Letters to the Society

Geoscientists' letters

This page has been created to facilitate rapid and timely interchange of opinion. Each month (space permitting) a selection of these letters will be published in Geoscientist , the colour monthly magazine of the Society Fellowship.

Correspondence strings are listed in the order that they are begun, the most recent string at the top. Within each string, letters are listed with the first letter of the string at the top, and subsequent letters below.

This page contains letters from the current year.  The archive of letters from previous years are accessible by clicking the links to the left.

If you wish to express an opinion, please Email the Editor. Letters should be as short as possible, preferably c.300 words long or fewer. You may also write to:

Dr Ted Nield, Editor, Geoscientist, c/o The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG.

• Please note that letters will be edited for publication. This particularly applies to versions  printed in the magazine.  The Editor reserves the right not to publish letters, at his discretion. Writers should submit their letters electronically to ensure rapid publication. All views expressed below are the responsibility of their authors alone.TN

Support Contaminated Land Specialists, please!

From Angela Baird (Rec’d & Pub’d 12 August 2010)

I work for an engineering consultancy as an Engineering Geologist within a geotechnical team with some knowledge and experience of the contaminated land industry. Our projects often combine resources from the geotechnical and contaminated land teams to make the most of any ground investigations undertaken, working together to offer the client the solutions they require as efficiently as possible.

I believe it is important that engineering geologists/geotechnical engineers and contaminated land specialists have an appreciation of each others requirements and work together to achieve the best results from any ground investigation, especially during such financially challenging times as these.

What is the Society doing to aid communication between these specialists? The Engineering Group appears to be doing well in actively supporting and raising the profile of the engineering geologists. However, based on my experiences, Engineering Geologists do not have a monopoly on being underappreciated at work. I believe there should be more support for contaminated land specialists, particularly, within the construction industry - where the focus often falls heavily on the engineering aspects, with contamination aspects “tagged on”.

I was hoping that the (still!) un-revived Environment Group might take on this challenge. Failing that, perhaps the Engineering Group could assist the contaminated land specialists and their group, and work together to encourage and support each others’ specialisms, thus strengthening their links and stance within the construction industry?

Keep the Tertiary!

From Andy Butler (Rec'd 9 August; Pub'd 12 August 2010)

Sir, I read with nterest the debate regarding the status of the Tertiary in the August edition of Geoscientist.

As a practising geologist with more than 15 years' industry experience in hydrocarbon exploration, I wanted to record my own views on the useage of the terms.

Tertiary, Neogene & Paleogene are terms in common use and are useful in their own right. Generally, my colleagues and I use "Tertiary" as a catch-all for post-Mesozoic, pre-Quaternary systems and Paleogene or Neogene for convenience in lumping together Paleocene-Oligocene and Mio-Pliocene sequences.  "Tertiary" will always remain in usage, even if only informally, and I believe it would be better to reflect that in the official stratigraphy.  I agree from experience that the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene has the greater stratigraphic significance and that ideally the Paleogene / Neogene boundary would have been set at the end Eocene.

I feel that as a division of stratigraphy that has served us well and is in common useage, "Tertiary" should be preserved in the scheme. I do not agree that this adds "unnecessary complexity for future generations of geologists to learn".

From John Buckeridge (Rec'd 23 August; Pub'd 25 August 2010)

I have read the article "Tertiary to-do" with some interest. As a palaeontologist, I am concerned that we are even contemplating deleting the Tertiary. In addition, I find the term K/T Boundary to be a very useful one - an alternative such as K/P would certainly confuse, as there are many Ps in the system.

If the boundary between the Palaeogene and Neogene were to be altered (along the lines suggested by Pearson & Hounslow), apparently to move the Oligocene into the Neogene, we would create widespread confusion. The term Tertiary is certainly more than on of "historical relevance". I am also saddened to read the apparent adoption (by default?) of the US English spelling of Palaeocene and Palaeogene. Perhaps there will soon be a move to remove "u" from "colour"?

The Lost Emperor

From Paul Buckland (Rec’d & Pub’d 3 August 2010)

I am sure that I shall not be alone in pointing this out, but in the otherwise excellent article on the Russian Arctic (Geoscientist 20(8)), and unless Russia has now annexed the Antarctic, the rather bemused looking penguin on p.18 is a long way from home (in that these birds are exclusively southern hemisphere).

