Question

Can someone help me with this and tell me what’s fracking and what does it have to do with carbon, carbon dioxide, or fossil fuels?

Answer 1

In essence, fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is a stimulation technique used in the exploitation of oil and natural gas resources. By injecting a mixture of water and materials known as fracking fluid at high pressure, shales are fragmented in order to release the gas it contains.

Shale formations are fine-grained, laminated sedimentary rocks, composed of fine clay particles and formed by the accumulation of sediment and organic matter into a sea.

By using this method, new fossil fuel resources can be exploited. However, this method poses serious environmental risk. Among these, air emissions consisting primarily of escaping methane as well as those produced by the equipment itself, increase the rate of climate change. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Spillage from the fractured formation as well as waste pits, can contaminate both surface and ground water thus posing a serious health risk to both the human and animal populations.

Answer 2

Your text must speak about the carbon cycle, ie all the forms that carbon can have (CO2, living organisms, fossils ...)

Terrestrial plants store atmospheric carbon through the primary production process and will only return a portion of it. The vegetation will then send this carbon to the soil in the form of dead organic matter. Most of this carbon is then returned to the atmosphere by the processes of respiration and decomposition in soils.

Exchange between living beings and the atmosphere is estimated at 60 gigatonnes per year. This exchange is a two-way process: while fermentation, respiration of bacteria, animals and plants release CO2, photosynthesis of chlorophyll plants fixes carbon in organic matter or biomass.

The oceans take more carbon from the atmosphere than they give back to it, so they are considered carbon sinks. A transfer of carbon is made between the different compartments by the rivers and rivers.

Climatic phenomena and erosion perpetuate the carbon exchange between rocks on the surface of the earth and in the oceans. Carbon dives under the mantle of the earth during a so-called subduction process - while volcanoes, baths and geysers release carbon dioxide and methane back into the atmosphere.

The geological phases of the carbon cycle - climate phenomena, erosion, subduction and fossil fuel formation - occur over a period of millions of years. The biological phases of the carbon cycle - photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition by microbes - can occur over a period of days to thousands of years.