Curtain Call for Fossil Fuels
Curtain Call for Fossil Fuels
Abiotic Oil & Carbon's Colossal Curiosities
“To the writers of books upon meteorites, it would be as wicked—by which we mean departure from the characters of an established species—quasi-established, of course—to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be to something in a barnyard, a temptation that it climb a tree and catch a bird. Domestic things in a barnyard: and how wild things from forests outside seem to them. Or the homeopathist—but we shall shovel data of coal.”
—Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned
The End
With a title like Curtain Call for Fossil Fuels you may be led to think that this is about alternative energy or, more hopefully, “free” energy, but alas, it is not. Rather, it is an attempt to portray the inadequacy of the term “fossil fuel,” and to prevent its further usage in the English language through education in the mysteries of the hydrocarbon structures in the Earth. We can’t blame people for using this misleading phrase, being guilty myself. We are inundated with such misconceptions. One should always be ready to consider new ideas and concepts, especially once the evidence is presented.
The term “fossil fuel” is a standard phrase used in reference to hydrocarbons in their various permutations as petroleum, coals, and natural gas. The argument presented here is that hydrocarbon deposits are not “fossilized carbon” at all in the sense implied in the modern usage of that term, that there is a larger “carbon dynamic” eventuating in the Earth process, of which mysteries abound. The standard response to all this is “well, they FIND fossils in the deposits.” This is scientific fact and will not be disputed, fossils certainly are found in SOME deposits, many of them being quite curious—coal balls and roof balls—and will be discussed in turn as they will further my argument. There are also serious fossil anomalies, evidences of human intelligence which crop up in various coal beds supposedly laid down hundreds of millions of years before humans are supposed to have existed. We will first look at the hydrocarbon structures themselves.
Universal Carbon
The distribution of carbon throughout the universe presents a fascinating picture continuing to evolve with new discoveries. Carbon is ubiquitous, being the fourth most abundant element in the universe, following hydrogen, helium and oxygen respectively. In the interstellar medium (ISM), carbon is found in various forms including atoms, ions, molecules, and dust. Complex organic molecules containing carbon, such as nitriles, aldehydes, alcohols, and long-chain hydrocarbons, have been detected in dense interstellar clouds. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widely distributed in galactic and extragalactic regions. In the solar system, methane (CH4) is present in the atmospheres of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Diverse carbon compounds have also been found on several moons of these planets, Pluto, comets, and asteroids. Saturn’s moon Titan rains methane from methane clouds into liquid methane rivers, lakes and seas, perhaps it was a dinosaur-infested planet in the past?
There is such a universal abundance of carbon that it may be reasonably considered that during the formation process of the Earth vast amounts of elemental carbon were integrated into the deep Earth structure, and cosmic carbon is still being deposited on Earth in interplanetary dust grains. Numerous meteorites with carbonaceous content have been reported, including coal-like substances.
Carbon exists on Earth with a dual physical nature as the hardest (diamond) and the softest (graphite) of mineral deposits. Carbon is also a fundamental ingredient of carbonate “sedimentary” rocks (limestone, chalk, graphite, dolomite, etc.), some deposits exhibiting curious and fantastic features which bring into question the normal concepts of sedimentation. Atmospheric and biospheric carbon are integral to our very structure and existence, and it is the acclaimed residue of past biospheric activity, which is the alleged source of Earth’s vast and generally pure hydrocarbon deposits.
Carbon is everywhere permeating the Earth—in depositional structures well studied due to the immense economic and political value of usable hydrocarbons, and as rarefied migration and transformation through much of the Earth to the surface, where it slowly but constantly outgases. Hydrocarbon deposits are vast and diverse: oil, coal, natural gas, methane hydrate. They appear in all geological strata from Precambrian (pre-life!) to Recent (too young for “fossil” process), and include igneous rocks (deep Earth origins, allegedly no life due to heat and pressures involved), with some hydrocarbon deposits completely enclosed in basalts. Oil is also found in bubbles in crystals and geodes.
