Burning Fossil Fuels
Burning fossil fuels refers to the process of extracting and combusting non-renewable resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas to generate energy. This process releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and climate change. The environmental impact of burning fossil fuels has led to a growing emphasis on transitioning to renewable energy sources.
5 Key excerpts on "Burning Fossil Fuels"
eBook - ePub- Brian Dawson, Matt Spannagle(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Fossil fuels cause acid rain (through the emission of sulphur and nitrogen compounds), which has adversely affected large tracts of forest and aquatic ecosystems over the past half century. They also emit significant quantities of heavy metals, contribute to water pollution, and raise several other fuel cycle waste issues. However, it is their contribution to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations that is the primary concern. Fossil fuels are the single largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 60% of global emissions (on a carbon dioxide equivalent [CO 2 e] basis). 6 In terms of the contribution to the three principal greenhouse gases in 2004, they accounted for 75% of global CO 2 emissions, 30% of methane emissions, and 9% of N 2 O emissions. In 2004, fossil fuel combustion released 28 billion tonnes of CO 2 to the atmosphere. Based on the most recent International Energy Agency projections, fossil fuels could contribute 34–40 billion tonnes CO 2 /year by 2030 and as much as 50–60 billion tonnes CO 2 /year by 2050, if current trends and policies are maintained. 7 Increases in emissions of this magnitude would accelerate the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and will almost certainly result in dangerous climate change. Fossil fuels can occur in solid (peat and coal), liquid (crude oil, gas liquids, tar sands, and shale oil), or gaseous (natural gas) forms, each of which can contain varying quantities of hydrocarbons. Coal Coal was formed over millions of years through the slow accumulation and decomposition of organic residues. Over time, as these residues were buried even deeper, the pressure and heat caused biochemical changes...
eBook - ePubA History of Technology and Environment
From stone tools to ecological crisis
- Edward L. Golding(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF FOSSIL FUELS Coal In recent years, it has become possible to work out the various kinds of damage that different technologies impose on the living world. But it is worth keeping in mind that a comprehensive scientific understanding of the natural environment only emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, and that back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was relatively little insight into the complex and often irreversible destruction that human activities could cause. It is also important to remember that over the thousands of years of agricultural civilization preceding industrialization, chronic overpopulation leading to frequent episodes of devastating famine and disease had produced a psychology of grim desperation in our ancestors who often had to live in a permanent state of insecurity about whether they would be struck down by famine or disease. Over time, this state of mind became a deep-seated cultural value that made it seem almost natural to overlook impacts such as the disappearance of native plant and animal populations, the wastage of topsoil due to over-cropping and over-grazing, or the massive pollution of water, air and soil. As we saw in Chapter 4, coal, oil and gas are all produced over millions of years through gigantic geological composting processes, as enormous layers of organic matter buried under sediments away from earth’s atmosphere are slowly transformed, first by microorganisms, and then by heat, pressure and chemical change. Of the three fuels, coal is the most abundant, and also the easiest to find and use, and it was the first to be widely exploited. Unlike some mined substances, however, coal is not a very uniform material; rather it consists of a large family of organic, sedimentary rocks whose composition in any given bed varies according to the dead organic starting materials, the conditions of its burial, and the length of time it has been entombed...
eBook - ePubThe World's Water Volume 7
The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
- Peter H. Gleick, Lucy Allen, Juliet Christian-Smith, Michael J. Cohen, Heather Cooley, Matthew Heberger, Jason Morrison, Meena Palaniappan, Paul Schulte(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Island Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 4 Fossil Fuels and Water Quality Lucy Allen, Michael J. Cohen, David Abelson, and Bart Miller Fossil fuels are essential to the global economy—for electricity production, transportation, plastics and chemicals manufacturing, heating, and many other purposes. However, the extraction and processing of fossil fuels, in addition to their use, have profound impacts on the environment and natural resources, including water. Large oil spills—such as the recent Deepwater Horizon drilling rig spill, which leaked over 4.9 million barrels (780,000 cubic meters) of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico—have focused attention on the potential for disasters associated with oil drilling to cause contamination of the natural environment (Lubchenco et al. 2010). The growing recognition of the serious risks to surface-water and groundwater quality from natural gas fracking operations also raises new questions. And even normal fossil-fuel extraction and refining processes pollute the environment. The connections between water and energy have been studied in recent years, with growing recognition of how closely the two are linked. Water is used, in varying quantities and ways, in every step of fossil-fuel extraction and processing (Ptacek et al. 2004). For example, the amount of coal produced worldwide in 2009 required an estimated 1.3 to 4.5 billion cubic meters (m 3) of water for extraction and processing. 13 Oil refining requires approximately 4 to 8 million m 3 of water daily in the United States alone (the amount of water that two to three million U.S. households use daily) (US DOE 2006). But while interest has grown in the volume of water required for energy production, the water-quality impacts have been given much less attention. Because water is used in so many ways during fossil-fuel extraction and processing (see Table 4.1), there are also many ways in which it can become contaminated with a wide variety of pollutants, from sediment to synthetic chemicals...
