07-24-2018, 01:17 PM
Trees and petroleum (diesel, coal) are just stores of the sun's energy. The only real difference is how old these "batteries" are. They don't release any more CO2 in the air when burned than they took in when growing. Anything else would defy the laws of physics. Like my high school physics instructor kept hammering into us:
"In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant, it is said to be conserved over time. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another." (he didn't write the wikipedia article that I know of, but he preached it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy )
"In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant, it is said to be conserved over time. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another." (he didn't write the wikipedia article that I know of, but he preached it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy )