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Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors

Agriculture is a significant contributor to anthropogenic global warming, and reducing agricultural emissions—largely methane and nitrous oxide—could play a significant role in climate change mitigation. However, there are important differences between carbon dioxide (CO(2)), which is a stock pollut...

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Autores principales: Lynch, John, Cain, Michelle, Frame, David, Pierrehumbert, Raymond
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116829/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33644695
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.518039
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author Lynch, John
Cain, Michelle
Frame, David
Pierrehumbert, Raymond
author_facet Lynch, John
Cain, Michelle
Frame, David
Pierrehumbert, Raymond
author_sort Lynch, John
collection PubMed
description Agriculture is a significant contributor to anthropogenic global warming, and reducing agricultural emissions—largely methane and nitrous oxide—could play a significant role in climate change mitigation. However, there are important differences between carbon dioxide (CO(2)), which is a stock pollutant, and methane (CH(4)), which is predominantly a flow pollutant. These dynamics mean that conventional reporting of aggregated CO(2)-equivalent emission rates is highly ambiguous and does not straightforwardly reflect historical or anticipated contributions to global temperature change. As a result, the roles and responsibilities of different sectors emitting different gases are similarly obscured by the common means of communicating emission reduction scenarios using CO(2)-equivalence. We argue for a shift in how we report agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and think about their mitigation to better reflect the distinct roles of different greenhouse gases. Policy-makers, stakeholders, and society at large should also be reminded that the role of agriculture in climate mitigation is a much broader topic than climate science alone can inform, including considerations of economic and technical feasibility, preferences for food supply and land-use, and notions of fairness and justice. A more nuanced perspective on the impacts of different emissions could aid these conversations.
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spelling pubmed-71168292021-02-26 Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors Lynch, John Cain, Michelle Frame, David Pierrehumbert, Raymond Front Sustain Food Syst Article Agriculture is a significant contributor to anthropogenic global warming, and reducing agricultural emissions—largely methane and nitrous oxide—could play a significant role in climate change mitigation. However, there are important differences between carbon dioxide (CO(2)), which is a stock pollutant, and methane (CH(4)), which is predominantly a flow pollutant. These dynamics mean that conventional reporting of aggregated CO(2)-equivalent emission rates is highly ambiguous and does not straightforwardly reflect historical or anticipated contributions to global temperature change. As a result, the roles and responsibilities of different sectors emitting different gases are similarly obscured by the common means of communicating emission reduction scenarios using CO(2)-equivalence. We argue for a shift in how we report agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and think about their mitigation to better reflect the distinct roles of different greenhouse gases. Policy-makers, stakeholders, and society at large should also be reminded that the role of agriculture in climate mitigation is a much broader topic than climate science alone can inform, including considerations of economic and technical feasibility, preferences for food supply and land-use, and notions of fairness and justice. A more nuanced perspective on the impacts of different emissions could aid these conversations. 2021-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7116829/ /pubmed/33644695 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.518039 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Article
Lynch, John
Cain, Michelle
Frame, David
Pierrehumbert, Raymond
Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title_full Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title_fullStr Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title_full_unstemmed Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title_short Agriculture’s Contribution to Climate Change and Role in Mitigation Is Distinct From Predominantly Fossil CO(2)-Emitting Sectors
title_sort agriculture’s contribution to climate change and role in mitigation is distinct from predominantly fossil co(2)-emitting sectors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116829/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33644695
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.518039
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