Meat, manure and gas
“If there is a growing demand for meat, which of course there is, that is going to end up requiring use of more nitrogen fertilizer and production of more livestock manure, both of which end up resulting in unintentional releases of various forms of nitrogen to the environment, including nitrates to groundwater and surface water and also greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide to the atmosphere,” he said.
Dr. Eric Davidson
Davidson looked for ways to ease the effects of climate change that would support an aggressive strategy laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In particular, the effects of nitrous oxide, described as the third biggest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide and methane.
But while nitrous oxide ranks number three in greenhouse gases, it is considered the most potent. It’s much better at absorbing infrared radiation. In other words, the sun’s energy passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, heats things up and is then released through infrared radiation. But that radiation then hits the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and goes no further.
Davidson has a simple analogy.
“It’s sort of the same idea as a parked car. The energy goes through the windshield of a car pretty easily. It’s absorbed on the car seat. Gets the car seat hot. Re-radiates out and it cannot escape the windshield on the way out. This infrared radiation cannot escape the windshield and so the inside of the car heats up. The physics is pretty well understood for climate change. I think we’d probably have better acceptance of it if we called it the parked car effect instead of the greenhouse gas effect,” he said.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25