Preamble:

I started writing this article on June 15, an important month for myself and my family. During this month we respectfully commemorate the sweet and unforgettable memories of my wife on her 63rd birthday on June 25, by making a special tribute to her graveyard, the ultimate rest place for human beings. People build monuments, memorials, mausoleums and shrines, a great way to keep the rest place of their beloved ones historic, to transcend the values of pure love to generations to remember for self rectification and gratification. A great way to promulgate and preach the messages of Abrahamic religion to the progeny. Since her leaving this world on February 5, 2020, she remains fully alive in all respects and inspires me to be a writer that I have yet to be achieved.

Unlike the old ways of writing books, essays and articles by preparing manuscripts by pen and pencil followed by typing in a type writer or nowadays in a computer, I have been trying to gain some skills of writing the books by computer coding using CSS, JSON, R, Rmd, and Python. Since my articles of interests are mostly involving with scientific facts and figures it is kind of convenient, enjoyable and challenging for me. I started coding and composing this article due to it’s importance to us and to our generations ahead of us for creating a safe and healthy world for living. I tried to extract and incorporate as many as possible related topics in this article and expect to include more related topics as time passes with the feedback of the readers. This is our world and we don’t let a few mindless rulers in power to destroy our present and future generations due to their own greed, arrogance and disrespectful attitudes towards the humanity and creations. There is no alternative for us to be united with our wealth, financial resources, knowledge, wisdom, skills, intelligence and moral values to defeat and eliminate the enemies of mankind and safeguard all creatures living on earth. Our biggest barrier to achieve our goals is the lack of awareness, ignorance, superstition and lack of morality. So, my articles are intended to address many of our contemporary important issues and subject matters to create awareness among the readers to form a self driven and an autonomous virtual institution of thoughts and ideas (VITI) that will create a new generation for the purification of our corrupt social infrastructures in the world. With this note of caution to my readers I am now focusing to address some of the important issues on fossil fuels and their man made derivatives in this article to make my readers aware of the facts and concerns regarding the subject matters. Many readily available csv data files that are taken and adapted directly from the authentic sources of course with due acknowledgements and proper referencing. Some of the data that are not readily available have been created from the Wikipedia of relevance by applying a powerful data fetching technique called “Web Scraping” that will be briefly discussed in general terms in one of the later sections. This article with texts, images, illustrations, tables, graphs and plots at the front end or reader’s end is the outcome of the complicated computer programming kept hidden at the backend. The technical details of programming are mostly being kept invisible for ease and comfort for most of the non-technical readers and users.

About 87 percent of all human generated carbon dioxide \((CO_2)\) emissions come from the combustion or burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil. Carbon dioxide emissions, largely by-products of energy production and use, account for the largest contributor of greenhouse gases, which are associated with global warming is measured in kt (kiloton) often calculated and reported as elemental carbon. This article will study and present each of these three fossil fuels separately to know about their reserve, production, consumption, price, and their corresponding \(CO_2\) emissions. The analyses will be carried out at the country and global levels to reveal and identify the potential contributors of the \(CO_2\) emissions and make recommendations to reduce the global temperature rise. Also, the impact of fossil fuels on climate change of our planet will be studied and presented. Furthermore, how global warming above \(1.5^o\)C threshold level is impacting the rise of sea level, creating extreme weather condition, biodiversity loss and species extinction, as well as food scarcity, worsening health and poverty for millions of people worldwide will be thoroughly investigated.

Fossil Fuels & Plastics:

Plastics are technological by-products of “petrochemicals,” or products made from fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. Modern day world is flooded with plastic products starting with shopping bags to computer chassis, automotive interior and dashboard, air plane interior, water and soda bottles, furniture, building blocks, phone casing, clothes, household decorating items are a few.

Virgin plastic resins are produced through a chemical process called polymerization reactions. Polymers are a chain of smaller molecules of monomers. There are two basic ways to form polymers: (a) linking small molecules together, a type of addition reaction, and (b) combining two molecules (of the same or different type) with the elimination of a stable small molecule such as water. This latter type of polymerization is called a condensation reaction is the combination of addition and elimination reactions.

