combustion of fossil fuels?

Question

how does the combustion of fossil fuels effect the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and world temperature

plz give reasons

plz give reasons

Answer 1

Good question, the combustion of fossil fuels increases the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) because the main backbone of fossil fuels are carbon molecules and hydrogen molecules (also known as hydrocarbons) and when they are burned with oxygen molecules in the air (O2) they combine to form CO2 as a byproduct. The reason why the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is harmful and raises our global temperature is due to the fact that the infrared energy of the sun bounces off the Earth and instead of going back out through the atmosphere into space, it is absorbed by the CO2 and bounced back into the atmosphere causing an accumulation of heat, thus raising the world temperature.

Answer 2

A couple billion years ago all of the earth's atmosphere was carbon dioxide and methane. When plants came along, they absorbed the carbon dioxide, used the carbon for their life material and released the ogygen in the carbon dioxide. The only reason animals can breathe the air is because of those plants taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.

Over these couple billion years, the plants died and became part of the earth first and then became coal and oil as they were compressed underground.

Now, humans are burning these fossil fuels (coal and oil) and burning recombines oxygen with the carbon. If we burn all plant material, the atmosphere will again have all of the carbon dioxide it had those billions of years ago and temperatures will increase. No oxygen breathing organism will be able to survive.

Answer 3

Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil produces carbon dioxide. This in turn increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas"; these gases reduce the rate at which heat energy is re-radiated toward space, and thus this tends to increase the world's temperature.