Global Food Production Threatens to Overwhelm Efforts to Combat Climate Change

Each year our terrestrial biosphere absorbs about a quarter of all the carbon dioxide emissions that humans produce.  This a very good thing; it helps to moderate the warming produced by human activities such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

But in a paper published in Nature we show that emissions from other human activities, particularly food production, are overwhelming this cooling effect.  This is a worrying trend, at a time when CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels are slowing down, and is clearly not consistent with efforts to stabilize global warming well below 2℃ as agreed at the Paris climate conference.

To explain why, we need to look at two other greenhouse gases: methane and nitrous oxide.

Read more at Global Food Production Threatens to Overwhelm Efforts to Combat Climate Change