What could be the source of all this carbon? It is theorized that depositions are resultant from the carbon cycle in the biosphere, which imposes an incredible and curious stability on Earth’s chemistry, as oxygen breathing fish are found since the early Paleozoic. Calculations of the carbon budget of the Earth indicate that on average 20 kilograms of carbon have been deposited per cubic centimeter (20kg/cm2) over the age of the geological column. That is quite an astounding bit to come from purely biological processes, and the curiosities of the deposits are astonishing as well.
Dinosaur Dung
If hydrocarbon deposits in the Earth are not formed from distilled fossils, then what? There is an alternative viewpoint in the abiogenic—non-biological—theory of hydrocarbon deposits (Mendeleev, Sokoloff, Vernadsky, Kudryavtsev, Gold, and others), and that is that the carbon—a primordial Earth substance—is constantly upwelling as methane from the deep Earth where it was deposited during planetary formation. In this theory the primordial carbon is transformed into petroleum and coal by chemical and bacteriological action in its upward migration from depth.
This abiotic theory has been well advanced in our current times by the late Thomas Gold (1920-2004), a noted and erudite scientist, but is still not provided a fair hearing in the courts of Western science. Gold has done extensive research, including drilling into Precambrian igneous rocks for hydrocarbons, to prove his theory. Gold presents Kudryavtsev’s argument that “no petroleum resembling the chemical composition of natural crudes has ever been made from genuine plant material in the laboratory, and in conditions resembling those in nature.”
In what is known as Kudryavtsev’s Rule “any region in which hydrocarbons are found at one level will be seen to have hydrocarbons in large or small quantities, but at all levels down to and into the basement rock.” Where oil and gas deposits are found, there is often a concordant coal seam or seams above them. Where the vertical stacking of hydrocarbon deposits is found such as in Iran, Java and Sumatra, and Oklahoma amongst other locales, drill shafts for oil and gas wells penetrate shallower coal beds. Gas is usually the deepest in the pattern, and can alternate with oil. All petroleum deposits have a capstone generally impermeable to carbon’s upward migration, and this capstone provides the damming mechanism allowing accumulated deposition.
Numerous reports indicate that some production oil fields appear to be refilling, or not depleting at the expected rate. This indicates continuous upwelling, and not static, dwindling sedimentary deposits. There is plenty of oil, not that we should necessarily be using such a backwards technology. But what ever happened to that “Peak Oil” nonsense? What we have to realize is that oil is the economic driver of our present civilization, the scarcity concept is essential to keep prices high and control of the population. Drilling is massively expensive and technical as well, and one is not inclined to drill where they don’t think they will find anything.
Western scientists are more heavily indoctrinated into certain belief structures than say the Russian scientists, who by following the abiotic thesis have allowed Russia to become the second largest producer in the commercial hydrocarbon market. Funnily enough, reviewing discussions/arguments between the theories, I always love to see the pseudo-skeptics chime in with their laundry lists, one comparing abiotic oil to “creationism, ghosts, witches, horrorscopes, christianity, alien abuductions [sic].” The commenter forgot to mention homeopathy, crystals and tarot cards 😆
“The capital fact to note is that petroleum was born in the depths of the Earth, and is only there that we must seek its origin” —Dmitri Mendeleev, 1877
Fire Ice
Under the oceans methane hydrate—fire ice—has accumulated in a semi-stable “frozen” state. This may be the result of the great masses of oceanic water acting as a capstone/reactor with the methane, and methane hydrate is also found under permafrost associated regions. One estimate is that these global hydrate sediments contain over 7 billion cubic kilometers of methane in the hydrate form, far exceeding the total of all other estimated sources of natural gas.
