wired and nextbigfuture Oct 25 and 26

[MSimon]

What about those samples from the midocean ridges, volcanoes, and deep mine shafts? They too are almost all levorotary, although, in fairness, there are a few samples that have surprisingly large amounts of "dextrorotary" molecules as well. What is this telling us? Probably that while some of the carbon compounds that come from the deep regions of the Earth's crust or upper mantle are abiotic, most are recycled carbon from the surface. The mechanism for recycling the carbon is most likely subduction of the Earth's crust (a key concept in the field of plate tectonics) or deep penetration by hydrothermal solutions that carry down organic matter from above.

http://www.howestreet.com/articles/inde ... le_id=2114

But there is another possibility. Bacteria make the oil out of hydrocarbons found deep in the earth. Something Gold suggested based on the magnetite found with some of the deep oil samples.

I cover a little bit of that in my post.

[djolds1]

Cites/links?

The contaminants in oil are what caught my attention some years back - heavy metals and helium concentrations that should NOT be present given biotic oil theory, but fit very nicely with oil migrating up from FAR down.

http://www.tccsa.tc/adventure/renewable_oil.pdf

http://hubpages.com/hub/Peak-Oil-or-Nonsense

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=20160

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/26/scien ... wanted=all

http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/20 ... -fuel.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/crispin8.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 259.htm#at

http://www.rottentothecoreblog.com/2006/may2006b.html

Is that enough to get you started?

LOL. And then some!

A man after my own geekified heart, but then we do both hang here.

[pbelter]

But there is another possibility. Bacteria make the oil out of hydrocarbons found deep in the earth. Something Gold suggested based on the magnetite found with some of the deep oil samples.

The site you quoted is one of the oilpeakers. They tend to present only part of the research data that helps them to prove their Malthusian concept of the scarcity of resources and the following end of the world. The same article is listed multiple times on other sites.

I did some digging and I found this:

http://trilogynet.net/Thomas_Gold/depth.html

Molecules that are composed of four or more atoms may possess chirality, meaning that the same arrangements of the positions of the components of the molecule can be achieved in two different ways, one being the precise mirror image of the other.[...]
The complete absence of any optical rotation at the deeper levels is itself a strong argument against a biological derivation of the oil.

It seems that the optical rotation of the molecules is 50/50 at deeper levels where temperatures are higher and bacteria cannot survive.

[zbarlici]

Obama is an idiot. He wants to kill off fossil fuels before there is a deployable replacement.

He is subtle. Not smart. And he knows nothing of logistics. i.e. he is an amateur.

i doubt that he`s an idiot... its just that he`s expected to be everything to everybody. He knows that motivation and inspiration come from encouragement, so, naturally, when he goes to MIT he`ll come up wit ha speech as he just did.

[KitemanSA]

Obama is an idiot. He wants to kill off fossil fuels before there is a deployable replacement.
He is subtle. Not smart. And he knows nothing of logistics. i.e. he is an amateur.

i doubt that he`s an idiot... its just that he`s expected to be everything to everybody. He knows that motivation and inspiration come from encouragement, so, naturally, when he goes to MIT he`ll come up wit ha speech as he just did.

Ok, so maybe he is an idiot savant.

[Shubedobedubopbopbedo]

Oil can come from many sources.

That doesn't change the fact that it will become more scarce in the future. The whole idea of "peak oil" comes from the established fact that oil production has in peaked in the United States. It is expected to do so elsewhere as well.

When it does, the price will inexorably rise. Other factors affecting the price of oil include the value of the currency used to purchase it, delivery lead-time and the resulting speculation on supply & demand, natural disasters, politics, price fixing, etc.

At some point, people will decide that certain oil products are no longer worth the price. People being very much like-minded, they will probably decide this at very similar times, en-mass. If the public uproar over the price of oil over the last couple years is any indication, the critical price might be $145 per barrel that triggers a mass technological shift in demand. Or it might trigger a roller coaster effect, with some people hanging on indefinitely in a gradually dwindling segment of the population that cling to an old technology.

My opinion on nuclear fusion is skeptical. Even if peak oil happens 100 years from now, or 1000 years from now, it doesn't mean that nuclear fusion will replace it as a primary source of energy. Nuclear fusion might not even work.

Demand will be suppressed if other energy sources can't be found. Technologies that don't require as much power will be used. We're seeing some of them already, as prototypes.

Another resource that might be analogous to fossil fuel, is fossil water. This water that comes from underground aquifers and used for irrigating crops. It is also a limited resource. This image shows circular crops grown, each centered on a fossil water well in Libya. You can see many that have been abandoned as the wells have dried up. The only difference between water and oil, is that when an oil well dries up, the pump stops. This isn't visible using aerial photography, as it is with fossil water agriculture. But I assure you, in the United States and elsewhere, many oil wells are also drying up.

[MirariNefas]

Nuclear fusion might not even work.

