Sources and Sinks of Fossil Fuel Emissions

Fossil fuel utilization worldwide has increased significantly over the last 100 years, especially since World War II, as illustrated by the curves in Figure 1. The resulting emissions to the atmosphere are believed by many to result in a variety of environmental problems such as the Greenhouse Effect and global warming (1). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to assess in some detail specific atmospheric pollutants that have been either directly (CO2, CO, CH4, SOx, NOx hydrocarbons, particulates) or indirectly (O3) related to fossil fuel usage and to compare them with emissions from other anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic sources.