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Fossil fuels have become such an integral part of our modern lives, that it would
be hard to imagine life without them. Most fossil fuels were formed hundreds of millions
of years ago, by processes of heating and compression deep within the crust of the
earth. Fossil fuels play a large part in the carbon cycle on earth, and affect the climate
we live in. There are many different forms of fossil fuels too, and each one has its own
unique properties and uses, as well as effects on the earth. We will now go into detail
about each of these subjects, and delve deeper into the incredible world of hydrocarbon
combustion.!

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What are fossil fuels, exactly? Fossil Fuels are a type of molecule called
hydrocarbons. A Hydrocarbon is a molecule consisting of a string of carbon atoms,
coated with hydrogen atoms, and this combination of atoms is what gives us the
flammable stuff we use to power our world. Hundreds of millions of years ago,
prehistoric plants and sea animals were buried in the ground, and the incredible heat
and pressure of the earth caused their atoms to rearrange into these hydrocarbons,
forming the sludge we call crude oil. There are many different hydrocarbons, ranging
from octane with eight carbon atoms to coal with up to hundreds.!

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Though fossil fuels are all hydrocarbons, they are not all formed the same way.
There are three main types of fossil fuels; natural gas, oil, and coal. Coal was formed
from 800 million year old plant material that was flooded in swamps and buried under
the ground. The heat and pressure of the earth caused the atoms to rearrange into
large clusters of carbon, hydrogen, and a few impurities. Oil was formed around the
same time, but from ancient marine life forms that were buried under the silt of the
seabed and converted into hydrocarbons. Natural gas was formed the same way, but
deeper in the ground and under more pressure. It then bubbled up above the oil, and
created pockets, generally around oil reserves.!

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Fossil fuels, or hydrocarbons, are molecules comprised entirely or almost entirely of
carbon bonds, coated in hydrogen. The chemical structure of the most we-known hydrocarbon,
octane (gasoline) is a straight line of eight carbon atoms covered in hydrogen atoms, with each
either bond from a carbon atom consisting of either one other carbon atom and three hydrogen
atoms, or two of each.

Combustion is the process by which the

presence of oxygen and heat energy
cause the hydrocarbons to break apart
and form new bonds with the Oxygen
atoms, in the form of Carbon Dioxide,
Carbon Monoxide, and Methane gas, as
well as releasing large amounts of further
heat energy.!

This expansion of gasses and increases

in heat cam be used to generate kinetic
energy in cars, boil water into steam to be
used to generate electricity, or even heat

our homes through simple radiation.!

Over the past 100 years, humans have caused the CO2 levels in the atmosphere to jump wildly
upward, to levels far higher than ever
recorded. For the last 800,000 years, the
CO2 levels in the atmosphere have
fluctuated between 150 and 300 parts
per million. Just within the last 150 years,
the CO2 levels have jumped to above
400 parts per million, the same time
frame in which humanity has become
more dependent on fossil fuels. The
levels are predicted to reach up to
between 550 and 900 parts per million,
causing a huge greenhouse effect that
jeopardizes the earth and its inhabitants. !

The "greenhouse effect" is the means by

which the earth is heated up, due to
increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 does not let the tuns radiation pass through as
easily as the rest of the atmosphere, and reflects some of the sun's heat back down onto the
earth. This helps to keep the earth warm and hospitable for all life on it, but too much of it can
cause the earth to heat up too much, endangering all the life that it was once keeping safe from
the dangerous radiation.!

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Fossil fuels have become such an integral piece of modern society, that it would
be difficult to imagine life without them. However, the use of these sources of energy
may be causing our earth's climate to change, and not necessarily for the better. There
are hundreds of scientific reports that support the theory that the earth is heating up. In
this essay, we are going to look at three pieces of evidence that prove the climate is
changing.!

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According to NASA.gov, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is more
than it has ever been in the last 650,000 years. For the previous 650,000 years, the
number of parts of the atmosphere that are made up of carbon dioxide per million
stayed between 170 and 300. in about 1950, the carbon dioxide count rose to over 300
parts per million, and continued to rise uncontrollably until today, where it currently
stands at just over 400. There is no end in sight to this poisoning of our atmosphere,
unless we do something about it ourselves.!

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According to the Washington Post, the area of arctic sea ice every month has
shown an unmistakeable and non-trivial decrease since 1979. In 1979, the arctic sea
ice covered nearly 7.5 million square kilometers in the month of September, whereas in
the same month in 2015, that number was closer to 5 million square kilometers.!

