You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. Kahoot! You need to enable JavaScript to run this app Definition of Argumentative Essay. An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents arguments about both sides of an issue. It could be that both sides are presented equally balanced, or it could be that one side is presented more forcefully than the other. It all depends on the writer, and what side he supports the most In other words, running out of oil will not save us. The world will need to transition away from oil and other fossil fuels while they are abundant and inexpensive — not an easy task
Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit?
Fossil fuels cause local pollution where they are produced and used, and their ongoing use is causing lasting harm to the climate of our entire planet. Nonetheless, meaningfully changing our ways has been very difficult. But suddenly, the COVID pandemic brought trade, travel, and consumer spending to a near-standstill.
With billions of people recently under stay-at-home orders and economic activity plunging worldwide, the demand for and price of oil have fallen further and faster than ever before, how the other half lives essay. Needless to say, oil markets have been in turmoil and producers around the world are suffering. Some pundits are now asking if this crisis could be the push the world needs to move away from oil. The idea that the pandemic could ultimately help save the planet misses crucial points.
And in terms of oil, what will take its place? Although the supply is finite, oil is plentiful and the technology to extract it continues to improve, making it ever-more economic to produce and use. The same is also largely true for natural gas.
The how the other half lives essay use of fossil fuels tops the list of factors contributing to climate change. But the concentrated energy that they provide has proven hard to replace. To deal with the challenge of climate change, we must start by understanding the fossil fuel system how the other half lives essay namely how energy is produced and used. Although fossil fuel companies are politically powerful, in the United States and around the world, their lobbying prowess is not the key reason that their fuels dominate the global energy system.
Likewise, the transition to an all-renewable energy system is not a simple task. There is plenty of blame to go around, from fossil fuel companies that for years denied the problem to policymakers reluctant to enact the policies needed to force real change.
It has been easier for everyone to stick with the status quo. The world needs technology and strong policy to move in a new direction. With greater understanding of the climate challenge, we are making huge strides in developing the technology we need to move toward a low-carbon future.
Still, understanding how we got here and why the modern world was built on fossil fuels is crucial to understanding where we go from here. Plants convert solar energy into biomass through the process of photosynthesis. People burned this biomass for heat and light. Plants provided food for people and animals, which, in turn, used their muscle power to do work.
Even as humans learned to smelt metals and make glass, they fueled the process with charcoal made from wood. Apart from photosynthesis, humans made some use of wind and water power, also ultimately fueled by the sun, how the other half lives essay.
Temperature differences in the atmosphere how the other half lives essay about by sunlight drive the wind, and the cycle of rainfall and flowing water also gets its energy from sunlight, how the other half lives essay.
But the sun is at the center of this system, how the other half lives essay, and people could only use the energy that the sun provided in real time, mostly from plants. This balance between human energy use and sunlight sounds like utopia, but as the human population grew and became more urban, the bio-based energy system brought problems.
In England, wood became scarce in the s and s, since it was not only used for fuel, but also for building material. London, for instance, grew from 60, people in toinand the price of firewood and lumber rose faster than any other commodity.
The once lush forests of England were denuded. Inroughly 50, horses pulled cabs and buses around the streets of London, not including carts to transport goods. As you can imagine, this created an enormous amount of waste. All this manure also attracted flies, which spread disease. The transportation system was literally making people sick. The pre-fossil era was not the utopia we envision.
Fossil fuels opened new doors for humanity. The resulting fuels freed humanity from its reliance on photosynthesis and current biomass production as its primary energy source.
First coal, then oil and natural gas allowed rapid growth in industrial processes, agriculture, and transportation. The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century, before fossil fuels came into wide use.
Human health and welfare have improved markedly, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in to almost 8 billion today. The fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy. Fossil fuels powered the industrial revolution, pulled millions out of poverty, and shaped the modern world. The first big energy transition was from wood and charcoal to coal, beginning in the iron industry in the early s. Coal has three times the energy density by weight of dry wood and is widely distributed throughout the world.
Coal became the preferred fuel for ships and locomotives, allowing them to dedicate less space to fuel storage. Oil was the next major energy source to emerge. Americans date the beginning of the oil era to the first commercial U. oil well in Pennsylvania how the other half lives essaybut oil was used and sold in modern-day Azerbaijan and other areas centuries earlier.
Oil entered the market as a replacement for whale oil for lighting, with gasoline produced as a by-product of kerosene production. However, oil found its true calling in the transportation sector. The oil era really took off with the introduction of the Ford Model-T in and the boom in personal transportation after World War II. Oil resources are not as extensively distributed worldwide as coal, but oil has crucial advantages, how the other half lives essay.
