I'm going to be the person who does this I guess. Fossil fuels are mostly from plant matter, not dinosaurs, or other animals, like is often said. Still dead I guess, but not what people would think when reading this.
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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I’m going to be the person who does this I guess. Fossil fuels are mostly from algae/zooplankton , not plant matter, or other animals, like is often said. Still photosynthesise I guess, but not what people would think when reading this.
I’m going to be the person who does this I guess. Algae is an alternative term outside of the standard domain/kingdom taxonomy, so it actually spans multiple kingdoms. Most green, red, and brown algae are in the plantae kingdom, i.e. plants. Other algae can be protists or bacteria. The shared trait is that they are non-land photosynthetic organisms. Fossil fuels can be divided into coal (mostly formed from land plants), oil (algae/plankton), and natural gas (algae/plankton). Still classification I guess, but not what people would think when reading this.
While we often gravitate towards putting things precisely into categories, it's important to remember that classifications systems are structures imposed on continuous and complex phenomena for pragmatic purposes. They should not be conflated with the phenomena itself.
It's good to correct misconceptions, but sometimes over focusing on categories distracts from the meaning or sentiment being conveyed, in which case it may be better to be generous with partially correct statements and let it go.
monophyletic terminology is so much easier to handle than paraphyletic ones.
both make sense regardless of use, but it's so annoying when a term has a monophyletic and paraphyletic definitions that are used interchangeably depending on context, all my homies hate that
but algae are plants
algae are evolutionary distinct to plants
alright
it depends on what book you look into. some authors define plants as being eukaryotic beings who have accepted photosynthetic symbionts, called chloroplasts.
by that definition, no, algae (bacteria) are not plants.
alright thanks this is fascinating
it is
I think in this context the distinction is single cell vs multicellular
either case, plants is a kingdom of life. algae are separate from them. they are not plants.
alright
Lol. Thanks. Yeah, I was grouping that in mentally but I guess I didn't use the right term.
Benziiiiiin. Gib mir Benziiiiiin!
Burning the ancient ooze releases ancientness in the air
Also, someday someone's meemaw could power someone's car
Profane vicissitude dwells beneath the barren land, doomed to mortal peril. Drinking upon our own demise in reckless cheer, humanity wastes the promises of the black blood of the earth, a curse spelled out through eons of rot.
I sell profane and profane accessories.
Hank Hell
That sounds exactly like something Logan Cunningham would narrate.
I heard my boy Wayne June, of Darkest Dungeon and other such fame
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Return the Earth to its primordial state by burning the effluvial rot and releasing the souls of the vanquished back into our world, so that they can draw energy from the radiation of our Cosmic Creator and use it to bake us in the infernal flames of greed and hubris.
Not only that but people will fight wars for the privilege of digging it out of the ground.
"Slowly" is a strong word.
Turns out even slow things progress quickly when the rate is multiplied billions of times over.
The magic of exponentials
I don't think "ichor" is the right word here. Lovecraft would probably use "effluvial rot" or something.
Such fowl eldritch liquid. Thou shalt prefer to be propelled by lightning contained, if you can spare the coin that is.
The order of holy transport
- bike
- e bike
- walking
- electric motorcycle/moped
- electric car
(Ebike might have a lower co2 emissions than a bike. Depends on what you eat and where you live)
Stick 60-160mpg ICE motor bikes between e motorcycles and electric cars.
No.
EVs are more efficient than the low range for the motorcycle. If you charged your EV with a portable gas generator, your efficiency is comparable to an ICE motorcycle. Most grids at this point are quite a bit less CO2 intense than a personal generator. That cuts significantly on the CO2 impact.
The only upside to a motorcycle is the reduced energy requirements for manufacturing. But lifetime, an EV will be the clear winner.
Google tells me powergrid emissions for ecars is 60-200gC/mile.
1 gallon of gas contains 8900gC.
A Honda NC750 gets 70mpg, a Honda wave gets 160.
8900/160=55
8900/70=120
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Hmmm its got me thinking. How many mommoths does it take to fill up my car? How much biomass was it before it turned into oil?
Like maybe 10 mammoths? Maybe just 1? Or maybe 1000?!
Maybe we can use dead people to start making new oil? I mean, grave yards usually take up very valuable real estate anyway, and they are growing in size exponentially all the time. We need to start being realistic about the dead. How long does it take for someone to turn into gas anyway? Like 1000 years?
Relevant xkcd https://what-if.xkcd.com/101/
It's not dinosaurs, oil is mostly sea stuff like plankton and algae. Coal is mostly land vegetation, trees.
Dinosaurs didn't really contribute much to this pool.
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I think it’s more plants than animals.
Oh?? Well how many trees does it take to fill up my car? Like is it like 1000 trees, and half a mommoth? Maybe 100,000 fully mature 50 foot tall trees? Im very curious about this now..
I don’t know the answer. But somehow I feel like someone on the internet has attempted this calculation.
i think it was mostly plankton
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There's a 'legit' theory out there that posits that oil is sentient.
Can someone please provide a tl:dw so my YT algorithm doesn't get fucked by watching this?
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Theory has a definition, when we stretch it this far we end up with pedants saying things like "but gravity is just a theory".
I theory is the most highly respected type of 'conclusion'(those don't really exist in science) because it is Based on rigorous testing. This isn't even a hypothesis, this is just a bonkers guess.
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