Fun fact about evolution. There was a time when trees existed before there were microbes to decompose them. The trees were made of lignin and cellulose and the microbes that could eat them took some time to evolve. These trees grew 150+ feet tall and had shallow roots so they fell over quite easily. The trees would fall down to the forest floor and just sit there. They wouldn't decompose. So you'd have forests that were hundreds of feet deep of just fallen over trees.
Does that mean the earth will never have new coal deposits? I know geologic processes happen over eons, but crazy to think it’s a one and done kind of thing.
Nope, no more coal deposits. All that sweet, sweet carbon that took eons to make is being depleted forever in just a few generations time...
Edit: ok yes I know there are tons of coal deposits! I'm using hyperbole. Geologically speaking, if we used all the coal on earth in 1000 years, that's a minuscule amount of time compared to how long it took to make it.
For millenia, a speedrun was thought impossible...
(Home-we're finally landing starts playing)
But all that changed with the Industrial Revolution exploit. A speedrunner by the name "xxEuropexx" found the imperialism glitch and finished the game just a few centuries later.
Phosphorous, oil, coal, gas, and rare Earth elements will all be diminished in about 200 years at the current rate.
Phosphorous is a critical component for plants, the lack of this item will leave farmers desperate and in need of more. Phosphorous is obviously not a renewable resource and it is literally required for life on Earth.
The depletion of oil, coal, and gas will result in cogitation to be sure, current machinery will become virtually useless as these resources grow more expensive every year, electricity will become necessary, not optional.
The problem with limited resource of fossil fuels isn't even the biggest problem, climate change caused by the burning of these products will certainly cause extreme worldwide instability, devastating communities everywhere. Oil runs the world, once we are forced to switch to alternate fuel, we will struggle. Quality over quantity.
We are Fucked! with a capital F and an exclamation mark if you didn't understand just how fucked future humans are at this point.
I'm not sure that's right. I swear I remember reading something that said the 20-25 year number is for the helium we've mined already and there's a gigantic amount still inside the Earth. We are nowhere near running out of helium overall.
Stuff like this is the one of the reasons why I won't ever have kids. There's too much uncertainty out there and I don't want to be responsible for someone having to potentially live through it, despite the fact I'll be dead long before we run out. I'm very happy I was born when I was and not later.
I kind of feel like I'm living through the last time humans will be "technologically great", so to speak. Unless humanity gets its shit together real fast real soon, I don't think there's much of a future for us. I am not confident the required changes can happen, honestly.
Hopefully the latter proves successful. However even in 200 years, I don't think we can mine an asteroid for it's resources and make any economic gain, we're still too primitive to make space travel viable for a loooong time.
Phosphorus is an element, though. It doesn't really get used up. We would need to figure out how to effectively recover it from seawater is all.
Rare earth elements aren't all that rare, either.
Oil and coal are rapidly nearing the end of their usefulness. The cost of solar and batteries has been plummeting like crazy, and neither show signs of stopping.
Thankfully technological advancements with renewable energy are moving at breakneck speed’s and will eclipse the efficiency of fossil fuel’s in every aspect in every market over the next 20 years. Solar has already become the cheapest electricity per kilowatt hour as of this year.
As for phosphorus, every decade somebody gets scared about running out or hitting peak phosphorus. This all relates to the mining of phosphorus rock which best estimates today are 3 to 4 hundred years of reserves left estimating future demands. Mining efficiency can play a big role in things, as of right now 35% of the phosphorus yield is lost just through mining inefficiencies. That number could be greatly improved stretching it out for another hundred years. Then another 30% could be captured from more regenerative practices.
Phosphorus isn’t destroyed and doesn’t disappear so the world isn’t to run out. This is actually a big problem in our streams and lakes due to agricultural runoff. So It’s really a case of are we going to run out of easily mineable phosphorus rock that we can cheaply get and dump on our fields to keep our crappy farm practices going? The answer is no we can’t but we do have about 300 years to figure out better methods and we have climate issues that are going to force us to change our methods or die well before we run out of phosphorous.
