Social Conscience
So Where Did All The Fossil Fuel Come From?

"How much plant material does it take to make a gallon of gasoline? Well, according to an expert - it takes 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material - that's 196,000 pounds - is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles, according to a study conducted at the University of Utah.

Can you imagine loading 40 acres worth of wheat - stalks, roots and all - into the tank of your car or SUV every 20 miles?" asks ecologist Jeff Dukes, whose study was published in the November 2003 of the journal Climatic Change.

But that's how much ancient plant matter had to be buried millions of years ago and converted by pressure, heat and time into oil to produce one gallon of gas, Dukes concluded.

Dukes also calculated that the amount of fossil fuel burned in a single year - 1997 was used in the study - totals 97 million billion pounds of carbon, which is equivalent to more than 400 times 'all the plant matter that grows in the world in a year,' including vast amounts of microscopic plant life in the oceans. ... 44 million billion kilograms (97 million billion pounds) of carbon in ancient plant matter to produce all the fossil fuel used in 1997" A Students Guide To Alternative Fuel Vehicles

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