If all fossil fuels come from dead plants and animals of the past, was all the carbon trapped in them present in the atmosphere as CO2 at some point? If we dug out all the fossil fuels in the world and burned them all today, would the atmosphere be comparable to what it was like before life?
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>was all the carbon trapped in them present in the atmosphere as CO2 at some point?
Yes, but that carbon wasn’t sequestered into plant material overnight. This took millions of years and the amount of CO2 varied with time.
The reason coal deposits in particular were even able to form was because the animals and bacteria needed to break down plant matter didn’t exist yet so piles of plant material accumulated and were buried without being decomposed.
>If we dug out all the fossil fuels in the world and burned them all today, would the atmosphere be comparable to what it was like before life?
No, the atmosphere had a very different composition back then and included Methane, Argon, and very little Oxygen.
Life itself is what changed the atmosphere.
Virtually all the Oxygen we breath comes from plants and single celled organisms like Plankton that broken down Carbon Dioxide through photosynthesis.
Overtime more CO2 was added to the atmosphere from Volcanoes and other natural processes. While more and more Oxygen entered the atmosphere.
Oxygen bonded with free Iron in the Oceans creating the banded iron deposits we mine today.
Oxygen bonded with the Methane in the atmosphere turning it into CO2 and water
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