The coal and petroleum burned today store sunlight captured by photosynthesis roughly:
AAbout 200 years ago
BTwo thousand years ago
CTwo million years ago
D200 million years ago
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: D. 200 million years ago
1. Fossil fuels are the buried remains of once-living photosynthetic matter.
2. The energy in them was originally solar energy trapped in carbon-carbon bonds.
3. The energy extracted today by the burning of coal and petroleum products represents sunlight energy captured and stored by photosynthesis almost 200 million years ago.
4. The other options are off by three to six orders of magnitude.
_Source: OpenStax Biology for AP(R) Courses (CC BY 4.0), Ch 8 'Photosynthesis', sections 8.1-8.3_
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