RE: fossil plants come back to haunt us: pub contains big error

[Tommy Tyrberg <tommy.tyrberg@norrkoping.mail.telia.com>]

At 10:50 2006-08-14, you wrote:

> May be true, but it is irrelevant in the context of this issue: the 
> mentioned publication underestimates the total land vegetation biomass by 
> a factor of 10 and therefore overestimates human energy consumtion as a 
> percentage of that by the same factor (22% should then become 2.2%).
>
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: David Marjanovic [mailto:david.marjanovic@gmx.at]
> Verzonden: vr 11-8-2006 12:21
> Aan: DML
> Onderwerp: Re: fossil plants come back to haunt us: pub contains big error
>
> > Forests (when broadly defined, as FAO does) contain about 80% of global
> > land plant biomass, which in turn is vastly more than plant biomass in the
> > oceans.
>
> I'm not sure if this is true if you include the cyanobacteria
> *Synechococcus* and *Prochlorococcus*, aka "seawater", in "plant biomass".

Any estimate of the amount of vegetation biomass in oil *should* ignore 
land vegetation and concentrate on oceanic biomass (i e mostly 
phytoplankton including cyanobacteria). Oil source rock is very largely 
marine though there are a few fields derived from freshwater deposits. 
Natural gas is more often derived from continental deposits though.
Incidentally oil deposits are "recycled" fairly quickly in nature. Most 
oilfields are of tertiary age, a few are mesozoic, while palaeozoic oil is 
practically unheard of. Coal lasts much better.

Tommy Tyrberg