Unconventional natural gas is essentially any form of gas that is too difficult or expensive to extract via regular drilling, requiring a special stimulation technique, such as fracking. Abundant in the United States, natural gas covers nearly 30 percent of U.
Forecasts suggest it will become an even greater part of the U. Unearthing, processing, and moving underground oil, gas, and coal deposits take an enormous toll on our landscapes and ecosystems. The fossil fuel industry leases vast stretches of land for infrastructure such as wells, pipelines, access roads, as well as facilities for processing, waste storage, and waste disposal.
In the case of strip mining, entire swaths of terrain —including forests and whole mountaintops —are scraped and blasted away to expose underground coal or oil. Even after operations cease, the nutrient-leached land will never return to what it once was.
As a result, critical wildlife habitat —land crucial for breeding and migration —ends up fragmented and destroyed. Coal, oil, and gas development pose myriad threats to our waterways and groundwater. Coal mining operations wash acid runoff into streams, rivers, and lakes and dump vast quantities of unwanted rock and soil into streams.
Oil spills and leaks during extraction or transport can pollute drinking water sources and jeopardize entire freshwater or ocean ecosystems. Fracking and its toxic fluids have also been found to contaminate drinking water, a fact that the Environmental Protection Agency was slow to recognize. Meanwhile, all drilling, fracking, and mining operations generate enormous volumes of wastewater , which can be laden with heavy metals, radioactive materials, and other pollutants.
Industries store this waste in open-air pits or underground wells that can leak or overflow into waterways and contaminate aquifers with pollutants linked to cancer, birth defects, neurological damage, and much more. Indeed, some These include benzene linked to childhood leukemia and blood disorders and formaldehyde a cancer-causing chemical. Mining operations are no better, especially for the miners themselves, generating toxic airborne particulate matter.
Fossil fuels produce large quantities of carbon dioxide when burned. Carbon emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to climate change. In the United States, the burning of fossil fuels, particularly for the power and transportation sectors , accounts for about three-quarters of our carbon emissions. Fossil fuels emit more than just carbon dioxide when burned.
Coal-fired power plants singlehandedly generate 42 percent of dangerous mercury emissions in the United States, as well as two-thirds of U. Meanwhile, fossil fuel—powered cars, trucks, and boats are the main contributors of poisonous carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide , which produces smog and respiratory illnesses on hot days.
The Arigna coal mine in Co. Roscommon opened in the late 18th century and ran up as far as the 's. Today Ireland imports most of its coal from areas such as Poland. The use of coal for production of electricity is decreasing as shale gas becomes more available. Natural gas is widely used in Ireland with supplies coming from both Irish sources and imports.
There are a number of gas fields in operation off the coast of Ireland including Kinsale Head, Ballycotton and the Seven Heads fields all located off the coast of County Cork. In recent years a new gas field located at Corrib off the west coast has been exploited. Oil is one of the world's most valuable commodities. In Ireland oil is no longer used for the production of electricity but is heavily relied on for transport and home heating.
Ireland has no domestic oil production and depends entirely on imports. In Ireland Peat has two main uses, generating electricity and home heating. Ireland has many raised bogs across the midlands. To prevent the destruction of Ireland's peatlands and their ecosystems many raised bogs and blanket bogs have been given legal protection and restrictions to peat harvesting have been put in place.
First the energy source must be found, geologists are constantly studying areas and their rocks to determine if deposits or wells are likely to occur. Once a source is located it then needs to be removed from the Earth. Extraction processes can vary from mining for coal, mechanical harvesting of peat and drilling for oil and gas.
Processing can take the form of crushing, grinding and milling. Coal is broken into smaller usable lumps for use in domestic settings and peat is often milled and compressed into briquettes for use in the home. The oil that is pumped from the earth is extracted in the form of crude oil.
This oil must be sent to a refinery where the different mixtures of fuels are separated by a processes called fractional distillation. The oil is separated into its different components such as petrol, diesel, kerosene, and residue.
These components can be processed further to make plastics. Energy: Fracking or hydraulic fracturing. Despite a drop in oil production and consumption in because of the COVID pandemic, both are expected to return to levels within the next few years.
The future of oil through remains uncertain as economies move away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable renewable energy. Coal is primarily used to generate electricity and, in , supplied 19 percent of U. Coal's share has been steadily decreasing as the costs of natural gas and renewable energy have dropped, making coal less competitive.
As coal usage has dropped in the United States, so have carbon dioxide emissions from coal—by 50 percent from to Coal production in the United States has been dropping since and is expected to continue to decline in the future. Multiple methods are employed for extracting coal, the most common of which is surface mining, which involves removing the top layers of soil and rock to access the coal. Surface mining accounts for 62 percent of coal extraction.
Underground mining, which creates tunnels in mountains to access coal, accounts for the other 38 percent. Both methods create environmental and human health issues in surrounding areas. Coal combustion produces a variety of air pollutants that harm human and environmental health, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and particulate matter. Coal ash is another harmful coal waste product, which is difficult to recycle and can seep into waterways, polluting them.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that million tons of coal ash are generated each year in the United States. Natural gas is burned to generate an increasing share of U. To grow these organisms removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the ocean, and their burial inhibited the movement of that carbon through the carbon cycle. The burning of this fossil material returns this carbon back into atmosphere as carbon dioxide, at a rate that is hundreds to thousands of times faster than it took to bury, and much faster than can be removed by the carbon cycle.
Thus, the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels accumulates in the atmosphere, some of which then dissolves in the ocean causing ocean acidification.
The burning of fossil fuels affects the Earth system in a variety of ways.
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