What Are Fossil Fuels?

We hear a lot in the news and in every day conversation about our reliance on fossil fuels such as oil and coal. However, not everyone has a great scientific understanding of exactly what makes a fossil fuel. Let's take a look.

Fossil Fuels Defined
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons, which over the course of many thousands of years have formed from the trapped remains of plants and animals that have not decated naturally. These include natural gas, petroleum and coal. Fossil fuels may also be used colloquially to refer to natural resources containing hydrocarbons which have been derived from other sources, which are also called mineral fuels. Fossil fuels account for the majority of our transportation fuel, electricity production, and are a significant source of household heat for cooking and environmental control all over the world.

Using fossil fuels has been what has enabled our industrial development to occur on the kind of scale it has occurred on. Fossil fuels, particularly coal, began to be used on a large scale with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and mostly supplanted the earlier water mills that had been used to perform mechanical work. Fossil fuels also reduced the reliance on peat and wood for heat in cold weather and for cooking.

The process of turning these remains into fossil fuel takes hundreds of millions of years. The length of time it would take to replace these fuels is why they are not considered to be renewable resources. This means that there is a limited supply of them, and that in some cases, we need to be concerned about the overall availability of these fuels for our use. There are other considerations when it comes to our reliance on fossil fuels.

Burning fossil fuels is also responsible for the greater portion of human generated carbon dioxide emissions, which are thought to contribute to changes ongoing in the earth's climate. Other emissions from these fuels increase pollution of other kinds, including smog in cities. While cleaner, more efficient methods of burning these fuels have been developing, not all of them are currently viable, and none of them are truly clean.

This, plus the limited availability of fossil fuels, is what is causing many people to look for alternative methods of producing electricity, heat, and other things that we currently use fossil fuel sources for. However, these alternative fuel sources are not yet sufficiently developed to take over our huge requirements for heat and power. Because of this, it's not possible to give up fossil fuels completely - at least not yet. 

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