Report from 33d Intl. Geology Congress in Norway (By Charlie Hall)

Below is an email by Professor Charles Hall from SUNY-Syracuse detailing his recent trip to an international Geology conference in Norway. Though written for his friends and colleagues, I thought the details and insights he shared from his trip to Norway would be worth sharing with the TOD readership, particularly the comments on peak oil and climate change. Charlie also tells me he has a new paper published next week on EROI economics which I will format and post here.

…This model was a marvelous “systems” project and included continental drift, paleoclimate driven by the British Hadley climate model, paleo ocean currents and so on all of which would generate better or worse conditions for river runoff (with nutrients and sediments, in turn influencing phytoplankton production) , benthic oxygen levels and so on (I learned that absolute anoxia is not needed to form oil but low oxygen levels is), and temperatures (you need at least 15 C, thus Harris believes that much of the arctic — where not continentally drifted — will not produce too much oil).

The Oil Drum