Latest Greenhouse gas Stories

Tiny microbes are at the heart of a novel agricultural technique to manage harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have discovered how microbes can be used to turn carbon dioxide emissions into soil-enriching limestone, with the help of a type of tree that thrives in tropical areas, such as West Africa. Researchers have found that when the Iroko tree is grown in dry, acidic soil and treated with a combination of natural fungus and bacteria, not only does the tree flourish, it also...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Cutting edge carbon capture technology is having quite the year so far as UK scientists said they have developed a "metal-organic framework" that works like a sponge, absorbing carbon dioxide from high pressure emissions. This latest breakthrough in clean energy technology, called NOTT-202, absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere by soaking in pressurized gasses and releasing these gases under lowered pressure while retaining the greenhouse gas, according to a...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com While many climate change studies focus on the physical and ecological processes that drive greenhouse gas emissions, a new study published this week focuses on the societal forces that could cause global warming. In a report published Sunday in Nature Climate Change, Michigan State University professor Tom Dietz and his colleague Eugene Rosa from Washington State University looked at the various social factors that have long been prime climate-change...

Michael Crumbliss for redOrbit.com Geoengineering is a field of study that proposes techniques to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. Methods range from mimicking the effects of large volcanic eruptions by releasing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to deploying giant mirrors in space. Scientists have proposed these sunlight-reflecting solutions as last-ditch attempts to halt global warming. A new study used climate models developed by the UK Met...

OTTAWA, June 4, 2012 /CNW/ - The Honourable Steven Fletcher, Minister of State (Transport) and the Honourable Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment, today announced the release of Canada's Action Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Aviation. The announcement was made at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum as part of Environment Week. "This Plan is good for the economy and good for the environment. It brings together the joint efforts of the aviation industry to...

BERKELEY, Calif., June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the United States according to a new environmental book, Green Illusions (June 2012, University of Nebraska Press), written by University of California - Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. Green Illusions explains how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride...

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com New evidence points to troubling levels of carbon dioxide, the world’s primary greenhouse gas, in the Earth’s atmosphere. Several arctic monitoring stations are measuring more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere this spring, compared with the 350 ppm that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. While some carbon dioxide production is natural, from decomposing dead plants and animals,...

Model vets millions of structures to find ones that will improve efficiency of current technology When power plants begin capturing their carbon emissions to reduce greenhouse gases – and to most in the electric power industry, it's a question of when, not if – it will be an expensive undertaking. Current technologies would use about one-third of the energy generated by the plants – what's called "parasitic energy" – and, as a result, substantially drive up the price of...

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com The edges of glaciers and Arctic permafrost are where most of the evidence of global warming can be seen, but scientists have recently been traveling to these remote locations for a different reason. Researchers from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks just published a study in the online edition of Nature Geoscience showing that methane trapped under arctic lake ice for millions of years is now being released by the melting ice. The team used both aerial...

A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy. Making carbon-based products from CO2 is nothing new, but carbon dioxide molecules are so stable that those reactions usually take up a lot of energy. If that energy were to come from fossil fuels, over time the chemical reactions would ultimately result in more carbon...