carbon dioxide

Chemists have developed a novel way to capture and convert carbon dioxide into methane, suggesting that future gas emissions could be converted into an alternative fuel using electricity from renewable sources.

Capturing methane, a greenhouse gas over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term, is vital for combating climate change.

For example, methane is of particular relevance to the global greenhouse effect because its warming potential is 25 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.

This is a region that has historically helped to buffer the world from further warming, by absorbing some of the carbon dioxide produced from human activities.

But when trees die, the wood rots and the stored carbon dioxide is released back into the air.