OK Leland Palmer, I told you on several occasions where you tried to steer threads towards Methane that you should wait until WUWT had a thread that was relevant – here you go, have at it. – Anthony
One of the indisputable facts in the field of global climate change is that the atmospheric build-up of methane (CH4) has been, over the past few decades, occurring much more slowly than all predictions as to its behavior (Figure 1). Since methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas (thought to have about 25 times the warming power of CO2), emissions scenarios which fail to track methane will struggle to well-replicate the total climate forcing, likely erring on the high side—and feeding too much forcing into climate models leads to too much global warming coming out of them.
Figure 1. Atmospheric methane concentrations, 1985-2008, with the IPCC methane projections overlaid (adapted from: Dlugokencky et al., 2009)
Figure 2 shows the year-over-year change in the methane concentration of the atmosphere, and indicates not only that the growth rate of methane has been declining, but also that on several occasions during the past decade or so, it has dropped to very near zero (or even below) indicating that no increase in the atmospheric methane concentration (or a even a slight decline) occurred from one year to the next.
Figure 2. Year-to-year change in atmospheric methane concentrations, 1985-2008, (source: Dlugokencky et al., 2009)
This behavior is quite perplexing. And while we are not sure what processes are behind it, we do know one thing for certain—the slow growth of methane concentrations is an extremely cold bucket of water dumped on the overheated claims that global warming is leading to a thawing of the Arctic permafrost and the release of untold mega-quantities of methane (which, of course, will lead to more warming, more thawing, more methane, etc., and, of course, to runaway catastrophe).
To some, the blip upwards in methane growth in 2007 (Figure 2) was a sure sign that the methane beast was awakening from its unexpected slumber. Climate disaster was just around the corner (just ask Joe Romm).
But alas, despite the hue and cry, in 2008 the increase in methane, instead of equaling or exceeding the 2007 rise, turned out to be only about half of the 2007 rise. And together with information on from where it seemed to emanate (the tropics rather than the Arctic), it cannot be taken as a sign that the slow methane growth rate during the past decade was coming to an end as a result of an Arctic meltdown.
Here is how NOAA methane-guru Ed Dlugokencky and colleagues put it in their publication last week describing recent methane behavior:
We emphasize that, although changing climate has the potential to dramatically increase CH4 emissions from huge stores of carbon in permafrost and from Arctic hydrates, our observations are not consistent with sustained changes there yet.
The factual portion of their conclusion remains the same, with or without the inclusion of the final word (but it sure was nice of them to throw it in there as a bone to climate catastrophists the world over).
Reference
Dlugokencky, E. J., et al., 2009. Observational constraints on recent increases in the atmospheric CH4 burden. Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L18803, doi:10.1029/2009GL039780.
Land Owner Preference tags for big game. It is based on your acres. The family property I manage gets 6 tags for a mix of big game.
Paul Penrose (18:03:57) :
Any relation to Roger Penrose?
Michael (11:26:54) :
~snip~
[Open Thread would be the appropriate place to post that. ~dbs, mod.]
Surveying the last 20 posts, I thought I was on the open thread. 🙂
I am Yaakoba, a 47 year old strawberry blonde female. I firmly believe that those who insult others to feel good about their selfs, must feel insulted about their selfs. To error is human.
I am a volunteer with the Denver Police Department and also a graduate of the Citizens Police Academy.
People lie all of the time.
Pamela Gray (10:11:26) :
On the other hand, NE Oregon families without heirs have sold high and dry tracks of land up South Fork to rich people from outside the area, who think living in a forested area that has a generation history of low snow impact is a good bet. Now their high forested and now snow buried log homes ain’t worth frozen spit.
Yep,I agree, the company I work for has a couple of those places listed.Sometimes it’scold enough for that spit to freeze before it hits the ground.Morgan lake area is also one for snow impact.”Gee it’s so close to LaGrande!” uh huh. Noticed also that the local warmists have gone strangely quiet now summer’s over.I think after this winter’s over there are going to be a lot of people looking for land in Arizona and
Florida….
“Curiousgeorge (17:09:26) :
About those cows. Part of the AGW mystic is the push for “Organic” farming. Which means no more industrial fertilizer (which is made primarily from that nasty old fossil fuel ). Which means that in order to properly fertilize the farm land to grow enough food to feed nearly 7 billion people, we would need an additional 4 billion cows crapping on it. Hmmm. How about that? Steak and eggs anyone? 🙂
”
You can bet the whack jobs believe in organic farming and in juicing fruits and veggies – that throw away all the pulp and fiber and wastes much of the fruit and veggies. Of course, most tend to be anti meat or at least anti beef and anti dairy. All those bovine methane emitters are pure evil. If you’ve noticed a slight disconnect there with the source of organic fertilizer and the supposed need to eliminate those useless methane emitters – congrats – it means you’re above the level of the mental retardation present in many of these people. It almost is enough to make one wonder if their diet is responsible. If these people weren’t so dangerous, they’d be rolling on the floor funny to watch.
