4 ms·

I still don't fathom this singular deposit of fossil fuels in the earth, are they truly some artifact of a huge die off of living creatures from centuries ago o

I still don't fathom this singular deposit of fossil fuels in the earth, are they truly some artifact of a huge die off of living creatures from centuries ago or is there some steady generation through time that replenishes and generates the crude oil beneath our feet? I'd like to learn more about where the fossil in fossil fuels comes from and just what sort of biomass quantity we're talking about and when on earth that quantity of biomass was originally generated and walked the earth.

jxramos 4y ago
I got curious to see what an oil well cross section may look like to see a pool of oil, there's some fascinating stuff on Youtube in this domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDrheWDhGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDrheWDhGw
fallingknife 4y ago
There is a steady generation of fossil fuels. It is many orders of magnitude slower than consumption, so basically modeling it as a fixed quantity is accurate.
- jxramos 4y ago
  aha, that's a pretty sharp conceptualization then, if it's being generated at too slow a rate we basically drain the reservoir before it can fill up and replenish.
Brometheus 4y ago
If you're interested in the historical process, personally I like the videos of PBS Eons a lot: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pbs+eons+coal https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pbs+eons+coal
- jxramos 4y ago
  This was was pretty interesting with nice animations "History's Most Powerful Plants" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pLQwa6SyZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pLQwa6SyZc), but it's more presenting conclusions and theories of mechanisms than how those conclusions were arrived at. I recall hearing similar things without such nice imagery or focusing on a particular plant as a kid but where's the adult explanation that has all the caveats and messy parts of the story that don't line up and all that. I've never seen or heard that part. They mention certain bacteria not being present to breakdown the plant matter of that special tree, but what about fungus, I would think fungus has been around a pretty long time. There's something very hand-wavy and too tidy about it all. I guess one thing is known is that these are carbon based materials and where does carbon primarily come from and how did it get way down in the bottom layers of the earth is a big question. I think today we'd identify the atmosphere, but it would be surprising if it was the other way around, if carbon mostly came from the earth and got released up as CO2 somehow. But CO2 is very stable, I think we'd expect the dominant source of an element to be all bound up in its most stable forms. I'm curious too how deep down do oil wells go. This hit has some fascinating real world depths apparently. Hydraulic fracturing reaches depths ranging from 5,000 feet to 20,000 feet. https://www.petro-online.com/news/fuel-for-thought/13/breaking-news/how-far-do-we-drill-to-find-oil/32357#:~:text=Hydraulic%20fracturing%20reaches%20depths%20ranging%20from%205%2C000%20feet%20to%2020%2C000%20feet https://www.petro-online.com/news/fuel-for-thought/13/breaki.... I'm curious next how much oil can be extracted from a well and how we could back track to that being some percentage of some originating mass and if the two things match up to some realistic numbers with our experience for how much mass one finds in a forest today, etc.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > what about fungus https://jgi.doe.gov/news_12_06_28/ https://jgi.doe.gov/news_12_06_28/ > The comparative analyses suggested that around 290 million years ago, right at the end of the Carboniferous period, a white rot fungal ancestor with the capacity to break down lignin appeared. Prior to that ancestor, fungi did not have that ability and thus the lignin in plant matter was not degraded, allowing these lignin-rich residues to build up in soil over time.
    - jxramos 4y ago
      That's fascinating, the evolution of enzymes to shift the measure of what is stable over a given period of time. > Once you have white rot you can break down lignin, the major precursor of coal. I'm curious there how is it know that lignin is the precursor to coal. What is coal anyways, is there a molecular structure to it. Ha, what a cool hit for that search, a rock, who'd have thought. I never heard of a maceral before. > Coal is a sedimentary rock that is composed principally of two basic classes of materials: inorganic crystalline minerals and organic carbonaceous macerals. The macerals form the combustible part of the coal and are, in turn, divided into three maceral groups—vitrinite, exinite, and inertinite. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780121507015500097 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012150...

jxramos 4y ago

I got curious to see what an oil well cross section may look like to see a pool of oil, there's some fascinating stuff on Youtube in this domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDrheWDhGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDrheWDhGw

fallingknife 4y ago

There is a steady generation of fossil fuels. It is many orders of magnitude slower than consumption, so basically modeling it as a fixed quantity is accurate.

jxramos 4y ago
aha, that's a pretty sharp conceptualization then, if it's being generated at too slow a rate we basically drain the reservoir before it can fill up and replenish.

Brometheus 4y ago

If you're interested in the historical process, personally I like the videos of PBS Eons a lot: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pbs+eons+coal https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pbs+eons+coal

jxramos 4y ago
This was was pretty interesting with nice animations "History's Most Powerful Plants" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pLQwa6SyZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pLQwa6SyZc), but it's more presenting conclusions and theories of mechanisms than how those conclusions were arrived at. I recall hearing similar things without such nice imagery or focusing on a particular plant as a kid but where's the adult explanation that has all the caveats and messy parts of the story that don't line up and all that. I've never seen or heard that part. They mention certain bacteria not being present to breakdown the plant matter of that special tree, but what about fungus, I would think fungus has been around a pretty long time. There's something very hand-wavy and too tidy about it all. I guess one thing is known is that these are carbon based materials and where does carbon primarily come from and how did it get way down in the bottom layers of the earth is a big question. I think today we'd identify the atmosphere, but it would be surprising if it was the other way around, if carbon mostly came from the earth and got released up as CO2 somehow. But CO2 is very stable, I think we'd expect the dominant source of an element to be all bound up in its most stable forms. I'm curious too how deep down do oil wells go. This hit has some fascinating real world depths apparently. Hydraulic fracturing reaches depths ranging from 5,000 feet to 20,000 feet. https://www.petro-online.com/news/fuel-for-thought/13/breaking-news/how-far-do-we-drill-to-find-oil/32357#:~:text=Hydraulic%20fracturing%20reaches%20depths%20ranging%20from%205%2C000%20feet%20to%2020%2C000%20feet https://www.petro-online.com/news/fuel-for-thought/13/breaki.... I'm curious next how much oil can be extracted from a well and how we could back track to that being some percentage of some originating mass and if the two things match up to some realistic numbers with our experience for how much mass one finds in a forest today, etc.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > what about fungus https://jgi.doe.gov/news_12_06_28/ https://jgi.doe.gov/news_12_06_28/ > The comparative analyses suggested that around 290 million years ago, right at the end of the Carboniferous period, a white rot fungal ancestor with the capacity to break down lignin appeared. Prior to that ancestor, fungi did not have that ability and thus the lignin in plant matter was not degraded, allowing these lignin-rich residues to build up in soil over time.
  - jxramos 4y ago
    That's fascinating, the evolution of enzymes to shift the measure of what is stable over a given period of time. > Once you have white rot you can break down lignin, the major precursor of coal. I'm curious there how is it know that lignin is the precursor to coal. What is coal anyways, is there a molecular structure to it. Ha, what a cool hit for that search, a rock, who'd have thought. I never heard of a maceral before. > Coal is a sedimentary rock that is composed principally of two basic classes of materials: inorganic crystalline minerals and organic carbonaceous macerals. The macerals form the combustible part of the coal and are, in turn, divided into three maceral groups—vitrinite, exinite, and inertinite. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780121507015500097 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012150...