'Fossil fuel' theory takes hit with NASA finding

worldnetdaily ^ | December 1, 2005

[seastay]

New study shows methane on Saturn's moon Titan not biological NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn's giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book's contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.

"We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14. Niemann concludes the methane "must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan, perhaps venting from a supply in the interior that could have been trapped there as the moon formed."

The studies announced by NASA yesterday will be reported in the Dec. 8 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

"This finding confirms one of the key arguments in 'Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,'" claims co-author Jerome R. Corsi. "We argue that oil and natural gas are abiotic products, not 'fossil fuels' that are biologically created by the debris of dead dinosaurs and ancient forests."

Methane has been synthetically created in the laboratory, Corsi points out, "and now NASA confirms that abiotic methane is abundantly found on Titan."

The realization that hydrocarbons are produced inorganically throughout our solar system was a key insight that led Cornell University astronomer Thomas Gold to write his 1998 book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels." Gold wrote:

It would be surprising indeed if the earth had obtained its hydrocarbons only from a source that biology had taken from another carbon-bearing gas – carbon dioxide – which would have been collected from the atmosphere by photo-synthesizing organisms for manufacture into carbohydrates and then somehow reworked by geology into hydrocarbons. All this, while the planetary bodies bereft of surface life would have received their hydrocarbon gifts by purely abiogenic causes. Gold wryly noted that he was sure there had not been any "big stagnant swamps on Titan" to produce the biological debris that conventionally trained geologists think was required on Earth to produce oil and natural gas as a "fossil fuel."

"If petroleum and natural gas are abiotic as we maintain in 'Black Gold Stranglehold,'" Corsi commented, "then the 'peak oil' fear that we are going to run out of oil may have been based on a giant misconception."

Paradigms in science change slowly and with great resistance, he noted, "But NASA has given us today incontrovertible evidence that Titan has abundant inorganic methane."

"If the scientists have ruled out that biological processes created methane on Titan, why do petro-geologists still argue that natural gas on Earth is of biological origin?" Corsi asked.

[Candor7]

This is good news. It means oil is a renewable resource.

I'll keep checking my back 40.

[Mount Athos]

maybe they will find aliens eating in taquerias on Titan, that would explain the methane

[GW and Twins Pawpaw]

So what will the greens whine about when they learn that we don't have to conserve petroleum? Will we drill in ANWR? Enquiring minds want to know!

[razorgirl]

"If petroleum and natural gas are abiotic as we maintain in 'Black Gold Stranglehold,'" Corsi commented, "then the 'peak oil' fear that we are going to run out of oil may have been based on a giant misconception."

Peak oil is based on what is actually getting pumped out of the ground. Whether it was from dead dinos, or crushed rocks, the sobering realities are that the current most productive oil fields are the ones discovered in the 50s or earlier. Oklahoma and Indonesia fields have already past their peak production.

[randog]

The University of New Hampshire has an interesting program in which they propose to grow oil-producing algae. They say it could provide up to 10% of the nation's oil needs:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Kinda puts a kink in the "oil-is-a-finite-resource" mantra.

[seastay]

well there is plenty on titan!

[razorgirl]

Kinda puts a kink in the "oil-is-a-finite-resource" mantra.

Only if you insist on it being produced the old-fashioned way... 50-year-old scotch and 50M-year-old oil.

However if you could grow it in your bathtub, that would be very cool... something I'm sure the oil companies will try to stop..

[razorgirl]

well there is plenty on titan!

All we have to do is burn up all the remaining oil getting it over here...

[justshutupandtakeit]

I thought it was long known that Titian had methane. Isn't it frozen?

[Alter Kaker]

This is good news. It means oil is a renewable resource.

No it doesn't. On the contrary, it indicates that oil isn't a renewable resource. No one has suggested a method for rapid oil formation --- without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

[Army Air Corps]

Rockets don't use petroleum...

[WestVirginiaRebel]

We can't drill on Titan! It might have life forms that we might disrupt! Or beautiful methane seas that some movie star might want to build a mansion next to...or...

[doc30]

And how do methyl hydrates, which just sit on the bottom of the ocean, fit into this picture?