My article on methane hydrate deposits:
In considering in our imagination how these deposits are structured in the Earth, we can see how one has cause to build a picture of carbon gas migrating up from deep Earth sources globally. How and in what form it deposits—if it doesn’t work its way to the surface like much of the gas—depends on geological and chemical structures of both large and small areal extent.
Signposts and signatures
Oil deposits are claimed to be of marine fossil origin, migrating from fossiliferous shales into other geological strata, generally only sedimentary. One major but little publicized problem—outside of the fact that no actual fossils have ever been found in petroleum—is that there is no known exact chemical process for conversion of biological debris into petroleum! Biological markers are claimed as the proof of biological origins, but perhaps they are contaminants. As noted above, some of the “biological markers” in oil are present in cosmic hydrocarbons. Here we find a major scientific belief—that of the biological origins of oil—without the fundamental and most necessary mechanism ever having been accurately described!
Common chemical signatures, based on trace element content ratios, are found in oil from particular regions, such as the Middle East, regardless of geological age of deposit. In fact most oils can be analyzed in this fashion to provide information on their regional source. The hydrocarbon deposits of Southeast Asia are found in an arc running from the Himalayas through the volcanic regions of Indonesia, cutting quite a geological swath. Yet the oil from any deposit in this region possesses a characteristic chemical marker, an affinity thus indicating a common regional source. Another dimension is added in that of the common chemical signature of oil found in Ordovician layer source rocks worldwide, said to be caused by a specific microfossil.
Coal and oil are considered to be of differing origins, oil from marine deposits and coal from vegetative land deposits. The two types of deposits are often related, and oil and coal also have significant chemical affinities. Oil and volcanic products have close chemical affinities as well. Eugene Coste (1859-1940) advocated for the volcanic origin of these resources, drawing parallels between the products of oil and gas fields and those of volcanic solfataric action, which include water, chloride salts, sulfur, sulfuretted hydrogen, carbonic acid, and hydrocarbons. His work suggests that petroleum, natural gas, and bituminous deposits are the condensed products of solfataric volcanic emanations, trapped as they rise through porous geological formations of various ages. Coste noted the presence of carbon and hydrocarbons in ancient rocks and the association of asphalts and oils with volcanic features, concluding that these substances originate from deep-seated fluid magmas, possibly in the form of carbides, and that the pressure of natural gas is a remnant of volcanic energy.
Earthquakes, like volcanos, may also be related to upwelling hydrocarbons. The shifting of large subterranean gas volumes could easily account for earthquake action and could also provide a workable model for tsunamis. Numerous eyewitness accounts over the centuries indicate curious natural phenomena related to earthquakes: lights, sounds, flames. In countries such as China, where pragmatism has the ability to overcome theory, ground gas measurements have been used successfully to predict earthquakes (Haicheng, 1975). A whole range of curious natural phenomena such as earthquake related lights and booming sounds may well be connected to upwelling hydrocarbon gasses.
Gas is produced in commercial quantities from the sides of Mount Taranaki, New Zealand’s largest active volcano, so volcanos and hydrocarbons are known to be directly related.
Diamonds are formed in volcanic pipes, from materials brought from extreme depth in the Earth. This shows that pure unoxidized carbon (diamond) and methane, which has been detected as gas bubbles in diamonds, exist at great depth, providing the source material for the abiogenic theory.
Instantaneous Generation of Petroleum
A recent paper “Controversial Issues of Hydrocarbon Field Formation and the Role of Geomagnetic Fields” by Andrey A. Ponomarev et al., explores unconventional factors influencing the generation of hydrocarbon deposits, particularly focusing on the role of geomagnetic fields in the instantaneous generation of petroleum! The paper reviews the geological contradictions between abiogenic and biogenic theories of petroleum origin and introduces an unconventional theory, which emphasizes the radical chain mechanism of hydrocarbon generation from organic matter. This mechanism is significantly influenced by discrete geomagnetic fields, leading to the almost instantaneous generation of hydrocarbons in reservoir conditions, a phenomenon the authors refer to as an “underground thunderstorm.” While these authors support the biogenic origins from post-life organic deposits, it is fascinating to consider the geomagnetic instant creation potential, which may lead to deeper insights into the abiogenic theory. Or perhaps allow us to consider that there are real aspects of both theories?
