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The team stresses that even cutting all non-carbon dioxide gases today still wouldn’t be enough to stop the warming influence from all greenhouse gases over the next 40 years — not unless carbon dioxide emissions were also cut by 80 per cent or more.

“You cannot solve this problem without going after (carbon dioxide) and you have to go after it soon and you have to go after it big,”said Jim Butler, who oversees the NOAA’s atmospheric monitoring lab and co-authored the Nature article.

However, the team said the non-carbon dioxide gases make up about 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions and shouldn’t be forgotten when countries consider options for tackling global warming.

“There are real advantages to going after these things together and we need to see gases as a collection,” said Butler.

“That’s the point we’re trying to make . . . it makes sense to go after these gases along with the others.”

Butler said cutting nitrous oxide emissions could be helped by reducing fertilizer use.

Fertilizer contains nitrous oxide that gets carried into waterways and evaporates into the atmosphere. Reducing the amount of fertilizer used or the amount of nitrous oxide in fertilizer could eliminate some greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere, Butler said.

The article is the result of two years of research, review and discussions that sprung out of the 2009 UN climate change conference.

The NOAA team reviewed 50 years of international atmospheric data and looked at future temperature projections to determine what effect reducing non-carbon dioxide gases would have on global warming.

Butler said future research should focus on understanding the complex relationship among the various greenhouse gases.

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