I am reminded of Gary Larsen's well known cartoon, with two Arctic terns sitting on an ice floe and one saying to the other: "You mean we flew 25,000 miles for this?”

The bird appears to be an emperor penguin in moult (I am open to correction from any geoornithologist) and while these trek up to 120km from their nesting sites in Antarctica, I suspect this one must be seriously lost!


Editor writes. Thank you to the many readers who have pointed this out. Clearly we should have challenged our assumption that the picture was correctly labelled, and the penguin merely out on a spree.

Glaciers again – when will they collapse?

From Cliff Ollier (Rec'd 1 July; Pub'd 12 July 2010)

Sir, In their comments on my recent article Hambrey et al. ( Geoscientist 20.06 June 2010 ) state that “...when glaciologists refer to the ‘collapse’ of ice sheets they do not mean disappearance in a few years, ...”.  Why did they not explain this to Gore, Hansen, Pachauri, Garrett and all the others who seem to have the wrong idea?

Hambrey et al. then continue “... [glaciologists] refer to a positive feedback whereby incremental change can lead to larger changes and, ultimately, to complete demise.’  This is a very private and specialised definition confined, so far as I know, to the authors. All the definitions of "collapse" I can find are similar to this one:

• Collapse - the act or instance of suddenly falling down, caving in, or crumbling (Collins English Dictionary).

I believe this is not only what most people understand by collapse, but also what the alarmists want to convey when they talk of the collapse of ice sheets. Suddenness is crucial to the idea.

So what time scale do these authors propose for their ‘collapse’ or ‘complete demise’? If not just a few years then when? Perhaps they join the (now dismissed) claim of Pachauri and the IPCC that Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035? Perhaps the icesheets will ‘collapse’ by 2100, but that would be pure surmise. The fact that the ice sheets where deep cores are drilled show no interruptions in half a million years indicates that it is extremely improbable.

“Anthropogenic” warming not beyond doubt

From John G Gahan (Rec’d 7.6 & Pub’d 8.6.2010)

Sir, I was disappointed with your editorial ‘ Unreasonable Doubt ’ in which you appear to align young-Earth creationism with doubt about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in that both stances are ‘denial’ veiled under the guise of ‘scepticism’.

Such a correlation is hugely worrying - particularly with your stated ‘belief’ that “Yet there remains little reasonable doubt that anthropogenic climate change is real…”. Granted it is well documented that during the past 100 years or so, gradual surface warming may have taken place; but as a scientist I should be interested to see the (full) evidence for anthropogenic cause and effect. To my knowledge there are several (at least six) hypotheses that could ‘reasonably’ contribute individually or collectively to atmospheric warming - ignoring the AGW ‘consensus’ attributed by The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the University of East Anglia (UEA) ‘climategate’ emails which has denigrated science in the eyes of the wider world.

Regardless of Lord Rees’s first Reith Lecture in which he states AGW is not controversial (so science is dead then?), is it not significant that because there has been no proper debate the Royal Society - with its insular take on the merits of AGW science (exemplified by its president, exacted by the IPCC and extolled by the BBC) - has contributed to a runaway dogma at the expense of compatible research in this field? It is hardly surprising therefore the Royal finds itself under pressure from its astute Fellows to re-examine the evidence because of ‘reasonable doubt’.

As Geoscientist is said to uphold the guiding principles of science and is the forum of debate, then please let the real debate begin.

Poles in peril

From Geoff Glasby*  (Rec'd 13; Pub'd 18 May 2010)

The November 2009 issue of Geographical Magazine  presents a disturbing account of the present status of the Arctic region, mainly the Arctic North, and the impact of global warming there. Most importantly, Arctic Ocean temperatures have increased by about 0.6°C between 1982 and 2009. As a result, there has been a steady decline in the thickness of Arctic ice. For example, the average extent of sea ice has declined from 8.2 x 106km² in 1979 to 6.3 x 106km² in 2009, a decrease of 23% in 20 years. Similarly, ice thickness at the North Pole has decreased by 50% between 1958-1976 and 2003-2007. These results suggest that Arctic multi-sea ice will disappear in summer within 20-30 years. The situation in the Antarctic appears to be even more extreme with the Antarctic Peninsula warming by 3°C between 1983 and 2009. This led to the collapse of the Larsen B Ice shelf in 2002. Some estimates suggest that sea level could rise by more than 40cm by the end of the century. Melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets would pose major problems for an overpopulated planet in the late 21^st Century.

