The phrase
"than carbon dioxide" is a comparison between two things.
Full definition
Of course it is possible that targets could be met via creative strategies such as the use of offsets or the counting of emissions reductions in gases
other than carbon dioxide.
Although there is much less of it in the air, it is 33 times more effective
than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and adding to greenhouse warming.
It is less prevalent
than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but also more potent: A molecule of methane results in more warming than a molecule of carbon dioxide.
Over a 100 - year timeframe, methane is about 34 times as potent at trapping
heat than carbon dioxide, and over 20 years, it's 86 times more potent.
Changes to the temperature and pressure of permafrost soils (and ocean waters) could lead to methane, a gas with a much stronger greenhouse warming
potential than carbon dioxide, being released.
They happily convert carbon compounds in their food to carbon dioxide, and also to very substantial quantities of methane, which is much
worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
There is an enormous amount of methane at the bottom of the oceans; and methane reflects heat far better
than carbon dioxide does.
These gases are not only damaging to the ozone layer, but are super greenhouse gases, thousands of times more
damaging than carbon dioxide (CO2).
If these rates continue, emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful
than carbon dioxide on 100 - year time scales, will increase 4 percent over the next decade.
Besides sunlight, the algae require little more
than carbon dioxide from nearby power plants, so operating expenses should be low.
Researchers say the slow digestive system of cows makes them a producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public
attention than carbon dioxide in efforts to fight global warming.
Although less
common than carbon dioxide and water vapor, each molecule is far more powerful and potentially as significant for global warming.
While this represents a much smaller percentage of overall greenhouse
gases than carbon dioxide, methane is about 20 times more effective at trapping heat.
If it escapes into the atmosphere instead, methane acts as a potent greenhouse gas — in fact, it is over 20 times more effective at trapping
heat than carbon dioxide.
Since 2006, atmospheric levels of methane — a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent
than carbon dioxide over a 20 - year period — have steadily been on the rise.
Although methane is about 200 times less
abundant than carbon dioxide, each incremental molecule of methane has about 20 times the heat - trapping power as each additional molecule of carbon dioxide.
Methane is 84 times more dangerous to our
climate than carbon dioxide in the short term, and it accounts for about 25 percent of the warming we're experiencing today.
Methane or natural gas is 72 times more potent at capturing heat in the
atmosphere than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after release - and to deal with climate change, we need to focus on the next few decades.
According to the EPA, methane is a particularly big contributor to climate change, as it has 28 to 36 more global warming potential
than carbon dioxide emissions.
The chemicals, which are emitted in the production of refrigerants, foams and aerosols, are thousands of times more potent
than carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases.
Although CFCs are extremely persistent, remaining in the upper atmosphere for decades, and although they are 10,000 times more
efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, the process of controlling them has been under way for years, for reasons having nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
Leaks of methane, a more potent warming
agent than carbon dioxide though with a shorter lifespan, make up another significant chunk of potential emission reduction.
Methane, for example, traps about 100 - times more heat in the very short
term than carbon dioxide does, but it also breaks down into carbon dioxide over a period of 10 - 20 years.