Fossil Fuels

[Masquernom]

Here's a good book about oil production;

Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage
by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

The author drew the wrong conclusion at the time. It was before fracking came along. But the book explains in understandable terms the formation of oil and natural gas.

In very simple terms, coal is layers of plants laid down and buried over time. Oil is plankton from the ocean that settled to the bottom and became buried over time. If the plankton goes too deep and gets too hot, you get natural gas. If it stays at the right temperature, you get oil. Over long periods of time, the oil will slowly seep upward. When it gets trapped under things it can't seep through, like a salt dome or impermeable rocks, it collects in a pool underground. These are what oil drillers originally hunted for. Geologists always knew there was oil trapped within rock layers, and widely dispersed. But it came out of those layers so slowly, it wasn't economical to drill for it. Then, horizontal drilling came along with the ability to fracture the rock layers. So you can drill into the rock layer with very dispersed oil, drill horizonally through the layer, then fracture the rock layer to provide paths for the oil to reach your hole. These "fracked" wells have shorter production lives and are less economical then traditional wells that are basically straws sucking oil out of a pool.

 

[marko]

This thread is pretty interesting, so I think I’ll ask my stupid question.

How did all this stuff “get buried”? Where did all the material that covers it come from?

Yes, I’m serious. I just don’t get it.

Murf

I think it's just natural sediments falling over the eons. Dust, dirt, volcanic action, live matter, all builds up. In the seas it's probably faster.

Go to Rome and see how the Forum and most of ancient Rome is now 10-20 feet below the current street level and that was less than 2000 years.

 

[Winemaker]

This thread is pretty interesting, so I think I’ll ask my stupid question.

How did all this stuff “get buried”? Where did all the material that covers it come from?

Yes, I’m serious. I just don’t get it.

Murf

For my example of the Pittsburgh seam, it was once a huge "Everglades type" area. There has been so much "geological turmoil" that has occurred over those 300+million years, it makes one head spin. Mind you the planet is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, and a lot of things have occurred. Volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, glaciers, floods, freeze/thaw cycles, continental drift, reversal of the magnetic poles, movement of magnetic poles, just to mention a few. The Appalachian mountains were once like the jagged peaks of the Rockies, but over their 480 million year life, they have become the worn rolling ranges they are today. These aren't things that happen in 100 years, or 2022 years for that matter.

 

[audreyh1]

Another example - coal comes from ancient decayed plants trapped underground, including peat bogs which can be directly burned for fuel even today. The term “fossil fuel” seems appropriate.

 

[audreyh1]

This thread is pretty interesting, so I think I’ll ask my stupid question.

How did all this stuff “get buried”? Where did all the material that covers it come from?

Yes, I’m serious. I just don’t get it.

Murf

Have you ever heard of tectonic plates? If not you have some education ahead to understand this stuff.

Erosion from mountains covers a lot of stuff. And mountains are formed all the time - usually from tectonic plates colliding. Huge chunks of earth can even be turned sideways or upside down from such forces. Volcanoes are created from an ocean tectonic plate submerging beneath another. This can occur along coastlines or out in the ocean. Hot spots can also cause volcanoes and huge lava flows covering surrounding land. Land also subsides due to weight of new land on top of it. Everything is floating around on the earth’s mantle. Continental land is continuously recycled.

 

[Murf2]

Have you ever heard of tectonic plates? If not you have some education ahead to understand this stuff.

Erosion from mountains covers a lot of stuff. And mountains are formed all the time - usually from tectonic plates colliding. Huge chunks of earth can even be turned sideways or upside down from such forces. Volcanoes are created from an ocean tectonic plate submerging beneath another. This can occur along coastlines or out in the ocean. Hot spots can also cause volcanoes and huge lava flows covering surrounding land. Land also subsides due to weight of new land on top of it. Everything is floating around on the earth’s mantle. Continental land is continuously recycled.

Well, I said I was a dummy! [emoji846]

What makes me wonder about it is, if a deer gets hit by a car. It lays on the side of the road until it’s taken care of by other animals & weather. I just don’t see how organic matter lays around long enough to be covered up without rotting. I can / do understand a cataclysmic event making it happen on a local scale but everything world wide being covered?

So what do they think the diameter of the earth was before whatever it was buried the fossil fuel? I assume the prehistoric animals were walking on the earths surface.

Thanks
Murf

 

[Zathras]

Well, I said I was a dummy! [emoji846]

What makes me wonder about it is, if a deer gets hit by a car. It lays on the side of the road until it’s taken care of by other animals & weather. I just don’t see how organic matter lays around long enough to be covered up without rotting. I can / do understand a cataclysmic event making it happen on a local scale but everything world wide being covered?

