Fossil Fuels: Oil, Coal and Gas Fossil fuels are essential to life on earth as we know it today. Our world would certainly be much different if it weren’t for such seemingly simple things such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These basic elements of life on earth may not seem like a major concern to some people until we put into perspective how they have shaped our world today. Civilizations have been built, economies have risen and crumbled, and even wars have been fought over these precious fossil fuels. However, these fossil fuels serve us in ways we may never truly appreciate, as long as we use them as recklessly as we do now. The major entity about fossil fuels is concerning their longevity and permanence in our world, and we all know, they will be around forever.
The Origins of Our Fossil Fuels Coal, oil, and gas were all formed from the remains of decayed and decomposing ancient animals and plants (Science Daily 2014). These fossil fuels we produced far before the dinosaurs ever roamed the earth, during the Carboniferous Period (Chapter 8 2012). This period of time, estimated around 360-286 million-years-ago, is believed to be when the earth was covered mostly in trees, plants, and swamps, and the bodies of water existing at the time were all filled with hundreds-of-millions of small plants called algae.
When the trees and plants that covered the earth at he time began to die, they fell into the seas and descended to the ocean floors. On the ocean floors, fish and
Fist of all, fossil fuels can make energy to make our life easier, but it also affects climate change. In daily life, fossil fuels are helping us to improve our life. Fossil fuels are making the electric power for us, and let us can use lights, computers, and other electricity. On the road, fossil fuels make our car, motorcycle can run on the road. Therefor, fossil fuels can let us easy to get somewhere else. In the air, fossil fuels let the aircrafts can fly in the air, then to make the world closer that you don’t need to spend a month on the road when you travel to the other countries. On the other hand, fossil fuels formed need more then hundred thousand years by natural processes, and it’s limit sources on the earth (Fossil Fuel). Therefor, if we don’t keep planning to use them, in one day, all of the fossil fuels will be dead. If all of the fossil fuels run out, the earth’s land ice will melt, and the sea level will get increase. At that time, a lot of coastal cities will flood by the ocean, and the
Fossil fuels, or as some entrepreneurs call it “black gold”, are one of the most influential inanimate objects within our culture. It is able to cause economic shifts, alter ecological systems if it is not managed properly, is a major source of fuel for agriculture, transportation, and industrial mechanisms, and it originates from plant and animal fossils over thousands of years. Today, the United States is the number one producer of oil, and we have found new ways of extracting it from the earth, such as hydraulic fracturing. Processes like these have the potential to poison local water supplies and alter the topographical structure of a given ecosystem. The discovery of shale has helped gas companies rely less of foreign oils and control the global market. Since oil has become cheaper within the U.S, there are more SUV’s on the road than before and people are starting to drive longer distances. Oil companies are facing the problem of finding ways to store excess oil. While we as humans see fuels as a source of mobility and prosperity, we often detach ourselves from how ecologically damaging the extraction methods are, the social injustices and inequalities it can create within a society, and most importantly that it is a nonrenewable resource. The assemblage of fossil fuels take thousands of years to form which is well past a human lifetime. Even trying to perceive that amount of time is incomprehensible to us. The composition of fossil fuels are not necessarily made from complex materials, all that is required is that something dies and goes under heat and pressure for a long period of time. That means that at some point we can potentially be incorporated within the sludge that is “black gold”. I feel as though bennet would articulate that in order to grasp the full understanding of our relationship with fossil fuels that we must address that at some point we are
Coal has been around ever since the caveman times. It is a black or brownish‐black fossil fuel, and is a mixture of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Giant plants started the creation of coal. After their deaths in swamps, water and dirt start to build up on them. Millions of years are needed to create this nonrenewable energy source. During this long period of time,
Coal is a fossil fuel and is the result of the altered remains of prehistoric vegetation that originally accumulated in swamps and peat bogs. The material that formed fossil fuels varied greatly over time as each layer was buried. As a result of these variations and the length of time the coal was forming, several types of coal were created. Depending upon its composition, each type of coal burns differently and releases different types of emissions.
Fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas, are currently the world 's primary energy source. Formed from organic material over the course of millions of years, fossil fuels have fueled U.S. and global economic development over the past century. Yet fossil fuels are finite resources and they can also irreparably harm the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the burning of fossil fuels was responsible for 79 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. These gases insulate the planet, and could lead to potentially catastrophic changes in the earth’s climate. Technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) may help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions generated by fossil fuels, but other, more sustainable energy sources are available. Alternative energy sources such as wind power, hydropower, nuclear generation, and biofuels have the capability to effectively replace fossil fuels within a reasonable amount of time.
