[adamwong246]

All petroleum was created from ancient forests before the evolution of microorganisms that could decompose fiber, so the plant material was simply buried and gradually became petroleum. Above ground, evolution produced organisms which could break down fiber. My point being, that not only is petroleum very useful, it is exceptionally rare on a geological timeline (at least on this planet ). It's like a cosmic trust fund, and like most trust fund recipents, we utterly squandered it. We took all this free energy, burned it to power ai slop, and poisoned ourselves in the process. We should have been using that oil to push humans out of the gravity well to Titan where petroleum is abundant. But no, we wanted big cars, cheap electricity and single use utensils.

Edit: I was mistaken, confusing coal and petroleum. While petroleum comes from microscopic ocean life, coal forms from the remains of terrestrial plants.

[nerdsniper]

I think that the forest thing might be true for coal but I believe oil is from algae.

[adamwong246]

You are right! Thank you for correcting me

[AYBABTME]

Hydrocarbons can be synthesized.

edit: let me elaborate.

My point is that the chemical complexity (manufacturing uses) can be reproduced, and the energy storage density also can be. So really the gift of hydrocarbons under the ground is more that readily available energy is under our feet to help propel us towards higher levels sources of energy. IMO it’s a stepping stone and that’s effectively how humanity is using it.

[adonovan]

This (amazing) hypothesis has been challenged by new evidence; see for example https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4780611/.