Wow thanks for opening my eyes. I'm now ready to get out there and start enjoying all the myriad ways that petroleum makes our lives better.

Fossil fuels enabled overconsumption of resources at levels never before possible. Can't wait for next year's Earth Overshoot Day! Also, CFCs enabled some true miracles in refrigeration, we shouldn't demonize them. Damned bleeding heart tree huggers ruin everything. >:-(

Just curious, how many "daily" deaths are there from extracting gas out of the ground?

Depends, do you want to count the mass extinction event that we've created? If so, you're really not going to like the answer.

It's sad that HN has been infested with this level of sensationalist ridiculouness.

Acknowledging the mass extinction event that we caused is sensationalism? We've completely fucked the climate in a bad way, and are triggering the complete destruction of entire species on a daily basis. Denying that is the actual ridiciulousness. So I will ridicule as I please.

Daily? Odd unit given Fukushima was over a decade ago. Also, "extracting" gas would compare to mining uranium from the ground, not to running a plant.

I'm only finding US statistics for the "extracting" part, and that looks like about 1000 dead in just the USA, just with regard to oil and gas extraction, in the last decade.

But, given your style and the newness of your account, I find it very hard to trust that you're really "just curious", rather than using the phrase to create rhetorical affect.

Why is it 'overcompensation'?

In fact we should consume even more, its totally fine, we just need to do it with nuclear breeder plants. Energy isn't practically limited.

In terms of total resource in vs energy out nuclear is fantastic. And if we actually made some series advances it would be insanely so.

They never said oil and gas had zero value. They never advocated for going back to wood and poo and whalefat. They actually didn't say any of the stuff you're mad at them for saying, and the stuff you're mad at them for not saying isn't really relevant to their point. I think most people reading these comments know oil and gas provide lots of energy we couldn't get from wood/poo/whalefat.

If you see gas and oil as an improvement to w/p/w, why can't nuclear be an improvement on oil gas?

You can tell from their wording that they have a "renewables good, oil bad" mantra. Like I said, they're happy to mention deaths stemming from fossil fuels, but not mention the lives that were helped by that form of energy. It's a tired narrative of people who are too lazy and/or uneducated to discuss the complicated issue of the pros/cons for fossil fuels.

It seems like you've projected an entire personality and set of arguments onto this one point they made that wasn't present in their post.

They compared fatalities between two energy sources. What do the relative benefits of those two sources have to do with their fatality rate?

I really don’t. I’m just tired of anti nuclear propaganda when fossil fuels are demonstrably worse of deaths and pollution. For the avoidance of doubt I fly, and drive a dirty diesel car.

Found the Albertan!

I really get fatigued seeing people bash dried animal feces, wood, and whales as if they have zero value...

> Oh go join Greenpeace already

Funny, because it's Greenpeace who is against nuclear power and thus pro-fossil fuels.