Oxygen: The Other Fossil Fuel

While arguing with some biologists about the origin of petroleum the question was asked, "what happened to all the carbon in the atmosphere?" (before the Paleoproterozoic era). As everyone knows, during photosynthesis CO2 is converted into O2. This would seem to suggest that oxygen is also biogenic in origin. However oxygen is the third most common element in the universe and any chemist or astronomer would balk at the idea oxygen is biogenic in origin. If oxygen is biogenic in origin, how can it be an element?

I'm beginning to suspect that the way one approaches the answer has something to do with the different lenses and semantic differences through which the scientists of different fields of study view the universe.

A biologist or geologist is going to say oxygen has a biogenic origin.

A chemist or astronomer is going to say oxygen has an abiotic origin.

The same is true of hydrocarbon compounds. Wallace E. Pratt writes:

...hydrogen and carbon and hydrocarbons abound throughout the universe, apparently, and certainly within our own solar system where they are known to make up the atmospheres and perhaps the outer layers of the major planets, yet, in the opinion of practically every petroleum geologist living today, all the petroleum we have found in the earth is the product of former life on earth. It is of organic origin, not of cosmic origin as the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus must be.

Another facet of this anomaly is the circumstance that among our most eminent scientists outside the petroleum industry the theory of organic origin is commonly rejected and a cosmic or inorganic theory is embraced -- Dr. Urey, the Nobel Prize winner, for example, and the eminent British atronomer-physicist, Fred Hoyle. Can these outstanding scientists be so wrong and yet so sure of themselves? Either way, the situation is disturbing to a scientist if to noone else.

Wallace E. Pratt, Letter to Dott, October 23, 1964.

Biologists and geologists seem to have what Charlie Munger calls "Man With A Hammer Syndrome." To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To biologists and geologists, all things on Earth including oxygen are biogenic.

Let us recall our Aristotle: hydrocarbons have 4 causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. And let us remind biologists and geologists not to forget the material cause, namely elemental chemistry. Hydrocarbons, like O2, are, after all, compounds comprised of abiotic chemical elements.