Over the last 20 years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations at Mouna Lau Observatory in Hawaii have increased from about 350 p.p.m. in 1989 to about 388 p.p.m. in 2009, an increase of about 11%. If atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase at this rate for the rest of the century, the atmospheric CO2 concentration in 2100 would be about 435 p.p.m. The best estimate suggests that anthropogenic factors have contributed 75% of the rise of global temperatures since 1987†.

In addition, world population will be significantly higher in 2100 One estimate suggests that the median value world population will peak around 2070 at nine billion people and then slowly decreases to 8.4 billion by 2100.

In Russia itself, environmental stewardship is not a strong point. There are several major types of environmental impacts in the Russian Arctic as a result of waste discharges during offshore oil and gas activity, smelting of ore deposits to produce metals and nuclear weapons testing. Pollution is a serious problem wherever smelting is taking place. In such areas, the landscape is often degraded to a barren wilderness as far as the eye can see.

Global warming will be the most pressing problem faced by mankind over the course of the 21st Century. The most dramatic effects of global warming will occur in polar regions. Deep cuts in atmospheric CO2 emissions are a prerequisite for maintaining a stable environment into the future.

† Lockwood, M. 2008. Recent changes in solar outputs and the global mean surface temperature. III. Proc. R. Soc. 464 no. 2094: 1387-1404

* Geoff Glasby is a marine geochemist who has spent the last 22 years working around the world.

Does global warming matter?

From John Heathcote (Rec’d & Pub’d 11 May 2010)

I have seen plenty of evidence of less recent Holocene climate change. However, properly controlled experiments are not readily possible, and I accept that others, for various reasons, remain sceptical.

I think geologists can probably agree that we are currently using fossil fuels at a rate greater than they are forming. This cannot be continued indefinitely, so we have to change at some time. If we are erroneous in the belief that fossil fuel consumption is adversely affecting climate, we will give up fossil fuel earlier than we may need to, but we would always have had to do it.

For those who make their livelihood from fossil fuel exploitation, maybe it's not so good. Others will earn a living out of alternatives. None of this is catastrophic. If global warming is real, the effects will be far reaching, and are likely to place unbearable strains on our globally integrated civilisation. I'm sure life on the planet will survive, but it may not include us!

In most other areas of life, if something might be really bad but we are not quite sure, the precautionary principle comes into play, even if it's inconvenient. Despite the effect on the fossil fuel industry, my belief is that there are grounds for caution, and we should seek to reduce emissions of warming gases substantially. It will involve major change to my lifestyle as well as everyone else’s, and it won't be politically popular; but that is not a reason not to do it.

Global warming pseudoscience

From Kyrios Paralogou* (Rec’d 1 April 2010, and published as soon as possible thereafter...)

Sir, Congratulations on having the courage to publish Cliff Ollier’s illuminating paper “Glaciers – Science and Nonsense” (Geoscientist, 20(3)), and thus bring to the attention of a British geoscientific audience the findings of his seminal paper for the venerable Lavoisier Group “The Greenland-Antarctica Melting Problem Does Not Exist”. Ollier’s contributions complement the more wide-ranging survey of climate science in the monumental “Heaven & Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science” by fellow-Lavoisierian Ian Plimer. (Congratulations, too, in publishing a remarkably uncritical review of this “important” book in Geoscientist, 20(4).)

If I have one scientific criticism of Ollier’s paper it is that its mention of “the global warming that took place between 1975 and 1998” is not as explicit as Plimer’s more forthright “There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998”. Of course, as Plimer cogently argues, the global temperature data are so riddled with flaws that we cannot really be sure that there has been any warming at all.