Fuels produced from oil are nearly ideal for transportation. They are energy-dense, averaging twice the energy content of coal, how the other half lives essay, by weight. But more importantly, they are liquid rather than solid, allowing the development of the internal combustion engine that drives transportation today.
Oil changed the course of history. For example, the British and American navies switched from coal to oil prior to World War I, allowing their ships to go further how the other half lives essay coal-fired German ships before refueling, how the other half lives essay.
Oil also allowed greater speed at sea and could be moved to boilers by pipe instead of manpower, both clear advantages. Natural gas, a fossil fuel that occurs in gaseous form, can be found in underground deposits on its own, but is often present underground with oil.
Gas produced with oil was often wasted in the early days of the oil industry, and an old industry saying was that looking for oil and finding gas instead was a quick way to get fired. In more recent times, natural gas has become valued for its clean, even combustion and its usefulness as a feedstock for industrial processes.
A final key development in world energy use was the emergence of electricity in the 20th century. Electricity is not an energy source like coal or oil, but a method for delivering and using energy. Electricity is very efficient, flexible, clean, and quiet at the point of use. Over the 20th century, the energy system transformed from one in which fossil energy was used directly into one in which an important portion of fossil fuels are used to generate electricity.
The proportion used in electricity generation varies by fuel. In sum, the story of energy transitions through history has not just been about moving away from current solar flows and toward fossil fuels. It has also been a constant move toward fuels that are more energy-dense and convenient to use than the fuels they replaced. Greater energy density means that a smaller weight or volume of fuel is needed to do the job, how the other half lives essay.
Liquid fuels made from oil combine energy density with the ability to flow or be moved by pumps, an advantage that opened up new technologies, especially in transportation. And electricity is a very flexible way of consuming energy, useful how the other half lives essay many applications. Before we could make efficient use of solar flows, this seemed like a great idea.
However, the advantages of fossil fuels come with a devastating downside. We now understand that the release of carbon dioxide CO 2 from burning fossil fuels is warming our planet faster than anything we have seen in the geological record. One of the greatest challenges facing humanity today is slowing this warming before it changes our world beyond recognition. Now that there are almost eight billion of us, we clearly see the impact of rising CO 2 concentrations.
Going back to the old days of relying mostly on biomass for our energy needs is clearly not a solution. Nonetheless, we need to find a way to get back to reliance on real-time solar flows and perhaps nuclear energy to meet our needs. There are so many more of us now, interacting via a vastly larger and more integrated global economy, and using much more energy.
But we also have technologies today that are much more efficient than photosynthesis at transforming solar flows to useful energy. The earth gets plenty of energy from the sun for all of us, even for our modern energy-intensive lives. The amount of solar energy that reaches habitable land is more than 1, times the amount of fossil fuel energy extracted globally per year.
The problem is that this energy is diffuse. The sun that warms your face is definitely providing energy, but you need to concentrate that energy to heat your home or move a vehicle. This is where modern technology comes in. Wind turbines and solar photovoltaic PV cells convert solar energy flows into electricity, in a process much more efficient than burning biomass, the pre-industrial way of capturing solar energy. Costs for wind and solar PV have been dropping rapidly and they are now mainstream, cost-effective technologies.
Combining new renewables with these existing sources represents an opportunity to decarbonize — or eliminate CO 2 emissions from — the electricity sector. greenhouse gas emissions in However, unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar can only generate electricity when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. This is an engineering challenge, since the power grid operates in real time: Power is generated and consumed simultaneously, with generation varying to keep the system in balance.
Engineering challenges beget engineering solutions, and a number of solutions can help. Power storage technologies can save excess electricity to be used later. Hydroelectric dams can serve this function now, and declining costs will make batteries more economic for power storage on the grid.
Storage solutions work well over a timeframe of hours — storing solar power to use in how the other half lives essay evening, for example. But longer-term storage poses a greater challenge, how the other half lives essay.
Perhaps excess electricity can be used to create hydrogen or other fuels that can be stored and used at a later time. Finally, fossil fuel generation often fills in the gaps in renewable generation today, especially natural gas generation, which can be efficiently ramped up and down to meet demand.
How the Other Half Lives By Jacob Riis, 1889
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You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. Kahoot! You need to enable JavaScript to run this app Definition of Argumentative Essay. An argumentative essay is a type of essay that presents arguments about both sides of an issue. It could be that both sides are presented equally balanced, or it could be that one side is presented more forcefully than the other. It all depends on the writer, and what side he supports the most In other words, running out of oil will not save us. The world will need to transition away from oil and other fossil fuels while they are abundant and inexpensive — not an easy task
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