I was wondering if someone or anyone could inform me on the many ways that the burning of fossil fuels is hurting our mother earth. And if possible tell me alittle about the differnt forms and ways she is being distroyed!!!!! Thank you so very much!!!!

Scifer:confused:

I for one am not against fossil fuels. Hell I'm going to be a Petroleum Engineer in 3 years. That said, here's some info.

Combustion of hydrocarbons idealy produces carbon dioxide and water. However, due to impurities in the fuel (sulfur, hydrogen sulfide, etc) toxic gases and other bad stuff can form. Also if hydrocarbons are combusted at a less than optimal oxygen flow rate, incomplete combustion occurs and carbon monoxide is formed.

I believe a major concern society has is the formation of carbon dioxide during combustion of hydrocarbons. Supposidly it (CO2) is a key player in global warming.

A lot of people bitch about coal plants and how they're satan's spawn. They whine about emissions from coal plants and about them being incredibly dirty and producing bajillions of tons of toxic gases every year. That's not too also. Well the gases are produced, but the coal plants I have visited and all that I've read about have insanely good air scrubbing filtering techniques to clean the exhuast air before it's let free into the atmosphere. The enviromental regulations on coal plants are very, very strict, thus they cannot pollute much, if at all.

They're many more concerns people have about hydrocarbons/fossil fuels. Many have to do with the petroleum industry itself. People believe petroleum companies are satan reborn because they "pollute" so much the earth should be dead. Those beliefs are totally unfounded. Sure the occaisonal tanker runs aground and speads a couple millions barrels of crude oil around. Crap happens, I'll admit that. I know it's bad, but really it's not all that bad. Many also say that basic drilling for oil kills the enviroment. Here's a few facts and figures. In 1970 the size of a drillsite was around 20 acres. This allowed for 502 acres of subsurface acres to be drilled. Present day (2003) the drill site is around 6 acres and a possible 32,170 acres of subsurface drillable area. The surface harm is virtually nill. I have a lot more information on oil someplace, so ask if you want more.


Any other questions or specifics I can possibly answer for you?

orbie: cars pollute
tik tok

Mother earth is a changing being. She cant be hurt.
It is, as a home for humans, that we fear she might be changed.

Burning fossil fuels allows us to create vast road systems. (Does anyone know the total area of all the worlds road?). It give us higher standards of living, which means we build bigger houses on larger blocks of land, thus expanding the urban sprawl.

Eventually the fossil fuels will be exhausted, yet the damage we do to our living environment will not slow down.

Stop the free market economy, regulate birth rates. Stop economic growth.

Andre I'd be interested in you elaborating on that.

c'est moi..
Yup, cars do pollute. Not much I can say against that.

Blindman..
"Eventually the fossil fuels will be exhausted, yet the damage we do to our living environment will not slow down"

The fossil fuel reserves of the earth will never really be depleted. They will just become uneconomical to use because the price of fuel recovery will exceed market price, thus the producers will not produce if there is no profit. There will be oil still left in the ground, a whole heck of a lot. The average recovery percent from all resevoirs produced is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30%. Sometimes the cost of recovery per barrel is greater than the market price, thus the resevoir is abandoned till a greater market price arises. Other times the resevoir is killed (Russia has lost a lot of resevoirs due to this) but bad resevoir managment. Resevoir pressure was lost and a water flood is too costly or other factors in pressure loss can kill a resevoir. Until prices rise this oil will sit in the ground. Much of it will likely never flow out of the well because there won't be a great demand for the oil when the price has skyrocketed. Of course this won't happen for a few decades.

Interesting little fact: Roughly one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) barrels of oil of been produced from all resevoirs in the world since the first well was drilled. It's estimated that another one trillion of known reserves still exist in the earth (this doesn't account for currently unfound reserves or reserves that haven't been verified).

Looks like all the time, the 'mother earth' everyone's arguing about is the biosphere.... or is that why people came up with the name 'mother' earth?