Figure 2.17 Discovery of natural gas reserves with exploration activities (From Islam, 2014).
Figure 2.17 shows the variation of resource base with time starting from biomass to natural gas. Biomass is available on earth in huge quantities. Due to natural activities, the biomass undergoes various changes. With heat and pressure on the interior of the earth, formation of fossil fuels starts due to the degradation of organic matters from the microbial activities. The slope of the graph indicates that the volume of reserve decreases as it is further processed. Hence, there is more coal than oil and more oil than natural gas, meaning unlimited resources. Moreover, the energy content per unit mass of the fuel increases as the natural processing time increases. The biomass resource is renewable and the biological activities continue on the earth, the process of formation of fossil fuels also continues forever. From this discussion, the conventional understanding of there being a fine boundary between renewable and non-renewable energy resources is dismantled, and it is concluded that there is no boundary between the renewable and non-renewable in the long run, as all natural processes are renewable. The only problem with fossil fuels arises from the use of toxic chemicals and catalysts during oil refining and gas processing. Provided the fossil fuels are processed using the natural and non-toxic catalysts and chemicals, or make use of crude oil or gas directly, fossil fuel will still remain as a good supplement in the global energy scenario in the days to come. These resources are totally recyclable.
2.6 Conclusions
Historically, truly sustainable lifestyle belongs to the pre-Industrial era. Every technology of ancient and Medieval era was sustainable, for which both energy and mass sources were natural. The introduction of electricity (artificial energy) and ubiquitous plastic (artificial mass) has created the culture of crisis that the world faces today. As we entered the Information Age, both the political ‘left’ and ‘right’ have missed the point that artificial lifestyle makes a process unsustainable. Politically, it has become fashionable to characterize petroleum (and all carbon-based energy technologies) as the source of unsustainability, while hailing non-carbon based sources as inherently sustainable (naming them ‘renewable’). The climate change crisis has been utilized to drum up support for the ‘left’. The ‘right’ on the other hand has failed to highlight the real positive aspects of fossil fuel, thereby marginalizing themselves as opposers of ‘settled science’, or worse, conspiracy theorists. This debate has been accentuated in the Information Age, with no end in sight.
Notes
1 1 Organic mercury compounds, sometimes called organomercurials, are those containing covalent bonds between carbon and mercury. Examples are methylmercury, dimethyl-mercury and methylmercury chloride (methylmercuric chloride).
2 2 For details of the galaxy model, see Islam (2014).
3 3 On the yang side of the yin-yang are six organs, namely, gall bladder, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, bladder and triple burner.
4 4 ‘Intangible’ would be the closest meaning of this word.
5 5 This term is applied to Newton and scientists of the post-Newtonian era that are believers of New Science, which is premised on the ‘infallibility’ of Newtonian description of mass and energy.
6 6 A cairn in front of its administration building actually describes the university’s origins two centuries ago from a fund created to launder the ill-gotten gains of an early 19th century war crime committed by the Royal Navy against a customs house in the U.S. state of Maine several months after Anglo-American hostilities of the War of 1812 had officially concluded.
7 7 In the coarse language of The New Yorker’s John Cassidy, Trump is saying, “screw you to the world” in order to implement “his maniacal, zero-sum view.”
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