Background Information
Ok, let’s start with the basics. The spaceship we are all living on is called the earth and it floats in the universe. Earth makes up about 30% of the overall surface of the planet, the rest is water. The fact that the planet is called "earth" and not "water", along with the fact that many people once believed that everything else in the universe once orbited around the earth, which was at it’s centre, shows me how humans constantly overestimate their own importance in the bigger picture.
The universe is 14 billion years old, while the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. One of human being’s most famous elderly ancestors Homo Habilis, first showed up about 2 million years ago. While we, Homo Sapiens or modern man first appeared about 250,000 years ago.
In comparison, the horse’s oldest ancestor appeared about 55 million years ago, while the first crocodile appeared about 84 million years ago. To get the big picture; the weight of crocodiles in the world is about 1 million tonnes. The weight of horses is 27 million tonnes, while human beings weigh about 410 million tonnes!
We have come a long way in a short time.
One of the ways that this is most obvious is through observations of energy usage. There are many definitions of energy; joules, horsepower or one that is commonly used for comparisons; “million tones of oil equivalent”. The bar-chart below shows some of the principal sources of energy, used in the world in 1999. The numbers on the left-hand side of the scale are in “million tonnes of oil equivalent”.
For a more detailed analysis of each of the above sources of energy (per capita users etc) please click here.
The definition MTOE or “million tonne of oil equivalent” is often used. While this is useful for comparisons, it does not show how much energy is captured through the use of various fossil fuels
Energy
in Fossil Fuels
Oil,
gas and coal, largely comes from dead plants and trees that died
hundreds of millions of years ago – before the time of the
dinosaurs. As the trees and plants died, they sank to the bottom of
swamps and oceans, eventually turning into oil, coal and gas through
time and pressure.
Chinese people first started to use coal about 3000 years ago to smelt copper.
Oil has been used for more than 5,000 years. In the Middle East, ancient people used crude oil collected from large seeps on the Euphrates River. A seep is a place on the ground where the oil leaks up from below ground. The ancient Egyptians used liquid oil as a medicine for wounds and oil has been used in lamps to provide light.
In North America, Native Americans used blankets to skim oil off the surface of streams and lakes. They used oil as medicine and to make canoes water-proof. During the Revolutionary War, Native Americans taught George Washington's troops how to treat frostbite with oil.
Approximately 5,000 years ago, the first discoveries of natural gas seeps were made in Iran. The gas seeps, probably first ignited by lightning, provided the fuel for the "eternal fires" of the fire-worshiping religion of the ancient Persians.
Natural gas usually has no odor and you can't see it. Before it is sent to the pipelines and storage tanks, it is mixed with a chemical that gives a strong odor. The odor smells almost like rotten eggs. The odor makes it easy to smell if there is a leak.
Even though many of these fossil fuels were first discovered thousands of years ago, it was not until the Industrial Revolution of about 200 years ago, that fossil fuel was used on large scale.
Nowadays, it can be estimated that since the Industrial Revolution began, we have burned fossil fuels that took over 13,000 years to grow.
Indeed, in an average year, we burn approximately 400 times more plant matter than grows in the world in a single year.
A person who drives 25,000 kilometres in a year uses approximately 54,000 tonnes of prehistoric, plant-material per annum.