Destruction of the Lost Continent of Mu
While Thomas Gold has promoted a modern scientific approach to the relationship between hydrocarbon gases, earthquakes and volcanos, we can also thank James Churchward who proposed this link as the cause for the sinking of the hypothetical lost Pacific continent of Mu. Churchward proposed a theory that attributes the catastrophic sinking of this vast landmass to the rupture of immense geological gas chambers.
According to Churchward, Mu was an immense continent covering nearly one-half of the Pacific Ocean, home to an advanced civilization of 64 million inhabitants. The continent was supported by a network of massive underground gas chambers. These chambers, filled with volcanic gases, were responsible for elevating Mu above sea level. However, a series of catastrophic events, including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, led to the explosive release of these gases. Once the chambers emptied, they could no longer support the weight of the continent. Consequently, the structural integrity of the landmass was compromised, leading to its fragmentation and eventual submersion beneath the ocean’s surface.
Churchward’s narrative describes this process as almost instantaneous, with Mu being “completely obliterated in almost a single night” and disappearing into a “great abyss of fire,” covered by “fifty million square miles of water.”
There are some potential corroborating factors that could lend plausibility to this idea:
It is well-established that large natural gas reservoirs and fields exist trapped underground, representing significant accumulations of hydrocarbon gases. If these reservoirs were ruptured or released rapidly, they could potentially have immense geological consequences. The association between hydrocarbon gases, volcanic activity, and seismic events is recognized in certain regions, such as the release of methane and other gases being linked to mud volcanoes and the migration of gases along fault lines contributing to some earthquake processes.
Catastrophic gas release events have occurred in Earth’s history, like the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which may have involved massive methane release from the seafloor, triggering climate changes and environmental disruptions. The rapid release of pressurized gases from underground reservoirs could conceivably cause significant surface disruptions, including ground subsidence, crater formation, or even the sinking of land masses, as proposed by Churchward for Mu.
Such gas bubbles existing in the form of commercial gas fields, are related to volcanoes in some geographical areas. Many mysteries of global geological structures and Earth’s history, such as mountains, crater remains, and mass extinctions, could potentially be explained by the upwardly migrating gas bubble theory. It may well be a major cause of geological activity warranting further investigation.
Carbon from Earth’s Pre-Flood Vapor Canopy
Isaac Newton Vail, in his work “The Waters Above the Firmament,” presents a unique theory regarding the formation of coal beds. Vail’s thesis, known as the Annular or Canopy Theory, posits that the Earth, during its early formation, was surrounded by vast rings or annular systems similar to those observed around Saturn. These rings, according to Vail, were composed of various materials, including water, minerals, and crucially, carbon. These rings were not limited to the equatorial region like Saturn’s rings, rather they enveloped the entire planet, forming a vast canopy in the skies.
During the Earth’s igneous era, when the planet was in a molten state, the intense heat vaporized a significant amount of material, including water and carbon, which then ascended and formed these rings around the Earth. As the planet cooled, these materials began to condense and fall back to the surface. The innermost rings, which contained heavier minerals and metals, fell to the Earth first.
Coal beds, along with other carbon strata, are not the result of decomposed vegetation as commonly believed but are instead accumulations of carbon that were once part of the Earth’s annular system. This carbon, having been expelled from the incandescent Earth and retained in the annular system, eventually fell back to the planet’s surface as sediment.
As the annular system gradually condensed and fell to the Earth over long ages, the last remnants, being water, fell as the final Deluge of Noah. The vapor canopy covered the entire Earth, creating a greenhouse effect that allowed for an Edenic climate on Earth with no seasons or rainfall until after the Flood when the canopy fully collapsed.