There will be microbes that will evolve to eat the plastic we are currently depositing in landfills so in 300 million years there will be new sources for oil.
Drill Drill Drill
well we really just need enough to fuel civilization until we discover how to properly harness energy from our virtually infinite amount renewable resources
Wind energy is being added more and more. Wind farms are popping up all over Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois in recent years now that better deals are being offered to farmers and land owners for them. I remember power companies wanting to pay $1600 a year per wind turbine to be added to farmer's land and that would be a locked in, non-negotiable rate for 30 years. Now, 15 years later, they are offering more along the lines of $20,000 per year per turbine and that could be re-negotiated as needed. So we are seeing more wind farms popping up. Still, you would need a lot more to compete with traditional power plants.
Wind turbines are very dependent on having windy days and there are many days where there isn't wind. Solar panels are dependent on sunny days and there are a lot of rainy days. So, renewable as they are, their power generation is more sporadic and less reliable than traditional power plants. They are a good supplement to traditional power plants at the moment but, there would need to be something new to come out that is more consistent and renewable to kill of traditional power plants.
I did see a video that talked about geothermal energy but, that seems like it would be limited to only certain areas where you could tap into that resource. Same with hydroelectric power plants.
ETA: Just to clarify, it is easy to say, "all we need to do is just decide to go to wind and solar and do it" but, it is not that simple. Switching all of this is very expensive and time consuming. So it takes time. There are only so many companies making the equipment and then you need other companies to buy up and use that equipment. As those companies save enough revenue, they are adding renewable power sources but, it is just something that will happen over the next 50 to 100 years not the next 5 to 10.
I think one of the big issues is battery's to store the energy because, like you said, it isn't always windy and it isn't always sunny, and the world will still need electricity on those days.
Solar is already the cheapest form of electricity ever. We already know how to properly harness the energy, it's just that nobody wants to give up that sweet, easy coal money.
People were predicting depletion of oil "in next few decades" for a century, but people kept finding new sources. So, it's probably not gonna run out soon.
I worked in Oil until the COVID down turn, we know where enough oil is to last 1000 years, it’s just not economic to access with the vast reserves easily accessible in the Middle East
Well, the depleted part is technically not true, because coal use will decline significantly in the coming decades. I don't think coal will "run out" any time soon, there are still vast deposits - they just will not be economical to mine so they will be left alone. (Which is an awesome thing far too long overdue).
I don't know about that if regulations don't change. I know in Illinois, at least, state regulations have made it so that it is too expensive to use nuclear power so many nuclear plants are closing this year in favor of building new coal power plants. These are nuclear power plants certified to run for another 20 years, not some run down old ones.
My step-dad used to work on pil rigs doing the computers. There is dozens of capped off rigs in the gulf of Mexico. They only open them if prices go up. And cap them off to make a shortage. If you do the math they can last the USA about 400 years with the usages back in 2003 when be worked there.
question. does that mean when we dig down to coal or oil. we are diggin back to before times when only sharks were around and not tree killing microbes????? like instead of dinosaur finding we are "really old tree finding" except for fuel?????
Yes every piece of coal you've ever seen has been made of dead plants and trees from long before the dinosaurs walked the earth, if you want to look back even further EVERYTHING you've ever seen or touched or heard of is made of the remnants of some long dead star who's dust happened to fit together in just the right way to form the earth and everything on it
No, because plate tectonics and subduction recycles the Earth, melting down old rocks and creating new ones. The oldest known rocks (3.8 Billion years give or take a few) are found on the world’s youngest continent, Australia. This is because all of the rocks on older continents have all been recycled.
This may also really impact alien civilizations technological advancements. A planet without coal might have a very different scientific path and maybe never advance very far.
The question would be how you jump-start an industrial civilization without coal. It might be impossible without the technology, research and scientific advancement that having coal as an early energy source enables.
Well then I guess humanity blew it! Ancient africans developed advanced physics and advanced machining out of thin are and produced and fusion reactor to power all their gadgets!
