Читать книгу Climate Change For Dummies - Elizabeth May - Страница 82

IN THIS CHAPTER

Investigating where energy comes from

Recognizing the differences between coal, oil, and natural gas

Connecting the dots between population growth, economic expansion, and climate change

Depending on where you live, you may be able to meet your energy needs without fossil fuels. For the last 150 years, that wasn’t the case. People, especially in industrialized wealthy countries, met most of their energy needs by burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas.

Burning these fossil fuels released large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) (we talk about those gases in Chapter 2). In fact, a little more than two-thirds of human-produced GHGs in the atmosphere come directly from burning fossil fuels. In this chapter, we examine the types of fossil fuels, look at how people use them in their day-to-day lives, and assess fossil fuels’ overall contribution to climate change.