[Red Badger]

Then everything we learned in school about “fossil fuels” was wrong? Coal deposits are definitely from plants. Oil and Natural Gas? I’ve heard theories that it may be compressed methane deposits from the beginning, but not convincingly.........

[RepublitarianRoger]

Then everything we learned in school about “fossil fuels” was wrong? Coal deposits are definitely from plants.

You said that "ALL that CARBON in ALL that oil & coal was once in the atmospere. We're just putting it back!" With the exception of natural gas, all fossil fuels, coal deposits from plants, and of course the plants themselves, are all solids. So I'm saying that unless you are going all the way back to the Hadean Eon in which nearly everything on Earth was not yet congealed into solid form (i.e. the entire planet could be considered "an atmosphere,") then your statement that "ALL the carbon in ALL that oil and coal was once in the atmosphere" is false. It was clearly not in the atmosphere to begin with. Most of it, as your statements about fossil fuels and planets indicates, is from solids.