highlights

from How to Avoid a Climate Disaster book

Methane warms 120 times more than CO2, but it doesn’t stay in the air as long. Everything is measured in CO2e. At the end of the day, what matters is temperature increase, and methane makes it rise very fast. Its effect is actually worse than what CO2e shows. Greenhouse gases absorb and trap heat.
why Carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gas while oxygen or nitrogen is fine?
- Because gases with single-atom or simple two-atom structures like oxygen (O₂) or nitrogen (N₂) let radiation pass through without absorbing it. But molecules like carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) have more complex structures — they can absorb parts of infrared radiation and trap heat.