Most people understand that fossil fuels and our current ways of living are causing issues involving global warming and the atmosphere. The question is, are these changes reversible or not? From previous post we have seen what the addition of human produced CO2 and other fossil fuels does to the environment. So is there a way to turn around what we have done in the past? A scientist Alvaro Montenegro and his team did a study to see how the environment would react if all of the known fossil fuel sources were used. His team projected that the majority of fossil fuels would be used by 2100 and then as supplies are limited they would be used more scarcely for 200 years till 2300. "Using sophisticated computer models, Montenegro and colleagues at the University of Victoria and the University of Chicago assessed the impact of consuming all known reserves of fossil fuels until they run out in 2300. Their simulations assume that the carbon dioxide producing by burning the fuel would waft into the atmosphere as it does today" [1]. The numbers that came from this test were astonishing. There is good news the damage that is caused could be reversed but the bad news is that it will take a long time for these damages to diminish. According to the test, 75 percent of the CO2 from burning the remaining fossil fuels would remain in the atmosphere for 1,800 years until the land and oceans would absorb it. The remaining CO2 would stay in our atmosphere for at least 5,000 years. [1] So we are looking at over 19 generations till we see much improvement unless we do something in the near future to cut our reliability on fossil fuels.
[1] http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=d9829a2d-72c0-4a12-a93f-285a50d79b1d&k=42282
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