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The Top Ten Greenhouse Gases

PopSci.com's guide to the vapors that are making Earth more toasty

Posted 3.17.09 at 1:43 pm 6 Comments

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10. Sulfuryl Fluoride

Termite tent, courtesy of the Monterey Public Library via Flickr.com

The new kid on the block, MIT scientists identified this chemical as a greenhouse gas on March 11th, 2009. Used as a fumigant, Dow Chemicals produces sulfuryl fluoride to kill termites. The chemical, which is highly inert, has a lifetime of up to 40 years, and traps 4,800 times more heat per molecule than CO2. The chemical only exists in 1.5 parts per trillion in the atmosphere, but according to the recent Journal of Geophysical Research, that number is going up by 5 percent a year.

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Read the article: The Top Ten Greenhouse Gases

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6 Comments

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laughingboy

03/17/09 at 9:06 pm

Water vapor constitutes over 90% of the greenhouse effect. CO2 and methane split the rest. Guess how much CO2 released into the atmosphere comes from man-made sources? 3%.

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mjlob

03/18/09 at 9:53 am

Looking at Image No. 2 for CO2, I see that most of the image shows water vapor coming off the cooling towers. Makes you want to rethink that maybe we should be trapping that water vapor instead of letting it into the atmosphere.

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kevmag1

03/19/09 at 10:50 pm

I'm sick of this SCAM. Al Gore did his movie 3 years ago on global warming. Now that we are in a cooling trend he changes to warning about "climate change".
The air we breathe is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, that 99%. Of the remaining 1%, 95% of it is water vapor. We finnaly get to CO2 which is 3% of the 1%. Of all the CO2 in the atmosphere, man is responsible 3-5% of it.
So,to try and show how small that is, if the air we breathe is $1million, $780K is nitrogen,$210K is oxygen....and man made CO2 is between $9 and $15. Man made CO2 is as significant as a fart in domed football stadium.
I'm all for reducing pollution and recycling,but these enviromentalists are trying to shove their ideology down our throats.If they get their way it will completely change our way of life and it won't be nice.

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bspencer413

04/03/09 at 6:16 pm

Don't forget rice production as a major source of methane gas. The bacteria essential to rice cultivation produces quantities of methane on par with farm animals.

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Fishman5

06/26/09 at 12:18 pm

I hope they can get a handle on that polution
______________
http://www.empoweringparents.com/Is-Your-Child-Depressed-6-Ways-to-Help-Them-Cope-Kids-and-Depression-Part-II.php

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wsugaimd

from Kailua Kona, HI

01/20/12 at 1:19 pm

wsugaimd

mjlob...dramatic picture of steam coming off cooling towers but shown under "C02". All part of the propaganda.

Man produces 27 billion tons of C02/yr but it goes into an atmosphere that already has 3,600 billion tons of C02.
27/3,600 x 100 = 0.75% of all C02 is man made.