As both Plimer and Ollier have noted, the notion of man-made global warming is politically-driven pseudo-science, comparable with Lysenko’s ‘vernalisation’ in the Soviet Union of Stalin and Kruschev. As Ollier has put it in a thoughtful paper on this theme: “Lysenkoism was eventually replaced by real science; the same will happen to Global Warming eventually, because real science will not go away.” In fact, the current tyranny of the global warming orthodoxy in the UK is the reason I have to write pseudonymously (as a geoscientist working in an industry whose future is now hitched to the global warming bandwaggon).

Already, ripostes have started coming in, criticising Ollier’s Geoscientist paper (see below). No surprise that they include people styling themselves as glaciologists and the like. As Plimer trenchantly put it in a BBC Radio 4 Today Programme interview in November 2009, his critics are “rent-seekers”, whose careers are staked on the war against climate change. Critics who accuse Plimer and others of falsification and misrepresentation of data are not to be compared with the tenacious investigators who have revealed the subterfuges of UEA. The works of the Lavoisierians are excluded from the peer review process, so it should hardly be a matter of sincere surprise or concern that they contain errors, whether large or small. In any case, in the field of scientific combat, this is an asymmetric conflict, and it is not reasonable to expect ‘guerillas’ opposing illegitimate ‘occupying forces’ to abide by some sort of Geneva Convention of science.

If there is any question as to where the majority of scientific opinion lies on global warming, Plimer’s observation in his Today Programme interview that the “most abundant number of scientists (in Australia) are geologists” must carry some weight. As a geologist myself it is heartening to have “Australia’s best-known geologist” (and an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society at that) as a spokesman for our science.

All that said, I think the Lavoisierians have not pursued the generic problem of Lysenkoist pseudoscience far enough. Plimer has pointed out that the much-vaunted Montreal Protocol (which purports to address the alleged effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on stratospheric ozone) does not address chlorine used in water treatment, or the “very large quantities of CFCs” emitted by volcanoes such as Mt Pinatubo. As we anticipate the demise of the Kyoto Protocol, the pseudoscience behind its Montreal proto-ancestor goes unchallenged. Will the Lavoisierians pick up the gauntlet?

*Name and address supplied.  Editor.

Now adults, try some common sense!

From David James (Rec'd 4 March; Pub'd 9 march 2010)

I have a strong interest in safety during fieldwork, my survival. My problem with the HSE zealots who increasingly attempt to dictate our behaviour is that all too often they do not distinguish between risk assessment that is a matter of common sense and is advisory and that which is not and is mandatory, ie consideration of circumstance.

If I was an employee in a helicopter making an emergency landing on water I would prefer not to trust my common sense and would bless an HSE culture that had insisted on prior training in what to do before letting me fly. As a retired geologist who still enjoys a spot of fieldwork, I reckon it up to me to use my common sense to make my own evaluation of risk and I get irritated when I see pictures of ‘politically correct’ field parties with all members sporting safety helmets when examining outcrops no higher than their noses.

I realise that unsupported excavations can be dangerous; recent tragedy only reinforces the need for proper training in avoiding such risk, but I do not accept the caption to the picture in Matthew McGann’s recent soapbox article, “on no account should anyone, ever, do this….” if only because I have not seen the site! Common sense tells me that if the excavation is in loose material, narrow and deep, then jumping down into it is clearly not to be recommended; if it is relatively wide, barely head-height and in relatively compacted or cemented material ( as suggested by the photograph) then surely one can proceed. The decision is to be made on-site, not by blanket dictat from some jobsworth in an office.

It is a sad commentry on our times that Matthew’s idiot receiving a rude shock after standing on a ladder in a swimming-pool using an electric drill is only to be dismissed as such if he /she owns the pool, ladder and drill. If not possibly (ideally) three people might be sued for allowing the rude shock to happen by loaning equipment or allowing access to the pool. Trebles all round ! The good and necessary parts of safety practice can only suffer if there is perception that laws based on HSE advice are written more for the benefit of lawyers than workers.

Geological fieldwork can be dangerous, sometimes this adds to its zest. Good advice and training have a vital role to mitigate danger; but so does common sense. And at my school there was no PPE in the chemistry lab!

