Economic geology · energy
Ore and oil are just geology that got concentrated enough to be worth digging up.
Copper is everywhere in the crust — at about 60 parts per million, which is worth nothing. A deposit is what happens when a geological process concentrates it hundreds of times over. Learn the processes and you can predict where the money is.
Every ore deposit is a concentration mechanism caught in the act — hot fluids, settling crystals, flowing water, evaporating seas, or deep weathering. Name the deposit from the geology.
The deposit
Loading…
A working petroleum system needs five things, and missing any one of them means a dry hole. Switch them on and off and watch what happens to the oil.
Build the system
Coal is a rank series: bury peat, heat it, drive off the water and volatiles, and what’s left gets richer in carbon at every step.
Increasing burial, heat and time — and increasing carbon and energy with it.
Energy resources
Loading…
The vocabulary that separates a rock with metal in it from an ore.