Fueling the long, slow climb back into the light

The crusading chimpanzee alpha males are having a hurrah at the expense of all else that would listen to their screams of indignation and alarm and heed their call to War.

The sapient protest, but lacking the tooth and claw, mostly use their intelligence to avoid the battle with the armies of the ape.

But even the sapient feel despair as the chimpanzee- emperor wannabe cheerleads the depletion of the pivotal resource of civilization: the cheap energy that fuels our economy and eases life.

Which they are justified in feeling- if the resource is really non renewable.

There is methane ice seeping from the sediment of the Gulf of Mexico, in places up to 300 feet thick. There are whole communities of animals that live in the methane seeping from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Methane is produced naturally by a group of anaerobic bacteria. Anaerobic bacteria normally live in the absence of free oxygen- such as in the silt at the bottom of the ocean or deep underground.

In the natural carbon cycle, most of the methane produced in the ocean is by a species of Archaeobacteria . Much of this exists as methane hydrate, an ice-like compound, can be found in the deep ocean beds.

The mechanism production of hydrocarbons is somewhat controversial among geologists- or geology NeoTheo Con geology revisionists , anyway. Many insist hydrocarbons are generated spontaneously in the mantle of the earth, but there is much evidence against this idea. If you ask the Government, it tells the kids methane's a nonrenewable fuel. It even calls the methane ice on the floor of the Gulf a fossil fuel, although it's being continually generated by bacterial action.

Actually, there's evidence both biotic and abiotic processes are at work :
Arguments have been advanced for each viewpoint, and although they conflict with each other, each line of argument sounds strangely convincing. In favor of the biogenic origin of petroleum, the following four observations have been advanced:

(1) Petroleum contains groups of molecules which are clearly identified as the breakdown products of complex, but common, organic molecules that occur in plants, and that could not have been built up in a non-biological process.

(2) Petroleum frequently shows the phenomenon of optical activity, i.e. a rotation of the plane of polarization when polarized light is passed through it. This implies that molecules which can have either a right-handed or a left-handed symmetry are not equally represented, but that one symmetry is preferred. This is normally a characteristic of biological materials and absent in fluids of non-biological origin.

(3) Some petroleums show a clear preference for molecules with an odd number of carbon atoms over those with an even number. Such an odd-even effect can be understood as arising from the breakdown of a class of molecules that are common in biological substances, and may be difficult to account for in other ways.

(4) Petroleum is mostly found in sedimentary deposits and only rarely in the primary rocks of the crust below; even among the sediment, it favors those that are geologically young. In many cases such sediment appears to be rich in carbonaceous materials that were interpreted as of biological origin, and as source material for the petroleum deposit.

On the other side of the argument, in favor of an origin from deeply buried materials incorporated in the Earth when it formed, the following observations have been cited:

(1) Petroleum and methane are found frequently in geographic patterns of long lines or arcs, which are related more to deep-seated large-scale structural features of the crust, than to the smaller scale patchwork of the sedimentary deposits.

(2) Hydrocarbon-rich areas tend to be hydrocarbon-rich at many different levels, corresponding to quite different geological epochs, and extending down to the crystalline basement that underlies the sediment. An invasion of an area by hydrocarbon fluids from below could better account for this than the chance of successive deposition.

(3) Some petroleums from deeper and hotter levels lack almost completely the biological evidence . Optical activity and the odd-even carbon number effect are sometimes totally absent, and it would be difficult to suppose that such a thorough destruction of the biological molecules had occurred as would be required to account for this, yet leaving the bulk substance quite similar to other crude oils.

(4) Methane is found in many locations where a biogenic origin is improbable or where biological deposits seem inadequate: in great ocean rifts in the absence of any substantial sediments; in fissures in igneous and metamorphic rocks, even at great depth; in active volcanic regions, even where there is a minimum of sediments; and there are massive amounts of methane hydrates (methane-water ice combinations) in permafrost and ocean deposits, where it is doubtful that an adequate quantity and distribution of biological source material is present.

(5) The hydrocarbon deposits of a large area often show common chemical or isotopic features, quite independent of the varied composition or the geological ages of the formations in which they are found. Such chemical signatures may be seen in the abundance ratios of some minor constituents such as traces of certain metals that are carried in petroleum; or a common tendency may be seen in the ratio of isotopes of some elements, or in the abundance ratio of some of the different molecules that make up petroleum. Thus a chemical analysis of a sample of petroleum could often allow the general area of its origin to be identified, even though quite different formations in that area may be producing petroleum. For example a crude oil from anywhere in the Middle East can be distinguished from an oil originating in any part of South America, or from the oils of West Africa; almost any of the oils from California can be distinguished from that of other regions by the carbon isotope ratio.

(6) The regional association of hydrocarbons with the inert gas helium, and a higher level of natural helium seepage in petroleum-bearing regions, has no explanation in the theories of biological origin of petroleum.

Most serious scientists don't argue: much methane, and even oil, is the product of the biological decomposition of biological products (see Nature 426, 344 - 352 (20 November 2003); doi:10.1038/nature02134 for a review).

Any biological product can be produced by a combination of molecular genetics, biochemistry, and chemical engineering. It's all a matter of isolation of the organism(s) doing the job, determining the genes, and working out a scale up.

Hydrocarbons could be produced from garbage or plant biomass at high yield- with a little research and development to pave the way.

So, yes, for the present, maybe for a generation or so, the Chimperor can royally screw up the economic basis for prosperity.

But sooner or later, some bright kids somewhere are going to put it together: an alternative energy source that doesn't require the destruction of some of the most pristine wild places on the planet for it's exploitation.

Who knows? It may be something as simple as cloning methanogenic genes into a transgenically rewired photosynthetic blue-green algae grown under glass, in nitrogen+ carbon dioxide, without oxygen, and over wet garbage to produce an endless source of power for the world's industrial economies.

It would make Saudi Arabia worth only about as much as its sand, and pauperize the robber barons that've been busy creating Endless War in order to get the Blank Check from the Faithful.

I think it would be a good idea.