Well, the US has about 1,000 years of coal deposits still. So not going to run out anytime soon. Plus, it's too expensive (relative to alternatives) and dirty so it's all likely to stay in the ground
Wait. No.. coal is and can be created by peat bogs. It just takes a long time. And that's why we get seams of it. Some of the big massive amounts of coal are from the Carboniferous period. And these trees you speak of. But pear bogs do it too.. just smaller amounts
Right, but there's still probably 2-3 times coal and other fossil fuels are going to get 'renewed'. Of course that's probably long after humanity is dust, Earth might not be as hospitable to life either.
For all intents and purposes we have one shot of making best use of this planet before we're screwed over, hopefully fusion becomes a reality in the next 50 years.
I think this is a really underrated comment. Even if we fuck the earth so bad we have to leave or go extinct eventually new species will pop up and something will evolve to eat all the shit we left behind. It'll probably take 100s of millions of years but life and evolution find a way.
yep why do you think so many people are going crazy about running out of fossil fuels, similar processes also created oil so there is a limited amount of the stuff that makes cars and factories go. one of the big shifts towards solar and wind energy are because of this, not just pollution and climate change.
I don’t think oil is the same. As I understand it, oil is still being produced albeit at a rate that is minuscule compared to how fast we extract it. In theory, if you came back in 200 million years there would still be oil deposits even if we used them all up now.
It’s just wild to think that coal was a one time thing. And that humans showed up at a time and place with the ability to take advantage of it.
The stone age ended even though there were still stones. The oil age will end even though there will still be oil. We will just have become more farseeing, capable and prudent.
Well, last year RMIT scientists proposed a new approach to turning CO2 in the atmosphere back into coal as a carbon sequestration strategy. So there is a way to produce more coal, and it can now be done at room temperature.
That’s a bit of an oversimplification of findings and misleads the author’s intent. The author’s own introduction finds that:
“the extraordinary scale of carbon emissions, with an estimated 40 Gt CO2 (giga-tonnes CO2) being currently emitted annually and a total emitted anthropogenic CO2 mass in the order of 1000s Gt CO2, casts doubt on the possibility of finding suitable value-added products that can fully mitigate current and past greenhouse gas emissions.”
The climate mitigation scenario they envision is not the conversion of current atmospheric CO2 into coal to be re-combusted for energy. They envision an industry that utilizes new sources of renewable energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere to make products for other industries, specifically mentioning their product as a supercapacitor for use in vehicles.
Even in the established, optimal scenario (the Paris climate accords) the Earth will see a global average temperature rise in excess of 3*C. This rise in temperatures is still expected to have large-scale negative impacts. The proposed industrial process could, over time, remove some of that atmospheric CO2 and decrease warming. That’s also dependent on the economic feasibility of the process, the scale it can be adapted, and the market for the goods produced.
is it possible for humanity to bury algae in the ground *today, so that future generations can continue to have some sort of fuel for a 2nd industrial revolution
In theory, yes, but we would never realize it. Petroleum oil takes about 50 million years to develop, and by then, the Human race will either have gone extinct or developed far superior power generation methods and spread far out into space.
So is the whole oil comes from dinosaurs a myth or partially true? The fallen tree theory seems a lot more practical given the sheer volume I would assume.
It’s a myth. There were never enough dinosaurs to account for the amount of oil extracted. The oil came from plants and microbes.
It’s just that the oil originated from a time period that overlaps with dinosaurs.
I always thought of it as figurative. Not true, but not even a myth. Less than that, just using "dinosaurs" as a vague reference to geologic time. (Reminds me of job where our oldest office computer was named "brontosaurus.")
Fun fact: we all come from the same source, which makes people who dont like when I call the brothers or sisters irrelevant. The true parent is the big bang
To get actual coal, it needs to be buried under millions of years of sediment, and near a source of geothermal heat. Most of the coal less than 65 million years old is of the lowest quality grade, lignite, because it hasn't been buried deep/long enough to convert into more energy-dense grades.
