EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -What is the link between fossil fuels and climate change? When fossil fuels are burned, they release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the air. Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere, causing global warming. Already the average global temperature has increased by 1C.

Detailed explanation-2: -Over the last century, burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). This increase happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO2.

Detailed explanation-3: -Humans have a huge effect on the carbon cycle when we burn wood, fossil fuels (such as oil, coal, and natural gas), and other forms of carbon. This action releases the stored carbon into the atmosphere, where it becomes a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases are gases in the atmosphere that absorb and release heat.

Detailed explanation-4: -Carbon dioxide concentrations are rising mostly because of the fossil fuels that people are burning for energy. Fossil fuels like coal and oil contain carbon that plants pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis over many millions of years; we are returning that carbon to the atmosphere in just a few hundred.