Most of the consumer plastic products that become part of human life are the outcomes of the first kind of polymers called thermoplastics. Thermoplastics are not bio-degradable but can be remelted for multiple use and life cycle. Thermoplastic polymers like general polymers are produced through chemical reaction of adding thousands of molecules. As an example by adding ethylene molecules we produce polyethylene resins and are being further processed through widely used polymer processing equipment such as extruders, injection molding, 3D printers and blow molding to manufacture widely and cheaply available consumer products. The chemical reaction that is used to synthesize ethylene to polyethylene is given below for readers who are interested to know the basics of polymer chemistry:

\[nH_2C=CH_2\rightarrow [-CH_2CH_2-]n\] All processes involving the manufacturing of plastic products emit huge amount of toxic fumes that are pollutants and have definite health and environmental hazards.

Other widely used polymers include polypropylene, polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride are being similarly synthesized by polymerizing \(H_2C=CHCH_3\), \(H_2C=CH C_6H_5\), and \(H_2C=CHCl\) respectively.

The second type of polymer include starch and cellulose. These are members of a class of compounds called carbohydrates, substances with formulas that are multiples of the simple chemical compound called Formaldehyde is a carcinogenic and highly toxic naturally occurring organic compound with chemical formula \(CH_2O (H-CHO)\). Both starch and cellulose are polymers of glucose, a type of sugar with the formula \(C_6H_{12}O_6\). In both starch and cellulose, molecules of glucose are joined together with concomitant elimination of a molecule of water for every linkage formed [1].

\[nC_6H_{12}O_6 \rightarrow ―[―C_6H_{10}O_5―]―n + nH_2O\] The natural fibers of proteins such as hair, wool, and silk are also polymers that contain the repeating unit (\(-CHRCONH-\)), where R is a group of atoms attached to the main polymer. They form by joining amino acids with the elimination of a water molecule for each \(CONH\) or peptide linkage formed. As an example, the structure of the tripeptide chain is formed from three units of the amino acid glycine (\(NH_2CH_2CO_2H\)).

An introduction that was made in the previous few paragraphs is intended to make the readers aware of the very basic knowledge on polymers and plastics. The readers who are interested to gain further knowledge on the subject matter are encouraged to learn from many of the authentic texts that are readily available in the market.

However, the targets of this study are to find the facts and figures based on well established data that are available in the public domain. A quick view on the global production of plastic in unit of millions of tons is shown in Fig. 1. We can see how the global plastic production increases with a rapid rate from 2 million tons to 381 million tons over the period from 1952 to 2015.

Due to an alarming rise in production over the last 70 years, public awareness and opinion cannot be avoided in terms of health and environmental concerns.

Plastic materials are existing and spreading rapidly through every part of our lives that we can’t even think of living without their use in our day to day functioning. Manufacturing of plastic products involving melting of plastic resins that create harmful, climate-damaging emissions of toxic gases that are not only contributors of environmental pollution but are perhaps the agents for creating cancers, respiratory diseases and COPD to humans. Disposing plastic bags and products in the ocean and underground gets percolated through water, solid and leached out some of their constituents. These constituents seeps into our soil and groundwater that are the causes of diseases and extinction of fishes and many rare species living in the ocean and on earth. Greed with aggressive big oil exploration and gas fields to be richer with the cost of exterminating the inhabitants of humans and other living creatures, trees and plants are not the mission of humanity.

Plastics production and burning fossil fuels are the massive sources of environmental pollution. The racing for big oil and gas businesses for increased profit and increased arms and weapons production for unethical wars and destruction of mankind are not the priorities of mankind.

We need to strengthen the climate change movement and rescue our society from the greedy polluters of fossil fuels and plastics. The people across the whole world should get united and stand upright strongly to resist the enormous appetite of the corrupt profiteers and rescue humanity from the clutches of environmental polluters.

Unity is the strength, so, let’s get united to propagate the messages across the minds of the people, let them understand the causes and remedies of pollution and promote and inspire the young generation to become decision makers or influence the existing policy makers to hold those who are polluters and make them accountable for the plastic waste they create. Our slogans for the protection of human health, climate, and environment must be loud to louder for a clean world and clean air to breathe. Our unification will break the unilateral control by the fossil fuel industry and make them accountable for destroying our health for the material greed and power.

