No more fossil fuels?

1701 Prospect Street,La Crosse WI 54603

30 April, 2022

Description

To this day, mankind's main source of energy is fossil fuels. Imagine if the power went out all over the world. What kind of disaster would But on the other hand, as fossil fuels continue to burn, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still rising, and the resulting greenhouse effect is keeping the average temperature of the earth higher and higher than pre-industrial levels. Natural disasters of all kinds will become more frequent and more powerful when global temperatures exceed critical thresholds. Imagine what kind of disaster that would be? Which is more terrible, the disaster of power failure or the disaster of nature? You may think it's a strange question to ask, but humans may actually need to make that choice. A new paper published in Nature suggests that if we really want to avoid that second catastrophe, we need to stop using most of the world's fossil energy. The researchers, from University College London, who published the paper, calculated that the planet is in danger. They point out that if humanity really does not want to see global temperatures break through the golden ring, it must take immediate action to reduce its use of fossil fuels. The so-called threshold is the figure the world agreed to in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Studies have shown that once this threshold is exceeded, the power of various natural disasters on earth will significantly increase, resulting in a large number of human tragedies. And even if they were to act now, it would probably be too late, because the data they've got is pretty alarming: most of the world's fossil energy is unusable if warming is to be controlled! How great is "most"? The numbers are surprising: 89% of the world's coal reserves will be unusable within the next 30 years.