Marine Algae - the basis for 95% of our oil reserves (photo credit: Julie Kuo)
Phytoplankton form the base of the ocean’s food chains, transferring energy from the sun to sustain the global ocean. These tiny floating plants account for half of the photosynthetic activity on Earth. They also generate the majority of our fossil fuels…
Join me as a I talk with Ivano Aiello, Geological Oceanographer at Moss Landing Marine Labs, about how oil reserves take hundreds of millions of years to form. “Our rate of consumption is orders of magnitude faster than anything that has to do with the actual formation of oil,” Aiello says. “We are exploiting something that moves so slowly, there is no way that it can be regenerated anytime soon.”
Watch the audio slideshow here or on youtube here.
