I am no fan of Barton and the denier caucus in Congress, it’s quite clear that he was *not* seriously wondering about the origin of the oil, but being sarcastic.

What’s quite clear is that Barton is being disrespectful of Steven Chu by stating his question–which denies established science–in a sarcastic, wise ass manner (snidely, as you say latter).

Read/view his statement again:

Isn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole? It *wasn’t* a big pipeline that we’ve created in Texas and shipped it up there and put it under ground so we can now pump it up and ship it back?

Okay, I read his statement again. He seems to be trying to over simplify the science and create the impression that oil and gas deposits formed in Alaska because it was warmer there at one time. However, the science says that this is not the case.

He was trying to argue the old “natural cycles” saw against anthropogenic climate change, on the basis that the reason why there’s oil in Alaska today (a very cold place today with little life and therefore little potential to lay down future fossil fuel reserves), is that back in the Cretaceous, it was a heck of a lot warmer there, with no permanent polar ice caps and dinosaurs roaming the land, precisely because of the *natural* greenhouse effect, with atmospheric CO2 at four times the current concentrations.

There’s no argument there. Sure, natural global warming comes and goes, glaciers come and go. That doesn’t disprove anthropogenic global warming. And that doesn’t mean we humans can tolerate glaciers on top of our cities or oceans moving inland to flood our cities or deserts expanding to destroy our croplands or rivers drying up with no glacial sources.

Barton was snidely saying, “look, the oil and gas got there because the climate and CO2 undergoes natural cycles — we humans have nothing to do with it.”

No, the oil and gas got there primarily because of plate tectonics, and we humans had nothing to do with it. Climate change cycles are not the primary cause.

(Embarrassingly, Chu actually got it wrong here, apparently attributing the temperature change to plate tectonics and the ensuing movement of the continents, rather than climate change).

No, Steven Chu did not get it wrong. Temperature/climate change has very little to do with creation of oil and gas. Secretary Chu was not attributing temperature change to tectonics, although if you review the science you will find that tectonics does affect global temperatures because of its affect on ocean circulation and land surface distribution.

I am unimpressed by the post, and embarrassed by some of the unproductive comments in reply — it’s like Limbaugh in organic hemp dungarees.

I am unimpressed by your comment to the blog post. You say that you’re no fan of Barton and the denier caucus, but your arguments are right along the lines of what they claim. You don’t give credit to Steven Chu, and you don’t seem to appreciate and quote the real science in your arguments.

We need to fight these dinosaurs, but we don’t get anywhere if we just don’t listen to them: we need to keep advancing the scientific consensus, refuting sloppy science, and making productive policy proposals; we don’t get anything but smugness by muddying the debate, misrepresenting their views, and engaging in crude, tribalistic invective.

Now here I find much to agree with, yet you don’t seem to be practicing what you preach. If Barton won’t acknowledge the science of plate tectonics, how can Steven Chu educate him with a six-second answer to a clearly prejudiced question? I agree we need to refute people like Barton clearly and civilly. It’s difficult to convey a four-year degree in geology in a short answer to a poorly phrased question. Steven Chu’s answer was as good as any:

This is a complicated story but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology and in that time also the plates have moved around. And so, it’s a combination of where the sources of the oil and gas …

(Chu continues) No, there are continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages.

BARTON: So it just drifted up there.

CHU: Uh…. That’s certainly what happened. It’s a result of things like that.

That is certainly what happened. The oil and gas deposits just drifted up there with the drifting plates. Only if one is a science denier, like Barton seems to be, is that answer not enough. Then the answer becomes about as long as a textbook on geology. But the science deniers won’t read that and won’t understand it and won’t believe it.

I gave you an article by a professor, a top expert on this subject, which clearly states that plate tectonics is THE KEY REASON why oil and gas deposits are found in four areas including deserts and arctic areas. Then you try to use “garage logic” to find some scientific-sounding reason why this isn’t the case. Do you see the absurdity in that? Don’t you think Professor Roger N. Anderson, at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who understands ALL THE SCIENCE behind plate tectonics, would have mentioned Barton’s/your hypothesis if it was relevant? Do you really think that a Congressman from Texas and yourself understand plate tectonics better than the scientific community represented by Professor Anderson? REALLY?

Step back from your ego and your bias and your big business political ideology and you will realize that you are just making hand waving arguments that mean nothing. Every time you want to question the science on behalf of your favorite Congressman, you had better go get yourself an education in that science first. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has such an education, and it shows when he answers an inane question like Barton’s that comes from an overly simplified understanding of science.

How about the simple fact, which, again, this very post mentions, that essentially all of the earth was, presumably, covered with vegetation (the earth was a “hothouse”) in the very period, the Triassic, in which the sources of the oil in Alaska were flourishing? Wasn’t it that point, expressly, that Barton was alluding to — that the earth was at the time, much warmer?

Don’t you think that there is clearly NOTHING in Chu’s response that acknowledged this fact? In his answer to Barton, isn’t it obvious that Chu is implying, instead, that it was only because the swath of the earth’s surface corresponding to present day Alaska was in a more temperate zone at the time the vegetation thrived from which oil was created that Alaska now has oil off its northern coast? And in any case, what your general quote certainly does not establish is even the claim that the surface of the earth corresponding to Alaska in the Triassic period was, in fact, in a zone much closer to the equator; it speaks in general possibilities, not about the specific case of Alaska.

