You might wonder why some people want to boycott fossil fuels: Gasoline, natural gas and coal. Here’s what is going on.

The greenhouse gases that drive our manufactured global warming are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and f-gases. F-gases are human-made gases that contain fluorine.

About 80% of the global heating in the next 100 years from the greenhouse gases that the U.S. releases today will come from carbon dioxide; 93% of that carbon dioxide comes from burning fossil fuels.

Another 5% of American overheating comes from methane and nitrous oxide that are released by the fossil fuel industry. Stop fossil fuels, and you stop that 5%, too.

Stopping fossil fuel burning would cut at least 80% off future temperature growth. Here’s the recent trend in global temperatures with 80% taken off.

That’s a dramatic improvement. Stopping fossil fuels would slow global warming enough to give people a chance of adapting to the slower changes rather than our current situation where we’re usually behind and trying to catch up with the growth in flooding, hurricanes, fires and heat waves.

There is more going on. What we need to stabilize temperatures is very different for different greenhouse gases. For example, methane produces 11% of America’s global warming emissions, but methane breaks down 12 years after it gets into the air.  

Methane is like bubbles that you make with a bubble wand. Let’s say each bubble lasts 30 seconds. If you make a new bubble every second, you get up to 30 bubbles after 30 seconds. After that, the bubble you created 30 seconds ago will pop. Older bubbles will continue popping as fast as you make new ones, and you will have a steady 30 bubbles until you change how fast you’re blowing bubbles.

That’s how things are with methane. We don’t have to stop methane to stop global warming. If we stabilize methane emissions, 12 years later, methane will no longer increase global temperatures. Same goes for nitrous oxide after 110 years.  

However, it’s a different deal with carbon dioxide. If we release the same amount of carbon dioxide as methane each year, carbon dioxide levels in the air continue rising, and global temperatures continue rising too. To stop global warming, we need to bring carbon dioxide emissions down to zero.  

Ocean impacts

Since 2008, climate scientists have recognized that our oceans have important impacts on carbon dioxide levels and earth temperatures. If we stopped fossil fuel burning tomorrow, some extra energy that has already been radiated into the oceans by global warming would radiate back out and heat our planet some more over the coming decades.  

At the same time, the oceans would continue absorbing carbon dioxide.  That continued absorption would lower carbon dioxide levels initially. In about 150 years, carbon dioxide concentrations in the air would stabilize at levels that are lower than whatever was the highest concentration they got to. However, the levels would still be higher than in 1950.  

Lowered carbon dioxide concentrations will lower temperatures. It turns out that the best estimates are that the increased heating from the oceans would roughly balance the reduced cooling from removing carbon dioxide.  That is why current best estimates are that global temperatures will hold roughly steady wherever they are when we stop burning fossil fuels.

“We get an essentially flat temperature curve… when human carbon emissions approach zero.” ~ Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania 2023

“Most models project that the Earth will stop warming if CO2 emissions reach net zero.” ~ The Fifth National Climate Assessment from the federal US Global Change Research Program 2023 

Cleaning up your own mess

In preschool, my kids loved learning to clean up their own messes. Having watched them, I enjoy my own peace of mind when I clean up my own messes rather than leaving bad things behind me.

You’ll be pleased to know that the industries who make F-gases are already working on finding replacements that do less harm. That makes sense.  F-gases are their pollution, and they should clean up their own mess.  

Farmers can clean up their own mess too. Scientists at agriculture schools are developing farming techniques with much lower emissions of methane and nitrous oxide.

For us, a lot of our global warming messes are our carbon dioxide emissions. We share responsibility for those emissions with the communities that got us to buy gasoline cars or natural-gas furnaces in the first place. We also share some responsibility for the emissions created to get food and other products to us.

To start cleaning up your mess, stop burning gasoline and stop burning natural gas. Whatever you do, don’t buy another gasoline car or another natural gas furnace. When we have all done our part, we will stop global warming.

Walking and biking are also boycotting gasoline. These days, I’m getting around mostly on bicycle and foot. Riding electric public transportation is boycotting gasoline too.