million years ago? Were there a bunch of piles of biological material in different places around the world that were all covered and mashed up all at the same time? Was the single Pangaea super continent split apart by this single cataclysmic event that singularly covered, crushed, and processed all that plant and animal flesh into oil?
The whole subject, the more I think about it, leads me to more questions and uncertainty.
Hi Peter,
Your suspicion (974) that oil companies have purposely stopped new refinery construction in anticipation of “peak oil” (or in order to benefit from an artificial shortage of refined products) may well be part of the story.
But the main reason that there have been no new refineries built in the USA can be gleaned from the articles cited below.
New Yuma, AZ oil refinery permit problem (Refinery Reform Campaign): “New Refinery threatens Arizona”
http://www.refineryreform.org/spotlight_yuma_az.html
New Makoti, ND oil refinery permit problem (Refinery Reform Campaign): “New Refinery threatens Native Lands”
http://www.refineryreform.org/community_northdakota.htm
EPA ruling
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2007/2007-08-24-091.asp
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) response to EPA ruling
http://www.nrdc.org/media/2007/070823.asp
Various environmental activist groups, such as RRC and NRDC, have stirred up fears in the general public of cancer risks, etc. to make it almost impossible for a new refinery to receive a building or operating permit within the very cumbersome US legal system (and with the very high number of lawyers in the USA).
This is more likely to be the principal cause for no new oil refinery construction there, rather than “profit motive” of the greedy oil companies.
Incidentally, construction of new nuclear power generation plants has been hampered for exactly the same reason.
(It’s a lawyer’s paradise. Just wait until the US birdwatcher groups, armed with a flock of lawyers, get their talons on T. Boone Pickens’ proposed bird-chopping wind farms. Squawk!)
Regards,
Max
In addition to Max’s comment above; I would add that a new refinery has not been built since 1976 in the US due to looney environmentalists obstructionists.
A new refinery using current technology could refine a higher quantity of crude at less expense than the current systems.
So, if anyone would want to build a modern, efficient, reliable, refinery it would be “big oil”. They could process larger quantities of oil, faster, and at less expense to their stockholders.
It isn’t the oil companies that are driving the price up, it’s the Leftists/Environmentalists.
Hi Bob,
You cited a study by J.F. Kenney on petroleum genesis and asked me for comments (950).
A lot of Kenney’s more detailed scientific deliberations are “over my head”, but the logic he proposes makes sense.
First, he invokes the second law of thermodynamics (internal production of entropy is always positive for every spontaneous transformation). Based on this, he deduces that the evolution of a chemically reactive multi-component system (such as natural petroleum), which possesses a chemical potential higher than any of the initial components from which it evolved (biotic materials) can occur artificially by the use of catalytic reactions (Fischer-Tropsch), but cannot happen in the natural world.
In the case of Fischer-Tropsch, the first step is to create a H2 / CO mixture (synthesis gas) from either coal or natural gas plus steam in a highly endothermic reaction. This gas is then catalytically converted to liquid hydrocarbons using a cobalt (or iron) catalyst. South Africa has used this process successfully for years.
Many years ago I ran a plant using the “oxo” process to convert synthesis gas and olefins to aldehydes (in this case, propylene to C4 aldehydes) under high pressure with a cobalt catalyst in a fairly exothermic reaction. But I digress.
Kenney cites many unsuccessful laboratory attempts to convert biotic materials to hydrocarbons heavier than methane. He concludes that the genesis of hydrocarbons from biotic compounds under low pressures is not possible, since the chemical potential of almost all biotic C-H-O compounds lies far below that of methane or other natural hydrocarbons. Any hydrocarbon heavier than methane generated at low pressure would be unstable and would decompose to lower-energy methane and carbon.
On the other hand, the genesis of coal from biotic materials in an oxygen-poor environment under high pressures is possible under the second law of thermodynamics, as is the genesis of methane.
Kenney then goes into a lengthy discussion of Thermodynamic Affinity (which is over my head) and points out that at STP methane possesses the lowest chemical potential, and is the most stable, of all hydrocarbons. At pressures under 30kbar the heavier hydrocarbons are unstable chemically and thermodynamically relative to methane.
He then discusses the evolution of higher alkanes from methane at high pressures and in the absence of oxygen. These reactions have been performed experimentally at pressures of 30 to 50kbar and temperatures up to 1500°C. Hydrocarbons up to C10 have been created, which remain stable under high pressure.
