Summations Only

Just in case anyone is interested, here is a spectacular photo of tar 'volcano' on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico: Search-IconThis is a case where hydrocarbons are flowing (migrating) without encountering a trap.Where oil vents to the bottom of the sea, we can actually find natural oil slicks floating on the surface of the water.

Looking back at the picture of the Cretaceous inland sea, it also maps to the other oil rich regions in North America. The sea covered the Alberta oil sands, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Where are they finding oil? Exactly in those places.

And if you look at other maps from the same periods you find fast marshes extending up through Oklahoma to Pennsylvania.

Actually, there are two major hydrocarbon eras. Most of the western coal regions are in the late Cretaceous to Eocene. Evidently some of the oil actually sourced in older rocks (Jurassic and even Triassic) as the previous posts showed.The Appalachian basins formed during the earlier era. The coal occurs mostly in the Carboniferous. However, it appears that oil might source from earlier rocks in the Devonian (such as the Marcellus Shale).It is interesting that with modern drilling and fracking methods we are actually starting to produce oil from what look to be source rocks. The point is that while they are the source of oil, the oil cannot freely migrate because the permeability of shale formations (such as the Marcellus) is simply too low to allow all of the hydrocarbons to migrate; that is, until we came along.Thanks for the interesting discussion.Here is some information on the Appalachian oil fields currently occurring in the Marcellus (and other) shales.eLibrary Redirect - DEP eLibrary

The Geological Timescale is starting to grow again to include the Anthropocene as proposed at the latest International Geological Congress. No "stacks of rock" involved. Linky at http://phys.org/news/2016-08-anthropocene-scientists.htmlEdited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Didn't we already refer to this as "the industrial age" ?Mind you, you need a bit of ancient Greek to make it more sciencey :-)

Many have argued that the Antropocene should start with the Stone Age, which would include the extinction of megafauna at the beginning of the current interglacial cycle.But you are right, scientists are fond of the Latin/Greek traditions within biology and geology.

Another word for creationists to find their "alternative" meanings for and pretend that their meanings are "scientific"!My bet is that creationists will pretend that the Anthropocene epoch is supposed to be another "stack of rocks" stacked one upon another from oldest to youngest, all over the surface of the world...then they will pretend that their straw-man is what geologists mean when they talk about the Anthropocene.I'm a Prophet!

Very true :-)I will admit to being a little irked by this sort of thing though. If scientists say that the industrial age has seen some unusual impacts on various eco and environmental systems, I can draw some inferences from that, and as an intelligent non-scientist, ask questions about pollution, deforestation etc.If scientists say that about the Anthropocene, however, I need to go look it up, before I can engage with the science. I'm not being completely excluded from the conversation, I grant you - but barriers to understanding are being erected (and that's fertile territory for the snake oil salesmen you refer to).Science isn't going to win many hearts and minds, if it behaves like a closed shop.Edited by vimesey, : Typo

I think it makes a bit of sense to note that human activities are affecting the whole planet and to mark it at the point when it will show up in the geological record in the future.The radionuclides and daughters will appear in the sediments that have been deposited since we started detonating thermonuclear devices.Plastics are being deposited in sediments around the globe. I have thought that an hypothetical intelligent species millions of years from now might suspect that some sort of plastic asteroid struck the earth during this period and caused a major extinction event.Human also have refined vast amounts of metals that may survive without oxidation or corrosion for many millions of years. Zirconium, titanium, hafnium, niobium, tantalum are just a few of these metals that can only be dissolved in certain acids and can only be oxidized by burning at high temperatures.There will also be an odd bio-geographical redistribution of species around the globe, that will not fit the patterns we have seen in the past that are explained by plate tectonics.

So, perhaps we're in the Early Plasticine era...

I'm not too sure why science should even try to win hearts and minds of the general populace?To me the way for science to win hearts and minds has been to demonstrate results. In America atomic theory only won the hearts and minds of the populace after a bad bomb or two dropped somewhere else.Same with climate change now. The hearts and minds of the general populace would only be won after a huge, big disaster flattening Manhattan or London or wherever.I mean, a quarter of Americans still don't even care much about the reasons they experience seasons...there's no way for science to win their hearts and minds anyway. Doesn't matter what's done by scientists to win their hearts and minds.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.Benjamin: Yes, sir.Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?Benjamin: Yes, I am.Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

No, stacks of rocks made from plastics. All deposited during a magic fluddie!Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Science isn't in the business of winning hearts and minds. It is in the business of discovering and understanding how the universe works. Part of that business is communicating with other scientists using clear and concise language, which outsiders call "jargon". Using "non-jargon" in those communications would result in confusion -- witness Faith's wasting and causing the waste of several thousands of messages resulting in ever increasing levels of confusion.In general, scientists don't care about communicating with the general public. Most scientists couldn't be bothered about "creation science". The closest they come to having to care is when they write their proposals for grants in order to do their research.Rather, it is the educators and science popularizers who do care and have to care about communicating with the general public, about winning hearts and minds. But there again, in their efforts to make science more accessible, they have to loosen the language and use "non-jargon" and analogies to explain those concepts. And again, that generates some confusion and misconceptions. Unfortunate, but an occupational hazard that cannot be fully eliminated. They have to offer the public a "royal road" to understanding science where no actual "royal road" exists (borrowed from the famous statement about teaching mathematics to royalty).It should be noted that many creationist claims, especially the 1980 classics, rely on the popular science literature as their "scientific" sources; eg, Walter Brown's leap-second claim literally used articles in Popular Science and Readers Digest as its sources.