But thanks, of course, for the obfuscation.

frankly0 Says:

Look, based on what is said in this very post, isn’t it perfectly clear from Chu’s response that he, in fact, got the answer way wrong, and, that, in fact, Barton caught him in a howling error?

Really? frankly0, clearly it is you who is showing a bias as well as a lack of scientific knowledge and the ability to search the Internet a little. I give you the gift of knowledge (below) in the hope that this enlightenment will lead you to discover other great truths and shatter your bias.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-is-oil-usually-found

January 16, 2006
Why is oil usually found in deserts and arctic areas?

Roger N. Anderson, a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, explains.

Plate tectonics determines the location of oil and gas reservoirs and is the best key we have to understanding why deserts and arctic areas seem to hold the largest hydrocarbon reserves on earth. But there are other important locations of large reserves: river deltas and continental margins offshore. Together, these four types of areas hold most of the oil and gas in the world today.

Oil and gas result mostly from the rapid burial of dead microorganisms in environments where oxygen is so scarce that they do not decompose. This lack of oxygen enables them to maintain their hydrogen-carbon bonds, a necessary ingredient for the production of oil and gas. Newly developing ocean basins, formed by plate tectonics and continental rifting, provide just the right conditions for rapid burial in anoxic waters. Rivers rapidly fill these basins with sediments carrying abundant organic remains. Because the basins have constricted water circulation, they also have lower oxygen levels than the open ocean. For instance, the Gulf of California, an ocean basin in development, is making new oil and gas in real time today. The Gulf of Mexico is also a great example of new oil and gas formation in a restricted circulation environment (see image at right above).

The same plate tectonics that provides the locations and conditions for anoxic burial is also responsible for the geologic paths that these sedimentary basins subsequently take. Continental drift, subduction and collision with other continents provide the movement from swamps, river deltas and mild climates–where most organics are deposited–to the poles and deserts, where they have ended up today by coincidence. In fact, the Libyan Sahara Desert contains unmistakable glacial scars and Antarctica has extensive coal deposits–and very likely abundant oil and gas–that establish that their plates were once at the other ends of the earth (see image at right).

Plate tectonics is also responsible for creating the “pressure cooker” that slowly matures the organics into oil and gas. This process usually takes millions of years, giving the oil and gas deposits plenty of time to migrate around the globe on the back of plate movements. Because these hydrocarbons are much more buoyant than water, they eventually force their way to the surface. Alternatively, rifting, collisions between land masses, and other tectonic forces can free the mature oil and gas from deep within sedimentary basins and then trap these organic fluids in reservoirs before they escape to the earth’s surface. We know these reservoirs as oil and gas fields.

Isn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole? It *wasn’t* a big pipeline that we’ve created in Texas and shipped it up there and put it under ground so we can now pump it up and ship it back?

He was trying to argue the old “natural cycles” saw against anthropogenic climate change, on the basis that the reason why there’s oil in Alaska today (a very cold place today with little life and therefore little potential to lay down future fossil fuel reserves), is that back in the Cretaceous, it was a heck of a lot warmer there, with no permanent polar ice caps and dinosaurs roaming the land, precisely because of the *natural* greenhouse effect, with atmospheric CO2 at four times the current concentrations. Barton was snidely saying, “look, the oil and gas got there because the climate and CO2 undergoes natural cycles — we humans have nothing to do with it.” (Embarrassingly, Chu actually got it wrong here, apparently attributing the temperature change to plate tectonics and the ensuing movement of the continents, rather than climate change).

I am unimpressed by the post, and embarrassed by some of the unproductive comments in reply — it’s like Limbaugh in organic hemp dungarees. We need to fight these dinosaurs, but we don’t get anywhere if we just don’t listen to them: we need to keep advancing the scientific consensus, refuting sloppy science, and making productive policy proposals; we don’t get anything but smugness by muddying the debate, misrepresenting their views, and engaging in crude, tribalistic invective.

Look, based on what is said in this very post, isn’t it perfectly clear from Chu’s response that he, in fact, got the answer way wrong, and, that, in fact, Barton caught him in a howling error?

Basically, and clearly, Chu was saying that the reason Alaska had so much oil was that the area of the earth’s surface which is represents was once much further south, where the vegetation necessary for the creation of oil could flourish, and that that swath of surface had drifted up over geological time into the Artic. He did not acknowledge the truth, that once upon a time the earth was, in its entirety, much much warmer, the very most north included.

Personally, I’m genuinely surprised, and a bit appalled that Chu got this wrong. My strongest impression is that the vast amount of movement taking place in continental drift has been east-west, not north-south, so, unless there was some quite anomalous local behavior with respect to Alaska in particular, one simply wouldn’t expect much drift north-south.

In the end, Chu got it wrong, Barton got it right. And Barton’s an idiot?

I love how Barton posted the video thinking it made the Nobel Prize winning scientist look like the idiot, not him. What a clown.

For example, what about the looming and increasing concern of the house committee on science and technology that the many cap&trade relevant agencies lack coordinated efforts (reporting to ensure proper and timely decision-making)? Without a coordinated effort from all types of monitoring sources, there is no way to completely measure, monitor, and verify the backbone of a cap and trade system.