Don't let the term "fossil fuel" confuse you. In the early days of drilling they found fossils in the oil that came up, and this led to the common hypothesis. But people don't really know the mechanism by which oil is created (possibly this is true for coal as well.) The russians have an alternative hypothesis and have some experimental results where wells that were previously depleted were refilled. So called "Fossil fuels" may be a byproduct of processes in the earths crust and may not be finite (though we could still exceed the rate at which they are produced).

The commonly accepted theory is really a hypothesis with not that much science supporting it. The alternative theory may not have any more science supporting it, either. But notice how the name and the fact that the commonly accepted theory has been commonly accepted so long that it becomes "Fact" biases people's perception of the situation.

I hear people talking about CO2 as if your "carbon footprint" is a relavent issue all the time-- it has become commonly accepted even though, in that case, the hypothesis has been disproven. (CO2's absorbtion of IR is low, and its proportion is low, and thus water vapor is the driver of greenhouse effect. Further, in the past, CO2 has been vastly higher without a runaway greenhouse effect.)