I have built a page on squidoo.com which discusses these issues; please take a look at it: Methane is a Greenhouse Gas.

This page expands upon that whioch I have mentioned here and also suggests some reading material. There is also place to vote on which source of methane poses the greatest threat to the environment in terms of its contribution to the greenhouse effect.

environment, global warming, climate change, greenhouse effect

I've just found out that the sun is directly responsible for global warming!

Apparently solar energy originating from the sun penetrates the earth's atmosphere where it warms the planet to just the right level for it to sustain life. However, it doesn't warm the earth equally across it surface, some areas receive more solar energy than others, meaning that they are warmer. To confuse this further, planet earth orbits the sun and rotates on its own axis, meaning that solar energy levels affecting various points on the globe vary periodically throughout time. Add to this that the earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and it varies in its degree of ellipticality with time and the solar energy reaching any one point on earth is extremely variable. This results in weather patterns that are different on different places on earth and ones that interact with each other in a stable but fluctuating fashion. This is known as climate.

The climate is changing.

Before humans had become very numerous the climate could change and no one very much cared about it. Climate change probably happened fairly slowly giving species a chance to migrate to more suitable areas, this wasn't really a problem as there were large areas of suitable habitat for these species to move to. Some species did become extinct as we know from fossil records, but others evolved to fill the niches left by the extinct ones. Throughout all of this the Sun did its job properly.

However, now the Sun doesn't seem to have caught on, it's not moving with the times. It hasn't adapted to humans pumping large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere where they trap heat. The Sun hasn't moved further away or colled down so that the natural speed of climate change can prevail, instead it has stubbornly remained in the same place as it has been for at least 5 billion years collaborating with greenhouse gases to speed up the rate of climate change to a level at which species (other than humans) are unable to adapt. At the same time the Sun has refused to supply enough solar energy for vegetation to grow faster than humans can clear it, so that now insufficient habitat remains for species to migrate into as the climate changes. Instead, suitable habitat is much reduced and fragmented so that many species are unable to make the migration to safer regions, particularly now the Sun has increased the rate of climate change. Because of this irresponsible behaviour of the Sun, the process of evolution is unable to operate properly to fill the ecological niches vacated by unusually high rates of extinction, because in many cases these niches only exist in small isolated pockets.

However, there is some hope.

Humans are coming to the rescue by inventing ways to combat the refusal of the Sun to either cool down or move further away. Plans are afoot to make machines that sequester carbon, to reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere (an important greenhouse gas), these will in effect be robotic trees. Other heros have come up with the idea of artificially creating cloud layers to reflect the sun's rays before it can be trapped and my contacts at NASA have hinted that there is a project underway to build a "solar tug" which will be able to tow the sun further away or drag it closer as required.

Until this miracle is realised by humankind we can all do our bit. We can all shave our heads and paint them silver to reflect more solar energy back into space. Alternatively we could walk around with silver umbrellas for the same effect. Another idea is to get rid of the leaves that rot and release CO2, drain the oceans from which eminates huge amounts of CO2 or kill all those disgusting wild animals to prevent them from emitting methane (another greenhouse gas) as animal flatulence is a major contributor to global warming - the millions of domestic animals kept for the benefit of humans would be exempt from this cull as they are "tame" and polite beasts with far better manners than their wild cousins.

Alternatively we could stop being such dirty, wasteful bastards and reduce the amount muck we pump into the atmosphere. Some people could become slightly less rich from this though.

Damn you Sun!