From this he concludes that in the Earth’s upper mantle at a depth of 100 km below the surface (at a pressure of 30+kbar and corresponding temperature of >1000°C and in the presence of iron as a catalyst) petroleum hydrocarbons could be produced from methane.
All sounds reasonable to me, although I admit I had always believed in the “dead dinosaur” origin of petroleum, but maybe it’s not a “fossil fuel”, after all.
Regards,
Max
JZSmith,
You have asked how it could have been possible for oil to form from biological matter millions of years ago, but we can’t see the same process at work now.
Millions of years ago the earth was much warmer, the sea level was higher, and shallow seas were more common. Many of these shallow seas would have been landlocked or mainly surrounded by land. There would not have been the strong currents, to stir up the sediment, as there usually is in the present day ocean.
The warmer temperatures would have greatly decreased the water’s oxygen carrying capacity. Consequently, any biological matter washed in from rivers, or from dead algae or plankton which may have sunk from the surface would have settled to the bottom and putrefied rather than decaying away as it would now. These seas may have been pretty unpleasant places, full of anaerobic bacteria and the smell of hydrogen sulphide gas, and quite devoid of fish life.
Eventually conditions changed on earth. Temperatures fell, sediment covered the thick layers of putrefying material, and over the years it slowly changed into what we now know as oil.
Max,
I understand it isn’t so easy to build a new oil refinery in the USA any more. The questions are ‘how hard are the oil companies pushing for them?’ and ‘why, since the early 80’s have they closed down half of the ones they do have rather than upgrading them?’
The reluctance of the oil companies to build new refineries is worldwide. Its not just an American issue.
And incidentally, I wouldn’t say the oil companies were necessarily ‘greedy’, on this issue at least. It just doesn’t seem sensible to build refineries if you know you won’t be needing them.
Bob_FJ posted some good instructions for using Google recently. Thank you Bob. If you Google for the words Saudi Arabia and oil reserves you’ll see quite a lot of discussion on what they actually might be. Since the Saudis nationalised their oil in 1979 their reserves have magically increased fourfold. There are more than a few cynics who have suggested that the main driver is an OPEC rule that allocates oil production on the basis of oil reserves. In other words, the more oil a country has, or says it has, the more it is allowed to produce and sell.
The Saudi government keeps the details of its reserves a State secret, but the western oil companies and governments must have their agents and spies there. Is it possible that no-government or big oil company wants to upset the Saudis by accusing them of lying, but at the same time they do know the true situation?
Everyone is assuming that the Saudis, can increase their production quickly if necessary. No-one else can that’s pretty much certain, but what if the Saudis can’t either?
Hi Brute,
You are correct (986) when you say that a handful of eco-activists and their lawyers are blocking the expansion of US refining capacity.
It looks like a sleeping US Congress is doing the same for US crude oil production capacity, by blocking ANWR and increased offshore drilling, while blabbing about “pipe dreams” such as corn-based ethanol and major solar and wind power generation.
Meanwhile US oil consumption has risen to more than 20 million bbl/day.
The current refining capacity has been reported at around 18 million bbl/day.
The USA produces 4.5 million bbl/day of crude oil domestically.
In addition to 9.2 million bbl/day of crude oil the USA imports around 2.3 million bbl/day of refined petroleum products (mainly motor gasoline). This is costing the USA a trade imbalance of close to $500 billion a year (out of a total trade deficit of around $700 billion).
So a sleeping Congress (now on vacation) and a handful of eco-activists have got your country in a bind.
A similar bunch has any new nuclear generation blocked (not only in the USA, but in most of the industrialized nations, except France).
And the public is apathetic and gullible enough to do nothing about it.
And the media is feeding them fairy tales about the imminent threat of a global warming disaster.
So what’s going on?
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
You wrote: “The reluctance of the oil companies to build new refineries is worldwide. Its not just an American issue.
And incidentally, I wouldn’t say the oil companies were necessarily ‘greedy’, on this issue at least. It just doesn’t seem sensible to build refineries if you know you won’t be needing them.”
There are several major new refinery projects (including expansions) underway outside the USA. Saudi Arabia, for example, has a major new project together with the Japanese. Oil producers would much rather export refined products, petrochemical feedstocks or even petrochemicals themselves, rather than just crude oil.
At the same time, older less energy-efficient refining capacity will be shut down in some countries.
But believe me, Peter, the world is going to need oil refineries for many, many years, not just to distill crude but also to upgrade it into higher value products through catalytic cracking processes, etc.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
You are correct about the mixed reports concerning Saudi Arabian oil reserves.
