Carbon dioxide is not the only gas that worries climate scientists. Airborne levels of two other gases one from ancient plants, the other from flat screen technology – are also on the rise. And that has scientists wondering about accelerated global warming.
The gases are methane and nitrogen trifluoride… In contrast, nitrogen trifluoride has been considered such a small problem that is generally has been ignored.
The gas is used as a cleaning agent during the manufacture of liquid display television and computer monitors for thin-film solar panels.
Earlier efforts to determine how much nitrogen trifluoride is in the air dramatically underestimated the amounts, said Ray Weiss, a geochemistry professor with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and lead author on a nitrogen fluoride paper to be published next month.
The level of nitrogen trifluoride in the air has quadrupled during the past decade, said Weiss, who is also a co-author of the methane paper. Nitrogen trifluoride is one of the more potent gases, thousands of times stronger in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Sun Herald (Sydney), 26 Oct 2008 – screen copy held by this website