"Going Cheney on Climate"

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Thomas Gold thought so, amongst others

but there's no persuasive evidence that supports the idea. Oil contains enough longish chain molecules to make it clear that it almost certainly comes from biological sources. Methane - CH4 - is a bit too simple to tell us much about its origins.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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The oil is where the biological explanation says it should be. They drilled a hole somewhere over in Europe based on the theory that it was part of what gathered together to form the earth. When the hole came up dry, the folks who supported that theory generally agreed that the experiment had disproven it.

I left my quote in to emphasize what I said. Specifically, "steady-state". A forest or grassland doesn't take up more carbon, it's balanced between growth and decay. (Which might be slightly worse compared to, say, uninhabited desert, because a lot of that decay is methane. But the levels of methane are still fairly low, so this effect can be ignored.) In order for it to be a net sink, the dead stuff has to go somewhere and not come back, and only swampy environments do this.

Ah, but they don't find ancient acorns and maple seeds in coal seams. They find ferns and cypress and all that swampy stuff. Forests and grasslands don't form much, if any coal.

I'll agree with that. Especially with 3/4 of the Earth's surface being water, it's silly to ignore. The fastest solution has already been proposed: keep on burning CO2, just fix it by fertilizing the middle of the pacific with finely dispersed iron oxide. Huge algal bloom in the middle of nowhere = huge mass of sequestered carbon.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

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It was a nice idea, but the field trials haven't gone all that well.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Oh cool, I didn't know anyone had done it yet. They do note that it didn't work well *in this part of the ocean*, there may be hope yet.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

You have to 'sequester' the bloom from the crustaceans. :-)

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The same site I linked before,

describes /most/ coal as being formed in swamps, as you guys have already said.

It also says deposits, in turn, can be fed by river sediments as well as local growth, so it'd seem that even grasslands in the middle of nowhere can wind up feeding plant matter into, say, the Mississippi, which drifts downstream and winds up adding to some future coal bed building near New Orleans, so to speak.

Optimal coal formation apparently happens where the water level rises continually, slowly, for long periods of time. That way the maximum amount of debris plops into the ideal anaerobic environment, and piles up without decaying.

IOW, rising sea levels are a good thing--they trap carbon.

Can't vouch for it, but this site shows an interesting distribution of the Earth's carbon:

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Terrestrial biomass holds quite a bit of carbon after all, more than I realized. I wonder if deforestation has reduced this.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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Wiki says most oil comes from algae, but that inorganic possibilities haven't been completely ruled out.

Interesting that oil's mostly marine (from algae), coal's from land- plants.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Yep, I went off 3/4 cocked on that one. I thought calling forests and grasslands "carbon neutral" a little too restrictive, that their debris could wind up sequestered too.

And I was right--sediments from those do wind up in, for example, coal deposits--but as a practical matter Paul and Tim were mostly right: most coal is formed in swamps and bogs, and presumably mostly from plants local to those environments.

Expert? I was just having a chat with the boys.

Muphry's Law? Above you said peat bogs make oil. Do they?

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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Forest fires can reduce wood to coke, which is close enough to pure carbon. That isn't metabolised, and shows up from time to time in geological strata.

They could, in the sense that organic material being degraded under anaerobic conditions could end up as oil or coal. Carbohyrates are more likely to eliminate water and end up as coal, but I'm no expert on the make-up of the swamp flora of the geological past.

In the permafrost, the local equivalents of peat bogs accumulate methane hydrates, which suggest that higher molecular weight hydrocarbons might also be present.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Yes, if they immigrated to the US. :(

--
Offworld checks no longer accepted!

I see that the Europeans are really serious about this CO2 thing.

They will do their "fair share" to help poor nations reduce their emissions and cope with warming and sea level rise. It looks like the recipients will get around 3 dollars per person per year, under a penny per day. Except that even the penny is not going to be real money.

John

They're buying carbon credits for saving wetlands, jungles, etc. And it looks like the third world countries are catching on to the fact that Gore, Inc. stand to make a lot more reselling these credits to industries once cap and trade treaties are signed.

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.

Correct. The sum needed - according the newspapers I read - is closer to 100 billion euros. There were suggestions that the European negotatiors had set their initial offer on the low side to allow themselves some room for manoeuvre, and presumably Copenhagen isn't seen as a the place where the deal will be finalised.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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The most impressive number is the amount simply dissolved in the oceans.