Burning fuels
Fossil fuels and global warming.
Smoke from burning
Coal, oil and gas are burned for energy.
What does burning them add to the air?
What this lesson covers
The idea
Burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, adding carbon locked underground for millions of years faster than plants and plankton can absorb it, so more heat is trapped, causing global warming.
Smoke from burning
Coal, oil and gas are burned for energy.
What does burning them add to the air?
- Carbon dioxide, which traps more heat
- Oxygen, which cools the air
- Nothing
From fuel to warming
Press Next step.
Fossil fuels
Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas releases carbon dioxide, which traps more heat in the atmosphere. This increases Earth's average temperature, called global warming.
Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which traps more heat. Earth's average temperature rises: global warming.
Notes
Fossil fuels → more carbon dioxide → more trapped heat → global warming.
Check yourself
Examples of fossil fuels are …
Burning fossil fuels releases …
More carbon dioxide in the air means …
The rise of Earth's average temperature is called …
- water and air. Fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas.
- sand and salt. Fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas.
- coal, oil and gas — correct. Yes!
- carbon dioxide — correct. Yes!
- only oxygen. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide.
- nothing. Burning releases carbon dioxide.
- less heat is trapped. More carbon dioxide traps more heat.
- more heat is trapped — correct. Yes!
- no change. More carbon dioxide traps more heat.
- the habitable zone. That is the region where water stays liquid.
- the water cycle. That is about water moving.
- global warming — correct. Yes!