Carbon dioxide (CO2)

Methane (CH4) is a hydrocarbon that is a primary component of natural gas. Methane is also a greenhouse gas (GHG), so its presence in the atmosphere affects the earth’s temperature and climate system. Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.

Source

Electricity and Heat Production (25% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): The burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.

carbon dioxide

Oxygen and nitrogen are not greenhouse gases, because they are transparent to infrared light. These molecules are invisible because when you stretch one, it doesn’t change the electric field. In general, symmetrical molecules with only two atoms are not greenhouse gases.

For more recent times (the past millennium), scientists have been able to quantitatively attribute the major temperature fluctuations to changes in solar activity, volcanic eruptions, and human-produced greenhouse gases and particulate pollution. These natural processes can not explain the current warming.

Sulfur dioxide, coupled with “elemental carbon emissions,” contributes to the formation of aerosols, which directly and indirectly affect warming and cooling in the earth’s atmosphere. Beyond sulfur dioxide’s environmental impact, this gas also is detrimental to human health.

Large volumes of SO2 erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid Warming. Such warming and associated acid rain becomes extreme when millions of cubic kilometers of basalt are erupted in much less than one million years.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: a gas that absorbs and radiates heat. But increases in greenhouse gases have tipped the Earth’s energy budget out of balance, trapping additional heat and raising Earth’s average temperature. Carbon dioxide is the most important of Earth’s long-lived greenhouse gases.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) are sometimes called high-GWP gases because, for a given amount of mass, they trap substantially more heat than CO2.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, even though it only lasts about a decade in the atmosphere, whereas CO2 persists for a couple of centuries. A continued rise in the amount of methane in the air could easily cancel out any near-term progress we make in reducing CO2 emissions.

Construction-related activities are among the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions. China’s extraordinary urbanization boom has intensified these activities. The production of cement and steel, which have undergirded China’s infrastructure development, both emit a large amount of CO2 during the refining process.

As the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, China suffers from notoriously bad air pollution. Its carbon-intensive industries have caused additional environmental challenges, including water scarcity and soil contamination.