Very interesting article in Motor Trend, touching on some recent evidence that the theory that the earth actually produces hydrocarbons from base components, as opposed to their being produced by the remains of formerly living dinosaurs and plants, may actually be correct:
EXCERPT:
[i] Lost in the big news last week-the race for the Democratic nomination, the reeling U.S. economy, the ongoing life/death saga that is “Dancing with the Stars”-came word that a new deep-water exploration area off the coast of Brazil could contain as much as 33 billion barrels of oil. How much is that? If estimates are accurate, the Brazilian find would amount to the world’s third-largest oil reserve. In comparison, the U.S. has proven oil reserves of 21.8 billion barrels. …
The find also brings up a name worth remembering: Thomas Gold. The Austrian-born astrophysicist, who died in 2004, was a renowned maverick in the science community, a brilliant rogue whose anti-establishment proclamations were often proven right. For instance, in the 1960s, as NASA began its assault on the moon, many scientists debated whether the moon's surface was comprised of hard rock or might in fact be a layer of dust so thick that, upon touchdown, the Apollo lunar modules would sink out of sight. Gold, studying evidence from microimpacts, moon cratering, electrostatic fields, and more, boldly predicted that the astronauts�?? boots would sink into the lunar regolith no more than three centimeters. And, give or take a centimeter or so, he was proven right.
What does Gold have to do with the recent Brazil oil find? In 1999, Gold published "The Deep Hot Biosphere," a paper that postulated that coal and oil are produced not by the decomposition of organic materials, but in fact are "abiogenic"-the product of tectonic forces; i.e., deeply embedded hydrocarbons being brought up and through the earth's mantle and transformed into their present states by bacteria living in the earth's crust.
The majority of the world's scientists scoff at Gold's theory, and "fossil fuel" remains the accepted descriptor of oil. Yet in recent years Russia has quietly become the world's top producer of oil, in part by drilling wells as deep as 40,000 feet�??far below the graveyards of T-Rex and his Mesozoic buddies.
Is it possible that Thomas Gold was right again, and that the earth is actually still producing oil?[/i]