“Vast” as an inadequate descriptor
Even if the biological origin theory—or at least some aspects of it—is true, some of the petroleum reserves are staggeringly colossal, the mind boggles at where the even larger accumulations of source rock could possibly be. This “source rock” simply has not been found in significant cases.
Prudhoe Bay in Alaska has an estimated retrievable reserve of 15 billion barrels—one of the largest reserves of oil known. However, the oil and tar sand deposits are jaw-droppingly titanic in comparison. The Orinoco heavy oil belt in Venezuela and the Canadian oil sands of the Athabascan deposits both contain estimates of over one trillion barrels of oil each. These are deposits of heavy oil completely intermixed with sands over thousands of square miles. There is no way that this extremely vast amount of heavy viscous—flowing only when heated—hydrocarbon material could have formed, “migrated,” and become completely intermixed, into the present sand beds from any “fossil” deposit, none of which have been found for these deposits.
What could be the origin of all this heavy oil? Upwelling transforming carbon? Carbon rain from the canopy? Perhaps, or something more complex, maybe even energetic? The trials and tribulations of the carbon element cannot alone explain the many curiosities and anomalies of the geologic column, of which petroleum and coal are but mere pieces of the puzzle.
The Athabascan sands, conventionally dating from the Cretaceous, overlie extensive Devonian bitumen deposits bearing a chemical affinity thus indicating a common origin! It is curious to note that in this general geographical region, there is an unconformity of other Cretaceous rocks conformably overlying Devonian rocks, with outcrops for over 150 miles in one direction. This is quite a bit of the geological column to be missing as though nothing had happened during those vast stretches of time: the carbonaceous Carboniferous itself, the great die-offs of the Permian, the initiation of the age dinosaurs in the Triassic, the dinosaur fluorescence in the Jurassic, all as if not a day had passed. This unconformity, like many others, are best left alone, or cherished notions shall be lost, forever.
Near Banff, Alberta Lower Cretaceous beds are overlain conformably with Lower Carboniferous. Some of the rock consisting of this dual formation is so similar as to be easily mistaken for the same deposit, save for the difference in fossil content. That is, that if it weren’t for the fossil differences it would appear to be the same bed of deposits, completely lacking Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic and Jurassic activities. There are many such anomalies and curiosities in the structure of the Earth, some of which prompt us to question the true nature of the geological column, whether or not it actually represents a linear time line of standard depositions or something far more complex and perhaps mysterious. For the point at hand we will refer to the accepted layering and names, and perhaps at another time delve more deeply into the questions arising out of the complex structures of sedimentary deposits.
The Carboniferous Period—comprising the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian—is named after the vast amounts of coal and other hydrocarbons found at this horizon level of the geological column. Coal deposits are certainly not limited to the Paleozoic, appearing in progressively younger strata into the Tertiary, but the Pennsylvanian beds are vast and persistent, both in thickness and areal extent. It has been assumed and acclaimed that these vast deposits are merely the remains of ancient forests and swamps, compacted and transformed over time. As a reference, it has been estimated that the present Amazon forest, if compressed into coal, would only comprise a couple inches or so of coal. Quoting the ever eloquent Velikovsky on the subject:
“Seams of coal are sometimes fifty or more feet thick. No forest could make such a layer of coal; it is estimated that it would take a twelve-foot layer of peat deposit to make a layer of coal one foot thick; and twelve feet of peat deposit would require plant remains a hundred and twenty feet high. How tall and thick must a forest be, then, in order to create a seam of coal not one foot thick but fifty? The plant remains must be six thousand feet thick. In some places there must have been fifty to a hundred successive huge forests, one replacing the other.”