Plastic Waste Generation by Industrial Sectors, 2015:

Plastic waste generation depend on the primary plastic use, and the product lifetime. In that perspective packaging industry is the major contributor to plastic waste, which is almost half of the global total. The use of packaging products with a very short lifetime of typically around 6 months or less need very strict legislative rules for waste management and use. On the other hand building and construction materials with long mean lifetime of about 35 years [2] cannot be disposed violating the environmental rules and regulations.

In 2015, primary plastics production was 407 million tons; around three-quarters (302 million tonnes) ended up as waste [2].

In the following analysis you will see how the plastic production by sector happened in 2015. About 42 percent was in packaging, building and construction was the second largest sector which was 19 percent of the total as can be seen in Fig. 2.

Plastic Waste Production (million tons) by Countries in 2010:

Total plastic waste generation by country, measured in tons in 2010 polluting waterways, rivers and the ocean environment. Rich industrialized countries such as China, USA, and Germany are generating the most plastic waste in the world. In Fig. 3 showing a pie chart with plastic waste generation by countries in million tons. Readers are suggested to read the data from the table along with the pie chart for better understanding of the statistics. To know the exact data you may either make a search by typing the country name on the search box or place your cursor on top of the country name on pie chart to reveal any particular data in of interest to you.

Plastic Wastes to the Oceans in Tons, 2019:

In Fig. 4, a global map is generated showing the countries that are potential polluters of our blessed oceans with plastic wastes that are gradually destroying our extremely valuable coastal economies — tourism and fishing industries. The effects of pollutants also destroying our oceans that control our climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, and provides us with the required pharmaceutical ingredients. Habitats and forests along the coast protect people from storms and flooding.

Once I generated Fig. 4, I felt thrilled but looking minutely I found that USA, UK, Oceania and some other countries are not shown on the map. I immediately checked with antijoin operation on my world map dataset with country dataset that I used for generating the map. Indeed I found these countries are not included that I had to include in the code to make the final map. So, the map is pretty much reflect the countries that are polluters of our beautiful oceans. My request to my readers is to identify your country of interest on the map and show to the concerned policy makers for complying the strong regulations in against of the violators.

\(CO_2\) Emissions from Cement:

The production of clinker, which acts as the binder, is a crucial step in making cement. Limestone \((CaCO_3)\) is “calcinated” at high temperatures in a cement kiln to produce lime (CaO), leading to the release of waste \(CO_2\). Following chemical reaction occurs during calcination:

\[CaCO_3 + heat \rightarrow CaO+CO_2\] About 50% of the emissions arise with the chemical reaction during calcination. Cement is the widely used construction material and its emissions are often considered difficult to reduce due to the fact that \(CO_2\) is released by a chemical reaction, it can not be eliminated by changing fuel or increasing efficiency.

A further 40% of cement emissions come from burning fossil fuels to heat kilns to the high temperatures needed for this calcination process. The rest of the 10% of emissions come from fuels needed to mine and transport the raw materials.

Cement kilns are used for the pyroprocessing stage of manufacture of hydraulic cement, in which calcium carbonate reacts with silica-bearing minerals to form a mixture of calcium silicates. The total volume of cement production worldwide to an estimated 4.4 billion tons in 2021. Cement kilns are the heart of this production process: their capacity usually defines the capacity of the cement plant.

Annual \(CO_2\) emissions (million tons) from cement production is shown in Fig. 5.

Crude Oil Exports by Country [3]:

A table of 100 oil exporting countries is given below with their corresponding amount of revenue in 2021. The top 15 oil export countries approximately earn 76.7% of global crude oil revenue in 2021 as shown in the following table along with a pie chart as given below.

Web Scraping:

A global map is useful to show the oil producing countries at a glance. To generate such a global map a useful technique called data scraping is being applied to extract the required data from a Wikipedia page with the following universal resource locator (url):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production

Once the website is open one can find the following wikipedia page followed by a table showing the countries with their corresponding oil producing capacity in terms of number of barrels per day.