Ice sheets

From Bruce Denness (Rec'd 9; Pub'd 10 March 2010)

Sir, Reading Cliff Ollier's piece on glaciers (Geoscientist 20.3 March 2010), I had an uneasy feeling that he may have been standing too near the polar trees to see the global wood. Interesting though his observations on glacier dynamics may be as far as they go, they do not appear to explain the dramatic events associated with the geologically recent past: the ending of the last ice age.

In little more than 2000 years starting less than 15,000 years ago, the global temperature rose naturally by about 6ºC accompanied a short while later by an equally rapid sea level rise of 100 metres or so due to the melting of continental ice sheets over much of the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere, which must then have been much like Greenland and Antarctica today. That was about 50 mm/year, which is consistent with forecasts of an impending sea level rise of about 5 metres by 2100 (Hansen, 2007) and about double that by 2200 (Denness, 1985). The latter was based on a global temperature forecasting model first published in detail by Denness (1984).

Avid readers of Geoscientist - and who isn't? - may recall that the temperature model also forecast: “a dramatic increase in global temperature for the 1990s – much more than expected from conventional models” (Denness, 1992); that duly occurred. The model likewise forecast the temperature decrease that has been going on over the last few years, obviating the need for the alleged “trick” apparently used by East Anglia's Climate Research Unit to disguise it. A conference organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers last November heard that the model goes on to forecast a sharp rise of about 0.25ºC around 2012 followed by fairly steady temperature until a further hike of about 0.4ºC in 2029 and, unless the world acts in unison now to prevent it, accelerating and uncontrollable rise thereafter (see Figure). Perhaps we should be grateful for economic recession.

References

• Denness, B. (1984): The greenhouse affair. Marine Pollution Bulletin 15(10), Pergamon Press, Oxford, 355-362.
• Denness, B. (1985): Greenhouse dilemma. Nature 318, 391.
• Denness, B. (1992): Global warming: natural and manmade. Geoscientist 2(4), 45.
• Hansen, J. (2007): Huge sea level rises are coming – unless we act now. New Scientist 2614, 30-34.
• Ollier, C. (2010): Glaciers – science and nonsense. Geoscientist 20(3), 16-21.

From Peter Barker (Rec’d 6 March; Pub’d 9 March 2010)

Sir, Cliff Ollier (Geoscientist 20.3) presents a partial view of glaciation, and the consequences for sea-level change. The best way of responding is probably to make a short list of statements addressing its main vulnerabilities.

1. Glaciers and ice sheets do flow downhill, but the relevant slope is essentially that of the ice surface, not that of underlying bedrock. Basal ice can flow “uphill”.
2. Ice flows (creeps) at all relevant temperatures: the colder, the slower, but still it flows. Geothermal heat and friction are important at depth, and basal melting can occur
3. Ice sheets are much younger (ie exchange ice with their surroundings) towards their edges than in the middle, as temperature (and other factors such as humidity and distance from the point of evaporation) affects both snowfall and flow. Close to its edges, an ice sheet does respond to modern temperature change. Palaeotemperature drilling goes for the longer record in the middle.
4. Antarctica is a (mainly) high continent, long sitting over the South Pole, whereas the North Pole lies within a deep ocean, with the nearest continents in lower (though still high) latitudes. Which do you think would be glaciated first, other things (eg ocean circulation) being equal?

There are other over-simplifications in the article, which it is pointless to try to correct. While applauding the concern that “melting scares” should not prevail, any more than denials of anthropogenic global warming, I think such an article should have been reviewed by a glaciologist before publication.

 

1984 and all that - reply

From Griff Cordey (Rec’d & Pub’d 25 February 2010)

Sir, Rick Brassington bemoans the poor take-up of the Chartered Geologists (CGeol) professional qualification (Geoscientist 20.1, January 2010). In his earlier history of the Institution of Geologists (‘Institution of Geologists – a brief history’ he notes that ‘… only a minority of professional geologists are Chartered geologists….’. Little has changed in the intervening period.

