Never mind that in 2006 it was reported that levels of the second most important greenhouse gas, methane, have stabilized.
Scientists are now working to create a new “tootless” grass for bovine enjoyment which will help cut methane emissions from the bovine tailpipes. What next? A moratorium on baked beans at BBQs? Editing out that scene from Blazing Saddles so that school kids don’t get bad ideas that might harm the earth?
According to the Scientific American article: “During the two decades of measurements, methane underwent double-digit growth as a constituent of our atmosphere, rising from 1,520 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in 1978 to 1,767 ppbv in 1998. But the most recent measurements have revealed that methane levels are barely rising anymore — and it is unclear why.”
From NewScientist: “Although this is good news, it does not mean that methane levels will not rise again, and that carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.”
Indeed, methane has made a small uptick in the last year.
Actually, NewScientist is wrong. CO2 is not the biggest “gorilla” of greenhouse gas on planet earth. It’s water vapor. Our earth would be much colder without water vapor in the atmosphere…it would be much like Mars. I seem to recall seeing a figure for average global temperature of about -14°F with water vapor absent.
So many of the climate models focus solely on CO2, but they leave out water vapor as clouds in the equations, or assume water vapor is static.
CO2 is far from being the most potent greenhouse gas. Chloroflourocarbons (CFC’s) commonly used as refrigerants as far worse at trapping infra-red in our
atmosphere.
Of naturally created GHG’s, Methane is 23 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Nitrous Oxide is even worse at 296. So far no emergency legislation has been authored to eliminate the effect of cows or dental surgeons. The Kyoto treaty does not address these other gases either.
Here is a gauge of various gases and their “GWP”:
Global Warming Potentials Of Gases
(100 Year Time Horizon)
GAS GWP
========================
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 1
Methane (CH4) 23
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 296
Hydrofluorocarbons
HFC-23 12,000
HFC-125 3,400
HFC-134a 1,300
HFC-143a 4,300
HFC-152a 120
HFC-227ea 3,500
HFC-43-10mee 1,500
Fully Fluorinated Gases
SF6 22,200
CF4 5,700
C2F6 11,900
C4F10 8,600
C6F14 9,000
The concept of the global warming potential (GWP) was developed to compare the ability of each greenhouse gas to trap heat in the atmosphere relative to another gas. In this case, CO2 is the reference gas. Methane, for example, has a GWP of 23 over a 100-year period. This means that on a kilogram for kilogram basis, methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period.
The interesting thing here is that this stabilization of methane levels in our atmosphere happened all by itself, and the scientists are clearly baffled as to an explanation. But that doesn’t seem to phase anyone promoting research to prevent cow tooting.
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There’s nothing in the USHCN specs about siting a station near the cow pasture. Do we have a lurking warm-bias in the rural stations now? 😉 On the other hand, that cow can hardly be a lights=0 situation.
REPLY: There’s nothing in the CRN specs either, but that’s another post.
OK, wheres the obnoxious Evil Carbon to put a Gore face on your pastoral portrait?
======================================
REPLY: Comments from Evil Carbon automatically go into the SPAM filter now, since he’s just pushing t-shirts and has nothing to contribute.
The surface concentration of CO2 on Mars is about 15x that of the surface concentration of CO2 on Earth.
You have read that Estonia has imposed a tax on cow flatulence, huh?
Governments all over the world are salivating at the revenue prospect of this newfound “Greenhouse Gas Hook”.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080508/106906451.html
That picture gets 10/10!
It really adresses a seriouis issue, are those rural stations really that rural? Maybe they should be renamed rearal. 🙂
Ok, lets try to get serious again.
That list with differents gases GWP is a bit misleading imo. While it may be accurate on how strong different greenhouse potential different gases have it does not reflect the reality.
It would make more sense to set up a list that shows GWP with the concentrations that currently are present in our atmosphere, including water vapor.
What a great photo. I remember one evening, about 1988 standing on my front patio with my 12 year-old daughter, with the mooing of the cattle in the dark fields below us. I made a joke, referencing bovine GHG emmissions, and suggested they should be equiped with pilot lights, providing an amusing contemplation of jets of flame in the dark.
Terrence and Phillip: Part of the Problem.
You need to multiply the GWPs by the current concentration to get actual contribution to ‘GW’
– also for Water Vapour…
– I read somewhere is works out at about 90-95% water vapour, 5-10% CO2
– and not very much for the others…
Yer ‘orrible!
Sorry, that was the latent Kiwi in me coming out.
Anyway, I’m guessing that things like rotting vegatation/sea life/other natural processes/garbage/etc probably puts a whole lot more methane into the air than cow toots. I seem to recall that there was even enough methane stored in the ice in parts of the Arctic that you could actually set a chunk of ice on fire. Maybe the levelling off of the methane concentrations is related to the ice now trapping more than it has been releasing lately?
From the article: Cows’ production of methane is down to the microflora in their gut that helps them to digest their food. As these microbes break down the grass’ cellulose, methane is produced as a by-product, the majority of which is burped up.
So, to be correct, although perhaps not as humorous, there should be flames coming out of the cow’s mouth, not back end.
From NewScientist: “Although this is good news, it does not mean that methane levels will not rise again, and that carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.”
