Will The World Economy Still Be Largely Dependent On Crude Oil In 100 years?

Today people widely use crude oil for many purposes. Processed oil is used as fuel. Fuel is used as a source of energy to power cars, plants and factories. Meanwhile, factories produce goods used in all spheres of life. Despite the fact that oil is very important for economic development, extraction and use of oil brings great damage to our planet because it leads to global warming (1).

The main problem of using oil is that it results in emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Many scientists think that this excess of CO2 gas causes greenhouse effect, which causes global warming. In this paper I will talk about global warming as caused by greenhouse effect and discuss implications of using oil for the future of our planet.

Crude oil was created during millions of years. Plants absorbed the CO2 out of the atmosphere. They used it for creating oxygen and for their own growth. When plants died, they decomposed and carbon, which they absorbed from the atmosphere in the form of CO2, became crude oil, coal and natural gas. Now, we are using these fossil fuels for production and economic development. So, when we burn crude oil, the carbon from oil goes back to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2)

The Sun is the main source of energy for our planet. When rays from the Sun reach the Earth’s surface, some of them are absorbed by the Earth’s surface and the rest is reflected back to the atmosphere. Atmosphere is made up of CO2, N2, O2, H2O and other gases. Some of them (like CO2 and H2O) are called greenhouse gases because they absorb energy of the sun and keep it in the atmosphere, which raises the temperature of the atmosphere.

There is controversy in the world community about the fact that global warming is caused by human activity (burning fossil fuels). I will discuss some views about this issue.

Some British scientists oppose the fact that global warming is caused by human activity. Patrick Michaels (Research professor, Department of Environmental sciences, University of Virginia), Richard Lindzen (Professor, Department of Meteorology, M.I.T) and Frederick Singer (Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental science, University of Virginia) argue that human activity produces less than 1% of CO2 per year while volcanoes produce significantly more CO2 per year. Also, plants and animals produce 150 gigatons of CO2 each year, while human activity produce just 6.5 gigatons of CO2 each year. These scientists conclude that man-made CO2 emission cannot be causing global warming. (2).

However, most scientists who also work on this issue including scientists from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) say the opposite. They indicate that today people produce about 30 gigatons of CO2 each year (3). Also, when Dr. Keeling and coworkers measured the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere they concluded that most of CO2 in the atmosphere today comes from fossil fuels (4). This study also conducted measurements of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen levels are falling while CO2 levels are rising, this is what one would expect from burning fossils fuel because this process takes oxygen out of the air to produce Carbonic dioxide (4).

So, the British scientists point out that human activity produces 6.5 gigatons of CO2 a year, while CDIAC estimate – this number to be 30 gigatons. This is a huge difference. Considering that Manning’s study concluded that CO2 in the atmosphere comes from burning fossil fuels, British scientists are probably wrong in their conclusions.

Another argument against human – caused climate change is based on Richard’s Lindzen paper. He says that climate on the Earth has always changed. There were ice ages and warm periods. Ice ages have occurred several times in the past 700 thousands years. They lasted 100 000 years as he points out. Recently we had warm period (X – XIII century) followed by little ice age (XIV – XVIII). During warm period people in Europe grew a lot of fruits and vegetables because winters were warm, and weather was favorable. As a result of the warming, Europe produced a lot of grapes and agriculture was flourishing (5).

However scientists have evidence that these jumps in temperature were very destructive. They agree that global warmings occurred before. They were similar to what happening today. Scientists suggest that the warming occurred because of carbon emission in the atmosphere (6). Same thing is happening now. These global warmings always were very destructive for wild life. They caused mass extinction. The symptoms of those events included: big, rapid jump in global temperature, risings sea levels and ocean acidification (6). These things are also happening today.

So, small jumps in the temperature can help human’s activity, but high jumps in temperature can be very destructive, and lead to mass extinctions and other catastrophes on the Earth.

