Last Update: July 4, 2015

  1. Fossil Fuel’s gift to the world – modern society, powerful machines, 7+ billion people
  2. How many days of human labor is in a gallon of gasoline?
  3. What’s in Crude Oil? A lotta toxic stuff, Benzene, Tuolene, etc
  4. Health effects of fossil fuel consumption
    1. Health effects of burning Diesel, and the exhaust fumes
    2. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma, from living near diesel exhaust concentrations
  5. Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Resources, Peak Everything
    1. What happens when the power runs out? That is, when Peak Oil really bites us in the butt?
    2. Fracking's false oil-energy boom leading the world to financial collapse?
    3. Peak Oil 101 – Chris Martenson
    4. Peak Oil Reading List
    5. DON’T WORRY, DRIVE ON: Fossil Fools & Fracking Lies
    6. 300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds
    7. U.S. Military rethinking its energy policies; speech by Adm. Mullin at the Energy Security Forum of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
    8. Fueling the Future Force: Preparing the Department of Defense for a post-Petroleum era
  6. The oil companies keep winning as long as we keep giving them money
  7. Natural Gas – the Supposedly Clean Fossil Fuel
  8. Gasoline and Diesel
    1. What is the true price of gasoline? Should it cost $10 per gallon?
    2. Types of Crude Oil sources & constraints
    3. Extracting Crude Oil from the ground
    4. Transporting crude oil to refineries
    5. Refining crude oil to oil products
    6. Delivery to consumers
    7. Oil Products Consumption – burning gasoline, etc
    8. Crude Oil Dispersants – The main tool to mitigate crude oil spill disasters
  9. Coal
    1. Types of Coal
    2. Clean coal? Misnomer?
    3. Coal as a source of electricity or conversion into synthetic crude oil
    4. History of Coal Use
  10. Fracking – Hydraulic Fracturing – Acidizing
    1. Produced Water from Fracking operations
    2. Fracking (waste water injection) probably causes induced earthquakes
    3. Hydraulic Fracturing (fracturare hidraulica) in Romania’s shale gas (gaze de sist) formations
      1. Public perception of shale gas in Romania
      2. The future of shale gas in Romania: questions and policy options
      3. Romania after Nabucco: Energy Security Options
      4. Romania’s Oil and Gas Framework: 2013 highlights
      5. Paleozoic Paleozoic Shale Gas Plays of the Eastern Europe: Romania case study
    4. United States State Department Bureau of Energy Resources – USAID
      1. Fiscal Year 2014 USAID Budget Request contains funding for fracking program
    5. Marathon Oil explains that Hydraulic Fracturing is safe and beneficial
    6. WARNING Fracking An Inconvenient Truth
    7. Truth about Fracking – Wes Wilson – Phil Doe
    8. Costs of Fracking for Oil and Gas

Gasoline and Diesel and Jet Fuel don't precipitate out of thin air. They come from a variety of oil fields, that we go over below. Roughly speaking the process is split into these phases (summarized from The 6 kWh electricity to refine gasoline would drive an electric car the same distance as a gasser?):

  • EXTRACTION: Crude oil is extracted from the planet using one of the extraction processes
  • TRANSPORTATION: Transport the crude oil to refineries
  • REFINING: Refineries process the crude oil into a myriad of products, primarily gasoline, diesel and jet fuel
  • DISTRIBUTION: Transportation through a distribution system that includes facilities which blend specific formulations
  • CONSUMPTION: Delivery at fueling stations

Once delivered into a vehicle, the fuel is burned. By itself, burning the fuel releases both greenhouse gas emissions, and other toxic gasses. The climate change impact of the fossil fuel emissions to drive the world-wide fleet is already starting to threaten human societies. We're already seeing intense heat-waves, extreme weather of all kinds, worsening drought conditions, and changes to seasonal patterns. According to climate scientists we're still in the early stages of the climate changes to come.

About the Author(s)

David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.
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