Latest Greenhouse gases Stories

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online With only 6 days separating us from the third-hottest summer on record, the warnings of climate scientists are increasingly being taken with more than just a grain of salt. Many climate scientists are of the opinion that if we haven’t passed a tipping point already, then that time is rapidly approaching. Carbon dioxide, one of the most prevalent of our greenhouse gases, acts as a sort of blanket in our atmosphere by trapping...

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Newlight Technologies, LLC announced today that it has been awarded a seventh patent related to the conversion of greenhouse gases, such as waste methane and carbon dioxide, into biodegradable PHA plastics. The new patent, U.S. Patent #8,263,373, joins Newlight's multi-layered and continually-expanding portfolio of intellectual property, which now includes seven U.S. and international patents and hundreds of additional filed patent...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers are working on safer, more cost-effective carbon capture technology that could help overcome some of the obstacles currently facing projects designed to help reduce greenhouse gases and combat global climate changes, according to several recently published news reports. On Sunday, Reuters reporter Chris Wickham detailed a new material constructed from aluminum nitrate salt, inexpensive organic materials, and water...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the oceans as a result of water pollution by nutrients — a major source of this greenhouse gas that gets little public attention — is enhancing the unwanted changes in ocean acidity due to atmospheric increases in CO2. The changes may already be impacting commercial fish and shellfish populations, according to new data and model predictions published today in ACS's journal, Environmental Science & Technology. William G. Sunda and Wei-Jun Cai point...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new computational method for identifying candidate refrigerant fluids with low "global warming potential" (GWP) — the tendency to trap heat in the atmosphere for many decades — as well as other desirable performance and safety features. The NIST effort is the most extensive systematic search for a new class of refrigerants that meet the latest concerns about climate change. The new method was used...

TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Thousands of accused witches were burned at the stake in medieval times in an effort to protect their communities from bad weather, stated Jane Orient, M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense. It didn't work then, of course, as Europe continued to suffer greatly during the Little Ice Age. And human beings still do not have the power to control the climate, she said. Orient spoke at the 30(th) annual meeting...

In a surprising finding, North Carolina State University researchers have shown that certain underground organisms thought to promote chemical interactions that make the soil a carbon sink actually play a more complex, dual role when atmospheric carbon levels rise. In a paper published in the Aug. 31 edition of Science, North Carolina State University researchers show that important and common soil microscopic organisms, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), play a role in sequestering...

Commercial natural gas was likely major factor in late-20th century stabilization Increased capture of natural gas from oil fields probably accounts for up to 70 percent of the dramatic leveling off seen in atmospheric methane at the end of the 20th century, according to new UC Irvine research being published Thursday, Aug. 23, in the journal Nature. “We can now say with confidence that, based on our data, the trend is largely a result of changes in fossil fuel use,” said chemistry...

Methane emissions jump dramatically Washington State University researchers have documented an underappreciated suite of players in global warming: dams, the water reservoirs behind them, and surges of greenhouse gases as water levels go up and down. Bridget Deemer, a doctoral student at Washington State University-Vancouver, measured dissolved gases in the water column of Lacamas Lake in Clark County and found methane emissions jumped 20-fold when the water level was drawn down. A...

The destruction of atmospheric ozone can take place within newly forming Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs), which serve as the battleground for manmade chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to attack and destroy ozone. These clouds form when clusters of frozen water "pick up" other atmospheric molecules such as methane, nitrogen oxides, and water molecules, similar to the way a snowball's girth increases as it rolls down a mountainside. Most previously established atmospheric models have assumed that a...