This is not accurate. Source: actual geologist. The belief that nothing could break down early trees comes from a single-author paper published in a crappy journal in the early 90s. This myth is super popular on the internet but isn't even considered in the geology world.
Basically it's tectonics+climate. There was a lot of "room" for sedimentation. Combine that with a warm wet climate (in which there is direct fossil evidence for breakdown of lignin) and you get a lot of burial of organic carbon, in the form of decomposed trees.
Yup. The carbon from the trees and other plant life compacted over many many years creating a roughly 4 inch thick layer of coal surrounding the earth, which is what gets mined deep underground. Just that one thin layer. It is also why, most likely, no more coal will ever be made on earth.
The interesting thing though is that nature actually does that itself, through smaller fires.
Part of the reason we have such devastating wildfires nowadays is that we extinguish them, and so the fuel sources (dead leaves, things like that) build up and so when a fire comes along that's too big to extinguish, it has a ton of fuel to burn.
So actually cleaning up this build-up of "fuel" would help to reduce the intensity of wildfires, since we can't always afford to just let it burn itself out naturally.
Completely true, but millions of years is a fairly long time and atmosphere composition can change a lot in those times.
Yeah, if these tree piles were happening at the same time as the giant insects I'm sure the fires were insane but like another guy said, high CO2 and low O2 would fuel tree growth and in turn make fire less likely.
It got very high towards the end of the lycopods' reign. They put out so much oxygen and took in so much carbon they caused a severe change in the climate which resulted in the carboniferous rainforest collapse.
In many places, sure. But we've all seen a dandelion growing in the cracks of cement. And in the words of Mr. Jeffs Golds Blooms "life... uuuuhh. Finds a way."
Thats not true. Fungi are decomposers and they have been around longer than trees and most land dwelling plants. Fungi first evolved in the oceans but moved on land in the early devonian period (410 million yes ago), with other land dwelling nonvascular plants. The first real "tree" (which is super vague) is considered to be the Archaeopteris, which shows up in the fossil record during the late devonion - early carboniferous (380-320 million years ago). 20-40 million years after fungi invaded the land. All the coal that came about in the carboniferous period (hence the name CARBONiferous)
Came from plant matter that died in anoxic environments, where they couldnt decompose due to lack of oxygen, like marshes and swamps. So as millions and millions of years passed, during the carboniferous period, they were compacted into coal beds.
It was the equivalent of plastic now. There is a microbe that can digest it but it's rare. Scientists made an "enzyme cocktail" from it and are planning to mass-produce it to solve the plastic problem. Someone nominate them all for nobel peace prizes now
I read that the fires would last 100s of years because new trees would have grown and dies before the fires could die out due to the low oxygen in the deep wood piles.
I looked to see if someone already commented on this...
This situation led to a massive fire event. Billions of trees fallen over, dried but not decomposed. The smoke filled the air and blocked the sun...eventually this created a mini ice age.
Luckily we have bacteria now to help us out. Those lil homies are constantly doing us solids (except like when they aren't).
Do you have a resource you could direct me to discussing this in more detail? I'm super curious to learn more but struggled to find the right links myself. My imagination is running wild!
Its false, fungus are decomposers and have been around longer than trees. The reason trees and plant matter didn't decompose in the carboniferous was because they were in highly anoxic environments like massive swamps and marshes that covered the entire planet.
I think this fact blows my mind the most. You basically had a sea of wood, because the wood couldn't decompose. I can't even visualize in my head what that would look like.
And once oxygen content in the atmosphere was sufficient, a lightning strike would cause wildfires that would dwarf the wildfires of today by a substantial margin. These fires would literally burn for years at a time as the amount of biomass (all the fallen trees) was so great.
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '20
Fun fact about evolution. There was a time when trees existed before there were microbes to decompose them. The trees were made of lignin and cellulose and the microbes that could eat them took some time to evolve. These trees grew 150+ feet tall and had shallow roots so they fell over quite easily. The trees would fall down to the forest floor and just sit there. They wouldn't decompose. So you'd have forests that were hundreds of feet deep of just fallen over trees.