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Comment by gnomewascool | Hacker News Reader

On geological time-scales (tens of millions of years) fossil fuels will be replenished. In fact the paper presents a speculative, putative mechanism by which an industrial civilisation may inadvertently help provide these resources for future civilisations:

> [...] the prior industrial activity would have actually given rise to the potential for future industry via their own demise.

See page "148", mid-way through the second column for details. (It's a shame that Fermat's Library doesn't provide an interface for deep-linking parts of the article.)

On a time-scale of thousands of years to (probably) single-digit millions of years, you're almost certainly right, though.

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> On geological time-scales (tens of millions of years) fossil fuels will be replenished.

Will they? My understanding is that we have abundant coal thanks to the Carboniferous period, during which trees emerged but no organisms had yet adapted to break down lignin, causing massive fossilized tree deposits -- coal. As far as I see, that was an unique period in Earth's history that will not take place again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

My understanding is that the carboniferous was a particularly productive coal forming period, but in no way unique. The majority of the coal on earth has been formed since the carboniferous and the process is ongoing today.

Figure 1 in the link below provides a good demonstration of north american coal formation over time/

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442

Mmm. Maybe. There is a plausible theory [0] that our coal deposits came from the era between when plants learned to produce lignin but bacteria didn't know how to break it down.

Given that lignin eating bacteria are now quite common, it is unlikely coal seams will form of the same quantity and quality.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Formation

I Think there is some confusion between coal formation rate and coal formation volume. My understanding is that more coal has been formed since the cretaceous than during the cretaceous.

Figure 1 in the link below provides a good demonstration of north american coal formation over time.

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2442

I believe it's fungus that breaks down the lignin.

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