UPDATE: Some readers took exception to my title, and I can see why now. I regret my choice of wording for the title. “Regulate its escape into the atmosphere” is where I was going. “Regulate” from my perspective in engineering things and making things work is different than what others might think. I wasn’t implying legislation. Recycling and recovery systems is what was in my mind. Gas regulator valves and all that. This passage from the story below was my focus: “Since we already know how to capture methane from animals, landfills, and sewage treatment plants at fairly low cost, targeting methane makes sense,”.
I’ve amended the title [in brackets] -Anthony
…
According to the 2007 IPCC AR4 Methane has a “global warming potential” of 25 times that of CO2 over 100 years. Here’s a CH4 budget pie chart. Note that there are several sources where we can manage methane without affecting energy creation. Starting on Methane, rather than CO2, is an idea that I could get behind because it can be recycled and used for many things.
A new paper from Drew Shindell from NASA JPL prompted Roger Pielke Jr. to write:
For years my father has been arguing that:
. . . attempts to “control” the climate system, and to prevent a “dangerous intervention” into the climate system by humans that focuses just on CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases will necessarily be significantly incomplete, unless all of the other first order climate forcings are considered.
His views are now being robustly vindicated as a quiet revolution is occurring in climate science. Here is how PhysOrg reports on a study out today in Science by NASA’s Drew Shindell and others:
According to Shindell, the new findings underscore the importance of devising multi-pronged strategies to address climate change rather than focusing exclusively on carbon dioxide. “Our calculations suggest that all the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases together have a net impact that rivals the warming caused by carbon dioxide.”
In particular, the study reinforces the idea that proposals to reduce methane may be an easier place for policy makers to start climate change agreements. “Since we already know how to capture methane from animals, landfills, and sewage treatment plants at fairly low cost, targeting methane makes sense,” said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C.
This research also provides regulators insight into how certain pollution mitigation strategies might simultaneously affect climate and air quality. Reductions of carbon monoxide, for example, would have positive effects for both climate and the public’s health, while reducing nitrogen oxide could have a positive impact on health but a negative impact on the climate.
“The bottom line is that the chemistry of the atmosphere can get hideously complicated,” said Schmidt. “Sorting out what affects climate and what affects air quality isn’t simple, but we’re making progress.”
Of note, Shindell et al. cautiously suggest that the entire framework of international climate policy may be based on an overly-simplistic view of the human effect on climate, by focusing on carbon dioxide equivalencies in radiative forcing (i.e.,g “global warming potential” or GWP), from their Science paper out today (emphasis added):
There are many limitations to the GWP concept (25). It includes only physical properties, and its definition is equivalent to an unrealistic economic scenario of no discounting through the selected time horizon followed by discounting to zero value thereafter. The 100-year time horizon conventionally chosen strongly reduces the influence of species that are short-lived relative to CO2. Additionally, GWPs assume that integrated global mean RF is a useful indicator of climate change. Although this is generally reasonable at the global scale, GWP does not take into account the rate of change, and it neglects that the surface temperature response to regionally distributed forcings depends on the location of the RF (26) and that precipitation and circulation responses may be even more sensitive to RF location (27). Along with their dependence on emission timing and location, this makes GWPs particularly ill-suited to very short-lived species such as NOx, SO2, or ammonia, although they are more reasonable for longer-lived CO. Inclusion of short-lived species in agreements alongside long-lived greenhouse gases is thus problematic (28, 29).
Read his complete commentary here
Here’s the press release from NASA/JPL with comments from Drew Shindel also.
This map shows the distribution of methane at the surface. New research shows that methane has an elevated warming effect due to its interactions with other substances in the atmosphere. For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances — notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles — that affect Earth’s climate. And they’ve been aided by ever more sophisticated computer models that make estimating the relative impact of each type of pollutant more reliable.
Yet the complexity of nature — and the models used to quantify it — continues to serve up surprises. The most recent? Certain gases that cause warming are so closely linked with the production of aerosols that the emissions of one type of pollutant can indirectly affect the quantity of the other. And for two key gases that cause warming, these so-called “gas-aerosol interactions” can amplify their impact.
“We’ve known for years that methane and carbon monoxide have a warming effect,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York and lead author of a study published this week in Science. “But our new findings suggest these gases have a significantly more powerful warming impact than previously thought.”
Mixing a Chemical Soup
When vehicles, factories, landfills, and livestock emit methane and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, they are doing more than just increasing their atmospheric concentrations. The release of these gases also have indirect effects on a variety of other atmospheric constituents, including reducing the production of particles called aerosols that can influence both the climate and the air quality. These two gases, as well as others, are part of a complicated cascade of chemical reactions that features competition with aerosols for highly reactive molecules that cleanse the air of pollutants.
“Emissions-based” estimates highlight the indirect effects that emissions of certain gases can have on the climate via aerosols, methane, ozone, and other substances in the atmosphere. Credit: NASA/GISS › Larger image
Aerosols can have either a warming or cooling effect, depending on their composition, but the two aerosol types that Shindell modeled — sulfates and nitrates — scatter incoming light and affect clouds in ways that cool Earth. They are also related to the formation of acid rain and can cause respiratory distress and other health problems for those who breathe them.
