I've said since middle school that there weren't enough dinosaurs ever to produce as much oil as there is, and that was a long long time and millions of barrels ago.
That’s because “fossil fuels” is a misnomer. My understanding is that it’s pretty similar to coal, just different compositions subjected to different conditions(temperature, time). The very foundations of these can be seen at any time by visiting a peat bog. TLDR not dinosaurs, just giant ancient forests. My source is a 40 year higher up engineer in the industry(oil platforms,derricks, and fields) for what it’s worth. 🤷‍♂️
The first use of the term "fossil fuel" occurs in the work of the German chemist Caspar Neumann, in English translation in 1759.[22] The Oxford English Dictionary notes that in the phrase "fossil fuel" the adjective "fossil" means "[o]btained by digging; found buried in the earth", which dates to at least 1652,[23] before the English noun "fossil" came to refer primarily to long-dead organisms in the early 18th century.[24]
Its not dinosaurs that produce oil. Most oil fields were likely large swamps in depository basins or on continental margins or maybe very shallow anoxic coastal waters under certain conditions. Go to somewhere like this today and you have enormous amounts of decaying organic matter that settles in them. Then for whatever reason these swamps had their organic matter "capped" by other erosion deposits that form an impermeable barrier protecting them from the atmosphere. These in turn are buried under sedimentary deposits and the heat and pressure deeper in the earths crust forms oil. Today we can mimic this process industrially through various means whether its using natural gas as a feed stock, you can use coal or even in theory decaying organic matter. The thing is though for widespread application it cannot compete with the natural deposits we have.
Because of our oxygen atmosphere and high UV exposure from the sun it makes hydrocarbons unstable in our atmosphere there are only certain geological conditions where this process can happen.
I've said since middle school that there weren't enough dinosaurs ever to produce as much oil as there is, and that was a long long time and millions of barrels ago.
Same here. A term like "fossil fuels" shows how manipulative the language can be.
That’s because “fossil fuels” is a misnomer. My understanding is that it’s pretty similar to coal, just different compositions subjected to different conditions(temperature, time). The very foundations of these can be seen at any time by visiting a peat bog. TLDR not dinosaurs, just giant ancient forests. My source is a 40 year higher up engineer in the industry(oil platforms,derricks, and fields) for what it’s worth. 🤷‍♂️
Who was saying that they were dinosaur bones?
Its not dinosaurs that produce oil. Most oil fields were likely large swamps in depository basins or on continental margins or maybe very shallow anoxic coastal waters under certain conditions. Go to somewhere like this today and you have enormous amounts of decaying organic matter that settles in them. Then for whatever reason these swamps had their organic matter "capped" by other erosion deposits that form an impermeable barrier protecting them from the atmosphere. These in turn are buried under sedimentary deposits and the heat and pressure deeper in the earths crust forms oil. Today we can mimic this process industrially through various means whether its using natural gas as a feed stock, you can use coal or even in theory decaying organic matter. The thing is though for widespread application it cannot compete with the natural deposits we have.
Because of our oxygen atmosphere and high UV exposure from the sun it makes hydrocarbons unstable in our atmosphere there are only certain geological conditions where this process can happen.