eBook - ePub- Bertrand Cassoret(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...4 Pollution, Risks and Problems Related to Energy Sources All energy sources have their drawbacks. Clean energy does not exist. Indeed, any human construction impacts our environment, uses space and natural resources and contributes to various types of pollution. 4.1 Global Warming Everyone has surely heard, by now, of global warming. This phenomenon is undeniable. Just go hiking in the mountains and compare the current situation of glaciers to what we can see in some old photographs and you will observe a dramatic retreat. As a matter of fact, this does not prove that this warming is of human origin, created or amplified by greenhouse gas emissions related to human activities, and particularly by the amount of CO 2 released by burning coal, petroleum or gas. The overwhelming majority of scientists dealing with these matters consider that human activities are largely responsible for global warming. CO 2 increases the greenhouse effect, which hinders the Earth’s infrared radiation and the diffusion of heat towards space. The solar energy reaching the Earth is thus increasingly trapped because of CO 2. Fossil energies come from plants which have slowly stored the carbon present in the atmosphere for millions of years through the effect of solar energy and photosynthesis. At the beginning of the 19th century, human beings started burning coal, gas and petroleum, thus releasing into the atmosphere, in around 200 years, half the amount of carbon it had taken millions of years to store. Two hundred years, compared to millions of years, just means “all at once”, and thinking that it might have consequences does not seem stupid at all to me. For a long time, emissions due to deforestation were dominant among all CO 2 emissions: when burning, trees release the carbon they have stored while growing. Since the mid-20th century, emissions due to coal, petroleum and gas became much higher than those due to deforestation...
eBook - ePubSustainable Energy Transitions
Socio-Ecological Dimensions of Decarbonization
- Dustin Mulvaney(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...Extractive industries can complicate claims about the general improvement of the human condition with energy access. As energy extraction increased, so did the mark of human activity on the landscape. Historian Lewis Mumford in his 1934 treatise Technics and Civilization noted that “carboniferous capitalism” relies on the “accumulated wealth” of carbon -based energy that took millennia to amass (Mumford 1934). The fossil fuels that power civilization today are the products of long ecological and geological processes—hundreds of millions of years—and its use slowly diminishes a stock of finite low- entropy resources. Mumford distinguished carboniferous capitalism from other eras where human civilization acquired flows of energy from the sun, mainly from wood and agricultural biomass. Mumford argued that carboniferous capitalism’s “habituation to wreckage and debris” with “disregard for a balanced mode of production and consumption” would strip human civilization of the energy resources upon which it is built. The upshot of Mumford’s concern can be connected to Georgescu-Roegen’s ideas about entropy and the economy, described earlier, where each transformation of resources degrades the quality of energy and drains stocks of natural resources. We can think of useful energy in the forms of stocks and flows. Stocks of energy and natural resources can be drawn down, while flows of energy and natural resources are constantly replenishing. The addition of carbon into the atmosphere by way of combustion of fossil fuels is also a major intervention in the carbon cycle. Scientific research is teaching us that adding carbon to the atmosphere is changing the planet’s climate. The greenhouse effect is the result of accumulated levels of gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that trap solar energy in the atmosphere. Solar energy delivered to Earth is absorbed and re-radiated out as heat in the form of long-wave radiation...