To generate a global oil production map the required data will be extracted from the following wiki table. By applying web scraping technique, this table in the wiki will be extracted for generating the global oil production map. However, the data available in this webpage is not readily available. It is present in an unstructured format (HTML format) and is not downloadable. Therefore, it requires knowledge & expertise on data scraping that is applied to extract the formatted data and subsequently to generate the global map for readers to see and read the oil producing regions on a world map with different colors.

On this global map as shown in Fig. 7, one can easily see that, total world oil production in 2021 averaged 77,043,680 barrels per day for which approximately 71% came from the top ten countries, and an overlapping 37% came from the thirteen current OPEC members. The table that was scraped for generating the global map is given below which is in conformation with the table as given in website for readers to see. Interested readers are urged to verify the status of their respective countries on the map for awareness and also delegating the matters to the policy makers for taking appropriate measures to stop the further deterioration of the valuable oceanic resources and the economy.

## # A tibble: 98 x 4
##    country              oil_bbl_per_day oil_bbl_per_day_capita opec_ind
##    <chr>                          <int>                  <int>    <dbl>
##  1 United States               11184870                  35922        0
##  2 Russia                      10111830                  73292        0
##  3 Saudi Arabia                 9313145                 324866        1
##  4 Canada                       4459455                 100931        0
##  5 Iraq                         4084822                 119664        1
##  6 China                        3987677                   2836        0
##  7 India                         610336                    554        0
##  8 United Arab Emirates         3091481                 335103        1
##  9 Brazil                       2905121                  12113        0
## 10 Kuwait                       2527106                 721575        1
## # ... with 88 more rows

World Oil Price [4]:

The invasion of Russia in Ukraine is a wake up call for US that Russia remains as strong and strategic as China since the cold war ended in December 26, 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated into its component republics.

With the cold war ended, the investments made by US and EU in Russia ended up with a big blunder in terms of oil, gas,fertilizer and wheat businesses that they relied on. Since the war started China seems much more closer to Russia and with the economic embargo in place by USA, Russia is seeking opportunities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in terms of both business and military bases to further strengthen it’s influence on the globe. Russia seems closely delegating with The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which was founded in Baghdad, Iraq, with the signing of an agreement in September 1960 by five countries namely Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They were the Founder Members of the OPEC. With economic embargo imposed on Iran, a 20-year “cooperation road map” was signed between Iran and Venezuela between the two oil-rich countries pledged to boost bilateral ties. I think it is a significant step forward with supports from both China and Russia along with their allies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America can control over the oil business in the near future.

The OPEC members along with Russia could play a big role in oil politics that could jeopardize the world economy. As a historical example during the Arab-Israeli War in 1973, Arab members of OPEC imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations.

Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to those countries and imposed cuts in oil production. In that embargo in 1973 oil price jumps from $3 to $12 in a short span of time. The dollar value $12 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $79.00 today, an increase of $67.00 over 49 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.92% per year between 1973 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 558.32%.

This means that today’s prices are 6.58 times higher than average prices since 1973, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 15.190% of what it could buy back then.

The inflation rate in 1973 was 6.22%. The current inflation rate compared to last year is now 8.58%. If this number holds, $12 today will be equivalent in buying power to $13.03 next year. If we calculate the inflation rate for $12 since 1973 we can find the present dollar value of $12 value of 1973. Hence, using the CPI of 44.4 in the year 1973 and 292.296 in 2022, we get $79 as can be seen below.

\[\frac{Consumer~Price~Index (CPI)~in~today}{Consumer~Price~Index (CPI)~in~1973}\times~1973~USD~value =\frac{292.296}{44.4}~\times~$12=$79\] So, $12 in 1973 has the same “purchasing power” or “buying power” as $79.00 in 2022. We can easily see the impact of Arab OPEC members oil embargo and unity back in 1973 had definitely a worldwide economic impact. Similarly, the invasion of Russia in Ukraine resulted a huge financial impact according to Fenderal Reserve Bank of Dallas [5].

Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blow to the global economy after the post pandemic recovery and increasing the already-high inflation in the US and it’s allies across the world.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil Market Report (OMR) is one of the world’s most authoritative and timely sources of data, forecasts and analysis on the global oil market – including detailed statistics and commentary on oil supply, demand, inventories, prices and refining activity, as well as oil trade for IEA and selected non-IEA countries.

