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NEWS OF
THE MONTH:
Higher Levels of Nitrogen Trifluoride
Than
Previously Thought
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As the
global climate crisis takes on the urgency of our
current financial crisis, environmental researchers
have given the green movement even more momentum by
releasing new greenhouse gas measurement figures
that were hitherto impossible to accurately gauge.
And the results are not promising.
As found by the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla,
California, greenhouse gas emission are four times
higher than we previously thought.
How could we have
not known this before?
Well, the answer is that the
greenhouse effect is not just caused by Carbon
Dioxide. Gases like nitrous oxide, nitrogen trifluoride and methane are actually more "warming"
than Carbon Dioxide. Methane, which is primarily
produced by animal agriculture, is twenty times more
warming than Carbon Dioxide, while Nitrogen
Trifluoride is a whopping 17,000 times more warming.
And here's the kicker - researchers have hitherto
been able to accurately measure Nitrogen Trifluoride,
thus explaining how off predictions of greenhouse
gas levels have been. Prior measurements in 2006
suggested there were 1,200 metric tons of nitrogen
trifluoride in the atmosphere. New analytic
techniques, however, have confirmed there are 5,400
tons of the dangerous greenhouse gas in the
atmosphere - with this figure growing by 11% each
year (based on 30 years of air samples gathered
under NASA's Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases
Experiment).
Researchers are now saying that the increased use of nitrogen trifluoride, which is a
colorless and odorless gas used in the production of
silicon wafers and in some lasers, certainly
warrants regulating it under the Kyoto Protocol.
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