Chapter 1, Reliance On Fossil Fuels Flashcards
What are fossil fuels?
Fuel consisting of the remains of organisms pressured in rocks in the earths crust with high carbon and hydrogen content.
What is renewable energy?
A form of energy derived from natural sources that do not use up natural resources to harm the environment.
How is coal formed?
Remains of dead plants that accumulate forming peat over time and are compressed at a high temperature. These conditions allow peat to turn into coal over millions of years.
How is crude oil and natural gas formed?
Crude oil and natural gas are formed from the dead remains of sea organisms that settle at the bottom of the ocean and accumulate and are compressed at a high temperature over millions of years. In the under ground crude oil wells natural gas can get trapped in top of the crude oil.
What are the 4 uses of fossil fuels?
Plastics,Pharmaceuticals,Fibers and Transport.
What year was the Paris agreement signed and which nation has pulled out of it?
2015, USA shortly after Trump took office.
What is the approximate life span of the 3 fossil fuels?
Coal 110 years, Crude Oil 50 years, Natural Gas 50 years.
How does the price of gas and oil affect its life span?
When prices are high companies like BP and Shell will have incentives to look for more oil fields and invest into new technology and engineering in order to access previously un accessible oil fields due to technical difficulties. High prices spur on investment.
What actions has the UK government taken to reduce plastic?
Charges for plastic bags, stopping single use coffee cups, ban of plastic straws and plastic cotton buds and the introduction of reusable plastic containers.
What does the IPCC stand for?
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.
Alternative word for manmade?
Anthropogenic.
What evidence proves Climate Change exists?
-More Volatile weather patterns with an increased frequency of flooding, storms, forest fires and droughts.
-Sea temperatures have risen.
-Polar ice caps melting.
-Fewer cold days and events. More hot days and events
-Ecological damage to the coral reefs off the coast of Australia.
What is carbon trading?
A nation is provided with a certain number of carbon permits based on its national target levels set by the Kyoto protocol. One permit is the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide. If a nation manages to use less than these allocated permits it can sell them to nations that exceeded their permit limit providing another incentive to reduce emissions.
What are the advantages of carbon trading?
-Reduced carbon emissions.
-Give a government control over their emissions.
-Allows companies to enter the transition period into renewables that suits their unique needs.
-Companies are given a financial incentive to not use all their permits.
What are the disadvantages of carbon trading?
-Investors buying and selling permits for the sake of profit not environment.
-Permit prices are too low to stimulate change in the companies as it may be more profitable to just pay for the permits.
- It is possible that countries inflated their permit needs to give themselves excess permits that they can sell.
