Renewable Gas Systems

Abstract

A global warming of the troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface, has been causally attributed to humankind’s burning of fossil fuels, cement production and other industrial manufacture, deforestation and other land use change activities. The thermal inertia of the world’s oceans means that even were anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to be completely curtailed today, there is enough added heat in the Earth system as a whole, and heightened levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the oceans, to continue warming the troposphere and land surface of the planet, perhaps for hundreds of years (IPCC, 2013). The risks of the onset of damaging climate change resulting from this “commitment” to further global warming, in addition to that already experienced, are so severe that measures are being implemented worldwide to stem net greenhouse gas emissions to air. Action to curtail what is known as “Black Carbon” — particulate emissions from the burning of wood and fossil fuels, in the very near term, could help to curb short-term atmospheric warming, and provide a window of opportunity to address the more long-term threats from the most significant greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (N₂O) (Boucher and Reddy, 2008; Client Earth, 2012; Highwood and Kinnersley, 2006; JRC, 2014; Minjares et al., 2013).