The largest group of professional geologists is probably those employed in the oil industry. The Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain’s membership is currently around 5200. The protracted process that finally resulted in the merger of the Institution of Geology with the Society (Brassington op.cit.) appeared to have taken place without the involvement of this group whose interests since 1965 have been represented by the PESGB. It might have helped to widen the recognition of the CGeol qualification if they could have been, in some way, involved.

The Society, by virtue of the merger, has assumed the role of professional regulator, yet the majority of those employed in the oil industry do not appear to recognise the need to acquire this professional qualification. Why is this?

A considerable proportion of oil industry staff are Earth science graduates and today many have, in addition, master degrees in petroleum geoscience or PhDs in specialised areas of the subject. On recruitment, they are placed in teams with experienced professionals and their work carefully supervised. Many employers additionally provide relevant courses on a continuing basis to augment on-the -job training, After three years or so, they are regarded as professionally competent.

This training process is probably as rigorous if not more so than that needed to meet the requirements of the CGeol qualification. The suggestion (Brassington , Geoscientist vol. 20,p.12) that should the Society abandon its role, then it ‘…would downgrade professional geoscientists to technician status…’.is, in the context of the oil industry, ridiculous. A further disincentive for industry professionals may be the need to be a Fellow of the Society in order to be eligible to apply for CGeol status.

In short, it is a qualification that some may feel is ‘nice to have’ but I suspect few in the oil industry feel it is a ‘must have’. In complete contrast, all the engineering disciplines require professional membership if a person is to progress professionally. Brassington suggests a number of ways by which the situation might be improved, citing employer recognition of CGeol as an important factor. If oil companies were to stipulate that all new recruits obtain CGeol and that this was essential for career advancement, the situation might indeed change dramatically.

However, given that recruits to the industry are academically well qualified, that the further training
provided is excellent and often on a continuing basis, the CGeol will, I suspect, remain as far as the oil industry is concerned, ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have’.

• Editor writes:  This and other responses to Brassington's piece may be found as subjacent pages to the online version of the original article.

Charter for change?

From Wendy Furgusson (Rec’d 19, Pub’d 24 February 2010)

Sir, It was with interest that I read the supporting statements of the Council nominees for 2010-11. First, to see their enthusiasm and ideas and second because of the make-up of the nominees. One topic of discussion at a recent Professional Standing Committee meeting that I attended was the lack of Fellows from academia and the oil industry going forward for Chartership. This was again commented on in the summary report on the first round of Chartership interviews under the new system.

It therefore struck me as ironic that of the 11 Council nominees, eight are from the oil industry or academia. Obviously interest and good will does persist in these fields; so perhaps whoever is voted onto Council may wish, as a group, to take up the challenge of tackling this shortfall.

Peak pique

From Dr David Antia (Rec’d & Pub’d 23 February 2010)

Sir, David Strachan provides a view of the future, based on peak oil occurring between 2016 and 2037 [1]. Peak oil was previously forecast in 1971 at between 1990 and 2000 [2] and in 1998 at 2008 [3]. Capital investment tends to follow the cyclic variation in commodity prices. This investment cycle coupled with the typical field production profile will inevitability lead to a perception that there will be a decline in global production in 10 – 20 years time. Whether there will be sufficient investment put in place to defer peak oil beyond 2020 will depend on finance availability, future oil prices, oil demand and the degree to which investment substitution into other energy forms occurs.

There are four groups of unconventional oil (primary resource (e.g. tar sand, oil shale [1])), refined products (e.g. GTL, CTL [1]), biofuels (e.g. biodiesel [4]) and geoengineered oil [5, 6]) which may contribute to filling any supply gap. Unconventional oil sources can be capital intensive and may be energy intensive. GTL and CTL project economics depend on the margin between the price paid for the gas/coal feedstock and the price received for the product oil. Tar sand and oil shale project economics depend on the product price. CO₂ emission constraints may impose a significant additional cost burden. Consequently, significant investment in these technologies (sufficient to produce 20 – 40 MMBO/d) is unlikely to occur until sometime after peak oil has occurred with an associated substantial oil price rise in the 5 – 10 year forward markets.

