3 ms·

Fossil fuels can be regenerated over a long enough period of time. We all eventually decompose.

• hotpotamus 3y ago
  My understanding (which could certainly be incorrect) is that most fossil fuels formed between the evolution of trees and fungi that could breakdown lignin and so most fossil fuel deposits were ancient even to the dinosaurs. I doubt that significant stores would form between now and the deadline for life on earth in a few hundred million years.
  • adamesque 3y ago
    I’ve recently seen some work claiming this link is exaggerated: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780611/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780611/
    • junofan 3y ago
      Yeah, (un)fortunately simple math is all you need to see the carbon cycle could not possibly have worked that way. There isn’t enough carbon produced under the proposed scenarios to support hundreds of years of tree growth, let alone millions. There was probably other stuff that broke down lignin.
  • brazzy 3y ago
    >most fossil fuels formed between the evolution of trees and fungi that could breakdown lignin This is only true for coal, not for oil (which is formed mostly from sea plankton biomass that is mixed into sediment layers).