:: Coal and oil are made from plants and animals that died millions of years ago ::
Well, time to STOP reading this article.
One of the things I like to explain to children is that a log laying on the ground is going to release all of its carbon into the atmosphere. You can either let it rot for a few years as it releases it, or you can throw it in a fire and it will get released in an hour or two.
But regarding hydrocarbons, I’m not of the mind that they came from plants and animals. Unless we believe there was a thriving ecosystem on Titan.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html
Human beings are preventing huge natural disasters, like used to occur regularly in the history of the planet.
We are extracting oil and coal from the underground and surface, and then turning them into fuels, which eventually go back into the earth’s crust and into the waters and into the atmosphere, where recycling of those natural elements occur.
If oil and coal were not consumed by humans, then, the ever-evolving/changing planet would find ways for those fossil-fuels to be ‘consumed’ via hugely dramatic disasters.
Humans ‘were placed here” on planet earth, just in time to reduce the overflowing fossil-fuels. When did humans ‘arrive’ on the planet? Right after the dinosaurs disappeared, who were very busy populating the planet with all of their biological ‘deposits’.
... Speculators should be free to make biofuels, but these should not be subsidized or mandated.
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Good logic being used in this sweet little article.
I think Viv Forbes could have added a little extra to that last sentence.
It would read better if she had said, “Speculators should be free to make biofuels, wind turbines, or solar panels (job creation and all), but these should not be subsidized or mandated.
bkmk
Biofuels are very inefficient. Ethanol has about 40% less energy per gallon than gasoline thus ethanol based fuel has fewer miles per gallon. The manufacture of ethanol from corn takes considerable energy from planting the corn to refining it into ethanol. More energy is consumed making ethanol from corn than will.be generated from using it as a fuel.