NF3, SF6 and the Apocalyptic Super Greenhouse Gases

As one hottest day/month/year follows one after the other, as wildfire seasons get ever longer with increasingly destructive fires, and as the planet is afflicted with ever stronger floods, hurricanes, and droughts it has become glaringly obvious to all but the hardened skeptic that global warming is very real and that our efforts to combat it have been ineffective. In no small part this is due to our losing and misguided anti-global warming strategy focused almost exclusively on countering carbon dioxide (CO2), the most benign of the greenhouse gases.

That there is a growing realization that there are more greenhouse gases than CO2 is apparent from the pre-COP29 statement of the US Climate Czar acknowledged that greenhouse gases other than CO2 now accounted for approximately 50% of global warming and that an inordinate amount of effort was directed at CO2, the most benign of all the greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, however, the conference addressed only the next most benign greenhouse gases, methane (between 30 and 90 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2) and nitrous oxide (up to 300 times as potent as CO2) and virtually ignoring the family of super greenhouse gases whose greenhouse effect can be many thousands of times greater than that of CO2.

For example, NF3, a gas used in the manufacturing of computers, flat screen televisions and solar panels, whose use is growing at an estimated rate of between 10 and 11% a year has a mind-bending greenhouse effect 17,200 times that of CO2, and can last in the atmosphere for 500 years. Another true super greenhouse gas Sulfur Hexafluoride (NF6) has an even greater effect, over 20,000 times that of CO2 and whose use is growing by nearly 10% per year. Shockingly, there are currently there are no international efforts to eliminate or even reduce the use of these potentially apocalyptic gases.

A study conducted at the University of California found that there was eight times the predicted level of NF3 in the atmosphere, despite the fact that NF3 is difficult to detect in the atmosphere.

Common sense absolutely screams that the most effective means of fighting global warming is to first address the most dangerous of the greenhouse gases most urgently. Unfortunately, it would seem that common sense is all too uncommon.