Researchers Discover the Most Potent Greenhouse Gas Yet

A greenhouse gas recently uncovered by University of Toronto researchers is the most potent greenhouse gas ever discovered.

Known as perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), the gas is more than 7,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth's atmosphere over a 100 year period, measurements show.

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, does not mark the discovery of PFTBA, which the electrical industry has used since the mid-20th century, but the realization of its role as a long-lived greenhouse gas. And with no known process to destroy or remove the pesky chemical from the lower atmosphere, the researchers say it likely remains there for hundreds of years.

Fortunately, PFTBA levels appear to be quite low. Measurements of the chemical made in Toronto revealed a mixing ratio of 0.18 parts per trillion - significantly lower than CO2's 400 parts per million.

Despite these new discoveries, there is much that remains a mystery about the chemical that makes it difficult for scientists to predict what PFTBA levels may down the road.

"We don't know what it's production rates are or what the use practices are like down stream, and so we can't actually say anything thing about how much is or was emitted," co-author Angela Hong told Nature World News in an email.

According to Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, while the gas may not pose an imminent threat, caution is needed in order to keep it that way.

"Since there is not a lot of it now, we don't have to worry about it at present," he told The Guardian. "but we have to make sure it doesn't grow and become a very large contributor to global warming."

Keeping levels down could very well mean some tradeoffs, Hong said. "So maybe we need to think about this as a society.

"There might be uses that really do require PFTBA for its stability, etc. and we need to restrict its applications to those uses in order to minimize inadvertent release," she said, adding there may also need to be "some ownership or responsibility from the manufacturer to collect the liquid and the end of its use."

Regardless, Hong said regulatory and monitoring systems need to be implemented in order to keep tabs on PFTBA levels.

When it comes to those questions that remain regarding the chemical she said: "Again, this might be the manufacturer's responsibility and policies need to be in place to ensure responsible or ethical chemical manufacturing."