[gcruse]

We may be burning it faster than it is being created, but that does not rule out oil being renewable. That just means it is being replaced slower than we are using it. Renewable, yes. Inexhaustable, no.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Calling it fossil fuel always has sounded like a fairy tale fabricated by idiots.

[ClearCase_guy]

If oil is geological in nature rather than biological in nature, then perhaps oil can be found almost anywhere, providing a deep enough well is used.

I believe some fields that seemed to be "tapped out" have later been found to have "re-filled". Whether that means oil is a renewable resource may be debatable. But it seems to me that the supply of oil available to us on earth may be several orders of magnitude greater than we think.

[razorback-bert]

Well it isn't Gold's theory.

[demlosers]

studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature

Yeah, this was suggested and pointed out during the Titan/Saturn threads when the probe was dropped.

[cpdiii]

There are indeed non biological sources of hydrocarbons. However, all the hydrocarbon traps in the earth are associated with sedimentary deposition. The oil we produce is from biological sources. When they start pumping oil from one of the Pacific volcanic islands call me, and bring a dead crow for me to eat.

[beaver fever]

"This is good news. It means oil is a renewable resource.

I'll keep checking my back 40."

It doesn't matter dick how methane is produced on Titan.

It does matter how that it is produced on Earth and we are just beginning to understand that process.

Even at that, methane may not be capable of being economically extracted in offshore underwater environments on the Earth.

Mining methane on Titan is science fiction and economically laughable.

[ARCADIA]

without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

The sun generates plenty of energy every day to keep us going until extinction. Enough of this is being stored to provide us with usable fuel sources; oil is just one of an infinite number of chemical alternatives. We can change to something else whenever we want to; it is just a question of making a transition. One of these days we are going to get bored with the 100-year-old piston put-put and develop something totally new with alot more Zoom!

[Strategerist]

Calling it fossil fuel always has sounded like a fairy tale fabricated by idiots.

You just adequately described the author of this piece in WingNutDaily, actually.

This is now the THIRD article where this blithering idiot, Corsi, has claimed that the "fossil fuel" theory of petroleum holds that is "created by the debris of dead dinosaurs and ancient forests."

THAT IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE.

Here you have a moron writing articles about a subject he doesn't have the SLIGHEST clue about.

The accepted theory of oil formation by virtually all petroleum geologists is that it's formed by dead microscopic marine and lake plankton. Dinosaurs have nothing to do with it (this stupid myth is a result of a some widely-seen supposedly educational cartoons) and land forests form coal, not oil.

So this guy is arguing against a theory, and his only knowledge of that theory is cartoons. Pathetic.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

The abiotic theory has been around for decades. When I worked in the oil patch before retiring over a decade ago. it was heresy to even breach the subject.

[ARCADIA]

Mining methane on Titan is science fiction and economically laughable.

So were the flying machine, steam power, electricity, and million other technological advances.

[JasonC]

Horsefeathers. Nobody has any idea how fast it is being created. And measured reserves have never gone down, since records have been kept.

[Alter Kaker]

Nobody has any idea how fast it is being created.

If it is being created, which is still just a hypothesis, nobody has ever observed it. Given that, don't you think it's a little irresponsible to think that it's a renewable resource?

[JasonC]

Nobody is talking about mining it there, the point is something created it there and that something was not life, since there is no life on Titan. Whatever that something is (geological processes being the leading candidate), probably operates elsewhere too, including here.

[JasonC]

Of course it has been created, the universe did not start with big hunks of oil floating around. The only question is the input processes and rates. There is no evidence it is a finite resource, and no reason to believe it is.

[mmercier]

Oil on earth may have fallen from space. I tend to believe this theory as it explains vast areas of tar sands all over the planet.

I have read a more interesting theory on the possibility that oil is produced in the outer earth core and forced upward over time. If this is the case then once depleted subterranean oil oceans may be refilling on their own.

In any case if we could mine Titan for high grade unleaded that would be a good start.

[sully777]

I'll be the first

I know they found gas in\on Saturn but have they found gas in\on Uranus yet? We have a right to know!

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

No, what it means is look for it in places where declared it was impossible to find oil in.

