I actually don't know what oil is, so I thought I'd write this post on the different kinds and purposes of the stuff, and just what's the big deal about the black gold, or whatever color it is.
First of all, we call gasoline to fuel our cars "gas" and it is a liquid. There's natural gas, too, which some of us use to heat our homes, and many of us use with our outdoor barbeques. It comes in big trucks, which I believe has it in liquid form, although it comes out of our stoves in gas form. Whatever the state (there are 4 states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), it's still "gas." Furthermore, we get motor oil for our cars (like Pennzoil), whose level we are supposed to check with the engine's "dipstick," upon pain of burning up our engine. So how does petroleum fit into all this? What about crude oil and refined oil, and the various permutations thereof, like sweet light and so forth? How is vegetable oil an oil like (what I presume is) the decayed and buried fossils of ancient organic material ("fossil fuel"). I never took a class that cleared all this up, so I've been in the dark, and I'm going to enlighten you.
My main question is this: does our economy depend on the product we call motor oil? It's such a minor thing, it seems, in comparison to the ubiquitous gasoline which our continually thirsty vehicles hunger for. When people talk about the price per barrel going over a hundred dollars, what exactly are they talking about?
Ah, who cares. I'm going to bed.
Just ride a bike. Take a bus or train. Carpool. in a hybrid.
and reduce your footprint:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/human-footprint/?ngc=57
1 day ago
No comments:
Post a Comment