Fossil Fuels and the Benefits Blake Brown Geology

Fossil Fuel is a term to describe a group of energy sources that were formed during the Carboniferous period which is approximately 360 million years ago. Fossil Fuels come in 3 different forms depending on what the organic matter is, the temperature, the time, and the pressure conditions. Coal, oil, and natural gas are the forms that are taken when met with the right conditions. Coal is composed of ferns plants and trees which hardened due to pressure and heat. Oil was formed from small organisms such as plankton and algae, where pressure causes the more complex matter to decompose.

Natural gas is the same process as oil except it was exposed to more heat making it decompose further into a gas form. Fossil Fuels are sought-after energy sources because they have a high energy density.

They are the worlds dominated energy source, with a variety of applications from electricity production and transport fuels. They can also be used to make plastics, cosmetics, to even some medicines.

Get quality help now

Writer Lyla

Verified writer

Proficient in: Fossil fuels

5 (876)

“ Have been using her for a while and please believe when I tell you, she never fail. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

It’s the middle ages, people in Britain run out of firewood to burn things. So, they switch to burning coal. But they use up the coal on the ground, miners dig deep, coal mines fill up with water. Samuel Newcome invents a coal-burning steam engine to pump out water, so miners can keep digging. Now we have ingredients for the industrial revolution, fossil fuels, and a way to put them to work. Coal miners bog down lugging coal, railcars make it easier, rails and steam engines combined make a railroad.

Then you get energy, cars, and planes. Oil is the world's primary fuel source for transportation and has been a crucial strength of our eras.

Oil created economies, but also condemned them; cut political restrictions, but also bought them; concerning wars, but also created them. Reconstructed the urban environment, nevertheless also polluted it; unrestricted a low-price tag but voiced its true costs. Oil also created jobs, then abused rights and tarnished health. Everything good that has come from oil has come at a price far higher than what you see faced on ads, a price that wildlife and civilization shouldn't have to tolerate so profoundly and an obsession that unless prevailed, will cause climate catastrophe. Coal, which was formed from primitive plants that gathered about 300 million years ago, is an ample and hastily inexpensive fossil fuel associated to the climbing prices of oil and natural gas, and accounts for almost 40% of total universal power generation.

Coal is also the prime cause of man-made CO2 emissions, in return made coal the single utmost hazard to the constancy of our climate, and is accountable for inestimable influences on the health of everything on our planet through the secretions of mercury, arsenic, dioxin, acid gases, such as hydrogen chloride, and other risky pollutants, and the atmosphere in the form of particulate productions, ground level ozone, smog, acid rain, coal ash waste, mountaintop removal, and global warming. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing or industrial gas drilling, is a course used in 90% of oil and gas wells which injects tens of millions of gallons of water, toxic chemicals, and chemically treated sand, which as of 2013 have not been fully tested, deep into the ground at enormously high pressures to crack apart thick shale rock, freeing the hydrocarbons, such as gas and oil. This mixture, known as 'frack fluid,' generates 'fractures' in the shale which allows the gasses to trickle out. From well site preparation to drilling and production, to the disposal of wastes, this dangerous, alternative method of gaining oil and gas is a thoughtless energy approach that is polluting the consumption of common necessities such as water.

Soils with poisonous compounds, infecting the air, endangering our well-being, upsetting lands, triggering earthquakes, and underwriting to climate change and extreme climates. Our global fossil fuel infrastructure and dependence have led to a vast, interconnected web of issues by undermining the stability of Earth's climate, harming the health of countless people around the world, polluting and destroying marine and terrestrial habitats, corrupting politics with dirty energy money, leading to energy insecurity, debt and poverty, blocking a clean energy transition, using far more water to generate electricity (view report) , which is set to double by 2035, than clean energy technologies like solar and wind, and increasing human rights abuses, war, and national security concerns. These true energy costs are not included in consumer utility or gas bills, nor are they paid for by the fossil fuel companies that produce or sell the energy.

Today, we are on the verge of a new era, the “Age of Ecological Scarcity”. For the first time in history, fossil fuel energy and raw material use, environmental degradation and pollution may be occurring on such an unprecedented scale that the resulting consequences in terms of global warming, ecological scarcity and energy insecurity are generating worldwide impacts. If humankind is to succeed in overcoming these global problems, we need to find the next “new frontiers” of natural resources and adapt economic development accordingly. This will require developing low-carbon sources of energy, processes of production and technological innovation that require less environmental degradation and pollution. It will also mean instigating institutional changes, creating global carbon and environmental markets, and implementing new policies to foster a new era of “sustainable” economic development.