The ancient shallow seas theory would be out the window. At present, if exploratory drilling cores show no ancient seas sedimentary rock, forgedbodit.

[gogogodzilla]

OMG! Gas coming from Uranus?

The horror... the horror!

[beaver fever]

There are massive gas methane deposits in off all the continental tectonic margins on earth and we are just beginning to understand how they are formed.

There is an international effort to understand these deposits and come up with a possible model for extraction. (Google IODP , Methane Hydrates)

Rule number one in the resource industry: if it can't be done economically on earth then it can't be done economically anywhere else.

[mmercier]

>> the point is something created it there and that something was not life

Oil did not come from decomposing swamps, that much now we (think) believe.

Velikovsky was I think vindicated on this point in the 80's when oil was found in a granite deposit in Finland where no primordial vegetation was possible.

I just hope the first probe on Titan does not have a short circuit, then we will have a baby star burning off for a decade.

[Dog Gone]

Oil on earth may have fallen from space. I tend to believe this theory as it explains vast areas of tar sands all over the planet.

I think trees fell from space, because I see them everywhere!

[Holdek]

Wow I had no idea Jerome Corsi was a petroleum engineer! I also didn't know that the oil fields were refilling! But, since he knows what he's talking about, I guess I should

All those oil pumps that have gone dry are probably overflowing by now. Let's all go look!

[DustyMoment]

The government of New Zealand is deeply disappointed - they can't tax farmers for their cows farting anymore.

[sully777]

I had to do it. If not me, a more irresponsible clown would have stepped in.

[dangerdoc]

The oil companies make money refining and moving petroleum. Their business model would do just fine with biofuels if they are cost competitive with petroleum.

[DBeers]

Peak oil is based on what is actually getting pumped out of the ground. Whether it was from dead dinos, or crushed rocks, the sobering realities are...

Peak oil theory is now officially and scientifically dead -the liberal tree huggers can drag the green corpse around attempting to mimic it alive BUT who cares...

[Cvengr]

When I worked in the gas industry, methane was still CH4. I really don't quite get how one would positively assert CH4 from a biological process is discernible from other sources when collected and sampled from large reservoirs.

[Holdek]

Really? Oil may have fallen from space? That's hilarious! What other theories do you have?

[beaver fever]

The present science concerning gas hydrate methane is that it is produced by biological organisms that decay from continental effluent and dead micro organisms at a depth of 300 to 600 meters on the continental horizons.

What ever happened on Titan is a different matter and may also be the result of now extinct biological processes or the result of purely geological processes. We just don't know.

That's what is exiting about science. You don't know until you know.

[sit-rep]

BTTT...

[mmercier]

>> I think trees fell from space, because I see them everywhere!

Good point. Not good enough to sway me from my fondly held notion however.

[TaxRelief]

...without question we are burning it much faster than it is being created, if indeed it is being created.

What is your basis for that assumption?

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

"The University of New Hampshire has an interesting program in which they propose to grow oil-producing algae. They say it could provide up to 10% of the nation's oil needs:"

Damn. what next, process via pyrolysis over a trillion bbls of oil from the oils shale in UT, WY and CO?

When keosene was first processed, it was from oil shale, the kero comes from kerogen, formed by the plants, bateria & algae found in oil shale.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9045164

http://www.answers.com/topic/1853

"Abraham Gesner [b. Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, May 2, 1797, d. Halifax, Nova Scotia, April 29, 1864], who first made a flammable liquid (that he named kerosene) from oil shale in 1846 and later from coal, begins to manufacture kerosene from coal in New York State. Kerosene quickly replaces whale oil as the most popular illuminating liquid, but when kerosene is extracted from petroleum by Samuel Kier [b. Livermore, Pennsylvania, 1813, d. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 6, 1874], also starting in this year, Gesner's coal-based process loses out to the new form of kerosene."

[Moonman62]

Rockets don't use petroleum...

Some do use a very high grade of kerosene. The Saturn rockets of the Apollo program used it. A new company called SpaceX will use it for their rockets.

[festus]

No one has suggested a method for rapid oil formation ---

Actually they have suggested that. Not necessarily in this article. Not being in the mood to argue about it feel free to research it on your own.