On the whole, I would consider myself a climate sceptic, in the open sense rather than the negative sense. I do believe that the science is not yet closed, not because there is any doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but because CO2 is by no means the dominant greenhouse factor and because we do not as yet understand all of the complex nature of our climate. For the BBC to run a reasonably balanced article entitled, What Happened to Global Warming there must be clear and growing indications that the science is not yet finally settled.
My comment now is however more about the open nature, or lack of, climatology in particular and science in general. Here and on Climate audit, Anthony, Steve and others have been consistent in calling for more openess in the science with which I would heartily agree. Recent events have illustrated wonderfully how access to and analysis of the underlying data behind scientific propositions can transform the debate.
The peer review process and the way that science is conducted has developed over many years and has great merit. It was of course designed for scientists to check each others work for accuracy and merit. Over time, and inevitably, it has become somewhat of a club, where a certain group of people are in and others are out. This is not a critiscm – this system has developed for good reasons so that the effort used to run the system was appropriate to the benefits gained. As science got bigger in scope it also fragmented as more and more specialisations developed and it became impossible for any one individual to keep in touch with any more than a handful of them.
In parallel with the increase in scope of science we have also seen the values expressed in society change around us as well. In recent decades we have seen a greater and greater focus on individual and organisational success. This is most obvious in business where making large amounts of money is seen as a great success but this is not exclusively the case. In science too, there is a success attitude that while by no means dominant has become more and more influential with scientists wanting to succeed and publish the paper that makes a difference and gives them greater status. Where business has infiltrated science this becomes even more obvious with science used to support the financial aims of large corporations. The claims of some scientists to personal ownership of data even where it has been publically funded is perhap the tips of the (rapidly melting?) iceberg.
There are currently two, and almost certainly connected, big changes happening. The first is the beginnings of the emergence of a new set of values in the world, as clearly represented by Anthony and Steve et al, that the ownership of important scientific data and discoveries, and thus by implication ultimately science itself, should be by humanity for the good of all and not by individuals and corporations for the good of themselves.
The second change is technologial and it is the freedom of information exchange that the internet has brought. Previously, publishing information, scientific or otherwise, was expensive. Now it is in contrast, very cheap. The cost benefit balance of publication that helped to create the relatively closed peer review process has swung inexorably in the opposite direction. But, the organisations and values that built up around and to protect the old paradigm have not yet experienced sufficient dissonance for them to accept the coming of a new model of openness. But it is coming.
Many of the scientists out there have spent many years with the, now growing old, paradigms of ownership of data and the club nature of scientific progress. The new paradigm threatens their values and in some cases their personal esteem if things are seen to change, especially if any of their work is seen to have any kind of flaws in the public eye. What they have not yet seen, or been able to accept, is the massive benefits of an open review system, backed up, for the forseeable future at least, by formal systems, run through the internet.
For those scientists who do recognise the merits of the new system there will be great benefits as their work begins to be supported by the wider community on the internet instead of simply being questioned by it which leads to the inevitable conflict of interests. The benefits to humanity of more open systems will lead to a much accelerated scientific process for those willing to engage it.
However, I also want to express some concern about the nature of some of the comments here on WUWT and on Climate Audit that to me seem to polarise the debate into us and them positions. If the debate, in its entirety, especially the comments, were framed more positively then I think we would have more chance of engaging the scientific community. Individual scientists faced with peer pressure, loss of control, a fear of loss of esteem etc are far less likely to jump to a new paradigm when that paradigm does not seem too welcoming.
I believe that we are on the cusp of a big change in science, championed by this blog and others like it.
As an aside, I wonder if someone over at Google would be willing to look at a Scientific Data Project. Imagine a way for any scientist, or in fact anyone with an interest in scientific exploration, to be able to tag a folder on their web site as scientific information or documents and for Google to then automatically archive and version everything in there for global access and review. I wonder…
jon – http://righttobe.wordpress.com
Sow worry, reap grants. What this to-do is all about.
Back2Bat (14:19:14) :
CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2H2O
Has anyone considered that methane burns?
Yes indeeded. Many coal bed methane wells are being drilled in areas with coal. cal bed methane is being sold for heating. Of course many of these drillers are penny stock companies.
The major sources of methane in the atmosphere are supposed to be from “rotting” vegetation. That rotting can take place inside or outside an animal, and bacteria basically are responsible. The major actual sources are wetlands and quite specifically wet farmlands such as rice cultivated areas, and large forested areas. Thus the highest methane concentrations are found over SE Asia and over the boreal forests of East Siberia and to a lesser extent over Canada and over Amazonia. Emissions from bacteria in animals is a minor source. The reason it figures at all is that the only methane sources counted in Kyoto are animals despite the realities of the impact of those sources.
