1d ago

At this rate, why not.

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I mean… if we’re being honest, the long-term effects of global thermonuclear war would be (very eventual) carbon sequestration in tens to hundreds of millions of years, and then we’ll renew our oil reserves! We of course won’t be around to use them, seeing as we’ll have been sequestered into the oil.
- Can we get new oil actually? I thought we now have organisms that can break down every organic matter and thus it can not really accumulate anymore?
  
  There's an abiotic pathway that creates new oil geologically. It's a very small amount.
  The theory is popular in Russia, where it's claimed to be the main way oil is produced. That's complete bullshit. It turned out there is some, but not enough to matter.
  
  If you squeeze a baby hard enough
  
  Oil actually comes from aquatic life (mostly plankton) that sinks to the sea floor and gets buried, squeezed and heated. Oil still forms today, but it's a process of millions of years.
  Coal is formed from plants, and that does indeed require something doesn't eat it first. Swamps, for example, help a lot, letting the fallen trees sink down where most stuff can't eat it. Peat can also form into coal. Coal forms even slower than oil though, and it's much rarer, but it also doesn't require an ocean, so it's often more accessible for us land-living humans
  
  Coal is much rarer than oil? I have to look that up, I always thought there is far more coal.
  Nope, there is about 3x more coal than oil.
  
  IIRC, all that coal comes from plant material from before there were microbes that can break down cellulose. Meaning that while it's possible to regenerate oil over millions of years, coal cannot.
  So yes, there may be more of it now, but when we burn it, it's gone forever.
- Being sequestered into the oil sounds pretty nice at this point.
- Another cycle, another life. Same shithole planet.

76 comments