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01.15.2025

Gases from Asthma Inhalers Cause Negligible Warming

Frits Byron Soepyan

January 2025

Abstract:

Various educational and medical institutions, as well as policymakers, have expressed concerns regarding the use of metered-dose inhalers to prevent or treat shortness of breath associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as these inhalers use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are greenhouse gases, as propellants. In response, “environmentally friendly” alternatives to metered-dose inhalers have been proposed for patients with asthma. To determine if prescribing these alternatives is necessary, we used the concentration and radiative forcing of the HFCs that are used as propellants (HFC-134a and HFC-227ea) in current inhalers to predict the temperature rise caused by the continued emissions of these HFCs into the atmosphere. Based on our estimates, the continued emissions of these HFCs would cause a combined temperature increase of about 0.0132 °C in 50 years and of about 0.0264 °C in 100 years. Such a rise in temperature is negligible and cannot be measured or felt. Therefore, curbing the emissions of HFCs from inhalers is unnecessary and would have minimal effect on the climate. Given this conclusion, the selection of inhalers to prescribe to patients with asthma or COPD should be based on the health, safety and needs of the patients, rather than on a purported environmental benefit.

Read the entire publication here.

1.31.2025

Radiation Transport in Clouds

By W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer January 2, 2025 Abstract We briefly review the dominant role of clouds in Earth’s climate. The earliest observational studies of heat transfer through Earth’s atmosphere, for example, those of John Leslie around 1800, showed that clouds have a large effect on radiative heat transfer from Earth’s surface… Continue Reading
1.8.2025

Methane and Climate

The paper’s Abstract explains that while the “radiative forcing” of each methane molecule is indeed 30 times larger than that of a carbon dioxide molecule, the increase in global methane is 300 times less than that of carbon dioxide. As a result, methane is only one tenth (30/300) as powerful in forcing as carbon dioxide, which adds about a degree Celsius to global warming as it doubles in the atmosphere. A methane doubling would provide only a tiny fraction of total greenhouse forcing, the paper says. Continue Reading

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