Terryskinner (16:11:42) – I believe you are onto something there. Methane emissions from dinosaurs… Must have been HUGE! They must have farted themselves to their own extinction!
Hey moderator – you’ve made a couple snips for off-topic. How about leaving a clue as to what the topic was, that others might learn the parameters for a particular thread ?
Specific concern is for the lightspeed/gravity posts.
dscott:
My, I have had my troubles with typos today. In my post of (09:28:50) this morning…
“…actual reaction is one of carbon reacting with oxygen”
should read
“…actual reaction is one of carbon reacting with steam…”
The reaction is called water-gas for this reason.
if you want a good idea of larger critters contributions, try termites. Really big critters like people and cows and dinos have far lower metobolic rates than do smaller ones like humming birds or insects. That means things like methane production per unit mass are much higher for the small ones than the large. Also, the total biomass of the smaller ones outweighs the mass of the larger ones substantially. Of course bacteria is the leading biomass, outweighing us big critters and insects alike.
While I’m in the neighborhood, I think we’re pretty safe from permafrost methane releases doing anything.
The last (Eemian) interglacial was several whole degrees warmer than present, and for a couple thousand years. It’s recorded in the Vostok Antarctic cores, so we can see that methane rose with the temperature to above today’s levels, but it also subsided with the temperature without causing any runaway climate catastrophe. Its decline matched the temp decline much more closely than did the CO2 decline.
Pamela Gray (11:49:44) : Your “made from plastic pop bottles” (sweater perhaps) and dangerous, because it is flammable, could have been replaced by a new, elegant, warmer, non flammable and peruvian made natural alpaca wool sweater. (which btw you can get it at US$10 here in Peru!!). So, by using garbage someone didn´t eat today.
Keeping our garbage piles manageable (cuts down on methane) is a worthwhile endeavor. I see nothing wrong with turning it into profits. In fact, I would say that making money out of garbage is the ultimate capitalistic endeavor.
@Pamela Gray: “In fact, I would say that making money out of garbage is the ultimate capitalistic endeavor”.
Yep, China is doing that in an unbelievably enormous way. They use packaging, though. Garbage has always been a money maker. You could ask the Mob.
Bill Illis (07:36:31) :
What do you make of the seasonality and the timing of the max/min at different locations? It seems Antarctica peaks in July (Southern winter), Alaska peaks in January (Northern winter). This doesn’t seem to fit with human activity or rotting vegetable matter.
My friends are going to protest Senator Lindsey Graham tomorrow. I gave them some tips for sinage.
Signs to use. (Argue the Science)
Solar Minimum = Global Cooling
It’s the Sun Stupid!
It’s the Sun’s Fault, Man’s Not to Blame.
Don’t Tax Me Bro, It’s the Sun’s Fault Not Mine.
Earth to Graham, The Sun has Been Asleep For Two Years.
Who Turned Down The Sun?
The Sun Got the Memo, The Planet’s Getting Colder
Adolfo Giurfa (10:34:58) :
Say what? My post was about sending biodegradables to the dump to avoid the methane, which is natural anyway. And the topic is “No methane increase like the IPCC predicted”. Wasting fossil fuels to send biodegradables to the dump, that are better used in your garden, to address a non-issue is a result of a failure to see the throughput.
Green HyperVentilating due to Methane hysteria.
How about CH4 + 2O3 -> CO2 + 2H2O +O2?
coaldust (07:16:55) :
Very interesting. A combustion engine with a ozone producing device (air passing through electrical shortcircuiting) to be injected in the carburator simultaneously with CH4.
rbateman (02:01:45) :
Adolfo Giurfa (10:34:58) :
Say what? My post was about sending biodegradables to the dump to avoid the methane, which is natural anyway
Biodegradability involves methane production. Wherever is that “Bio” there is carbon and hydrogen (stuff we all living things are made of), when decomposing produces ammonia NH3 and CH4 (methane). BTW flies smell NH3 (protein decomposition) and are attracted by garbage.
Anyway, my point is that one of the Green religion’ s dogmas, that of recycling, it is wrong. It decreases production and jobs. Also, recyling of cattle remains to feed cattle originated the “mad cows disease”.
” Adolfo Giurfa (08:48:29) : ”
It also tickles me when the greenies claim that recycling paper and using electronic means “saves trees”. It doesn’t. Old growth natural trees are not cut for paper, they are cut for lumber. Trees for paper are farmed and the paper companies are the single largest planter of trees on the planet. When you reduce the need for new pulp, you reduce the number of trees PLANTED by the paper companies. They are still going to cut the ones they have already planted but when that harvest is complete, they aren’t likely to replant if the demand isn’t there. The land then gets sold for other use.
Reducing your use of paper and recycling what you do use results in fewer trees growing, not more.