Russia is being isolated by US, EU and G7 countries and increased tougher economic sanctions could reorient the trade flows shutting down the wells. This reorientation of trade may increase the oil production elsewhere, coupled with slower demand growth, especially in China, is expected to defend itself against an acute supply deficit in the coming years. Due to this widening supply and demand uncertainties, oil market volatility remains undesirable, but prices are trading in a lower and narrower $10/bbl range above $100/bbl. Brent last traded at $ 105/bbl and WTI $102/bbl.

As restrictions on China ease, summer driving picks up and jet fuel continues to recover, world oil demand is set to rise by 3.6 mb/d from an April low through August.

World Crude Oil Price [6]:

In Fig. 8 it is clearly visible the sudden rise in crude oil price worldwide due to war in Ukraine. Also, the sudden oil price rise back in 1973 as mentioned earlier. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974 from US$3 to nearly US$12 per 42 gallon barrel ($75 per cubic meter), equivalent in 2018 dollars to a price rise from $17 to $61 per barrel.

Oil - Proved Reserves:

Estimates of oil reserves have been made based on a combination of primary official sources, third-party data from the OPEC Secretariat, World Oil, Oil & Gas Journal and Chinese reserves based on official data and information in the public domain. Canadian oil “under active development” are an official estimate. Venezuelan Orinoco Belt reserves are based on the OPEC Secretariat and government announcements. Reserves and R/P ratio for Canada includes Canadian oil sands. Reserves and R/P ratio for Venezuela includes the Orinoco Belt. Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves include NGLs from 2017. Total proved reserves of oil are generally taken to be those quantities that geological and engineering information indicates with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.

Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq and Russia are the top six countries with the highest oil reserves in the world as shown in Fig. 9. In terms of oil reserves it seems to me that these six key players that are capable to control the world oil market over the next 20 years if they can hold back their oil production until the other big oil reserves start to deplete. However, these six oil rich countries need to invest heavily on other businesses so as to meet their respective economies during the hold back period.

Oil Production:

This dataset on fossil fuel production is produced by combining the latest data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and the Shift Project Data Portal.

BP provide fossil fuel production data from 1965 onwards (and crude prices from 1861 onwards). The Shift Data Portal provides long-term data from 1900, but only extends to 2016.

To maintain consistency with the energy datasets on Our World in Data, we have taken BP data as preference – meaning if BP provides data for the given country and year, this is used. Where data is not available from BP for a given country, or pre-1965 we rely on the Shift Project.

We have converted primary production in exajoules to terawatt-hours using the conversion factor: 278.

Production per capita has been calculated using a population dataset that is built and maintained by Our World in Data, based on different sources: https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

Fig. 10 shows United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia are the top three oil producing countries. However, due to economic embargo on Iran and Venezuela their production is substantially reduced that may help these countries in the coming years. The production capacity is expressed in Tera-watt-hour (TWh). Terawatt-hour (TWh), is a measure of electrical energy, 1 TWh = \(10^{12}\) watt-hours.

In Fig. 11 production capacity in 2020 is shown where one can easily see the top three oil producing countries are United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Oil Market Report - May 2022:

  1. Excludes condensates.
  2. Capacity levels can be reached with 90 days and sustained for extended period.
  3. Iran, Libya, Venezuela exempt from cuts.
  4. Mexico excluded from OPEC+ compliance. Only cut in May, June 2020.
  5. Bahrain, Brunei, Malaysia, Sudan and South Sudan.

[Source: Oil Market Report - May 2022, https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-may-2022]

Oil Consumption By Country (TWh):

Fossil fuel consumption per capita is measured as the average consumption of energy from coal, oil and gas per person.

Fossil energy consumption is the sum of primary energy from coal, oil and gas. Gross domestic product (GDP) is measured in constant international-$ which corrects for inflation and cross-country price differences.

Raw data on energy consumption is sourced from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Primary energy in exajoules (EJ) has been converted to TWh by Our World in Data based on a conversion factor of 277.778.

Each source’s share of energy based on the “substitution method” were calculated by Our World in Data by taking all energy sources’ energy normalised to EJ – this takes account of the inefficiencies in fossil fuel production and is a better approximation of “final energy” consumption.

