@filistro,
(Cue Monty Python mode) — I’m not arguing, I’m just gently guiding you to enlightenment, ma’am.  Arguments are next door.  Have your money ready.

Technically speaking, charcoal isn’t a fossil fuel until it turns to coal.  Sure, it’s still C12, amorphous (crystalline would be diamond, planar hexagonal bonded would be graphite).  But coal is generally denser than charcoal.  Any decent geologist can tell them apart instantly.

On the other hand, there is the K-T Boundary, which is marked by a layer of charcoal — and it dates from 65 megayears ago.  Almost everybody would agree that that is “fossil” charcoal, but it’s not coal.

Diamonds aren’t generally considered fossils, because they were formed* deep inside the Earth by geological processes, not from biological material.  (They’re usually found in aeons-old “pipes” that vented magma to volcanoes.)

A “fossil” is basically organic matter that has become a rock (or where the organic matter has been replaced by rock, such as silicates replacing carbon compounds).  Yeah, the terminology is imprecise — is oil a “rock”?  What about “fossil water”, as in the Ogallala aquifer?  But generally, it’s got to be really, really old…

So if you take a dead cat and put it into a bio-processor and turn it into diesel fuel, that isn’t “fossil” fuel, just “bio-fuel”.  (This experiment has already been done — but, as I understand it, the cat was already deceased, not helped along by the researchers.)  As in so many cases, it’s the process that matters, not the substance that matters.  If you compost animal matter, then grow broccoli in the result, that doesn’t make the result Soylent Green, no matter where the animal material came from, right?

Again — no argument, just a discussion of the meaning of terms.

The proper term for fossil feces is “coprolites”, BTW, and they’re highly sought-after by archeologists studying human pre-history.

*Don’t try to pass off one of them laboratory-grown tetrahedral crystalline Carbon objects as a “diamond”, or DeBeers will be on your case big-time.

@shortchain… “fos­sil” would require the stuff to be buried for a few megayears.

I know I shouldn’t be arguing with a scientist on stuff like this (because I always come to grief eventually when I do that ) … but once organic matter has been turned to charcoal, hasn’t it effectively been “fossilized,” albeit by a different (and speedier) process ?

Like when they make synthetic diamonds in a few days in the lab.… what you have didn’t take millions of years to produce like a natural diamond, but it’s still a diamond… right?

@filistro,
The proper term is “bio-fuel”, and “renewable” also applies — but “fossil” would require the stuff to be buried for a few megayears.

Here’s hoping you have a great time.

shortchain… THANK YOU for this!!!

I really do spend quite a lot of my time worrying about the environmental damage and ludicrous inefficiency associated with disposal of human waste in modern society. It’s great to know that smart people are actually giving the matter some serious thought (and funding!) I particularly like the idea of solar toilets reducing human waste to functional charcoal. In essence we would be  using the sun to produce our own renewable fossil fuel… which sounds like an oxymoron but apparently is not.

I’m leaving tomorrow for my annual late-summer hiking trip into the wilds of northern Montana, but after reading this I will be smiling while polishing hiking boots and hunting up knapsacks and bear repellent.

Thanks again. You are a peach

(Posted just for you, filistro.)

Articles get posted over the weekend?  Sorry, I was outdoors enjoying the first rain we’ve seen in ages! If any of you have an in with any weather gods, we could use about another 16 inches or so…

I admit that I have been thinking about water conservation issues, as I survey my dead, brown lawn next to the dead, brown lawns of my neighbors. Our lawns are all quite dry regardless of how much water we each wasted in an attempt to keep ‘em alive throughout June. By July, my neighbors and I mostly gave up on watering our lawns, seeing that no amount of water was making a difference during 100+ temps in Iowa. Hey, at least I don’t have to mow!

I hadn’t realized that flushing actually used more water than lawn watering. Perhaps that’s because flushing happens in relatively small amounts several times per day all year round, while lawn watering tends to happen in big obvious chunks once per week or so during the summers. It’s amazing how those little amounts can add up.

Considering the improvements in toilet technology (many of today’s 1.6 gpf toilets flush more thoroughly than the 3 gpf monsters of yesteryear), I would say that mandating such standards is a form of “totalitarian” tyranny that I think we should all be glad GHW Bush was prescient enough to implement, giving innovative engineers a reason to look at the problem.

And, while King is from Iowa, I do my best to avoid anything he says, because he usually just angers me… (Likening legal immigrants to dogs is another of his recent charmers.) I wish Christie Vilsack luck knocking him off in IA-4.

Those that like to use biblical standards also seem to forget that man was commanded to be a good steward of the earth, not just to “have dominion” over it.

Pick and choose! That’s what they’re good at. Maybe that’s why they are so adept at taking things out of context.