Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller got a conference in Geneva in 1892 to call all oil from the ground “fossil”. It implied scarcity, kept the price up and protected his (Standard Oil’s) monopoly.
Fossils are mineralized (petrified) remains of dead animals and plants. They are hard and calcareous and leave imprints. You can’t run engines on lime. No fuels are “fossil”.
Much more common are sediments, the soft remains of dead animals and plants. These have formed gas and oil under high heat and pressure, which are now extracted and used. Because dead plants and animals still become sediment, these resources are renewed, but more slowly than they are consumed.
The Earth’s interior contains over 90% of all the carbon that the Earth has received since its creation and still receives from exploding distant stars. This carbon mostly exists in the form of various compounds.
New gas and oil are also formed from original carbon under high heat and pressure at lower levels than where sediments are stored. Now these large quantities are also being extracted.
Calling oil and gas from the ground “fossil” plays into the hands of alarmists. Dubai now says that “fossil” fuels will be “phased out”. Since there are none, this means nothing in practice. Experts know this, of course.
Let us therefore bury the term “fossil fuels”. They do not exist!
Tege Tornvall
