As fossil fuels are preserved plant and micro-organism remains,they contain carbon.When they are burnt,carbon-dioxide is released.Thus fossil-fuel burning is linked to problems of air pollution,acid rain and global warming.As CO2 is a greenhouse gas,its increase in the atmosphere will increase the greenhouse effect leading to global warming.Decreasing the use fossil fuels may solve the problem due to global warming to some extent.What are fossil fuels? How do they form and what are they made of?Plants convert solar energy to chemical energy in photosynthesis. Their chemical energy is stored as carbohydrates like starch and also used in their structures like cellulose. For thousands of years plants and animals die in swamps or oceans compacting into the mud and water. Layers build slowly, only a few inches every hundred years. Anaerobic decomposition begins to break them down. If the region sinks and soil layers build up the ancient plant matter compresses under the layers and rock forms eventually.
Peat bogs form in swamps and coastal salt marshes to become coal. About 10 feet of compressed plant matter eventually make a foot of coal. Time, pressure, and heat changed the ancient plant's and animal's carbohydrates and lipids into coal, a hydrocarbon.
Petroleum formed from the oceanic depositions of plankton and other marine life. Layers of sediment accumulated over this organic ooze compression, heat and time operated on this to become shale with petroleum held in place by a stone cap.
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~pisupati/ACSOutr鈥?/a>
Burning petroleum or coal releases the energy as heat and light. Using air the coal's hydrocarbons are converted to water vapor and carbon dioxide and a fair amount of air's nitrogen will become nitrogen oxides and plain soot will form.
Fuel + air -%26gt; light + heat + water + carbon dioxide + nitrogen oxide + pure carbon
Pure carbon as soot is an air pollutant. The soot is the basis of smog's fine particles. http://www.copirgstudents.org/reports/ai鈥?/a>
http://www.grist.org/news/2008/03/24/soo鈥?/a>
Coal was once burned for winter heat and to cook as well as by industries. London became famous for its dense sooty fogs lasting days. When this happened the death rate rose precipitously. By the twentieth century the relation of fogs coal soot and the death rates were linked.
"While the fog horrified London, very little was done about its source. Several more fogs in February 1882, December 1891, December 1892 and November 1948 killed thousands, but it wasn鈥檛 until 1952 that people began to think about air pollution in a more modern way. In December 1952 a mix of fog and coal smoke again swept through London, killing 4,000 or so residents." This led to viewing pollution as the scourge and steps where taken to control it. In response to the smog the Clean Air Act was introduced in 1956, revised in 1968 requiring industrial use of tall chimneys. 1974 introduced a Air Pollution Control act regulating the composition of motor fuels.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story鈥?/a>
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/off鈥?/a>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witne鈥?/a>What are fossil fuels? How do they form and what are they made of?I learned that fossil fuels can be used like gasoline, digged deep from the soil. Once the chemical releases the gas in the air, it is not replaceable. So thus, making hazardous and pollution, it strikes carbon dioxide the most.
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