—Immanuel Velikovsky
What about an 800 foot (243 meter) thick coal seam in Australia? How many miles thick must the plant matter have been to form such massive pure carbon deposits? What, pray tell, causes these multiple layers and exceptionally thick coals? While peat bogs do have a chemical congruence with coal beds, there are questions of size and structure which leave the fundamental question of origin still open. Would successions of massive peat bogs and marshes continually be deposited at the same flat area, dozens of times, cycling with shales and limestones, and adding in clays, sands and gravels in more recent deposits? Velikovsky postulates catastrophe-spawned hurricanes sweeping burnt forest debris with successive tides sweeping in marine layers and fresh layers of burnt organic materials. Yes, some of the evidence supports his line of thought, but not all of it.
Somehow I think something more organic—or more properly, organized—has happened, or is happening.
Sequential Somethings
Cyclothems are rhythmic sediments, repeated layering of alternating strata, such as coal, limestone, shale, etc. They are not to be confused with annual, or “varve,” deposits, which indicate seasonal variations. No, the cyclothems are mind-boggling curiosities. The Pennsylvanian cyclothems, which in this case include coal measures in the sequence, cover over 50,000 square miles in areal extent in North America, and further persist in outcrops around the globe (like France, for one). Some of the associated layers are very thin shales less than half an inch thick bedded in layers with pure coal of varying thicknesses, all perfectly dead level and flat, with known continuous segments of over 15,000 square miles! How can these finely layered strata be explained? Certainly not by sedimentation, especially when the polystrate fossils are considered. And when we consider that these precisely-related coal seam sequences are found in Europe, then their amazing persistence truly boggles the mind. Methinks more than giant hurricanes at work here.
Fusain, or “mother of coal” is a charcoal-like geological layer that appears in coal beds mostly, but not always. Fusain contains “woody” characteristics, indicating a potential vegetative origin, however the exact mechanism has yet to be scientifically described. It is persistent globally, and it has been suggested is the remains of conflagration. What sort of conflagrations create perfectly flat, very thin (some 1/4”, 6.35mm) carboniferous layers of questionable origin and of great areal extent?
Vein-like deposits of coal have been described, such as the Canadian type known as Albertite, suggesting the possibility that the coal was at one time liquid. This is a further nail in the coffin for the increasingly tenuous conjecture that the coal beds are merely ancient swamps & peat bogs. It is almost a certainty that the coal was injected as a liquid into the fissures. In the case of Albertite, a vein coal from New Brunswick, Canada, liquid petroleum is found in cavities, as well as in cavities of related shales.
Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!
Fossils are certainly found in coal, but these raise far more questions than they answer. Actually the greater curiosity is the general absence of fossils and source material patterning in coal, save for reports on some Tertiary coals such as the Geiseltal of Germany which has been described as a “veritable graveyard” of flora and fauna of globally diverse geographical and climatological regions deposited in a mixed and disarticulate fashion. Such large deposits of mixed biological debris are not limited to coal beds, and are quite indicative of global catastrophe such as postulated by Velikovsky. Deposition of the Geiseltal must have been quite rapid, as chlorophyll is still found preserved in leaves in the coal, thus indicating that the coal itself is not from the leaves! Perhaps it had rained as fire from the sky during or causing suggested catastrophe. Or was squirted wholesale from the bowels of the Earth, or rained from the heavens, to punish and extinguish the trees and animals of paradise.
In general however, what fossils that have been found in coal beds are replacement fossils, that is they bear the patterns of the original flora or fauna, but consist of coal itself, or often pyrite and other minerals. Most fossils that do occur are at the top or above the seam, leaving the seam bodies pure. That is, the fossils are found in the non-coal roof or floor rocks!
Coal is amazingly pure carbon, often 90% or more, with mineral contents as low as 4%, and ash residues of less than 3%. Curiously, erratic boulders and rock fragments are found in coal, though soils which the vast coal-forming forests supposedly grew upon are fully absent. It is claimed that the so-called “fireclays” found underlying many coal beds are the soils upon which the vast forests once grew, but in Nova Scotia there is a coal measure three miles thick, whose structure contains 76 coal seams and 90 fireclay layers. The fireclays are occasionally found without related coal as well.
