“Digging Up the
Dead”
Utilization of Ancient
Resources
Kerry Costlow
Coming up…
• Who Cares?
• What are these resources?
• What do they form?
• How efficiently are we using
them?
• What does that mean for us?
• What can we do?
Who Cares?
• Fossil fuels used today are
composed of ancient resources
– Coal, oil, gas
• Resources are millions of years old
• We use TONS of the materials
everyday
• Release CO2 into the
atmosphere
What are Ancient
Resources?
• The remains of organisms that fixed
carbon from the atmosphere millions of
years ago.
– Have built up over the last ~500 million years
• Usually refers to plant life
– Trees, leaves, dead vegetation, small organisms:
plankton, phytoplankton
• Important because of the carbon and
hydrogen contained within the organisms
• Form many important fossil fuels
– Coal and Oil
Ancient Resources to Coal
and Oil
• Coal
– Most abundant and widely
distributed fossil fuel
– Called “buried sunshine”
• Formation
www.stovesonline.co.uk/ how-coalformed.html
– Trees and other vegetation build
up on the swamp floor, lack of
oxygen
– Rivers wash sand and silt into
swamp and compress vegetation
driving out moisture and
impuritiespeat
– Buried deeper and deeper, heat
and time alter chemistry
– Peat becomes brown coal
– After millions of years brown
coalbituminuos coal
– Finally, more pressure, heat,
time, and removal of impurities
 anthracite
Ancient Resources to Coal
and Oil
• Oil
– Product of life in ancient oceans and
estuaries
• Formation
http://www.think-energy.com/ThinkEnergy/1114/activities/Gas.aspx
•Ocean crust rotation allows oil to
escape
– Nutrients are brought from bottomwaters causing phytoplankton to
bloom
– Then dead remains carried to oxygenfree depths, organic matter
accumulates
– Theses sediments buried and
compressed
– Perfect conditions needed to squeeze
organic matter out of source rocks,
transfer to suitable storage stratum
– Storage must be porous, but lie under
strong impervious rock to withstand
pressure and prevent escape
– Must “cook” at 212-275˚F for millions
of years
Uses of Resources
• Coal and Oil
– Used as energy
resources
– Thirty years ago
• Coal supplied 31%
of the world’s fossil
fuels
• Oil supplied nearly
half
(Flannery 77)
• In 1995 humans
were using 24
million barrels of oil
per year
• Every one of the 6
million people is
using 4 times as
much energy as
those 100 years ago
• Meaning burning of
fossil fuels has
increased 16-fold
over that time
(Flannery 77)
Efficiency
• Transformation
from plants to
usable products
– 10% efficiency
for coal
– 0.001% efficiency
for oil
• Coal deposits
– 62%
from
– 82%
from
removed
underground
removed
surface
(Dukes 34-35)
Efficiency
• In 1997 ~ 44 Eg (44*1018 g) of
photosynthetic product-carbon was
necessary to generate the fossil fuels
burned.
• This is 422 times the net amount of
carbon fixed globally each year
• The amount of solar energy needed to
grow this vegetation was 36 times the
sum of solar energy that strikes Earth’s
surface in one year.
(Dukes 37)
Dukes, J.S. “Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy,”
Climate Change 61 (2003):40.
What does that mean for
Us?
• Every gallon of gas created we have
used 100 tons of ancient plant life
• We are using 20% more than the planet
can sustain in order to provide for us.
• Overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing,
destroying forests, polluting oceans and
atmosphere
• By 2050, population ~ 9 billion, we will
be using 2 planets worth of resources
– But the waste is in fact limiting factor
(Flannery 78-79)
What can WE do?
• “The true value of energy to society is
the net energy, which is that after the
energy costs of getting and
concentrating that energy is subtracted”
• We need to do more research in which
the net energy is evaluated
– Lotka’s principle: systems win and dominate
that maximize their useful total power from
all sources and flexibly distribute this power
toward needs affecting survival.
What can WE do?
• It has been estimated that there are
6.3*1012 metric tons of coal and 320*109
m3 available on the earth (Hubbert 105-106)
– How much do you use in your car?
• The amount of time spent on creating the
ancient resources is so much greater than
the time we have to recover that there is
no hope of replenishing the supply in any
reasonable amount of time (Hawkins 2004)
• We need to invest in sources of energy
– Solar, wind, water, nuclear
• Do your part!!
– Walk when you can, recycle, turn off your
lights, invest in your own research
Works Cited
• Dukes, J.S. “Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of
Ancient Solar Energy,” Climate Change 61 (2003). pp. 31-44
• Flannery, T. (2005). The Weather Makers: How We Are
Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth.
Canada: HarperCollins. pg. 69-79.
• Hawkins, D.G. “Global Warming: Dodging the Silver Bullet,”
NRDC presentation (February 2004),
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/work/2004/zets/conference/pres
entations/hawkins.pdf
• Hubbert, M. King. ･ Energy from Fossil Fuels. Science, New
Series, Vol. 109, No. 2823 (Feb. 4, 1949),･Published by:
American Association for the Advancement of Science. pp.
103-109.
• Odum, Howard T. Energy, Ecology, and Economics. ･Ambio,
Vol. 2, No. 6, Energy in Society: A Special Issue (1973).
Published by: Allen Press on behalf of Royal Swedish Academy
of Science. pp. 220-227.