Greenhouse gas calculations blame carbon dioxide too much for global warming, and methane too little, suggest researchers Thursday. In the journal Science, a team led by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York finds that chemical interactions between greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide cause more global warming than previously estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other efforts. ‘The total amount of warming doesn’t change, just the balance of gasses behind it,’ Shindell says. The world’s climate warmed an average about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1906 to 2005, very likely due to industrial greenhouse gases, the IPCC concluded in 2007, adding that carbon dioxide is ‘most important’ greenhouse gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas produced by lanfills, agriculture and some industries. In the study, Shindell and colleagues added chemical interactions between aerosols and greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon monoxide to a century-long model of climate change. They wanted to see the effects on each gas’s ‘Global Warming Potential,’ or individual contribution to global warming. Methane played a bigger role than expected, suggesting that climate treaties such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol need to consider […]