The finiteness of fossil fuels isn't real in a practical sense.

The globe burnt about 8.8 billion tons of coal in 2024. Which is a huge amount. This is the peak, most estimates are that we will reduce from there.

Australia alone estimates that it has 147 billion tons of economically recoverable coal. That is Australia alone could supply the entire globe at peak usage for over 16 years. And Australia only has about 14% of the globes coal reserves, we can keep burning coal at this pace for at least the next hundred years. And it a hundred years the scope of what we consider to be economically recoverable will have expanded greatly, further increasing our supply.

We will cook ourselves before we run out of fuel.

A more sci-fi apocalyptic angle on this fact is the argument that fossil fuels, especially easily accessible ones, are necessary to bootstrap a futuristic multi-planetary civilization. They provide the easy energy necessary to support an industrial revolution and the society and technology level necessary for more advanced and renewable forms of energy necessary to really build and sustain an advanced civilization long term.

But because they take so long to form, stumbles along the path of energy advancement mean a planetary civilization could run out of fossil fuels before reaching the level of advancement necessary to move beyond them. At that point, the civilization is essentially doomed since they lack the technological ability to move beyond fossil fuels and they lack the energy resources necessary to develop that technology.

CO2 can be converted to methane. It just isn't profitable to do so yet. After the fossil fuels are depleted, it will be a viable niche for storable energy where renewables aren't practical.

Once fossil fuels run out, most exclusively-fossil-fuel-based activities will simply cease to be economically feasible.

That doesn't contradict your statement, of course. But in the long term the fossil fuel niches will start looking more like today's rocket-fuel niches.

Why is this conversion desirable?

Methane synthesized from excess renewable power can store that renewable power for years, handily fixing the whole "Sun don't shine every day" problem.

It's durable energy storage and can be easily moved around like liquid fuels.

It also would remove CO2 emissions from things like airplanes, which won't be able to be battery powered in the near future, and could renewably replace chemical feedstocks in lots of industrial processes.

But this requires immense industrial capability, probably some serious innovation in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere because that's basically an unsolved problem right now, and a massive oversupply of solar power which cannot happen under market systems because nobody builds infrastructure to sell power at below market rates.

It might be a 50 year plan.

You swap a plentiful greenhouse gas for another greenhouse gas that is burnable at no net environmental cost.

I don't think you realize how much OIL we still have. The warnings about running out of oil is long long gone.

You're right, it's not infinite, but we are in no crisis now or in the foreseeable future.

"You're right, it's not infinite, but we are in no crisis now or in the foreseeable future."

Have you not heard of climate change influenced by fossil fuel burning, or are you a climate change skeptic?

The general consensus is that climate change is a crisis, now and in the foreseeable future.

Yes of course, but i have not heard of a reasonable action plan given the world's population and basic human nature.

> One point that gets very little coverage is that fossil fuels are a limited resource

Every time someone uses the term “renewable” they are providing coverage to this notion.

It is deeply bizarre you can think otherwise.

The renewable in renewable energy sources is referred to, indeed, the energy sources.

The user was arguing that the materials to exploit them are renewable too.