The author finds that the gas substitution scenario would realize 40 percent of the reduction in global warming that could be achieved with a full switch to low- carbon fuel sources. The benefit for mitigating warming revolves around the fact that to produce an equivalent amount of electricity burning natural gas would release less carbon dioxide than burning oil or coal. Though atmospheric methane traps more outgoing radiation than carbon dioxide does, at reasonable leakage rates its atmospheric concentration is much lower and what is released decomposes much more quickly. The author suggests that over timescales relevant to large-scale warming-decades to centuries-the effect of any methane released during natural gas extraction would be inconsequential.
Source:
Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, doi:10.1029/2012GC004032, 2012
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GC004032
Title: Assessing the greenhouse impact of natural gas
Authors: L. M. Cathles: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
3. New findings expand Apollo observations of lunar atmosphere
In December 1972 the astronauts of Apollo 17-the last manned mission to the
moon-deployed the Lunar Atmospheric Composition Experiment (LACE), a
spectrometer designed to measure and characterize the thin lunar atmosphere.
Forty years later, Stern et al. built upon those initial measurements, providing the
first remotel
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