The formation of the other two fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas) took millions of years just like coal. Oil and gas come from the remains of small animals and plants. Long ago, when the animals and plants died, they sank to the bottom of the sea. The dead matter formed a large mass, which over time was covered by layers of sand, silt, and mud. As the weight of the sediment increased, the mass became more and more compressed. Then, the heat and pressure of the Earth eventually turned the mass into oil and gas. If the heat applied during the formation was low, then more oil was produced than gas. If the temperature was
This paper will discuss the three main fossil fuels which are oil, coal, and natural gas. This research shows how the fossil fuels are formed, where they could be found, and explain how they were formed over millions of years. This paper will show the numerous advantages of fossil fuels compared to the disadvantages and how they are hurting the Earth. Fossils fuels are critical to the function of everyday life. The world would be a different if fossil fuels and their uses were not to of use.
These fossil fuels serve to be very beneficial for our use and need for energy. The accessibility of these energy sources are relatively abundant in our environment. These sources of energy, specifically crude oil for example, are found in abundance underground in certain areas. For example, while there is not huge oil sources underground everywhere, there are large rigs in certain areas of the world that supply an astronomical amount of crude oil for our use. Places such as Saudi Arabia and Canada have been the 2 largest providers of non-renewable oil for the US. Similarly, there are many places in the US that non-renewable resources like oil and coal have been tapped into. These oil rigs and coal mines are being used at a rate that some worry is not sustainable, or responsible. The oil rigs, in particular, produce a real economic boom as well as the benefit to fulfill our energy needs. For example, back when gasoline was 4 dollars a gallon, it
Energy has been used for transports, cooking, lighting, running a machine and many other different ways. Most of the energy that humans use is fossil fuel and fossil fuel included coal, oil and natural gas.
To start with, what are fossil fuels and in what ways do they impact our environment? Fossil fuels consist of natural gas, oil, and coal which are sources of energy that have formed within the earth for millions of years. In other words, they come from decomposed plants and animals which have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas through heating and compression in the earth's surface over hundreds of millions of years. In fact, millions of homes and businesses around the world use fossil fuels either for cooking, heating, or production of household commodities and many more.
As we know there are three main types of fossil fuel, each type present in a different state. Coal is a solid fossil fuel, made up of many layers of dead trees and plants which have decomposed, compressed and heated by nature over millions of year. The pressure of all the layers of mud, rock, and sand on top of this extracts all the water and oxygen from the carbon substance, leaving a solid carbon enriched substance known as coal. the length of time coal remains buried determines the richness of carbon the coal contains, the longer it's buried the richer the coal is. By combusting coal with
There are three different types of “Non-Renewable” fossil fuels on plant earth, they are oil, coal, and natural gas. Oil was first created by different living creatures that lived in the ocean waters, these creatures were then buried under the oceans floor for many years. After a very long period of time the heat from the sun and different pressure eventually started to heat up these different creatures that were buried under layers of sediment deposits. That was how the thick substance called “oil” was first formed. But deeper down into the earths crust the same thing happened but it eventually formed “natural gas”. After a long period of time passes, the oils and natural gas that is formed eventually works its way up through the earths surface into rock formation called “cap rocks”. From these cap rocks we get most of our natural gas and oil today. The last non-renewable energy is coal, we use coal to do things like heat up our homes. Coal was created almost the same way as natural gas and oil. Coal is created by many different kind of plants like ferns and trees that existed many many years ago. Coal is also formed by swamps that were located in the eastern part of the united States that were covered by sea water. a big problem is that this sea water contained a lot of sulfur. So when this coal that has sulfur in it burns it creates an air pollutant. Luckily, we found other fresh water
Fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas, have facilitated global economic development by stimulating the industrial sector. Formed when organic matter gradually concentrates over the span of millions of years, fossil fuels constitute the world 's primary source of energy. Upon extraction, they are processed in refineries to create invaluable raw materials such as fuel oil, gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas which meet 82 percent of U.S. energy demanded by catalyzing the generation of steam, electricity and power transportation systems (US Energy Information Administration). Fossil
Fossil Fuels are the natural fuels such as coal or gas found in the Earth’s crust. It is formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms. A hydrocarbon deposit, such as oil, coal, or natural gas, derived from the accumulated remains of ancient plants and animals. Carbon dioxide and other gases were produced by burning fossil fuels are considered to be one of the principal causes of global warming.
The world currently functions through the use of fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels possess two significant disadvantages. Fossil fuels harm the global environment because they enhance the greenhouse effect by releasing carbon dioxide, and they release other harmful