The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels

Rating:
Summary: Drilling Days of Yesteryear
Review:

Gold is one of a handful of truly innovative thinkers to come out of the 20th century, but possibly the least well known. His earlier book, "Power from the Earth", shares some of the ground covered in this new edition of this title, and a web search should turn up a page of his material from 1992 which led to this title, but by the time he gets the credit the main idea -- that hydrocarbon fuels are primarily abiogenic rather than "fossil fuels" -- will be uncontroversial. I suspect that the "global warming" demagogues will soon saddle on once they realize that it strengthens their delusional system.

The proven reserves of crude oil have increased twentyfold since 1973, and despite the unfounded claims of the "global warming" and other "greens", oil supplies have continued to increase even as the efficiencies involved in their uses have increased. In mid-2000, former Saudi oil minister Yamani said, "the stone age didn't end because people ran out of stones," basing this on the increase in supply (such as the massive finds in the former Soviet "stan" republics) and the coming decrease in per capita use (fuel cells, particularly in autos).

Those interested in the origin and/or the ancestry of Earthlings will also find this book to be of great interest. Despite a claim in an earlier reader review, there's nothing contradictory in Gold's "deep life". For further reading online, visit the William Corliss site (or not) and search for "The KTB Hole"; additional info can be found with a search on "Siljan Ring", but beware of the naysayer sites that may turn up.



Rating:
Summary: Compelling arguments
Review: At first glance, this book struck me as highly suspicious. However, once I began reading it, I quickly came to seriously consider Gold's thesis as tenable. By the end of the book, I was strongly inclined to think that Gold has a much more credible explanation for the source and formation of oil and gas than the de facto one.

Gold does write convincingly, but moreso he presents some very cogent reasons for his abiogenic theory. I'll not attempt to rehash the details, but just say that his theory is parsimonious, involves little hand-waving and uses no dramatics.

There is nothing scientifically outlandish here, unless you have some ideological adherence to the biogenic view. In fact, the biogenic view seems now quite contrived and dubious in retrospect. Gold's view accounts not only for oil, coal and gas, but also confers reasons for formations of biogenic matter - peat and lignite - as well.

Gold's further assertion that a biosphere exists going many kilometers down may have seemed ludicrous years ago, but in light of our knowledge of extremophiles nowadays, his thesis seems very plausible.

As if that weren't going far enough, Gold further asserts that it is far more likely that (assuming life had a terrestrial origin) such life began deep in the earth, not in shallow tidepools or other surface environments. Any origin-of-life theory is very difficult to justify, but Gold's seems as plausible as any, and more plausible than most.

A worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: This puts the oil shortage scam on notice:
Review: Carol M Henn from Rockville does not seem to grasp the full significance of Gold's work. You cannot take short term (ten yr)statistics for oil depletion and extrapolate into the next century which is precisely what oil corporations have always done. Remember that just 40 years ago the technology did not exist to extract oil at 30,000 feet. Here in Australia we have an "oil crisis" every 15 years which is then quickly replaced by replenished reserves. These reserves have been tapped from the same oil wells since the 1950's and still we have the media screaming headlines about the last drop of crude within 5 years. After 60 years of hearing the oil industry cry wolf over depleting oil reserves it is time to seriously review the current geological evidence. Gold's findings are supported by Russian petroleum exploration geologists in the 1950's who discovered vast quantities of hydrocarbons in the Ukraine where no sedimentary oil bearing strata exists. "The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths." Academician Professor Vladimir B. Porfir'yev, senior petroleum exploration geologist for the U.S.S.R., at the All-Union Conference on Petroleum and Petroleum Geology, Moscow, 1956.
Also keep in mind that oil can be extracted from oil shale and coal of which there are deposit's in Australia Sth Africa, Brazil, USA and Canada that would last thousands of years. If Gold's theories are correct we will not need other sources for our future energy needs, perhaps Gold's findings are hard to accept because they don't fit with the current Darwinist's views of evolutionary deposition .

Rating:
Summary: Interesting theory, weak on oil depletion
Review: I have long believed that oil depletion is a serious issue that could derail our economy sooner than most people think. When promoting this view on internet bulletin boards, people would occasionally respond that Thomas Gold has shown that oil comes from abiotic sources deep within the earth, not from biological sources, and we hence we have plenty, no need to worry.

I have at last gotten around to reading this book. He makes a stronger case than I would have guessed. He also thinks through a number of issues related to his theory in an inventive and interesting way. He argues that earth's first organism was more likely to have evolved underground than on the surface, and makes a pretty good case.