Proceeding into the continually more curious we come across the polystrate (multiple strata) intrusions such as fossil trees. These can penetrate from a carbonate layer–e.g. limestone–into one or more coal layers. This raises the question of how those trees could have stood through successive aeons of forest accumulation and destruction. Shouldn’t the tree have become part of one mere layer of coal, along with its floral family? Examples of such trees are described in the literature as “coalified where they are within the coal seam, but are not coalified where they are in the carbonate” (Gold) leaving exact origin open to question. Seriously, how could a tree stand through the complex and long term activities which supposedly caused the finely laid, flat, consistent coal beds and end up partaking of the mineral substance of that and the alternating oceanic layers? There are many examples of polystrate fossils, they are not limited to coal beds, but they raise some important questions. Common sense requires a new paradigm to be engendered.
Coal balls and roof balls are another curiosity. Coal balls are spheroids of plant materials residing in the body of the coal seam and described as “remarkably well preserved” (Corliss). They range in diameter from several feet down to an inch or so. Roof balls are a similar phenomenon, though occurring in the shales overlying the coal beds, and consisting of marine fossils. These two phenomena appear to be related, as they both indicate motionally active, rather than passive, formative processes in the creation of the spheres. The polarity between plant and marine animal indicates a alternation of origin, but yet they are structurally related. Is the formation of the shale directly related to the coal? Can we afford to overlook some wider ranging indications of organized patterning in geological formations? Organized… organic… am I allowed to think in this direction?
Now, for my next trick
But beyond curious and into the really weird we must consider some of the more bizarre objects which have been discovered in coal. Coins and spoons, stone walls and ancient mine tunnels, all have been reported from ancient coal beds. While stone walls and tunnels can be written off as “natural” formations, this is not so easy with the manufactured metal artefacts. A gold chain was found in a lump of Carboniferous coal by Mrs. S.W. Culp of Morrisonville, Illinois in June of 1891. Whilst breaking up coal for heating Mrs. Culp discovered the chain still partially imbedded in the coal chunk she had just broken. According to standard dating of geological strata, the chain is approximately 300 million years old. An iron cup was found in coal by an electric plant worker in Arkansas in 1912, the coal having come from Oklahoma and being dated at about 312 million years ago.
These dates are vastly previous to any accepted human occupation of this planet–dinosaurs had yet to walk the Earth–yet fully human remains have been discovered in similar strata! In 1862 in Macoupin County, Illinois, modern human male bones were discovered in a slate covered coal bed 90 feet underground, dated to ≈300,000,000B.P. The bones were crusted with a carbonaceous deposit which was easily scraped away to reveal white bone underneath. A similar skeleton found in a coal bed in Leicestershire, England, was reported in 1829. But people didn’t exist when the coal was being formed, so you will not learn of these anomalies in school or encyclopedia, yet.
While bizarre finds such as these are certainly not limited to coal beds, we’ll keep our focus to make our point. When we consider the rhythmic successions of finely layered, perfectly flat, persistent facies of coal, and then further add into our consideration the unique character of fossils actually found in and around coal beds, from the coal and roof balls and polystrate trees to the evidences of humans, then we find cause to disbelieve that these deposits are the remains of ancient forests. Which is further confirmed by deposits such as the vein-like coals ... which makes me wonder what else to term them rather than “deposits.”
The Beginning
Perhaps the entire geological column is a fortean event, or series of events, and if so we would expect the unexpected, and that is what we find, upon scrutiny. If the vast hydrocarbon deposits are the remains of some ancient biospheric global life processes, then we must work to build a picture of that life through forensic examination of the residue: i.e. the geological column. It would not be life as is presently conceived and pictured in numerous books—dinosaur infested swamps, or seas filled with strange flora and fauna.