Mr Strachan did not consider two emerging comparatively low cost unconventional oil technologies, which appear to have potential to fill the perceived oil supply gap after 2020 [1]. These technologies appear to be cost competitive with conventional oil exploration and production. They are:-

1. Biofuels: Traditional biofuels (e.g. derived from corn, soyabean, sunflower, rapeseed and palm oil) have a very high land take and produce 127 – 4,481 bbls triglycerols/yr/km² [4]. The next generation of biofuel crops based on algae currently has yields of 35,286 – 105,857 bbls triglycerols /yr/km² [4]. The cost of producing about 11 x 10⁶ bbls/d of triglycerols (the feedstock for methyl-esters (biodiesel)) from algae is currently estimated at around $11.5/bbl [4]. Biofuel yield can be enhanced by passing sequestered CO₂ through the algae [4].
2. Catalytic Geoengineering of CO₂ sequestration reservoirs: Modification of reservoir pore water composition both prior to and during CO₂ sequestration has the potential to convert sequestered CO₂ to oil (which can subsequently be recovered) [5,6]. For example, sequestration of 100 MMscfd CO₂ may result in the formation of >47 MMBO (at 40 – 70^o C, >5 MPa) within an 11-year time period. i.e. >1 bbl oil per 8500 scft of sequestered CO₂. The estimated anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2004 were 49 Gt CO₂-eq, of which >30 Gt are CO₂ [7]. This emerging technology offers the potential to manufacture from anthropogenic CO₂ emissions >63 G Bbls/yr (>170 MMBO/day) of gasoline grade oil  within the reservoir. This represents a potential recoverable resource of 60 – 120 MMBO/d plus associated hydrocarbon gas products. This new technology has emerged from field and experimental evidence for a new model for high volume, fast, catalytic, oil formation at low temperatures (10-150⁰C) and medium pressures (5 – 80 MPa) in the geological (sedimentary) environment (Australia, Baltic, China, East/West Atlantic, East/Central Pacific, Equador/Peru, India, Middle East, North Sea, New Zealand, Russia) [6, 8].

These two emerging technologies appear to have the potential to meet the future global requirement for gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, and diesel, while at the same time finding a productive use for sequestered CO₂ by recycling it to form either biodiesel or oil.

In the event that peak oil does occur by around 2020, it is likely that the resultant high oil prices, and government incentives to develop unconventional oil resources and manage carbon, will provide the necessary investment environment to ensure both prolonged operation of depleting fields and substantial new investment into unconventional oil. There can be little doubt (given the size of the known unconventional resources) that with sufficient investment any oil supply gap can be closed for the foreseeable future.

1. Strachan, D., 2010. Bridging the energy gap. Geoscientist, 20, 2, 15-19.
2. Hubbert, M.K., 1971. The energy resources of the earth, Scientific American, 225, (September), 60-70
3. Cambell, C.J., Laherrere, J.H., 1998. The end of cheap oil. Scientific American, (March), 78-83.
4. Gupta, S. 2009. Algae: A most suitable tool for arresting global warming and sourcing bio-diesel; International Symposium on Carbon Management and Climate Change and Role of Applied Geochemistry in Mineral Exploration [ISCMCCRAGME]. 24-27 November 2009, Abstracts. NGRI, Hyderabad. Indian Society of Applied Geochemists [ISAG]. p.19.
5. Antia, D.D.J., 2009. Polymerisation Theory (the catalytic formation of oil from CO₂ and CH₄): Application of an Accelerated Geological Process to Remove Carbon Oxides from Flue Gases and use Carbon Oxide Sequestration to Produce Oil in Sedimentary Sequences. ISCMCCRAGME, 24-27 November 2009, Abstracts. NGRI, Hyderabad. ISAG. p.1-2.
6. Antia, D. D. J., 2009/2010. Polymerisation Theory – Formation of hydrocarbons in sedimentary strata (hydrates, clays, sandstones, carbonates, evaporites, volcanoclastics) from CH₄ and CO₂: Part I: Polymerisation concepts, kinetics, sources of hydrogen, and redox environment; Part II: Formation and Interpretation of Stage 1 to Stage 5 Oils; Part III: Hydrocarbon expulsion from the hydrodynamic flow regimes contained within a generating pressure mound; Part IV: Polymerisation modelling of sequestered carbon dioxide and waste organic liquids to hydrocarbons. Indian Journal of Petroleum Geology, 17 (1), 49-86; 17 (2), 11-70; 18(1); 18 (2).
7. IPCC, 2007 (ed. Metz, B. et al.) Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Technical Summary. Cambridge University Press.
8. Antia, D.D.J., 2008. Oil polymerisation and fluid expulsion from low temperature, low maturity, over pressured sediments. Journal of Petroleum Geology, 31, 263 – 282.