But some of the evidence he provides doesn't really support his contention. For instance, he argues that many earthquakes are due to sudden releases of vast quantities of natural gas, rather than due to plate tectonics. After reading the evidence he brings forth on this, I agree that this is likely a cause of some earthquakes. But this doesn't prove that oil or natural gas comes from abiotic sources, nor does it prove that we have plenty of it.

Gold believes that if oil is bubbling up from middle earth and isn't dependent on ancient plant or animal life for its creation, then we ought to have plenty of it. This doesn't actually follow. If loads of the stuff was bubbling up, we would have more natural oil seeps than we do.

Gold believes that we are discovering vast new amounts of oil all the time and that old oil fields are refilling. Most geologists disagree. We are now burning more oil than we discover, and have been since the early 1980s. What Gold sees as growing reserves, are in many cases not supported by the facts. For instance, in the late 80s most OPEC nations vastly increased their reported reserves. This wasn't due to new drilling that found new oil - it was a ploy to allow them to pump more oil in accordance with OPEC rules that fixed oil production to a percentage of reserves.

Gold doesn't examine the issue of oil in a quantitative manner at all. He believes that oil is abiotic and assumes that means we have plenty of it. He has marshalled some interesting evidence in favor of his theory, but comes up short on analyzing what this means in terms of oil depletion.

If you choose to read this book, you should balance it off with "The Party's Over" or "The Coming Oil Crisis" or "GeoDestinies".

Rating:
Summary: Interesting theory, weak on oil depletion
Review: I have long believed that oil depletion is a serious issue that could derail our economy sooner than most people think. When promoting this view on internet bulletin boards, people would occasionally respond that Thomas Gold has shown that oil comes from abiotic sources deep within the earth, not from biological sources, and we hence we have plenty, no need to worry.

I have at last gotten around to reading this book. He makes a stronger case than I would have guessed. He also thinks through a number of issues related to his theory in an inventive and interesting way. He argues that earth's first organism was more likely to have evolved underground than on the surface, and makes a pretty good case.

But some of the evidence he provides doesn't really support his contention. For instance, he argues that many earthquakes are due to sudden releases of vast quantities of natural gas, rather than due to plate tectonics. After reading the evidence he brings forth on this, I agree that this is likely a cause of some earthquakes. But this doesn't prove that oil or natural gas comes from abiotic sources, nor does it prove that we have plenty of it.

Gold believes that if oil is bubbling up from middle earth and isn't dependent on ancient plant or animal life for its creation, then we ought to have plenty of it. This doesn't actually follow. If loads of the stuff was bubbling up, we would have more natural oil seeps than we do.

Gold believes that we are discovering vast new amounts of oil all the time and that old oil fields are refilling. Most geologists disagree. We are now burning more oil than we discover, and have been since the early 1980s. What Gold sees as growing reserves, are in many cases not supported by the facts. For instance, in the late 80s most OPEC nations vastly increased their reported reserves. This wasn't due to new drilling that found new oil - it was a ploy to allow them to pump more oil in accordance with OPEC rules that fixed oil production to a percentage of reserves.

Gold doesn't examine the issue of oil in a quantitative manner at all. He believes that oil is abiotic and assumes that means we have plenty of it. He has marshalled some interesting evidence in favor of his theory, but comes up short on analyzing what this means in terms of oil depletion.

If you choose to read this book, you should balance it off with "The Party's Over" or "The Coming Oil Crisis" or "GeoDestinies".

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The review below says it all, so I won't retread the same ground. Gold's arguments are well-stated and scientifically sound. An excellent read.

Rating:
Summary: A scientific revelation/revolution
Review: This book is more than a mere milestone. If approached with an open mind, it will revolutionize much traditional thinking in the areas of energy, seismology, and the life sciences.

Professor Gold is an astrophysicist of high repute, who applies his excellent, free-thinking mind and impeccable logic to disciplines outside his chosen field with astonishing success. This disturbs traditionalists and adherents of scientific orthodoxy no end, especially when Dr. Gold, more often than not, is correct in his iconoclasms.

The instant work presents and consolidates Dr. Gold's seminal work in the area of earth sciences. Dr. Gold argues convincingly, and with easily understood reasoning, that petroleum, and even coal, are not biogenic, i.e., created from previously living organisms. Instead, he contends, so-called "fossil fuels" are the result of hydrocarbons being brought up from and through the earth's mantle, and being transformed into their present states by bacteria living in the Earth's crust. These bacteria compose the "deep, hot biosphere" in the book's title. Thus, fossil fuels are a self-renewing resource not nearly as susceptible to the depletion so often forecast by doomsayers.

