This is the first of two essays on the
wonderful
bonuses we have received from the earth.
EARTH GIFTS
All life lives off the gifts
of the earth. Processes of the earth have
given us the chemicals on which life lives and breathes. Life shares in a wonderfully complex
interaction that has been here from the beginning.
The world of humans has used
these gifts of the earth for sustenance and for materials from our beginning a
few hundred thousand years ago. Since
the advent of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, our use of our co-travelers
and the material resources has grown and accelerated.
THE GIFTS FROM THE LIVING
Fossil fuels are the legacies
of ancient life, across time combined with earth pressure and earth heat. Concentrations of the earth materials we use are
also contributions of geologic forces – water, volcanoes, continental plates,
pressure, time and heat.
These many gifts allow us to play and
live.
THE PATHS TO FOSSIL FUELS
PETROLEUM, NATURAL GAS AND COAL
We use fossil fuels in many
ways. Look around you. Almost every
thing you touch has a history of fossil fuels.
From the computer, to the truck that transported it, to the road the
truck drove on, to the chair you are sitting on. Fossil fuels infuse our life. They provide our food from farm to process to
store. They provide our clothes. They are the life “blood” of our world at
present.
In 2015 we used
11,306,400,000
million tonnes of oil
and oil equivalent
An energy servant is a hypothetical replacement of human energy by
fossil fuels. One barrel of oil is the
equivalent of 8.6 years of human labor.
131,493,432,000,000
- this is the approximate number of energy slaves used globally in 2015
using fossil fuels. This does not
include hydro, nuclear or “renewables”.
The original term
was “energy slave”.
I think this disparages
the horror and
ugliness of
slavery.
How Much Oil
Have We Used?
According to John Jones
from the University of Aberdeen’s School of Engineering as many as 135 billion
tonnes of crude oil have been extracted since commercial drilling began in
1850.
How Much Natural Gas Have We Used?
The world's first industrial
extraction of natural gas started
at Fredonia, New York, United States, in 1825. By
2009, 66000 km³ (or 8%) had been used out of the total 850000 km³ of
estimated remaining recoverable reserves
Cubic Kilometer (km3) is a metric unit of volume equal
to the volume of a cube with sides of 1
kilometer.
66000 km³ of natural gas equals
66000000000000 cubic meters
This equals 1,508,804,280 tonnes of oil equivalent.
If we compare the 2015
contribution of fossil fuels to installed solar energy farms or wind energy
farms, it gives an indication of how large an area would be needed to equal this
contribution of fossil fuels in one year.
TOPAZ SOLAR FARM
RESOURCES
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