An interesting study on a way to reduce air pollution and restrain global warming made the news today. An international team led by Drew Shindell of NASA says that adopting existing technology in controlling methane and soot could hold back the projected temperature increase by 40% over the next 40 years while saving a likely million lives a year from lung disease.
Though there is 200 times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. Their calculations show it accounts for 28% of the warming effect. The focus would provide a quicker impact than carbon dioxide in the short term, because the fixes are relatively easy to do. They entail 14 techniques such as "capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection." These practices "are being used efficiently in many places, but aren't universally adopted," said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.
The combined effects would, according to their computer modeling, reign in the projected warming to 1.3 degrees Celsius instead of 2.2 degrees, and increase crop yields by 150 million metric tons a year. CO2 accounts for 48% of man-made global warming, soot 16% and methane 14%. CO2 is definitely the main long-term culprit and must be reduced as part of any effective solution, but it stays in the air a long time, while methane and soot disperse more rapidly. Choking off their infusion into the air would mitigate their contributions to the greenhouse effect quickly. No matter what is done on CO2, which is produced primarily by burning oil and coal and by deforestation, what is already in the atmosphere will take many decades to be absorbed by natural processes.
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