Dr. Gold's logic appears impeccable to this writer, and the tests he has done to date, such as drilling in the granite of a large Swedish impact structure and finding hydrocarbons where none "should" exist are persuasive indeed. The popular conception of oil, gas, and coal being the remains of once living creatures seems hopelessly out of date in light of Dr. Gold's research.

Dr. Gold goes on to discuss the origin of life, as it relates to microorganisms found in the earth's crust and asks whether these primitive creatures may exist on other planets as well.

Another interesting theory arising from the implications of mobile hydrocarbons in the Earth's interior relates to earthquakes and their prediction. Dr. Gold notes many cultures have spoken of physical changes occuring prior to earthquakes and suggests that these tangible phenomena are related to gases moving in the crust. When a critical point is reached in terms of shifting tensions, Dr. Gold suggests the result is an earthquake.

Interestingly, much Russian research agrees with Dr. Gold on this and other of his theories. Western research appears more bound to orthodox thinking. It is this writer's belief that Dr. Gold and his cohorts have much to say on the true state of the planet beneath us, and its contents.

The book receives my highest recommendation, and it will be interesting to see how much of Dr. Gold's thinking becomes the scientific orthodoxy of the future. The book is rated a must read for anyone with an interest ie earth sceiences, energy issues, or both.

Rating:
Summary: Surprising and entertaining
Review: This easy to read book makes moderately convincing arguments in favor of some unusual theories. It's surprising and disappointing that I can find few arguments against Gold's theories by those who reject them.
The book's main weakness is that it is not as rigorous as it ought to be when attacking theories that have been widely accepted. The book usually doesn't analyze alternate theories as thoroughly as I would have liked.
For example, he implies that the sudden 30 foot drop that some land experienced in the 1964 Alaska earthquake is hard for conventional theories to explain. But it would take a good deal of knowledge of both the accuracy of the reported time that drop took and of how fast a drop is consistent with conventional theories to verify this implication, and I see few signs that he has acquired such knowledge.
It's also rather annoying that he exaggerates the importance of his theories to oil drilling. It's easy to imagine that sedimentary rock is the most cost-effective place to drill regardless of how much oil is in other rocks. And the claim on the back cover that he says "we are not running out of petroleum" is a very misleading way to summarize his theory.

Rating:
Summary: This book could change everything
Review: Thomas Gold is no stranger to controversy, and this is book is about as controversial as it gets. He has a habit of unleashing a firestorm of whenever he publishes a new book, but Gold has this annoying tendency to be right most of the time. If what Gold says is true, then even the term "fossil fuels" would have to be dropped. Gold's theory is too involved to go into in a short review but basically he contends that petroleum is a bioproduct of deep biological activity in the Earth and is not the converted remains of ancient life after a few million years of decomposition. Gold presents compelling evidence that is hard to refute. In addition, these theories explain the presence of compostion of mineral enriched earth as an a few other mysteries such as the presence of helium which has been so far unexplained by conventional ideas. One thing about Gold is that he backs up everyting he says with sufficent evidence to convince most skeptics ( except the ones with a lot to lose).

If Golds ideas are true then thousands of textbooks will have to scrapped and re-written - which of course explains the widespread resistance by the scientific community to this idea.

The principles of science are supposed to be observe, theorize, test and predict. If your theory is true then it can make a valid prediction. After reading the book I am convinced that Gold is right.

After reading a few of the references I also discovered that the conventional theory of oil and gas creation has no real evidence to back it up. The conventional theory fails in between the testing and predicting phases. As Gold points out, so far no one has ever been able to come up with the chemical reactions needed to form petroleum from decaying organic matter. I found this book fascinating and well written even for the non-technical person. The issues are well presented and backup up with meticulous notes and backup data.

I would recommend this book to anyone, and I am sure this page will accumlate several "reviews" from people who have never read it challenging the data, but I suggest that you make up your own mind. You will find Gold to be very convincing.

Rating:
Summary: The Problem
Review: Thomas Gold's theory is very well thought out and makes more sense than anything else. However, the problem that I hit is that his theory and evolution don't go together. This much chemical activity and 4,600,000,000 years won't work. The earth would be gone by now. So my recommendation is that a reader read it with creation and the young earth theory in mind. Then everything fits perfectly. The true beauty of this book is that it makes you think.