Fossil Fuels, a Compendium of Dumbness

The fossil fuels - gas coal oil

We have to admit that we have little, if any, use for activists who use lies and half-truths to proselytize for their cause. It's worse, too, when the cause is worthy instead of something "sinful," like greed or a hunger for power. That's why our chief geologist gets his dander up when he encounters environmental activists who repeat scientifically inaccurate or unsupportable claims in their screeds; and even more so when the activists claim to be "educating" the public. He ran across one such "principled liar" recently plying his trade at Sciencing.com (just hate that name): he's journalism graduate Alex Silbajoris, who we caught shading the facts in "What Are Three Examples of Fossil Fuels."¹

Silbajoris claims in his biography for the site that "other studies include geology"; to which we say, "not enough of it." Why do we say that? well, he starts out with a bogus statement and continues from there:

"Fossil fuels are so named because their sources are not readily renewed like solar, wind or hydroelectric energy. "

No, Alex, that's the definition of nonrenewable energy sources, of which fossil fuels are a subclass. They're called  fossil fuels because they derive from dead organic matter. Uranium is also nonrenewable, but it's a chemical element instead of a fossil fuel.

Alex goes on to "explain" the different grades of coal: lignite, bituminous, anthracite. According to Alex, the difference in the three grades is depth of burial:

"Anthracite is the hardest and highest grade of coal, but it's also the most difficult to extract because it occurs deeper in the Earth's surface."

No, Alex, anthracite isn't high-grade coal because it "occurs deeper in the Earth's surface," it's high-grade because it has at some time in its history been deeply buried. Anthracite was at one time mined quite near the surface in the Appalachian Mountains. Silbajoris then goes on to explain how nasty coal is, concluding with the scary, albeit only tangentially-related, claim that "German law allows the destruction of whole towns to mine the coal under them." Apparently, Alex has never been to Appalachia... after which Silbajoris ominously intones, "Controversy swirls around speculation of how much oil remains to be discovered and extracted around the world." Pretty prose, but not quite true, Alex. Real scientists (as opposed to semi-informed amateurs) have a fairly good handle on the topic. And finally, Silbajoris demonstrates his unfamiliarity with fossil fuel markets by explaining boom and bust cycles:

"In the 1880s, the gas boom in northern Ohio and Indiana provided cheap energy and jobs, but because the resource was thought to be inexhaustible it was squandered, and the boom lasted only a few years. Later booms came and went in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas."

More half-truths, in particular the Indiana gas boom claim. Had Silbajoris read his reference in its entirety, he might have noted the penultimate sentence: "...the consumption and waste so characteristic of Indiana’s gas boom provided a lesson to other states of the necessity to manage the use of resources." One of those lessons was proper reservoir management, which sets limits on the rate of production of gas or oil and requires operators to drill at a specified minimum distance from adjacent wells. But Alex wouldn't know that...

Just like he either doesn't know or doesn't want to know that boom and bust cycles in the oil business are caused by economic factors: it costs a lot to produce from a well or field, and if the selling price of a fossil fuel is too low for the company to make a profit, they quit drilling and producing. That's the bust. When the price comes back up, they start drilling and producing again: that's the boom. But Silbajoris doesn't want you to know that, and we think that means he deserves our Dumbass of the Day award for biased "informing." See? it's not just Fox News that shades the truth...

¹ The original has been rewritten by one of Leaf Group's "cleanup team," but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   sciencing.com/three-examples-fossil-fuels-4610638.html

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