Some scientific evidence has given cause for such pictures, but the gaps in the pictures are ignored, to the detriment of not knowing the full picture. We are left to conjecture over the origins of the Earth’s layers, that ancient and wonderful residue so highly appreciated in rugged mountain and desert canyon.
According to Rudolf Steiner, and others, all physical substances are the residue of previous life activity or cosmic processes. But what sort of life, planetary singular? A planetary being that rains single species deposits of dinosaurs or fishes interspersed in carbonate cements. Why not? Such deposits exist. But so do jumbled deposits of diverse animal fossils mixed together as if by massive global turbulence, and single deposits such as the Cambrian Burgess Shale containing more types of life than the rest of the geological column put together—the later at the beginning of life in the Cambrian Explosion! No easy answers.
Perhaps as Rudolf Hauschka has proposed, carbon—which he termed “Geogen”—is the primal Earth element itself (in the series with Water, Air and Fire), given life and form through the instreaming of cosmic forces when they meet at the Earth’s surface. As this Earth element wells up from deep underground on wings of fiery hydrogen, rather than being the residue of life, perhaps it is a necessary precursor. If so, what toll do we take on the future life waves of planet by our abuse of, and degeneration into, destructive hydrocarbon technology.
Everything that can be made in “organic” or coal tar chemistry can also be made from plant carbohydrates, from textiles to plastics, dyes to fuels, we can grow it all from the ground without rupturing Earth’s vital fluid system.
Not only should we stop calling hydrocarbons “fossil fuels,” we should also stop sucking them out of the Earth, and seek that time Tesla predicted as “when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” And then, perhaps, the natural order of intelligent progress will have cause to eventuate.
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References
Churchward, Colonel James; The Lost Continent of Mu; Ives Washburn; 1933
Corliss, William R.; The Sourcebook Project, Glen Arm, Maryland
– Science Frontiers: Some Anomalies and Curiosities of Nature, 1994
– Strange Planet: A Sourcebook of Unusual Geological Facts; 1975
– Unknown Earth: A Handbook of Geological Enigmas; 1980
– Mysterious Universe: A Handbook of Astronomical Anomalies; 1979
– Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological; 1989
– Inner Earth: A Search for Anomalies; 1991
– Neglected Geological Anomalies; 1990
– Biological Anomalies: Humans III; 1994
Cremo, Michael A., & Thompson, Richard L.; Forbidden Archeology, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1996
Fort, Charles; The Books of Charles Fort; Henry Holt and Company, 1941
Gold, Thomas;
–The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth; USGS Professional Paper 1570, The Future of Energy Gases, 1993
–Earthquakes, Gases and Earthquake Prediction, 1994 Hauschka, Rudolf; The Nature of Substance; Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983
Hauschka, Rudolf; The Nature of Substance; Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983
Ponomarev, Andrey A. et al.; Controversial Issues of Hydrocarbon Field Formation and the Role of Geomagnetic Fields
Vail, Isaac Newton; Waters Above the Firmament; Ferris & Leach, 1902
Velikovsky, Immanuel; Earth In Upheaval; Pocket Book Edition, 1977
Zou, C.N et al.; Continuous hydrocarbon accumulation over a large area as a distinguishing characteristic of unconventional petroleum: The Ordos Basin, North-Central China; Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, PetroChina, Beijing, China
Excellent info, thanks, Thomas. Amazing 80 feet tall seams of coal! If you haven't seen Fletcher Prouty's take, here's what Mr. X has to say: https://youtu.be/zSff0pwc1Xc?si=IENflpAsfQT_lPVg . He was the representative of the railroad industry at government energy seminars, since he worked for Amtrak. He points out that the definition of 'organic' was changed in an 1892 convention in Geneva, and that fossils are not found below 16k feet but that oil is drilled way below that. And of course Rockefeller's Standard Oil controlled much of the industry as well as the resultant petrochemicals used for Big Pharma, and also the petrochemicals used for Big Ag. Problem, reaction, solution.