So what do they think the diameter of the earth was before whatever it was buried the fossil fuel? I assume the prehistoric animals were walking on the earths surface.

Thanks
Murf

It wasn’t world wide.
Each region can have their own little cataclysms.
It might be as simple as a landslide carrying vegetation into a pond.

As mentioned above, the formation of fossil fuels requires an oxygen free environment.

If all plant matter turned into fossil fuels we would have a hell of a lot oof fossil fuels, and probably no ecosystem.

 

[Masquernom]

Well, I said I was a dummy! [emoji846]

What makes me wonder about it is, if a deer gets hit by a car. It lays on the side of the road until it’s taken care of by other animals & weather. I just don’t see how organic matter lays around long enough to be covered up without rotting. I can / do understand a cataclysmic event making it happen on a local scale but everything world wide being covered?

So what do they think the diameter of the earth was before whatever it was buried the fossil fuel? I assume the prehistoric animals were walking on the earths surface.

Thanks
Murf

First you form peat. Then the peat gets buried under tons of rock and turns into coal. Here's where peat gets started;

The habitat requirements for peat initiation and accumulation are similar in every geographical location (waterlogging, low pH, low nutrient availability, low oxygen supply, reduced decomposition rate) but the physical and chemical characteristics differ according to specific site characteristics of landscape area and topography, climate, water depth and flow, nutrient availability and biogeographical availability of plant species.

Peat formation is the result of incomplete decomposition of the remains of plants growing in waterlogged conditions. This may happen in standing water (lakes or margins of slow flowing rivers) or under consistently high rainfall (upland or mountain regions). As a result, partially decomposed plant remains accumulate and become compacted, forming peat that changes the substrate chemical and physical properties leading to a succession of plant communities.

This process is referred to as the hydrosere that begins classically in open water and proceeds through fen stages that are influenced by nutrient-rich ground water (and rainfall) to bog that receives nutrients and water supply only from rainfall.

 

[audreyh1]

Well, I said I was a dummy! [emoji846]

What makes me wonder about it is, if a deer gets hit by a car. It lays on the side of the road until it’s taken care of by other animals & weather. I just don’t see how organic matter lays around long enough to be covered up without rotting. I can / do understand a cataclysmic event making it happen on a local scale but everything world wide being covered?

So what do they think the diameter of the earth was before whatever it was buried the fossil fuel? I assume the prehistoric animals were walking on the earths surface.

Thanks
Murf

The earth overall diameter is not getting larger. Material is just recycled. Carbon gets recycled into organic matter then decomposes again into soil and air. It’s a closed system (except for sun energy and the occasional asteroid).

Even if an animal or plant is exposed to the elements and mostly decays exposed, some animals and plants did get buried and preserved by various means. Areas can be inundated. Decaying animals/plants in the ocean and lakes can drop to the bottom and build up there, get compressed and covered by eroding soils and rocks from land. Sea levels rise and fall.

As mentioned above, peat bogs don’t really decay (super slow). They eventually get buried.

Most of the source would be ancient plants and algae/zooplankton.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, and your cellphone has slightly less mass when the battery is discharged than when it is charged.

Truth!

It's just impossible to have a scale sensitive enough to measure the change.

A typical cell phone battery can store 18 Wh, which weighs less than 1 millionth of a microgram.

 

[Turbo29]

If all plant matter turned into fossil fuels we would have a hell of a lot oof fossil fuels, and probably no ecosystem.

'
And this is why termites are absolutely essential.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

It's just impossible to have a scale sensitive enough to measure the change.

Also true.

But, IME, many people do not know the principle of this physical truth, regardless of whether or not one can measure it with household equipment.

 

[folivier]

And we have to understand that the science is all hypothetical until it is absolutely proven to be true. Then along comes more advanced science and a better and/or different understanding of the evolution of our planet. IOW it's basically all guesses. Until we develop a time machine.

 

[Zathras]

And we have to understand that the science is all hypothetical until it is absolutely proven to be true. Then along comes more advanced science and a better and/or different understanding of the evolution of our planet. IOW it's basically all guesses. Until we develop a time machine.

That is not how science works.

A hypothesis is formed after observations. The hypothesis must be something that can be tested, and is falsifiable.

Tests are performed to either disprove, or support the hypothesis.

Over time, if no tests disprove the hypothesis, it becomes a Theory.

If a test does disprove the hypothesis (or theory) a new hypothesis is formed taking into account what has been learned so far.

