| Sumario: | Nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat, claims Ray Weiss and a team of researchers at the University of California–San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Weiss and his team expect nitrogen trifluoride to become a bigger problem soon because it is used in the manufacture of three highly popular goods: LCD televisions, computer circuits, and thin-film solar cells. Weiss's study discovered a nitrogen trifluoride concentration of 0.02 parts per trillion in the atmosphere in 1978 and 0.454 parts per trillion in 2008. Although it is currently responsible for just 0.04 percent of human-induced global warming compared with the 60 percent attributable to carbon dioxide emissions, its share could rise exponentially. The report notes that the gas's atmospheric presence is increasing by 11 percent a year. In 2008, the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change added nitrogen trifluoride to a list of gases that should be regulated by the Kyoto Protocol.
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