[R-G] compare engdahl on plate tectonics to this

[Gregory Meyerson]

engdahl suggests that russian geologists who support the abiotic  
theory are applying wegener's plate tectonics theory to the discovery  
of oil.  engdahl uses this piece of information to suggest that what  
the russian scientists are doing is sound.  endahl also notes that  
u.s. scientists viewed wegener as a lunatic, the implication being  
that just as wegener was correct, so the russian geologists will be  
proven correct.





note below (from the heinberg article I url'd for you) how wegener is  
used to bolster the biotic origins case.  the relation between theory  
and evidence is complex.







The claims for the abiotic theory often seem overstated in other  
ways. J. F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corporations, Houston, Texas, who  
is one of the very few Western geologists to argue for the abiotic  
theory, writes, "competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers  
and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural  
petroleum does not evolve from biological materials since the last  
quarter of the 19th century."(12) Reading this sentence, one might  
assume that only a few isolated troglodyte pseudoscientists would  
still be living under the outworn and discredited misconception that  
oil can be formed from biological materials. However, in fact  
universities and oil companies are staffed with thousands of  
"competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men [and  
women!] knowledgeable of thermodynamics" who not only subscribe to  
the biogenic theory, but use it every day as the basis for successful  
oil exploration. And laboratory experiments have shown repeatedly  
that petroleum is in fact produced from organic matter under the  
conditions to which it is assumed to have been subjected over  
geological time. The situation is actually the reverse of the one  
Kenny implies: most geologists assume that the Russian abiotic oil  
hypothesis, which dates to the era prior to the advent of modern  
plate tectonics theory, is an anachronism. Tectonic movements are now  
known to be able to radically reshuffle rock strata, leaving younger  
sedimentary oil- or gas-bearing rock beneath basement rock, leading  
in some cases to the appearance that oil has its source in  
Precambrian crystalline basement, when this is not actually the case.