To call it “guesses” is dismissive of all the work and experience of people that have spent years/decades studying certain phenomenon.

 

[Koolau]

That is not how science works.

A hypothesis is formed after observations. The hypothesis must be something that can be tested, and is falsifiable.

Tests are performed to either disprove, or support the hypothesis.

Over time, if no tests disprove the hypothesis, it becomes a Theory.

If a test does disprove the hypothesis (or theory) a new hypothesis is formed taking into account what has been learned so far.

To call it “guesses” is dismissive of all the work and experience of people that have spent years/decades studying certain phenomenon.

Semantics

Sorry but hypothesis is the scientific term for what the layman would call a guess. We do base our "guess" (or hypothesis) on observed 'facts'. We (as scientists) DO set up our hypothesis so as to be testable. So there's that.

Remember when there were 4 elements? Air, earth, fire and water. I recall as a young scientist thinking that was pre-alchemy and dismissing it as superstition. Turns out, it was actually rather predictive of reality and was "accepted" as fact for a long time. YMMV

 

[Turbo29]

Semantics
Remember when there were 4 elements? Air, earth, fire and water. I recall as a young scientist thinking that was pre-alchemy and dismissing it as superstition. Turns out, it was actually rather predictive of reality and was "accepted" as fact for a long time. YMMV

A theory doesn't have to be "true" (whatever that means) to be useful.

 

[Zathras]

Semantics

Sorry but hypothesis is the scientific term for what the layman would call a guess. We do base our "guess" (or hypothesis) on observed 'facts'. We (as scientists) DO set up our hypothesis so as to be testable. So there's that.

Remember when there were 4 elements? Air, earth, fire and water. I recall as a young scientist thinking that was pre-alchemy and dismissing it as superstition. Turns out, it was actually rather predictive of reality and was "accepted" as fact for a long time. YMMV

Sure, one could call a hypothesis a guess. But as you yourself pointed out, there are differences.

And yes, humankind’s knowledge grows and expands, and changes as we developed new tools to examine the universe around us.
This is how the process is supposed to work

My main point was, we don’t go from hypothesis to absolute certainty with nothing in between.

 

[ls99]

Semantics

Sorry but hypothesis is the scientific term for what the layman would call a guess. We do base our "guess" (or hypothesis) on observed 'facts'. We (as scientists) DO set up our hypothesis so as to be testable. So there's that.

Remember when there were 4 elements? Air, earth, fire and water. I recall as a young scientist thinking that was pre-alchemy and dismissing it as superstition. Turns out, it was actually rather predictive of reality and was "accepted" as fact for a long time. YMMV

I spent nearly 15 years wo*king for and with geologists, seismologists, marine biologists and other assorted other Phds. Spent many hours listening to their pi$$ing contests about whose theory AKA SWAG was better, or the stuff's liekelyhood of getting further or long range funding. Even more arguments about who is going to be the the first author on a paper, then, many mor hours about how fudge the differences of opinion on any given subject. I know a few Phds who were driven out of the then club for their refusal to sign onto the consensus. Could not get funding, not having friends in high places of handing out government $$$, etc., ended up in far away places. Though they all became big fish in little pond and many years later being vindicated.

If the public thinks the politicians method of making sausage, ahem, Policy or Law, and funding vast projets is ugly dare I say currupt, more should be privy to the "science consensus". As for the peer review process, yecch. Very much like dissenting from Faucci and then getting funded for research by NIH. Be a cold day in hell.

 

[Koolau]

A theory doesn't have to be "true" (whatever that means) to be useful.

Exactly!!

 

[Koolau]

I spent nearly 15 years wo*king for and with geologists, seismologists, marine biologists and other assorted other Phds. Spent many hours listening to their pi$$ing contests about whose theory AKA SWAG was better, or the stuff's liekelyhood of getting further or long range funding. Even more arguments about who is going to be the the first author on a paper, then, many mor hours about how fudge the differences of opinion on any given subject. I know a few Phds who were driven out of the then club for their refusal to sign onto the consensus. Could not get funding, not having friends in high places of handing out government $$$, etc., ended up in far away places. Though they all became big fish in little pond and many years later being vindicated.

If the public thinks the politicians method of making sausage, ahem, Policy or Law, and funding vast projets is ugly dare I say currupt, more should be privy to the "science consensus". As for the peer review process, yecch. Very much like dissenting from Faucci and then getting funded for research by NIH. Be a cold day in hell.

I recall being a bit disappointed in the politics within Megacorp. But I was flabbergasted when I began teaching at a major university and seeing the absolutely cut-throat, back-stabbing politics. Who knew? YMMV