Originally Posted by
pangolin
But but but it's fossil fuel!
It probably is, at least the large shallow deposits which we use. But it's probably also possible for oil to form without biomass. In fact, you can do that for sure in a lab. Can it happen in the depth of the earth? Almost certainly. In enough quantity and in large enough deposits to be useful to us? Maybe not.
The ingredients and recipe are indisputable: hydrogen and carbon. The process is indisputable: heat and pressure (and time). The ingredients don't always have to come from dead plants.
But again... it doesn't really matter because the economically accessible oil deposits which have already been depleted are clearly not renewing themselves in our lifetimes.
Oil may actually be a renewable resource, but clearly not on the time-scale that we need.
Kind of like trees, renewable yes but it's not always practical to wait 70 years for the lumber to build your house.