This seems naive to me. Polywell, focus fusion, and others are long shots, sure. They might never work. But all nuclear fusion? Don't be silly.

For one thing, it already "works" in the sense that we practice nuclear fusion all the time and have been for decades. We have tabletop sized fusion devices. (Edit*) Other fusion devices are a major element of our military. There's also a very large fusion reactor at the heart of our solar system encouraging us to replicate its results. Clearly the physics has been proven. Now it is a problem of engineering and optimizing economics.

The universe is not out to get you. God isn't purposely trying to keep energy out of our reach to spite you, and mankind can fly even though we weren't born with wings, and when we fly higher and closer to the sun our wings don't melt like wax. I think a lot of people expect us to need to live simply with low consumption and renewables out of some kind of romantic vision that simple is "right" and that mankind is too prideful. If we try something difficult and it fails or backfires, that's assumed to be the universe teaching us a lesson about what was never meant to be.

That was a bit more of a rant than you deserved there. Anyway, I'm going to bring up something unpopular on this board and point to ITER. It may not be the best way to make fusion power, and it's descendants may never be cheaper than coal at today's prices, but there's substantial reason why it gets the big bucks. The physics of tokamaks have been well studied for decades. All that work for the past fifty years that's been failing to deliver fusion? Well, it turns out it actually was worth something. The tokamak path, though unwieldy, is pretty close to a sure bet. It will work, and before 2100. If the fossil fuels peak and all that, it'll even be economical in comparison.

[kurt9]

If fusion does not work, there is always fission. Thorium fueled MSR comes to mind, as does the IFR. These are just two of the advanced fission concepts that are being developed in places like India, China, and Japan. Whether it be fission or fusion, it is clear to me that the future of energy is based on nuclear processes.

[chrismb]

Fusion definitely does work. Take a look upwards during the day. Manmade fusion works too. Ask the ex-inhabitants of Elugelab where their island went!!....

If push-come-to-shove and we're a freezing planet with no sun and no heat, then we just have to let off a few H-boms underground. It's been tried out before already; look up 'Operation Plowshare' and 'Project GNOME'. Not pretty, very messy and not an easy way to get thermal energy out of nuclear reactions, but it can be done!

[kurt9]

Again I ask: What is wrong with fission power?

They don't even have to be big:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Small_nu ... r_reactors

[passenger66]

I think fusion will work in some or many forms eventually.
I think we should be doing the LFTR (MSR) / IFR now, because we have energy problems now, and because I wish they would keep rather than blowing up the Appalachians.
I still think we have a peak oil problem and will think that until I see production increase and the price of oil come down - I don't think there has been that much inflation in the USD to cause such a big price increase in the last few years.
At the moment it does look to me like we'll be buying our future energy from BRIC the same as we're buying everything else from them. I hope they like our vegetables, because I don't know what else we've got to trade.

[MSimon]

But there is another possibility. Bacteria make the oil out of hydrocarbons found deep in the earth. Something Gold suggested based on the magnetite found with some of the deep oil samples.

The site you quoted is one of the oilpeakers. They tend to present only part of the research data that helps them to prove their Malthusian concept of the scarcity of resources and the following end of the world. The same article is listed multiple times on other sites.

I did some digging and I found this:

http://trilogynet.net/Thomas_Gold/depth.html

Molecules that are composed of four or more atoms may possess chirality, meaning that the same arrangements of the positions of the components of the molecule can be achieved in two different ways, one being the precise mirror image of the other.[...]
The complete absence of any optical rotation at the deeper levels is itself a strong argument against a biological derivation of the oil.

It seems that the optical rotation of the molecules is 50/50 at deeper levels where temperatures are higher and bacteria cannot survive.

I do not see a contradiction.

Theremophilic bacteria may produce oil where they can survive (I believe Gold was a fan of this {Deep Hot Biosphere}) and pressure and temperature may do it at deeper levels.

[MSimon]

Well, it turns out it actually was worth something. The tokamak path, though unwieldy, is pretty close to a sure bet.

Every time they build one bigger they find new obstacles. It looks like one of those "always just out of reach" deals.

[MirariNefas]

It looks like one of those "always just out of reach" deals.

Again, the universe is not out to get you. God isn't trying to trick us. Just because something has been difficult in the past and new barriers have been discovered, doesn't mean there's an infinite number of barriers waiting to pop up the harder we look.

[MSimon]

It looks like one of those "always just out of reach" deals.

Again, the universe is not out to get you. God isn't trying to trick us. Just because something has been difficult in the past and new barriers have been discovered, doesn't mean there's an infinite number of barriers waiting to pop up the harder we look.

There may not be an infinite number of barriers for the tokamak path. Just enough.

For far too long we have had all our eggs in the tokamak (and variations) basket.

When you do not know what you are doing multiple approaches is the way to gather knowledge. Fortunately we now seem to be on that path.