Since this statement says “it does not mean”, and includes “that C02 remains the 800-pound gorrilla…” in the same sentence, then I agree that the fact methane levels aren’t rising does not mean that C02 remains the 800 pound gorilla. Never was, of course. More like a 2-oz. (just a guess) baby bird.
Actually, although water vapor does contribute the most of any single GHG to our current climate, it is not considered to be a radiative forcing factor at this time because it is not changing the climate. It is considered to be a feedback factor though because water vapor is largely dependent upon air temp.
“…Radiative forcing is a measure of how the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system is influenced when factors that affect climate are altered…” AR4 FAQ 2.1
Radiative forcing is a function of both the warming tendency of the gas and it’s concentration. For this reason, at this time CO2 is considered to be about 3 times stronger (has 3 times the global warming potential) as far as radiative forcing goes than methane (because methane is much less common in the atmosphere). CO2 is considered to be about 10 times as strong as N2O when it comes to radiative forcing.
Therefore the statement “carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.” is technically correct, even though CO2 does not currently contribute as much to our planet’s current climate as water vapor does.
Those interested in more information about this and how these values were derived and their use should check out the AR4 Chapter 2.
Arch
(OK… the gorilla statement is figuratively correct if not technically correct.) 😉
Arch
New Scientist: “Although the World has not ended, that doesn’t mean that the World will not be end”
Has anyone else noticed how the media refers to CO2 emissions as “carbon emissions”? If it were carbon we were emitting it would cause cooling.
I put the AR4 in the fiction section. Clearly C02 is not important or else it would not be cooling now or would not have cooled in the 1970s.
Other factors are more important.
Just because the IPCC fabricated an idea about Co2 being the most potent GHG does not make it so.
This “stabilisation” of atmospheric methane was also noted in the following paper from NOAA back in 2003.
‘Atmospheric methane levels off: Temporary pause or a new steadystate?’
E. J. Dlugokencky
NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA
S. Houweling
National Institute for Space Research (SRON), Utrecht, The Netherlands
L. Bruhwiler, K. A. Masarie, P. M. Lang, J. B. Miller,1 and P. P. Tans
NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Received 8 July 2003; revised 8 July 2003; accepted 2 September 2003; published 8 October 2003.
”
[1] The globally-averaged atmospheric methane abundance
determined from an extensive network of surface air
sampling sites was constant at 1751 ppb from 1999
through 2002. Assuming that the methane lifetime has been
constant, this implies that during this 4-year period the global
methane budget has been at steady state. We also observed a
significant decrease in the difference between northern and
southern polar zonal annual averages of CH4 from 1991 to
1992. Using a 3-D transport model, we show that this change
is consistent with a decrease in CH4 emissions of 10 Tg
CH4 from north of 50N in the early-1990s. This decrease in
emissions may have accelerated the global methane budget
towards steady state. Based on current knowledge of the
global methane budget and how it has changed with time, it is
not possible to tell if the atmospheric methane burden has
peaked, or if we are only observing a persistent, but
temporary pause in its increase. INDEX TERMS: 0330
Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Geochemical cycles;
0365 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Troposphere—
composition and chemistry; 1610 Global Change: Atmosphere
(0315, 0325). Citation: Dlugokencky, E. J., S. Houweling,
L. Bruhwiler, K. A. Masarie, P. M. Lang, J. B. Miller, and P. P.
Tans, Atmospheric methane levels off: Temporary pause or a new
steady-state?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(19), 1992, doi:10.1029/
2003GL018126, 2003″
I note that Ed Dlugokencky is quoted in the Scientific American report but doesn’t say anything like “yes, we noticed this 5 years back and I can’t understand why there have been all these scare stories in the media about methane.”
I originally thought that you meant “faze” instead of “phase” in the last sentence, but with the “phase shifting” the AGW crowd will soon be going through, I decided you were making a very clever joke.
As always BBQ is the answer.
Whether or not H2O is regarded as a green house gas, one surely has to take into account the current concentrations of H2O (and other gases) when ranking the real GWP of an increment in any other gas. If so, one would note that the absorption spectra of methane and water have such considerable overlap that added methane has a very low GWP.
[…] UPDATE 5/10/08: Interesting discussion of methane (cow farts in particular) and other greenhouse gases at Saving Gaia With Bovine Tailpipe intervention. […]
You NEVER hear the global warmers talk about Methane’s stabilization but some of the newest Methane numbers show an increase again.
Here’s Mauna Loa’s numbers up to March 2008.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/iadv/graph/mlo/mlo_ch4_ts_obs_03397.png
Here’s the global averages for the four main GHGs.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi_2008.fig2.png
So what they’re saying is that:
Water vapour = more warming = more water vapour = more warming …
is not true.
But:
CO2 = more warming = more water vapour = more warming …
is true?
As for taxing flatulent cows, the Estonian government will be really surprised when the farmers turn to producing subsidised biofuels or building golf courses on their land, thus bringing about food shortages.
I am with Jerker and Phil in wanting to see an expanded data table.
You might even do water vapor at zero and 35 degrees C.
“So many of the climate models focus solely on CO2, but they leave out water vapor”
Ocean currents, Solar Wind (sunspots), and who knows what else.
—–
—–
That GHG potential is very useful!
What Phil said earlier, except I have heard the CO2 figure as high as 30% (I don’t believe that, though).
If it is 5% of GH effect, the rating of water vapor would be somewhere between 1/25 and 1/150 (half that for 10%). Does anyone have a more precise figure?