An illustration that CO2 won't roast the Earth in a runaway tipping point…

policycritic at 8:21 pm
Is this a common plate tectonics formula?
No, it is not.
Neither it is a commonly accepted formula for the creation of hydrocarbons.
It isn’t even a formula for the creation of “rock”, as “rock” requires copious amounts of Silicon, Potassium, Aluminum, Magnesium, Manganese, Phosphorous, In addition to the iron in the formula (which comes from where, btw?) and the Calcium and Oxygen that could come from limestone and water.
Even then, these are not enough. In some rocks or there must be minor amounts of Chlorine, Fluorine, Lithium, Sulphur, Titanium, Boron, or Beryllium, and sporadically there must be concentrations of nearly all other metals with atomic numbers from 22 to 92 (except for 43) into rocks we call “ores”
http://www.mineralseducationcoalition.org/periodic-table-elements
See also the Bowens Reaction Series (by convention the hottest is on top the coolest on the bottom)
The vast majority of hydrocarbons in known deposits come from organic matter that is buried, heated, under pressure, and molecularly “cracks” large organic molecules into smaller ones. Plate Tectonics is the mechanism for bending rock and focused migration and trapping of hydrocarbons into commercial accumulations, or “fields”
That said, there could be a separate, abiogenic process to source light hydrocarbons, principally methane, from the deep crust or mantle.

The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth’s crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. — Science Daily July 27,

Wikipedia: Abiogenic Petroleum Origin

is a hypothesis that was proposed as an alternative mechanism of petroleum origin. It was popular in the past, but most geologists now consider it obsolete, and favor instead the biological origin of petroleum.

This is really too kind. We have produced and know the locations of many trillions of barrels of oil and many quadrillions of cubic feet of natural gas (methane + minor amounts of ethane, propane, butane). For the vast majority of these hydrocarbon deposits, we know the age and approximate locations of the rocks containing the original organic material. All these hydrocarbons are most easily explained by from a biologic source.

Geologists now consider the abiogenic formation of petroleum scientifically unsupported, and they agree that petroleum is formed from organic material.[1] However, the abiogenic theory can’t be dismissed yet because the mainstream theory still has to be established conclusively.[3]

This last sentence is fundamentally and logically wrong! Even if we conclusively prove the mainstream theory, that does not preclude a second parallel abiogenic process, even if in trivial, non-commercial amounts. Since Wiki has this logical error, let me posit the Wiki has another: that the mainstream theory is now proved.
The shale oil and shale gas revolutions today proves a biologic source of hydrocarbons. Oil and gas are being produced directly from the source rock, of known age, thermal history, and organic content. Instead of waiting for the hydrocarbons to migrate to a trap over millions of years, we have gone straight to the “source” and produce these from the “kitchen”. These hydrocarbons could not possibly be abiogenic for there is no way they could be created in the mantle and work their way into impermeable shales and not found elsewhere. This case is closed. The vast majority of all oil and gas is biogenic. The theory has worked for 100 years and quadrillions of dollars.
In today’s shale gas revolution, nothing changed in our theory for the source of hydrocarbons. What changed was our techniques for getting hydrocarbons our theories knew were there out of those tight rocks.
That doesn’t mean there are no abiogenic hydrocarbons. An theory of abiogenic source for hydrocarbons has to stand on its own. And it has to earn its keep. It would help if some hydrocarbons could be found on earth where a biological source was unlikely, much less impossible.

Stephen Rasey says:
August 10, 2013 at 11:03 pm

Thanks for your reply. Have you ever heard this interview? It’s Dr. J.F. Kenney on NPR a few years ago. He makes the point that there are 4,000 Russian articles in the scientific literature and “hundreds of books and many, many monographs” about abiotic oil that haven’t been translated into English. In this NPR interview, Kenney discusses the abiotic mantle origin of petroleum, and makes the point that biological molecules cannot exist at temperatures higher than the critical temperature of salt water, which he says is reached at 3-5 km down depending on whether you’re in continental or marine environment. He said the Russian scientists found CaCO3 was of mantle origin from isotope tests on carbonitite formations in the mantle. And they were able to create oil i the lab with CaCO3, iron oxide, and triple-wet distilled water brought up to pressures of the mantle of the earth.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111025151824/http://www.gasresources.net/Kenney-NPR.mp3
The website with all Kenney’s scientific papers doesn’t seem to exist anymore; he may have died.
But I found these:
http://www.studien-von-zeitfragen.net/Zeitfragen/Petroleum/petroleum.html
A list of Russian papers with English names is at the end.
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html
Thanks, Stephen

A slight correction to Stephen Rasey 8/13 12:00 am
b. That unconventional hydrocarbon sources (shale oil, shale gas) prove at least these hydrocarbons cannot have be abiotically derived in the mantle.
Make that:
b. That unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs (shale oil, shale gas) prove at least these hydrocarbons cannot have been abiotically derived in the mantle.
These hydrocarbons are created in conventional source rocks. It is the same type of source rocks, sometimes the very same rocks, that create hydrocarbons that migrate into conventional, higher permiabile, reservoirs. What is unconventional is that we are horizontally drilling directly through the source rock kitchen. With hydraulic fracturing, we increase the effective surface area of the well bore, shortening the hydrocarbon migration path from miles to inches, and turn the source rock into a commercial reservoir.
Conventional source rocks with immovable hydrocarbons turned into unconventional reservoirs by fracking. That is why it proves these hydrocarbons are not derived from the mantle.