RE: Nutty Chemistry I guess you didn't take a serious look at my last post to you Sullyvan. Let me reitterate one lat time. They called Jack Gallgher from Dome Petroleum an 'absolute nutball' for postulating that there might be huge elephant pools of oil & gas in the Beaufort Sea back in the 50's and 60's. By the time the 70's and 80's rolled around the geologists and petrochmical engineers et. al. that didn't agree with his theories were categorically proved to be the real "NUTBALLS ". It is well to consider that at the time he first postulated his theory 99 &44/100 % of them called his theories "nutty". (They did the same with the doctor in Sask. who espoused Vitmin D therapy for MS and other ailments, although 40 years later the experts have revisted the theory and admit there is almost certainly something to it.) It appears analagous to what you and many others on this board are saying about Matt & Co's theories now. Anyone today who disagrees with the fact that there are elephant size pools of oil & gas up in the Beaufort is considered completely off their respective rocker, simply because it has been proved that Jack's theories were right on the money.
I would suggest extreme caution in knocking down theories that have yet to be proved or disproved. You are running the risk of looking just as ignorant and stupid as all those naysayers regarding the Beaufort sea theories and believe you me have they ever been proved to be absolute idiots and morons. The above noted story should be fair warning to any rational thinking person that science is always morphing and it is extremely dangerous and downright stupid to put yourself in a box regarding any kind of ABSOLUTE theory regarding geology or almost any other science. A lot of this has to do with the rigid teachings that we get in the University system regarding the scientific method, and this is my opinion where the real fault lies. Philosophers often have a heyday with this topic.
Frankly I posit that a lot of the present scientific theory is hooey, bunk and full of crap because it simply doesn't allow for alternative theorizing. The only way such alternate theories might be accepted seems to be through numerous trials, which are time consuming and often extremely expensive. They may help in terms of trying to come up with general standards, and can prove or disprove a theory, but do not prove or disprove a new theory BEFORE IT CAN BE TESTED. This is the leap in logic that causes the standard scientic method to fail, and fail horribly.
For example, we know that aspirin in the vast majority of cases reduces the painful effects of headaches, but according to the scientific method it didn't do so until it was proved to do so. There is extreme illogicality to this approach. either the asprin works or it doesn't, it has nothing to do with 'testing' before or after the fact. All such testing does is confirm whether the theory is true or not, but according to the bastardized scientific method being espoused by some of the people on this board, (and in Universities in general) if you can't prove Matt & Co's theory right now then until you do so it must be categorically wrong. This is simply short sighted, ignorant and ridiculous.
I think a lot of the naysayers on this board are caught in the trap of stoically defending rigid, non responsive and ultimately faulty scientific thinking on the subject. (as well as many, many other applications of it in life I might add.) Time will tell, but I think the fools are really the ones who are not allowing for possibilities on both sides of the issue. I am far too old and have been around far too long not to hedge my bets, how about you?