Why is the burning of fossil fuels unnatural?

It's completely natural - as in "comes from nature". In fact, just about everything is natural. It's not something that would happen in the absence of mankind, which is what some people mean by the word, forgetting that man is part of nature.

Define natural, if you think it's anything that happens by itself, it isnt natural. If it's anything done by a plant or animal then it must be since we do it. But then nuclear power plants must be natural too. And HAZMAT.

Think of fossil fuels as stored solar energy. Before man showed up, they were piling up for eons. Our population has skyrocketed since we started using oil. And we're wasting it to do thing like ship mountains of cheaply made goods from China to America so we can use them for a little while then put them in a landfill.

And we arent finding the big fields anymore.

Think of this,, It took millions and millions of years for natural processes to store up all of that carbon in the forms of coal, oil and to a lesser extent natural gas. Now we come along and in less than a hundred years release a good big chunk of it back into the atmosphere. Oil and coal don't dig themselves out of the ground and set themselves on fire, do they?

Fossil fuels took millions of years to form. We're burning through them in a few hundred years, and releasing carbon/pollution into the atmosphere at a rapid rate, causing global warming and other environmental problems. So in that sense, it's not very "natural".

I agree with Peter J, burning of fossil fuels is natural.

Why?

Its a natural gas. Weird right?

Fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – currently provide more than 85% of all the energy. You can extract clean-burning hydrogen from fossil fuels.

-hope it helps-

Because using them allows the current level of technology that keeps most people alive. If technology was moved back to that of just the 1700s 2/3rds of the babies that survive today would not and the population would start shrinking to what it was then. The core issue if you read the believers answers and questions closely is they feel humankind is a virus on the face of the earth that needs to be cured. I myself say let them cure themselves and leave the rest of us alone, but they want the rest of us to die off and then they say they will commit suicide when we are gone. Fat chance is what i say!

It not unnatural, however the increased amount of emissions changes the structure of our biosphere-- which we people happen to live in.

It's not.

I'd prefer to go back to burning whale oil, but the environmentalists get even more bent out of shape about that.

Because it releases harmful toxins into the atmosphere, negatively affecting the environment and its inhabitants. You wouldn't wanna breathe in the exhaust from your car, would you? Yucko.