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Station: Environment
Help Stop Global Warming - Eat a 'Roo-burger
In the search for sources of the gases contributing to global warming, a surprising source of methane gas, (one of the more significant gases in that category) turns out to be the emissions coming from both ends of cows, sheep and goats. It seems that these animals are regular gas factories, as a result of their diet and digestive systems. Incredibly, on a world-wide basis, these animals account for more greenhouse emissions than all forms of transportation combined, partly because methane has 25 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide.Past CO2 Declines Did Not Cause Fewer Ice Ages
Climate scientists have used sediment cores from the seafloor to show that the decline in the frequency of ice ages during the last 2 million years is not the result of a reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere during that time. Ice ages used to occur about every 40,000 years until about 1.2 million years ago. For the last half-million years, the frequency of ice ages has declined to just once every 100,000 years. One theory for this change was that the amount of CO2 had declined during that time period. Until recently, the CO2 content in the atmosphere had been measured by analyzing the gas trapped in bubbles found in ice cores drilled from glaciers, but this data only went back 800,000 years.Melting Arctic Permafrost May Cause Real Havoc with Climate
An increasing rate of melting of the Arctic permafrost in areas around the Arctic Ocean may signal a runaway climate change in the next few years. The observations of Katey Walter show that the rate of melting, and the corresponding increase in the rate at which methane gas, a serious greenhouse warming contributor, is being released could lead to a "thermal runaway" scenario in which no amount reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would be able to reverse the situation. As this part of the world warms, the release of huge quantities of carbon which have been locked in the permafrost for millennia could trigger an irreversible warming trend which exceeds man's ability to counter it. This type of situation is what is known as a positive feedback loop: the air and soil temperature rise, leading to melting of some of the permafrost and the release of the carbon that had been frozen there. This additional carbon leads to further warming, which leads to additional melting, releasing more carbon, and the cycle continues to grow more destructive with each passing cycle.