Additional metrics have been calculated by Our World in Data: – Annual change in energy consumption by source: this is calculated as the difference from the previous year – % of total primary energy: calculated as each source’s share of primary energy from all sources – Per capita energy by source: calculated as primary energy consumption by source, divided by population.

Per capita figures have been calculated using a population dataset that is built and maintained by Our World in Data, based on different sources:

https://ourworldindata.org/population-sources

The Qatar, Singapore and Trinidad are the top three countries as per capita fossil energy consumption vs. GDP per capita in 2020, as shown in Fig. 12.

Fossil fuel consumption per capita, 2020:

Fossil fuel consumption per capita is measured as the average consumption of energy from coal, oil and gas per person.

In Fig. 13, the top three cosumers, Qatar, Singapore and Trinidad can be easily seen.

In Fig. 13: Country vs. Fossil Fuel Consumption in 2020 >= 20000 kWh, these are basically rich economies in the world.

On the other hand as can be seen in Fig. 14, Country vs. Fossil Fuel Consumption in 2020 <= 20000 kWh, these are basically poor economies in the world.

Annual \(CO_2\) emissions from oil:

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production. Land use change is not included.

In Fig. 15 one can observe that \(CO_2\) emission in Billion Tons from the use of oil by the three top countries include United States, China and India.

Annual \(CO_2\) Emissions from Gas:

In Fig. 16 one can observe that \(CO_2\) emission in Billion Tonnes from the use of oil by the three top countries include United States, Russia and China.

Annual \(CO_2\) Emissions from Coal:

In Fig. 17 one can observe that \(CO_2\) emission in Billion Tonnes from the use of oil by the three top countries include China, India and United States.

Electricity Production from Coal:

In Fig. 18, it is clearly shown how China is increasing its electricity production from coal over the last twenty years. On the other hand United States is gradually reducing its dependence on coal for the electricity production. India like China is also increasing its dependence on coal for producing electricity.

The current production of electricity is about 5500 TWh by China to meet the electricity demand by a huge population of 1.402 billion (2020) and rapid industrialization. A similar scenario is happening in India where the present electricity production is about 1200 TWh due to meeting the electricity demand by a huge population of 1.38 billion (2020) and increased industrialization.

Electricity Production from Gas:

In Fig. 19, it can be clearly seen the how United States ramp up its electricity production from gas over the last 20 years. In seems Russia and Japan remain steady in their production of electricity from gas.

Electricity Production from Oil:

In Fig. 20, it is clearly seen that United States and Japan are reducing their dependencies on oil for producing electricity over the last 20 years. But on the other hand Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil for producing electricity during the last 20 years.

Global warming potential of greenhouse gases over 100-year timescale (GWP):

GWP measures the relative warming impact of one unit mass of a greenhouse gas relative to carbon dioxide. A GWP value of 28 therefore means one ton of methane has 28 times the warming impact of one tonne of carbon dioxide over a 100-year timescale. These figures do not include climate change feedback effects [7].

In the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (AR5), it presents GWP both with and without climate change feedback effects. For some gases, for example methane, this can introduce significant uncertainty. In the case of methane, the GWP100 value without feedbacks is 28; with feedbacks this increases to 34.

Data denotes the global warming potential (GWP) over a 100-year timescale for greenhouse gases relative to the GWP of carbon dioxide (which is denoted as 1). Global warming potential measures the relative warming impact of one unit mass of gas relative to one unit of carbon dioxide. For example, a GWP value for gas ‘x’ of 25 would mean one ton of ‘x’ would have 25 times the warming impact of one ton of carbon dioixde.

Fig. 21: Shows the 2015 Global warming potential of greenhouse gases over 100-year timescale (\(GWP_{100}\)) for \(CO_2\), \(CH_4\), \(N_2\), \(HFC-152a\), \(SF_6\) and \(PFC-14\)).

Concluding Remarks:

Our ancestors relied on very basic forms of energy: human muscle, animal muscle and the burning of biomass such as wood, leaves, or crops. With the Industrial Revolution a whole new energy resources of fossil fuels have been adapted for energy production. During the last 100 years or so fossil fuel energy has been a fundamental driver of the technological, social, economic development in the world.

Fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) have, and continue to, play a dominant role in global energy systems but with several negative impacts. During conversion through burning they produce carbon dioxide (\(CO_2\)) and are the largest sources of global climate change. They are also a major contributor to local air pollution, which is estimated to be linked to millions of premature deaths each year.

This article presented the long-run and recent perspectives on coal, oil and gas – how much countries produce and consume; where our fossil fuel reserves are; and what role the fuels play in our energy and electricity systems.

The use of fossil fuel, coal, is being considered as the key material for the onset of the “Industrial Revolution” that began in Britain using steam engine and spread to the rest of the world, including the United States, by the 1830s and ’40s. This period is considered by the modern historians as the “First Industrial Revolution”, and the late 19th to early 20th centuries is considered to be the “Second Industrial Revolution”. During the “Second Industrial Revolution” the use of other fossil fuels petroleum, and natural gas boosted the rapid advancements and use of steel, electric and automobile industries. Industrialization is not only limited to the use of fossil fuels but it transformed agro-based economy to industrial commodities of various kinds. We have seen in Figs. 13 and 14 the correlations of Fossil Fuel Consumption in 2020 by the rich and poor countries respectively. Also, we have seen in Fig. 12 how per capita fossil energy consumption vs. GDP per capita in 2020, diving the rich and poor countries.

Massive and rapid industrialization took place with the increased use of fossil fuels and more electricity production and more \(CO_2\) emissions and more environmental pollution. Of course increased economy happened but with the cost of increased population, urbanization, and changing life style and with stress on the basic life supporting systems.

The Industrial Revolution destroyed communities, culture and shattered peaceful rural life. People especially young women are forced to move to the cities and slums to work for garment factories, plastics industries by giving up their education, family and marriage life. As secularization, industrialization, and urbanization continued to grow with the increased use of alcohol, and drugs.

The Industrial Revolution may have resulted an increase in wealth, the production of commodities, and the standard of living, access to healthier diets and foods, better housing, cheaper clothing, so called advanced education and creates more job opportunities.

Our scientists were not driven in the right direction by the greedy politicians in the past to come up some alternative environment friendly energy sources as a result we don’t have that many choices to make. As low-carbon sources of energy – nuclear and some viable renewable energy sources could be some alternatives that are readily available, to make the transition from fossil fuels for now until we come up with the inventions of new energy sources in the near future.

References:

  1. https://www.britannica.com/science/chemical-reaction/Polymerization-reactions

  2. Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made. Science Advances, 3(7), e1700782. Link http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full

  3. https://www.worldstopexports.com/worlds-top-oil-exports-country/

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production

  5. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/0517.aspx

  6. https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html

  7. Source: IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Appendix-A:

Definition of GDP: Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.

Definition of GDP per Capita: Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) measures a country’s economic output per person and is calculated by dividing the GDP of a country by its population.

Definition of kWh: The kilowatt-hour is a composite unit of energy equal to one kilowatt (kW) sustained for (multiplied by) one hour. Expressed in the standard unit of energy in the International System of Units (SI), the joule (symbol J), it is equal to 3600 kilojoules or 3.6 MJ.

Appendix-B:

Open Data:

Most of us rely on the Open Data sources, which are open to anyone and everyone for access, modification, reuse, and sharing.

Open Data sources are the outcomes of the open source, open hardware, open government, open science movement. The movements influence the governments, independent organizations, and agencies to come forward to open the floodgates of data to create more and more open data for free and easy access.

The world is expanding at a very faster pace and increasingly more data-driven and restrictions on the access and use of data, the idea of data-driven business and governance have been gradually withdrawn. There is alternative to Open Data to address national, regional and global problems and businesses and empower democracy in general.

There are 15 Open Data sources that are widely used by data scientists are as follows:

  1. World Bank Open Data
  2. WHO (World Health Organization) — Open data repository
  3. Google Public Data Explorer
  4. Registry of Open Data on AWS (RODA)
  5. European Union Open Data Portal
  6. FiveThirtyEight
  7. U.S. Census Bureau
  8. Data.gov
  9. DBpedia
  10. freeCodeCamp Open Data
  11. Yelp Open Datasets
  12. UNICEF Dataset
  13. Kaggle
  14. LODUM
  15. UCI Machine Learning Repository