Most scientists actually agree that human activity caused the global warming. However some scientists still believe that human activity cannot cause the global warming. Does it mean that there is no consensus between scientists? The petition stating that there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide methane or other gases is causing global warming was signed by 31 thousand scientists (7). But the percent of scientists agreeing that global warming is not caused by human activity equals only 3%. Other 97% agreed that humans are causing global warming (8).

So, since most scientists agree that global warming is caused by human activity, I conclude that people have to stop using fossil fuels including crude oil in the amounts in which we using it today. We should reduce it’s consumption to a minimum for the future of our planet.

But if people will not use crude oil for producing of energy, haw can we substitute it? To solve this problem, scientists began inventing alternative energy sources. Alternative energy encompasses all energy sources that do not consume fossil fuel. They are widely available and environmentally friendly. Below I will describe some of alternative energy sources.

One of the most easily accessible energy sources is solar energy. To obtain solar energy people build solar farms with solar panels (bataries), used to harvest energy in more than 80 countries. Solar panels convert solar energy into electric energy (9). Also another alternative energy source is wing energy. Wind energy is popular in many countries around the world. Windmills use kinetic energy of the air molecules and convert it to electric energy. In Europe wind energy is widely used. In 2014 Denmark obtained 39% of their energy using wind power. In 2013 in Portugal – 23%, in 2011, in Ireland – 14%, Spain – 16% and Germany – 8% using wind power. In 2011 USA obtained 2.9% of energy using wind power (9).

Global warming is a topic of debates for politicians and for the public. Unites States society of Catholic bishops also decided to participate in discussing the issue of global warming. Catholic bishops take part in this discussion not as politicians, economists or scientists but as messengers of the common people. In the statement of the US conference of Catholic Bishops they issued the statement that says that global warming is not a political or economic problem but it is a problem of protecting our planet created by God. We have to keep our planet habitable for next generations. Bishops urge the USA and other countries to conduct dialog about this issue. They urge to approach this problem with prudence. Catholic Church agrees with scientist about the fact that global warming is caused by human activity (using minerals including crude oil which releases CO2 into the atmosphere). Bishops urge the world community to monitor this problem and take steps to prevent global warming from getting worse in the future. They suggest developing and using alternative energy sources that don’t depend on crude oil. So, in the view of the Catholic bishops, world economy should move away from using crude oil in the future (10).

Having investigated this topic, I believe that in the future the world economy will not (and should not) depend on oil because people will begin using alternative energy sources to save the planet and make our atmosphere clean. I agree with the view of the Catholic Church that we should approach the problem of global warming as humans beings who try to protect their home-the Earth, because we only have one planet to live!

Works Cited

1) "The Greenhouse Effect." UCAR Center for Science Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://scied.ucar.edu/longcontent/greenhouse-effect>.

2) "The Great Global Warming Swindle." The Great Global Warming Swindle. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/>.

3) "Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions." Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/overview_2006.html>.

4) Keeling, R. F., et al. "Global oceanic and land carbon sinks from the scripps atmospheric oxygen flask sampling network." Seventh Int. Conf. Carbon Dioxide, Broomfield, CO. 2005.

5) "Resisting Climate Hysteria." — Quadrant Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria/>.

6) "Climate Science Glossary." Skeptical Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm>.

7) "Global Warming Petition Project." Global Warming Petition Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://www.petitionproject.org/>.

8) Cook, John, et al. "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature." Environmental Research Letters 8.2 (2013): 024024.

9) "Alternative Energy Sources - Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Biomass, Ocean and Other Energy Sources." ConserveEnergyFuture. N.p., 20 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/AlternativeEnergySources.php>.

10)"Global Climate Change A Plea for Dialogue Prudence and the Common Good." Global Climate Change A Plea for Dialogue Prudence and the Common Good. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/environment/global-climate-change-a-plea-for-dialogue-prudence-and-the-common-good.cfm>.

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