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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
 Posted - 09/06/2006 : 13:30:32
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...in one eruption than humanity has in it's entire history!
Ok, so I've heard this one batted around for quite a while. I've NEVER seen a source. Nor have I seen any direct criticisms of the claim. Anyone have any info on this purported fact? Is it true? Is it BS? If it IS true, how does this fit with human-sourced global warming? Sources would be appreciated with any claims. Thanks.
- Chaloobi
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-Chaloobi
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 13:46:41 [Permalink]
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I couldn't wait. Here's the first source I found on the subject:
quote:
INFLUENCE ON THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT:
Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced.
link: http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html |
-Chaloobi
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 13:51:21 [Permalink]
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| Ahhh, but what about cow farts? |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 15:29:55 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Ahhh, but what about cow farts?
That's methane.
Funny thing though, I heard an idiot on the radio the other day, dumb caller. She tried to say the fact they found methane on Titan (Or whichever moon) meant dinosaurs were not the source of oil and therefore the people claiming oil is a renewable resource were right. Her rationale was there would have had to have been dinosaurs on Titan to get methane there.
The dumb host never got it that she was mixing up methane and oil, let alone it was plant matter not dinos that decayed into oil..
It's been bugging me. Now that I've told someone, I can put it to rest. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 17:29:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Ahhh, but what about cow farts?
That's methane.
Funny thing though, I heard an idiot on the radio the other day, dumb caller. She tried to say the fact they found methane on Titan (Or whichever moon) meant dinosaurs were not the source of oil and therefore the people claiming oil is a renewable resource were right. Her rationale was there would have had to have been dinosaurs on Titan to get methane there.
The dumb host never got it that she was mixing up methane and oil, let alone it was plant matter not dinos that decayed into oil..
It's been bugging me. Now that I've told someone, I can put it to rest.
How silly! The caller's point doesn't even make sense. I mean, I wager that if they look hard enough, they might find, say, gold (or platinum, or titanium (!)) on Titan. Does that mean that gold (platinum, titanium, etc.) on earth is renewable?
AM talk radio is the bane of American politics. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/06/2006 : 18:52:58 [Permalink]
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quote:
AM talk radio is the bane of American politics.
AM talk radio is the bane of reason.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 00:13:40 [Permalink]
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| Sadly, talk radio, am or fm is the bane of reason most the time. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 06:48:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Ahhh, but what about cow farts?
That's methane.
Funny thing though, I heard an idiot on the radio the other day, dumb caller. She tried to say the fact they found methane on Titan (Or whichever moon) meant dinosaurs were not the source of oil and therefore the people claiming oil is a renewable resource were right. Her rationale was there would have had to have been dinosaurs on Titan to get methane there.
The dumb host never got it that she was mixing up methane and oil, let alone it was plant matter not dinos that decayed into oil..
It's been bugging me. Now that I've told someone, I can put it to rest.
IIRC from geology class, oil is thought to be largely from algae / plankton type sources. I'm sure there's a source out there to clear up the mystery though.  |
-Chaloobi
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 10:52:10 [Permalink]
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Well well, here explains the twisted version of the caller:
"The abiogenic origin theory of oil formation is rejected by most geologists, who argue that the composition of hydrocarbons found in commercial oil fields have a low content of 13C isotopes, similar to that found in marine and terrestrial plants; whereas hydrocarbons from abiotic origins such as methane have a higher content of 13C isotopes. In an April 2002 letter published in the science journal Nature, Barbara Sherwood Lollar and her colleagues from the Stable Isotope Lab at the University of Toronto reported their analysis of the Kidd Creek mine in Ontario. An unusual ratio of 13C isotopes and the presence of helium provided evidence of hydrocarbons with abiotic origins, but they argued that commercial gas reservoirs do not contain large amounts of hydrocarbons with a similar signature. Gold and other geologists who argue that there are significant amounts of oil from abiotic origins maintain that as oil seeps up through the layers of Earth closer to the surface, it mixes with oil from biological origins, and takes on its characteristics."
It seems the caller assumed that "fossil fuel" meant dinosaur fossils and hydrocarbon was synonymous with oil rather than merely included oil along with methane.
There seems to be quite a following of the rosy idea oil deposits are a continually renewing resource but a scientific consensus oil deposits originate from biological material in large quantities and similar deposits of such quantities are not recurring currently. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/07/2006 10:54:09 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 11:01:12 [Permalink]
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This one has a short but fun description of the process of oil formation.
You need large quantities of organic matter and the absence of O2 which then ends bacteria from digesting the remaining hydrocarbons. So a large quantity of deep water organic sediment meets that criteria. There may be other favorable settings.