I have seen numbers ranging from a “conservative” estimate of “proven” reserves of 260 billion bbl to a figure of 2 to 2.5 times this amount as quoted by the Saudis.
They are now producing close to 10 million bbl per day and say they could easily increase this to 13.5 million bbl/day. So far they have not been unable to crank out more at a moment’s notice when economically and politically desirable.
But even the higher reserves estimate is lower than the amount of recoverable oil from the US oil shale deposits, estimated at 800 to 1,200 billion bbl.
Of course, that won’t be as easy to access as “just turning open the valve” in Saudi Arabia, but it will be “made in USA” and (at $100+ per bbl) at a nice profit, thank you.
Regards,
Max
Hi Peter,
Just one more word on oil reserves.
The USGS has estimated that off-shore reserves in the Arctic (Siberia, Alaska, etc.) could amount to 90 billion bbl, while Greenland estimates around 110 billion bbl there.
Lots of problems getting to it in an environmentally friendly fashion (makes the North Sea challenges look like a cake walk), but it’s up there.
Then we hear from time to time about new offshore finds in slightly friendlier territory, such as the 8 billion bbl Petrobras field off of the Brazilian coast.
Regards,
Max
Max,
76% of Americans support expanding American domestic oil production and have been hammering the Democratic controlled Congress to expand offshore oil drilling and opening up ANWR for drilling. President Bush lifted the Executive offshore oil drilling ban, (implemented by his father) several weeks ago.
Last Friday, the Republican minority members of the House of Representatives, (Republicans), requested a vote on their new energy bill that included lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling and drilling in ANWR, (as well as various other “alternative” energy initiatives).
Nancy Pelosi, (San Francisco Marxist and Speaker of the House) DENIED the request to bring the bill to the House floor for a simple vote and instead adjourned the House for a FIVE WEEK VACATION despite the howling protests of the Republicans. Ms. Pelosi is currently using her vacation hours winging her way around the country on her tax payer provided private jet promoting her own book.
Numerous Republican members of Congress refused to leave the building and continued debating/discussing the energy bill, (and are currently still at it). Ms Pelosi responded by ordering the lights, air conditioning, microphones and television cameras turned off in the building…….yet, the Republicans continue and many have returned from their home states where they had previously been on vacation to join their Republican brethren.
Very little press coverage of this melee, (as you would expect), and the tactic is quite transparent…….Ms. Pelosi, (we call her “Stretch”, due to her many facelifts), will not allow a up or down vote on this bill as she does not want Democrat members of Congress on record either supporting/undermining this topic/bill until after the November elections. Stretch stated recently, while hawking her new book, that “it is her job” to “save the planet”.
Regardless of a person’s views on the topic, what infuriates me the most is that MY VOICE in Congress, MY REPRESENTATIVE has been silenced. (My Representatives happen to be absolute Leftists/Greens and servile partisan Democrats…… but that’s beside the point).
This single person, this lone representative, has circumvented the entire democratic process. As they say, “What comes around, goes around”, and the most frightening aspect of this situation is that ONE person, (in the future, it could be a member of either party), can hold the entire country hostage based on his/her personal opinion and disallow a simple vote.
The news of the Republican act is being disseminated to everyday Americans at a glacially slow pace, but there is a rising tide of outrage that “the People’s House” has been closed for vacation while gasoline prices are high and Congress is doing NOTHING about it. (Did you like the way I inserted those two global warming puns into the last sentence?)
Hopefully the outrage will continue past Labor Day into the election season and we can boot these Goldbrickers out of the Congress and elect some representatives that will ACCOMPLISH something and perform the work of the people.
This just came across my desk today…………………
MONTANA FARMER HAD NO IDEA
503 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL
WOULD BE NAMED AFTER HIM
Henry Bakken allows a geologist to drill for oil on his farm outside Billings, Montana in 1953. Years pass. Technology improves. A few months ago, the U.S. government confirms “The Bakken Formation” holds…
• 5 TIMES MORE OIL than the massive
Ghawan field in Saudi Arabia, which
until now was considered the world’s
largest oil field.
• 64 TIMES MORE OIL than the entire
Alberta’s Penbina project.
• 235 TIMES MORE OIL than USA’s
entire reserve…
Max,
If you are Swiss why would you worry about the oil being “made in USA” ? In any case, the world economy is so globalised these days that it doesn’t make any difference where the oil is or the nationality of the company that extracts it. You’ll won’t end up paying any less, and unless you own shares you won’t get a cut of the profits.
