“Who says asphalt isn’t natural?” Why is it that when scientists report something surprising Anthony Watts has to sneer? Here Anthony posts a University of California, Santa Barbara press release titled “Scientists discover underwater asphalt volcanoes“.

I guess Anthony sees it as a chance to build on the theme that scientists don’t know nuthin’. It’s especially hard for him to resist when it gives him an incidental chance to pump his discredited “analysis” of US weather stations. Today he includes a cherry-picked Utah “climate monitoring station” that has its temperature sensors in a paved parking lot. Is this station used for climate data? Who knows.

Asphalt volcano schematic. Source: University of California, Santa Barbara.

Quite interesting actually. Natural oil seeps are well-known, but this an unusual kind of deposit. By chance I have a natural “asphalt” specimen of my own, collected from a small High Arctic tar sand deposit.