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| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/07/2006 11:01:54 |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 23:16:41 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
This one has a short but fun description of the process of oil formation.
You need large quantities of organic matter and the absence of O2 which then ends bacteria from digesting the remaining hydrocarbons. So a large quantity of deep water organic sediment meets that criteria. There may be other favorable settings.
So it is a renewable resource after all (to be pedantic) - just not at anywhere near the rate at which we are using it.
If much of the abiotic hydrocarbons are seeping upward, then deep gas reservoirs should be have a higher portion of methane than shallow gas reservoirs. This is not the case, shallow gas reservoirs contain much lighter gas (almost pure methane) while deep reservoirs contain a larger portion of heavier components - pentanes, hexeanes etc. Hydrogen sulphide is alo much more common in deeper reservoirs.
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"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 04:10:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
This one has a short but fun description of the process of oil formation.
You need large quantities of organic matter and the absence of O2 which then ends bacteria from digesting the remaining hydrocarbons. So a large quantity of deep water organic sediment meets that criteria. There may be other favorable settings.
We already have "large quantities of organic matter": Garbage, sewer, and even human bodies that we can dump into the ocean. So it seems to me that if we want hydrocarbons to renew themselves at a pace that might keep up with consumption, all we need do is get rid of this dangerous "O2" stuff. Maybe scientists and engineers could find a way to bind it with carbon!
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 09/08/2006 04:19:38 |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 06:45:17 [Permalink]
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| Don't forget that organic matter is generated primarily with energy from sunlight. Plants are just biological solar collectors and oil just stored energy from hundreds of millions of years of biological activity. Clearly it's more efficient to skip the hundreds of millions of years part and go directly to biofuels. Even MORE efficient is to skip the whole plant thing altogether and go directly for solar. |
-Chaloobi
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 13:28:02 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
So it is a renewable resource after all (to be pedantic) - just not at anywhere near the rate at which we are using it.
If much of the abiotic hydrocarbons are seeping upward, then deep gas reservoirs should be have a higher portion of methane than shallow gas reservoirs. This is not the case, shallow gas reservoirs contain much lighter gas (almost pure methane) while deep reservoirs contain a larger portion of heavier components - pentanes, hexeanes etc. Hydrogen sulphide is alo much more common in deeper reservoirs.
Why wouldn't lighter gases and liquids rise first? |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2006 : 00:53:01 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
quote:
Originally posted by Ghost_Skeptic
So it is a renewable resource after all (to be pedantic) - just not at anywhere near the rate at which we are using it.
If much of the abiotic hydrocarbons are seeping upward, then deep gas reservoirs should be have a higher portion of methane than shallow gas reservoirs. This is not the case, shallow gas reservoirs contain much lighter gas (almost pure methane) while deep reservoirs contain a larger portion of heavier components - pentanes, hexeanes etc. Hydrogen Sulphide is alo much more common in deeper reservoirs.
Why wouldn't lighter gases and liquids rise first?
Over geological time it wouldn't matter which was rising faster. Abiotic hydrocarbons should be more prevelant in deeper reservoirs since they would be more likely to be trapped there before they could rise to shallower reservoirs.
Abiotic hydrocarbons would be almopst entirely methane. Athough the abiotic advocates have shown that heavier hydrocarbons (oil) can form at the extremely high temperatures and pressures that occur in the mantle, the oil be thermally cracked into light hydrocarobns at the lower pressures and lower (but still very high temperatures) in the crust. Abiotic hydrocarbons would be gas, mostly methane.
The concept of hydrobarons moving all the way up from the malte through cracks in the rock is absurd - natural fracture systems are not that continuos. Porosity and permeability generally decrease with depth making it very difficult for abiotic hydrocarbons to migrate upwards. The existance of hydrocarbons in Pre-Cambrian ingeous rock is not proof abiotic origin as inidcated in No Free Lunch.Part 1 and Part 2. Commercial oil and gas reservoirs are almost always sandstone or carbonate (limestone/dolomite) formations that oil has migrated into from shale souce rock. The shale that oil originally came form is impermeable. In fact the hydrocarbons are usually trapped by overlying shales.
Gold's claim that oil could not be formed by biotic processes is a strawman. He is referring to old theories. Oil is formed from lipids not from carbohydrates. The wells drilled in Sweden in search of abiotic oil produced 15 tons of oil This sounds like a lot but it is less than 20 cubic metres, much less htan a truck load. This is the amound typically used to kill a well (fill it with liquid so it will not flow) prior to a workover. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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