Climate Change

From Hugh Richards (Rec'd & Pub'd 20 January 2010)

Sir, In his item “Down-under doubts”, (Geoscientist, January 2010) Joe McCall has called for a statement of Australian scientists’ “doubts about climate change models” and for “a concise reply from an acknowledged expert”. I do not think this can realistically be achieved, but it is good that this issue has been raised.

As an on-line perusal of The Australian newspaper (quoted by Joe McCall) and related titles will show, climate science has become highly politicised in Australia, to a degree not seen in the UK. A number of scientists in that country (and elsewhere) have entered the fray as aspiring opinion-formers, in some cases appearing to have an agenda to cause confusion about climate change rather than to advance the science or to educate non-scientists. Furthermore, the areas of dispute are very diverse, ranging from predictions of sea-level rise on specific coastlines to whether CO₂ is an effective forcing agent for global warming at all. I do not see how a single statement of ‘doubting’ Australian scientists’ views could be obtained, and I very much doubt that a single ‘acknowledged expert’ could be identified who would be widely accepted as authoritative.

As geoscientists, I think we owe it to ourselves, and to those we interact with, to be well-informed about humanity’s ability to influence the global climate. However, I suspect that many non-academic geoscientists like myself, who do not have the time or resources to read deeply into the literature, are at little advantage over journalists and others who seek to interpret climate science to the public and our elected representatives. I wish I could sustain an informed critique of those who criticise the ‘consensus’ predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as being either exaggerated or too conservative, but I cannot (not in detail, anyway; and it’s the details that some of the ‘sceptics’ tend to focus on). I therefore look to the Geological Society and other such bodies to provide independent and authoritative statements on aspects of climate change science within their relevant remits. Unfortunately, the Royal Society’s statement of March 2005 is now out of date and, in view of its copious citation of the 2001 IPCC reports, I suspect it is rather unconvincing for those who take issue with the ‘consensus’ science approach of the IPCC. So what is to be done?

Firstly, I think the Geological Society should remind Fellows of their ethical duties as scientists to avoid making deliberately misleading statements about climate science (or indeed any other type of science), driven by non-scientific (e.g. political) agendas. The Society has, after all, seen it necessary to produce a Position Statement repudiating “Creation Science (attempts by Young Earth Creationists to gain acceptance for what they misrepresent in public as corroborative empirical evidence for their view)” as “a trespass upon the domain of science”. I do not think it is stretching a point to see the tactics of some seemingly scientific deniers of anthropogenic climate change as being akin to (albeit more sophisticated than) those of ‘creation scientists’.

Secondly, the Society should not get embroiled in controversy about climate modelling, but should state that predictive modelling of climate change is a necessary endeavour, albeit one which pushes beyond the boundaries of ‘normal’ science. The same can be said of other endeavours such as long-term post-closure performance assessment modelling for deep geological repositories for radioactive waste. The Society could also usefully state that in such endeavours, ‘consensus’ elicitation approaches as used by the IPCC are needed in order to provide outputs that are useful to policy/decision-makers.

Thirdly, the Society should produce independent and authoritative statements on what is and is not known about key topics which are clearly geological in nature and are the subject of dispute in the context of climate change. These statements should be intelligible to non-specialists, including scientifically literate journalists, but also well supported by references to the scientific literature. To demonstrate independence, such statements should be obtained from and agreed by as broad as possible a spectrum of expert scientists, who should be drawn mainly from outside the climate change research ‘community’ in general and the IPCC in particular, and preferably including scientists employed or funded by the fossil fuel industries. Of course, if those drawing up the statements were to agree that the IPCC 4th Assessment Working Group 1 report presents an accurate summary on a specific key topic, this should be stated.