Dr. Eugene Mallove, editor

Infinite Energy

P.O. Box 2816

Concord, NH 03392

 

 

Subject:            Review of Gold's book, The Deep Hot Biosphere

 

 

Dear Dr. Mallove:

 

            I enjoy reading IE [Infinite Energy] for its breadth of perspective and willingness to describe deep physics in terms that I (a geologist) can comprehend.  Keep up the good fight!  In issue 26 you have published a review of a book on a subject where I really know more than either the author or your reviewer, and I am compelled for personal interest to offer for publication remediation to a serious omission.

 

            The reviewer quotes the theme of Thomas Gold's 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, to be "Hydrocarbons 'are not biology reworked by geology, but rather geology reworked by biology.'"  In other words, biological modification of inorganic, geological material produces petroleum.

 

            This is not Thomas Gold's "abiogenesis" theory of oil as set forth in his 1987 book, Power from the Earth.  There, petroleum was considered part of the makeup of the planetesimals that accreted to form the earth.  Neither was it Gold's theory in eleven subsequent years of his publications up to and including his contribution in December 1998 of a poster at a conference on Petroleum Potentials in the Crystalline Basement held in Kazan, Tatarstan.  That paper was entitled “Metal Ores and Hydrocarbons,”  and its theme is that "… hydrocarbon flow, on the way up [from eath's interior] will make a large array of molecules, in detail depending on such things as the carbon-hydrogen ratio, the ratio to other elements like nitrogen and oxygen, the catalytic action of specific minerals in the rocks, and the temperature-pressure regime it finds on the way."  No mention is made by Gold to the end of 1998 of any reworking by biology of inorganic, abiogenically originating, geological product to create petroleum.

 

            How Thomas Gold could undergo such a conversion between the end of the 1998 conference and the 1999 publication date of Deep Hot Biosphere is puzzling - unless one knows that next to Gold's paper in the Kazan conference was another paper that specifically advances an entirely new concept: that petroleum is created by microbes acting on methane, which effuses from earth's interior.  The paper was mine: “Anhydride Theory: a New Theory of Petroleum and Coal Generation.”  It sets forth the proposition that petroleum is a mixture of anhydrides of methane, and that these are created by the progressive stripping of hydrogen from methane by microorganisms, either with or without associated fossil biomass.  Coal is a result of the bacterial addition of methane-derived carbon to peat.

 

            Your reviewer comments admiringly that "Gold even quite shamelessly commits the even deadlier sin of daring to speculate in realms outside his own sphere of expertise."  Notably, the term shameless used as a compliment by the reviewer is also a good description for Gold's plagiarism.  Proceedings of the Kazan conference are published (all in English) by Polar Publishing, Calgary (email <archeanc@telusplanet.net>, or tel. 403-244-3004).

 

                        C. Warren Hunt

                        1119 Sydenham Road SW

                        Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2T 0T5