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Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases
Although, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide, non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated greenhouse gases contribute significantly to climate change.
Although, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide, non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated greenhouse gases contribute significantly to climate change. But, they find less mention than carbon dioxide at the Paris climate talks. These non-CO2 greenhouse gases have more significant climate change effects than carbon dioxide on a per-ton basis, and many have greater short term impacts than CO2.
Global non-CO2 emissions are projected to increase significantly between 2005 and 2030 unless further actions are taken to reduce emissions. Between 1990 and 2005, methane recovery and other mitigation efforts have decreased the rate of growth, but total emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases have nonetheless increased. Economic and production growth will continue to drive emissions increases in the future unless additional mitigation actions are adopted.
Non-CO2 GHGs include methane emitted mainly from the petroleum refineries, nitrous oxide mainly emitted from the excessive use of fertilizers, hydrofluorocrbons (HFCs) and other man-made perfluorocarbons used in transformers and electronic industries. In terms of their present contribution to total global warming, non-CO2 gases contribute about 20 percent. However by 2040, this is likely to reach 50 percent.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) stated that early action on these gases, particularly those with shorter atmospheric life, can contribute to reduction of warming by 0.6 degrees C by 2100. This reduction is 0.1 deg C more than what small island nations are demanding at Paris.
What's more, such actions would have important benefits like economic savings for the farmers who use excessive fertilizers, reducing river and ocean pollution by drainage of excess fertilizers, savings for the refineries, savings for electronic and transformer industries by using cheaper alternatives etc.
Such energy efficiency advantages, if implemented, will be enormous. As most of the non-CO2 GHGs have lifetimes of 10-15 years, their emission reduction would give early results related to reducing warming as compared to CO2 that have a lifetime of 100 years.