The latest figure I have for Saudi oil is 8.5 million barrels per day and falling! That could explain the recent price rises. Even after the recent falls they are up about 60% from this time last year.
There are big problems extracting oil from shale and tar sands, so you shouldn’t just take the number of barrels in these hard to work deposits at face value. Some of these are totally uneconomic and are very energy intensive to extract. If you use a half barrel of oil in order to extract a single barrel, that can make economic sense. But if you lose more than a barrel, in cost and energy terms, then it doesn’t, at whatever the price of oil.
The global consumption of oil is approximately 85 million barrels per day. That’s 31 billion barrels per year. So, the figure you have quoted for the Arctic is about three years of world consumption. The whole of Iraq’s reserves would keep the world going for about 4 years. Russia’s reserves for two years. That’s if it can be pumped out fast enough, but of course it can’t.
Add to the equation that in the next 5-8 yrs the growth in demand is expected to be about 50% to over 120million barrels p.d. You must be hoping that the subterranean gods who are busily producing all this abiotic oil are prepared to put in a little overtime!
Hi Max,
Many thanks for your review of the study by J.F. Kenney on petroleum genesis. (987)
It was certainly beyond me, and is a very interesting result.
Yet another piece in the (unsolvable?) jigsaw!
I see that Peter has given an account of how squishy biota can accumulate in vast quantities in past aeons, (but not today) but it does not look feasible to me.
PeterM,988,
Your post was a lovely story, but the following extract, jarred me quite a bit:
You seem to describe two types of decay, one aerobic and the other anaerobic, and I don’t see that one should be more effective than the other. If as you say the seas were much warmer at that time, would that not speed-up the rate of vegetable/animal decomposition? Avoiding semantics, (please), I read that: to putrefy and to decay are surely interchangeable in effect, apart maybe in odour? How does rather slowly accumulating deceased plankton become isolated from little gobbley things? Put it another way: we are not talking about a situation as apparently seen with coal seams, where somehow, SUDDENLY, massive quantities of biota are mysteriously isolated from their normal compost-able surroundings. (Suggestions of the catastrophic maybe, but SOMETHING ELSE to your oil hypothesis anyway!)
The theory of evolution shows that wherever there is a niche in nature, (where there is a potential food source), that niche WILL be filled, even when it is bizarre. Nice examples are bacteria that live in hydrochloric acid in our stomachs, intestinal worms, and a bunch of weirdos that live at very hot vents in the deep ocean blackness.
Another factor too: warmer conditions as you describe tend to promote accelerated biological activity, and bacteria and protozoa come first, with amazing reproduction rates.
Bob_FJ,
If oxygen is present in the water, any decay tends to be pretty absolute. For instance, an animal body would be reduced to a skeleton after a few months in the sea, and a piece of wood would disappear fairly quickly too. There isn’t much energy in limestone or chalk, and this is what you expect after aerobic decomposition of the animal bodies.
On the other hand a body or a piece of vegetable matter falling into a swamp, where there is little or no oxygen, would be putrefied by anaerobic bacteria. The resultant ooze would, like oil, contain much more calorific energy.
PeterM 998, you wrote in full:
My response [1] Yep, and I guess that you have set a time-scale of aerobic decomposition of wood as being “quick”…. Fine I have no problem there. I also think you may well be right that decomposition of the squishy parts in skeletal plankton is mostly aerobic, but so-what?
My response [2] That’s a cute try Pete, but you allege certain biological conditions to have existed in a warmer past aeon, that allowed vast accumulations of vegetable matter to accumulate without decay, to explain why that can no longer be demonstrated today in different conditions. (even though biological activity would intuitively be much higher in those warmer times!). Also of course, ANAEROBIC bacteria, protozoa, and what-not, fungi whatever, were the more primordial, (per Olympiad = first out-the-blocks), don’t forget! You want us to believe that your hot-seas hypothesis, is both entirely different, and yet also similar to the cold tannic swamps of today? Ho Hum!
There is some truth for your observations today in that high latitude cold swamps which are high in brown waters, (tannic acid), do have ability to preserve peat and animal remains. (per etymology; the tanning process of skins etc) However, how can you claim similarity with your oxygen starving warm seas?
I can’t resist the chance of the “Premio Mille” Uhm uhm ahhhh….
Oh yeah right, Brute,
Ain’t democracy great?