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Finally, according to
the National Snow and
Ice Data Center, the
annual snow cover in
the northern hemisphere
is also decreasing,
which allows the earth
to heat up even faster
because snow reflects a
lot of the sun's energy
back into space, rather
than absorbing it into
the surface. Between
1979 and 2011, the total
snow cover in the
northern hemisphere for the month of June has gone down about 21.5% every decade,
dropping from an average 9 million square kilometers to below 2 million.!

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These are all
factors that have an
effect on the
temperature of the
atmosphere, and mixed
together, combined with
all of the other changes
happening in the
climate, they do not
bode well for the future
of our earth. Almost all
of these changes can be
accredited to the use of
fossil fuels by humans. !

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Our earth's climate is changing rapidly, but it may not be changing as much as it should
be - which is good for us, but not so good for the earth. Recent studies show that the oceans
are actually acting as a buffer, taking a large portion of the blows we are throwing at the earth,
but they won't do so forever.!

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There are about 3000 floating devices around the earth, recording the conditions of our
oceans, and they've uncovered something astonishing. The oceans are not heating up nearly as
quickly as our atmosphere, and they may be saving us temporarily from a much hotter earth. It
is well known that water can store more energy than air, and this can be demonstrated by
holding a candle flame to a balloon. Any regular balloon would have its rubber melted and
subsequently explode, but a balloon filled with water won't. That's because the water absorbs all
of the heat energy from the flame so that the balloon doesn't melt and pop. Deep sea
convection currents take the warm water from the surface of the ocean and trap it deep down,
near the sea bed, and replace the warm water above with cool water from below. It's estimated
that over the past 10 years, oceans have stored as much as 10 to the 23rd (1 followed by 23 0s)
Joules of energy, or 90% of all the excess heat energy trapped in our atmosphere by
greenhouse gasses. Disruption of these currents would remove this heat buffer, and result in
extreme heating of the earths surface very quickly.!

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Oceans help our atmosphere stay cool in more than one way, too. People often talk
about increasing atmospheric temperatures melting the polar ice caps, but what exactly does
that mean? The Ice caps do more than harbor polar bears and penguins. The ice caps are
different from glaciers and sea ice, in that they act as their own permanent entities, growing and
shrinking with the seasons and typically covered with snow. They help cool the earth in a very
powerful, important way, by reflecting as much as 80% of the sun's rays back into space. When
solar radiation hits the dark ocean water, it absorbs 90% of that heat energy, and reflect the rest
back into the atmosphere. That heats up the water, and causes the ice caps to melt more than
normal, shrinking the area that reflects sunlight and allowing more to come into contact with the
oceans. This creates a positive feedback loop, where the oceans heat up, allowing them to heat
up faster, causing them to heat up even faster still. Since 2000, the rate at which the sun's
radiation is absorbed into the Arctic Ocean for the months of June, July, and August has
increased 5%, according to Nasa. This combination of factors all leads to exponential increase
in heat over time, spelling disaster for our earth.!

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Another huge way the oceans help maintain lower levels of atmospheric pollution and
heat is by absorbing a large portion of the carbon dioxide in the air. Since the Industrial
Revolution, which happened around the middle of the 19th century, it's estimated that the
oceans have absorbed as much as a quarter of all carbon dioxide produced by humans and our
machines. Humans release more than 22 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
every day. This absorption of carbon dioxide is not good for our oceans however, as it is making
them more acidic, which is harming the plants and animals the live beneath the surface. Many
shellfish are having harder times living in these conditions, because the increased acidity in the
water that makes up their ecosystem is eating away at their shells. This is especially an issue
for terrapods, a small plankton-like animal with a shell, which are a major food source for many
types of fish. The extinction of this animal could lead to a massive collapse in the food chain.
The increased acidity is also disconcerting for the coral reefs, in which more than 25% of all
marine life reside. It prevents them from forming their skeletons as quickly, so they crumble and
disappear.!

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The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, and in only 3 billion of which has it
actually seen life. Humans came around a mere 200,000 years ago, and we've caused all of this
damage just within the last 200 years, which is why this is all so alarming. Carbon dioxide levels
now are increasing much more rapidly than at any recorded point in the history of life itself. 100
million years ago, these levels increased much more slowly, giving animals a chance to adapt
and react to the new environment. Today however, things are changing too quickly, and we are
already seeing mass extinctions and changes to the environment on a global scale. The only
way we, as a species, can save the earth from certain, imminent doom is to significantly
decrease pollution emissions immediately, and hope the earth recovers from the damage we
have already caused.