Scientists Suggest Turning Methane Into Carbon Dioxide Could Reduce Global Warming

Scientists Suggest Turning #Methane Into #Carbo_Dioxide Could Reduce #Global_Warming

International #Conference on #Global_Warming and #Natural_Disasters

#December 09-10, 2019 #Bangkok, #Thailand

Theme: Alarming Signs of Global Warming!! Preventive solutions towards climate catastrophe

Website: https://globalwarming-naturaldisaster.environmentalconferen…

Email: globalwarmingdisasters@asiapacificmeets.com

Registrations are open....!!!!

Submit Your Abstract....

A group of climate researchers from Stanford University have proposed that an effort to turn one of the worst greenhouse gases, methane, into carbon dioxide – not the worst greenhouse, but much more abundant – could still work out positive for the planet.

It's a lessor of two evils approach to repairing the planet.

Methane is approximately 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the first two decades after it’s released into the atmosphere. In a paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability they reason that turning all that methane into CO2 would still put humanity ahead and estimate that the transformation would eliminate about one-sixth of the cumulative drivers of global warming.

Only last week, we reported on an initiative to extract carbon dioxide from water and turn that into methanol fuel using giant, floating solar farms to power the chemical reaction.

However, nations the world over are well behind on their pledges to invest in clean-energy innovation. The International Energy Agency said that only seven of some 45 energy technologies and sectors it assesses are on track to reach the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

Perhaps then it's time to start thinking about damage limitation, rather than trying to prevent it altogether, since that seems to be a more realistic outcome.

Some greenhouse gasses are significantly worse than others, in terms of how much heat they trap in the atmosphere. If it was possible to turn the worst greenhouse gasses into less-damaging ones then, theoretically we end up with a net positive.

"To make a dent in the global CO2 budget, we need to remove billions of tons of CO2 every year, likely between 5-10 billion tons per year [out of ~40 emitted currently]. This effort is like running the coal industry in reverse," Dr Rob Jackson, lead author of the new paper and Professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University, told Forbes.