Word: nitrous
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...ocean lanes are the backbone of globalization, but they are also carbon hogs. Each year, about 100,000 ships contribute some 1.3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, about 3% of global carbon emissions. In addition, ships spew out huge amounts of traditional air pollutants, like nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), and emit black carbon soot, a leading contributor to melting Arctic ice. "It's an overlooked and important problem, but it's also extraterritorial," says Travis Bradford, the chief operating officer of the Carbon War Room, based in Washington, D.C. "And there's no external force...
...concentrations in the atmosphere at 550 parts per million - a modest goal - we would need more land for biofuel production by the end of the 21st century than is currently used for all food crops. Worse, all the fertilizer needed to grow those bioenergy crops would increase emissions of nitrous oxide, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, and water supplies would also be stressed. "We have to think about this very carefully," says Melillo. "We need to have a complete analysis about the unintended consequences of biofuels." (See pictures of the 2008 global food crisis...
...what humans do: they looked for a way to fit it into one of the boxes in their mind. Some speculated that the girl's doctor must have made a mistake and that's why she died. Another woman wondered if perhaps the girl had been doing whippits - inhaling nitrous oxide - and that had contributed to her death. If we tell ourselves that we can prevent catastrophe by avoiding whippits, then we have reduced the uncertainty. But we haven't reduced the risk...
...even with that battle all but won, scientists are finding a new man-made threat to the ozone layer: nitrous oxide (N2O), otherwise known as laughing gas. A study published in the Aug. 28 Science found that N2O - a by-product of agricultural fertilizer and a number of other industrial processes - is now the biggest ozone-depleting gas in the air, and could present a real threat to the ozone layer in coming decades. And worse, unlike CFCs, N2O - which also adds to global warming - is not regulated by the Montreal Protocol, meaning there is no global effort...
...tipping point - requiring that we now push it back. "It can be a win-win phasing out these gases, both for climate and the ozone," says Robert Portman, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and a co-author of the study. If we fail, we won't be laughing about nitrous oxide. (Read "Can Steven Chu Win the Fight Over Global Warming...