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Sdwingnut t1_iv254hm wrote

Reply to comment by Human802 in New England may not have enough natural gas to last the winter by mycophdstudent

How so? Shale and oil fields will certainly reform over hundreds of thousands to millions of years from currently living organic matter if left to decompose undisturbed.

Edit: I'm fine with the downvotes , particularly if they are accompanied by scientific references to prove me wrong. I'll be happy to admit it if I can learn more about fundamental differences in geology now compared to millions of years ago.

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Shep_Book t1_iv2ltan wrote

Something to consider is that we have a lot more organisms that can break down organic matter before it has time to be turned into oil. One theory is that oil and gas would have a hard time regenerating while there are organisms that can break down and convert the matter, putting it back in the carbon cycle.

It’s why, while I love trees and I think they are great, eventually they die and decompose, releasing all the stored carbon back into the atmosphere.

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Electrical-Bed8577 t1_iv3juop wrote

Unless they burn first. Then it isn't condensed compost and eventually oil, long after we're gone. It's carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon in the atmosphere does not turn into an oil resource bubbling up from Jed's place. It just gets super warm and really hard for us to breathe. Then, after we decompose for millennia, there may be some oil bubbling up.

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Sdwingnut t1_iv2r1vv wrote

It's not a bad hypothesis, but methane (the simplest of all hydrocarbons at CH4 and the major component of natural gas) results from many different biochemical metabolic pathways. If anything, more organisms results in faster breakdown of complex organic matter into simpler molecules. But I don't know if there truly are more organisms now than a million or even a hundred million years ago. The Cambrian Explosion was more than half a billion years ago.

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