Why is water considered a renewable resource and petroleum a nonrenewable resource?

Question

In science class, my teacher told us that water is a renewable resource and petroleum is a nonrenewable resource. My question is why are they in seperate categories?

Answer 1

We can reuse water, either by purifiying it ourselves or using nature's cycle.  Petroleum, when used, is destroyed.  Thus, we only go around once when we use it.  It is not renewable.

Answer 2

Mother nature has many cycles . The plants recycle our air and that is the first step in our fossil fuels recycling . Ask your teacher where our original fossil fuels came from, it is the plants recycle our air . The plants take in CO2 and give us the O2 and hold on to the C . The leaves fall off the plants and float down the river to the delta where they deteriorate into gas ,oil ,and after a long time coal.

Answer 3

Petroleum is formed over hundreds of thousands (if not many millions) of years, so it's not readily recreated on demand.

Water is only sort of renewable.  Water evaporates, returns to earth as rain/snow, runs off mountains as melt, runs into ground and into aquifers, flows into oceans, does it all again.  Humans, animals, and plants use water and then process it back out through urine and sweat, it gets naturally processed back to water, goes through the water cycle again.

The trouble with water is that in certain places in the world, local water supplies are insufficient to meet demand.  This can be exacerbated by droughts.  As we draw from aquifers at rates higher than they can refill, we start running into water shortages, or at least forecasts of future shortages.

If we build enough desalinization plants, we might be able to keep up, one day.

Answer 4

Water evaporates and falls down again as rain during the water cycle.  So water is renewable.

Petroleum is nonrenewable because it takes millions of years to form.  It can't be made again in any reasonable length of time.