Non-Carbon Gases Linked to Warming

Methane and other gases that don’t contain carbon dioxide have played a greater role than carbon gases such as coal and oil in warming the Earth’s surface in recent decades, a NASA-funded study said. The study signals that “we need to be working to reduce these minor gases as well” as fossil fuels containing carbon dioxide, said Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental advocacy group. Brown said the results “in no way let anyone off the hook,” such as industries that produce gas, coal and oil. Jim Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the report’s author, cited tropospheric ozone, chlorofluorocarbon and black carbon or soot particles, as well as methane, in the study commissioned by NASA.