• Question: how do cars cause global warming what is the chemical?

    Asked by hubs to Josh on 19 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 19 Jun 2013:


      Hello!

      The main component of petrol is a chemical called octane. It has a chemical formula of C8H18. So it’s basically lots of carbon and hydrogen. Whenever you burn a fuel which has carbon in it in air, you make carbon dioxide (CO2). This is the chemical that’s mostly responsible for global warming. It hangs around in the atmosphere trapping energy in the atmosphere, which causes the Earth to heat up.

      If we run a car on hydrogen, then there’s no carbon in the fuel to form carbon dioxide when we use it as a fuel, so we avoid the global warming effects!

      Thanks for the question 🙂

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