Are you tired of high gas prices?
If only you had an ocean of gasoline.
Well, now you do.
In this episode,
we'll fill all our oceans with gasoline
instead of saltwater.
We use a lot of gasoline.
In 2020, Americans alone
used about 465 billion l (123 billion gal)
just at the gas pump.
And we don't just use it for
powering our cars.
We add gasoline to chemicals,
plastics and other synthetic materials
that we use every day.
And because we burn so much of it,
we produce a lot of human-made
carbon dioxide.
We’re already dealing with
the extreme weather and natural disasters
brought on by warming our planet.
So how much worse would it get
if our oceans were made of gasoline?
Oceans full of gasoline might seem
like an explosive disaster waiting to happen.
But our oceans wouldn’t
all go up in flames.
By itself, liquid gasoline doesn’t burn.
But when gasoline vapor mixes with air,
it becomes a flammable gas.
Every fuel needs to reach
a specific temperature to give off vapor.
This is called a flashpoint.
Unfortunately, gasoline has a very low flashpoint.
It only needs temperatures of -40 °C (-40 °F) to produce vapor.
And since the Earth’s average temperature is 16° C (61° F),
you’d see oceans of liquid gas
that were constantly evaporating.
So although the oceans wouldn’t
go up in flames,
their surfaces would.
Beachfront properties would be looking out
over a vision of hell.
And as the oceans burned,
there'd be an incredible surge of toxic smoke.
Carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide
and nitrogen oxides would fill the air.
Climate change would accelerate even more.
Marine life would die instantly,
so say goodbye to seafood.
And because oceans
create half of the oxygen
in the atmosphere,
you'd have difficulty breathing.
Instead of oxygen,
you'd inhale toxic chemicals.
Carbon monoxide would be especially hazardous.
It would replace the oxygen
in your red blood cells,
causing severe tissue damage.
And if you lived close to the ocean,
you could die from breathing in
too much carbon monoxide.
There’d also be issues from
long-term exposure to toxic gas.
All over the world,
people would start having tremors,
seizures and hallucinations.
Some would experience memory loss.
And it wouldn't end there.
Gasoline is only 75% as dense as ocean water,
so gasoline oceans
wouldn't have enough buoyancy for ships to float.
And because transport ships
wouldn't be able to,
well, transport stuff,
oceans of gasoline would destroy global trade.
And that would increase
the cost of everyday items.
OK. Here's the question
I know you’ve been waiting for.
Well, gasoline is made up of various hydrocarbons,
which all have different properties.
When they turn into a gaseous state,
the hydrocarbons separate and disperse.
So you wouldn’t see gasoline rain.
But you would see rain composed
of separate hydrocarbons.
And this would cause
our skies to rain acid.
That's because the gasoline oceans
would emit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
They would mix with water and oxygen
in the atmosphere and fall as acid rain.
And that would be bad because acid rain
would damage plants and crops,
creating food scarcity.
But even more important
than food is fresh water.
And that would be hard to come by.
Any freshwater that flowed into the ocean
would instantly become contaminated.
So we'd have to build a closed loop
cycle of freshwater to sustain life on Earth.
Now, would anything good come
from the oceans turning to gasoline?
Well, the price tag at your local gas
station would plummet.
But I don’t think it would be worth
our entire planet being covered in toxic smoke,
or food and freshwater becoming scarce.
Not to mention you'd be battling
skin and respiratory illnesses.
Now, you might fare a little better
if the oceans were filled
with liquid mercury instead of gasoline.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.