Fossil Fuel Impacts on the Environment: A Perspective on the Middle East and Iran

The composition of the Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere at the beginning of the Earth's formation and the Archaean was very different from its current state. In the Archaean, the atmosphere's composition was predominantly CO2, with small amounts of methane and nitrogen gases, and almost devoid of oxygen. Additionally, ocean water had an acidic pH. After several hundred million years of geological and biological activities, almost from the late Proterozoic and Phanerozoic, the composition of the atmosphere and hydrosphere has taken its current form. From the beginning of the Paleozoic to the Miocene, for more than four hundred million years, as a result of biological activities and geological phenomena, a part of carbon dioxide gas of the atmosphere has accumulated in fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). Human civilization, after the industrial revolution, with the use of fossil fuels and the peak of their use in 1950 until now, and the continuation of this trend until 2050, in about 100 years, will consume almost 80% of the world's accumulated reserves of fossil fuels. A sudden increase in CO2 in such a short time means introducing a sudden shock to the composition of the atmosphere, resulting in an increase in the Earth's heat, and this process is expected to become more intense. This problem has caused changes in the climate of the planet, and the result will be extreme changes in rainfall, drought in some areas, including Iran, the Middle East, and North Africa, changes in the rainfall pattern and its type in the year on the planet, drying up of many lakes and rivers in regions with the latitudes 20-35 degrees, as well as changes in the water level of the oceans and even their pH changes, which will threaten human society and some biological species.