Burping bovines, fossil fuel in US may toast planet faster A new study has revealed that the amount of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent but far less prevalent than CO2 – released into the US atmosphere is significantly higher than previously thought. "We find greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and fossil fuel extraction and processing (i.e., oil and/or natural gas) are likely a factor of two or greater than cited in existing studies," reports a paper describing the findings, "Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States", published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Overall, as the Harvard Gazette explains, the study found methane emissions to be 1.5 times to 1.7 times higher than earlier estimates by the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In some regions, however, the difference is much greater. In the south-central US, for example, methane emissions were found to be well above the EDGAR estimates – "4.9 ± 2.6 times" higher, in fact. Read more http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/26/potent_greenhouse_gas_emissions_much_higher_than_thought/
