Oil, Earth mass and gravitational force

Abstract

Fossil fuels are intensively extracted from around the world faster than they are renewed. Regardless of direct and indirect effects of such extractions on climate change and biosphere, another issue relating to Earth's internal structure and Earth mass should receive at least some interest. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), about 34 billion barrels of oil (~4.7 trillion metric tons) and 9 billion tons of coal have been extracted in 2014 worldwide. Converting the amounts of oil and coal extracted over the last 3 decades and their respective reserves, intended to be extracted in the future, into mass values suggests that about 355 trillion tons, or ~ 5.86*10 −9 (~ 0.0000000058) % of the Earth mass, would be 'lost'. Although this is a tiny percentage, modeling the potential loss of Earth mass may help figuring out a critical threshold of mass loss that should not be exceeded.Here, I briefly discuss whether such loss would have any potential consequences on the Earth's internal structure and on its gravitational force based on the Newton's law of gravitation that links the attraction force between planets to their respective masses and the distance that separate them.

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“…Although the percentage of the extracted fossil fuels' mass seems to be small compared to the global Earth's mass as previously highlighted (Moustafa 2016), and beyond technical, financial and logistical challenges for mining the Moon, it might be much wiser to solve Earth problems on Earth rather than to export them to the Moon and create new problematic challenges in the space. Moreover, the lunar exploitable resources might not be as abundant as fossil fuels on Earth to eventually counterbalance the potential loss of terrestrial mass by the extraction of equivalent lunar material and bring it to Earth.…”

Exploit and ignore the consequences: a mother of planetary issues

“…I thank Dr. Unice Oleander (Oleander 2016) for the valuable comment on my paper "Oil, Earth mass and gravitational force" (Moustafa 2016). Dr. Oleander is right to say that it is impracticable to manipulate every gravitational body in the solar system and, thus, proposes to pay more attention to proximal celestial bodies, in particular the Moon.…”

“…Indeed, the relative proximity between the Moon and Earth (~ 357,000 km  ), compared to other celestial bodies, makes that any substantial change in the mass of any of them (Earth or Moon) might have mutual repercussions on both of them, based on reciprocal gravitational interactions. The recent description of gravitational waves and the fact that such waves propagate freely through the Earth (Abbott et al 2016) Although the percentage of the extracted fossil fuels' mass seems to be small compared to the global Earth's mass as previously highlighted (Moustafa 2016), and beyond technical, financial and logistical challenges for mining the Moon, it might be much wiser to solve Earth problems on Earth rather than to export them to the Moon and create new problematic challenges in the space. Moreover, the lunar exploitable resources might not be as abundant as fossil fuels on Earth to eventually counterbalance the potential loss of terrestrial mass by the extraction of equivalent lunar material and bring it to Earth.…”