So, I’m just curious that since fossil fuels are made from life, and since there is an unbroken line of life leading back since life began, shouldn’t things like coal and oil be constantly manufactured? I realize the problem with using up things faster than they are being created, but that’s not really my question. Won’t life forms today eventually be oil and coal of the future?
And do scientists know how much fossil fuel is produced, say, every day right now? Like let’s say that right now there are 1 trillion barrels of oil left in the earth, how much of that is oil that just came into existence yesterday? Do you understand what I am asking? Is there a way to know?
well, peat is kind of the first step of organic matter becoming coal, and there are regions which can make a ton of peat. but even then, the recapture of the carbon from it is slower than it’s used so it’s kind of a “slow renewable” resource.
Someone with the specific facts will be along shortly, but the skinny is that fossil fuels are being depleted much, much faster than they are being replenished. The replenishment rate is essentially negligible as compared to the rate we are using fossil fuels, which is why they are classified as non-renewables.
Most of the coal is from the Carboniferous period, which was a period in time after true wood had evolved in plants, but before fungi and bacteria capable of digesting lignin has evolved. Trees which died didn’t really decay, but were eventually buried and turned into coal. Today trees which die decay and don’t get the chance to turn into coal, even if you waited around long enough for them to do so.
Yes, coal is being formed all the time, and so are all the forms of carbon that lead up to the various kinds of what we call coal. Peat, Lignite, Bituminous and Anthracite coal are always being made.
Some of them, but mostly primitive life forms form coal and oil.
The formation of coal took about 60 million years (about 300 million years ago). Oil also takes millions of years to form.
I don’t think people appreciate “millions”. The whole of recorded history goes back maybe 5,000 years. We’ve been agricultural for what, about 19,000 years. Something distinguishable as human has been around (depending on your level of ‘human’) for somewhere between a few hundred thousand to maybe 3 million years. We’ve been using hydrocarbons for a few hundred years at the very most.
So likely we are burying carbon to form the next eon’s hydrocarbon supplies… but the existing growth is negligible compared to how fast we are depleting existing supplies.
There are places in “the wild” that are still accumulating peat. Oil is accumulations of organic matter that piles up faster than it can decay. The human factor is another major problem. The abundant wild growth of ancient times has been wrecked by humans. The rolling farm fields of eastern North America and Europe used to be covered with giant forests - we cut them down, burned them most likely, and don’t allow their replacement to grow. Then there’s climate change - Lebanon is renowned for its cedars, they were the lumber supply of choice in the Ancient Mediterranean for ships and construction; today between human destruction and climate change, it is a shadow of what it used to be. Plus, as AndrewL points out, coal formed before nature evolved a form capable of composting dead trees. As a result of these factors, we are likely forming a lot less future carbon sources than was happening in pre-historic, pre-human times.
One “bright” spot - we may be overfishing to the point where the traditional eaters of plankton and other organic matter are unable to keep up with the supply - maybe we’re accumulating sea-bottom organic matter, future oil, faster than typically used to happen?
As far as I understand, coal is formed from peat, and peat is formed from decaying moss. Trees have nothing to do with it. The process is still continuing; peat is still forming gradually, and old peat is slowly turning into coal.
And if you visit somewhere like the Isle of Lewis and Harris, for example, we are mining away millennia of accumulated peat before it has a chance to turn into anything more condensed.
This is no small amount of carbon. If it continues (and there is no sign of a slowdown yet), then over half of the fossil fuels used by mankind will end up back in the system. Somewhere.
I think that plant life in the “Carboniferous” period (which term has apparently now been offically replaced) – the very roughly 300-million-year-ago period alluded to above – was so abundant that fossil fuel production far exceeded what is being produced now. At least that’s what I was taught a while back, not sure if current scholarship agrees. So it’s not just that we’re using it fast, but also that unique conditions in the past created a large reserve we are using up.
That is good indeed, but not enough, as the cite from the National Geographic reports: “By rights it should be worse.”
In the end the issue remains:
Even with that noticed carbon sequestration the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere continues.
But besides environmental concerns, the issue here IMHO is that knowing about how long fossil fuels take to form does point to the need to conserve those resources and/or to use alternatives.
Of course, the rate of abiotic oil creation is a bit disputed. I think the guy who came up with the notion gave ridiculously high rates of generation, such that we would never run out of lots of oil. The reality is probably a rate far far lower than is practically measurable.
This is a good visualization of the carbon cycle.
Roughly, we liberate around 9 Gigatons Carbon / year. 3 Gigagtons of this is absorbed back through photosynthesis on land and 2 Gigatons is absorbed by the oceans per year; leaving 4 Gigatons in the atmosphere.
Uh, the hydrocarbon seas on Titan were “almost certainly” laid there by dinosaurs?
Look, I’m open to any idea that can be proved, but that one requires an unreasonable amount of evidence in order to be the most likely explanation. I simply don’t see how that conclusion could be reached by anyone.
The problem with the replenishment of fossil fuels by geological processes is that it doesn’t explain any of the oil we’ve found, which are located in areas where the sedimentary rock has gotten pressed down over time, and predicts that we would find oil specifically in areas of rock uplifted from deep within the earth- which as far as anyone knows doesn’t exist. If he could find all this oil in areas he predicts it would be and where no one else is even looking, he’d be a trillionaire.
What ever happened to Thomas Gold’s theory about hydrocarbons coming from immeasurably vast deeper deposits? I’m reasonably sure it’s nonsense but he had some good points in his favor, IIRC.
Methane is one of the most basic molecules of the universe. No surprise that like water (the other common basic compound) it’s found on a number of planets an moons where the sun is too distant to cause it to evaporate off. It’s a condensate from the primordial cloud that formed the solar system. Over time, it would chain to form longer, more complex hydrocarbons.
As for earth, anything volatile like methane would likely burn off with a reactive oxygen atmosphere, unless buried under sediments away from the atmosphere. Fortunately, earth has plants that are busy creating new complex organic molecules to “make” oil and coal. The “organic” molecules that were part of original formation of the earth have long ago been recycled by reactions into other chemicals.
the locations of oil fields tend to be where organic matter collected at the deltas of major drainage millions of years ago - the shores of the central sea that ran through the middle of North America; the Orinoco delta; the Mesopotamian delta; the North Sea, drainage from northern Europe; and so on. One item I read said that until grass evolved, the plant coverage did less to prevent erosion and run-off, so sedimentary accumulations were much higher. (Which also explains the presence of many dinosaur fossils, because mudslides and buried carcasses would have been much more common back then.)
