What great good luck we have living on a planet that provides billions of barrels (35 gallons per barrel) of fuels every year which we currently misidentify as fossil fuels. The concept of oil being the result of millions of years converting old dinosaur fossils into fuel oil which gets stored in a big tank in the ground that is almost empty was debunked about 50 years ago. The “fossil” moniker has stuck and was not removed when the idea was debunked.
Oil is an earth fuel produced by the planet in cooperation with the sun. It is created from the detritus of life on the planet. Through high heat and pressure, the solar energy stored in the detritus is extracted. All the earth fuels — oil, natural gas, coal, ethanol, biofuels, wood, corn cobs – have the same basic characteristic. we extract the solar energy stored in earth fuels the same way our ancient ancestors did; we burn them.
The problem with earth fuels is utilization. We use earth fuels to generate power for single-use devices. I have at my home many single-use devices that use earth fuels for power. I have a furnace, hot water tank, clothes dryer, car, lawn tractor, snowblower weed whacker/trimmer, leaf blower, generator and gas grill. Ten devices, in various states of efficiency, even my car which I maintain in the best condition of all my devices, wastes tons of energy and produces pollution, and the effectiveness goes downhill from there with my other devices.
The solution is the conversion to electric motors in all devices. We can generate energy using earth fuels in power plants where we can control the burn, install millions of dollars of pollution controls and in general achieve a more efficient and sustainable use of earth fuels.
Bob DeMaura
Bennington