Human activity is a major source of sulfate aerosols, but smokestacks don’t emit sulfate particles directly. Rather, coal power production and other industrial processes release sulfur dioxide — the same gas that billows from volcanoes — that later reacts with atmospheric molecules called hydroxyl radicals to produce sulfates as a byproduct. Hydroxyl is so reactive scientists consider it an atmospheric “detergent” or “scrubber” because it cleanses the atmosphere of many types of pollution.
In the chemical soup of the lower atmosphere, however, sulfur dioxide isn’t the only substance interacting with hydroxyl. Similar reactions influence the creation of nitrate aerosols. And hydroxyls drive long chains of reactions involving other common gases, including ozone.
Methane and carbon monoxide use up hydroxyl that would otherwise produce sulfate, thereby reducing the concentration of sulfate aerosols. It’s a seemingly minor change, but it makes a difference to the climate. “More methane means less hydroxyl, less sulfate, and more warming,” Shindell explained.
Many atmospheric pollutants compete for access to hydroxyl radicals (OH), highly reactive molecules that “scrub” the atmosphere of pollutants. This diagram illustrates hydroxyl converting methane (CH4) into carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) into sulfate aerosols. Credit: NASA/GISS › Larger image
His team’s modeling experiment, one of the first to rigorously quantify the impact of gas-aerosol interactions on both climate and air quality, showed that increases in global methane emissions have caused a 26 percent decrease in hydroxyl and an 11 percent decrease in the number concentration of sulfate particles. Reducing sulfate unmasks methane’s warming by 20 to 40 percent over current estimates, but also helps reduce negative health effects from sulfate aerosols.
In comparison, the model calculated that global carbon monoxide emissions have caused a 13 percent reduction in hydroxyl and 9 percent reduction in sulfate aerosols.
Nitrogen oxides — pollutants produced largely by power plants, trucks, and cars — led to overall cooling when their effects on aerosol particles are included, said Nadine Unger, another coauthor on the paper and a climate scientist at GISS. That’s noteworthy because nitrogen oxides have primarily been associated with ozone formation and warming in the past.
A New Approach
To determine the climate impact of particular greenhouse gases, scientists have traditionally relied on surface stations and satellites to measure the concentration of each gas in the air. Then, they have extrapolated such measurements to arrive at a global estimate.
The drawback to that “abundance-based approach,” explained Gavin Schmidt, another GISS climate scientist and coauthor of the study, is that it doesn’t account for the constant interactions that occur between various atmospheric constituents. Nor is it easy to parse out whether pollutants have human or natural origins.
Natural sources of methane include wetlands, termites, decomposing organic materials in ocean and fresh water, and a type of ice called methane hydrate. Man-made methane sources include livestock, rice paddies, biomass burning, landfills, coal mining, and gas production. Credit: U.S Dept. of Energy Technology Laboratory
› Larger image “You get a much more accurate picture of how human emissions are impacting the climate — and how policy makers might effectively counteract climate change — if you look at what’s emitted at the surface rather than what ends up in the atmosphere,” said Shindell, who used this “emissions-based” approach as the groundwork for this modeling project.
However, the abundance-based approach serves as the foundation of key international climate treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol or the carbon dioxide cap-and-trade plans being discussed among policymakers. Such treaties underestimate the contributions of methane and carbon monoxide to global warming, Shindell said.
Unpacking the Implications
According to Shindell, the new findings underscore the importance of devising multi-pronged strategies to address climate change rather than focusing exclusively on carbon dioxide. “Our calculations suggest that all the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases together have a net impact that rivals the warming caused by carbon dioxide.”
In particular, the study reinforces the idea that proposals to reduce methane may be an easier place for policy makers to start climate change agreements. “Since we already know how to capture methane from animals, landfills, and sewage treatment plants at fairly low cost, targeting methane makes sense,” said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C.
This research also provides regulators insight into how certain pollution mitigation strategies might simultaneously affect climate and air quality. Reductions of carbon monoxide, for example, would have positive effects for both climate and the public’s health, while reducing nitrogen oxide could have a positive impact on health but a negative impact on the climate.
“The bottom line is that the chemistry of the atmosphere can get hideously complicated,” said Schmidt. “Sorting out what affects climate and what affects air quality isn’t simple, but we’re making progress.”
His team’s modeling experiment, one of the first to rigorously quantify the impact of gas-aerosol interactions on both climate and air quality
Oh really? This is just more of the same BS with the same agenda. If it’s financially viable to capature methane to use as a fuel then fine, people will do it. As for regulation, no way. This is the same bunch of people trying to find new ways to justify themselves, and control the rest of us.
Anthony,
The proponents of AGW, UN IPCC believe they have to regulate greenhouse gasses.
Their proof is based on bad climate models, spin and another hoax they call consensus. They have kidnapped the science and turned it into a political instrument which is going to cost us billions of dollars, our economy, our middle class and our freedom.
The skeptics think there is no evidence that greenhouse gases play any significant role influencing our climate. They debunked the IPCC statements and put the evidence at the table that entirely destroys the scientific arguments for any emission regulation.
We really don’t do our case any good if we create a rift in opinion which is absolutely the case if people from within the skeptic camp make a call for the regulation of greenhouse gases.
In my opinion this is a strategic blunder.
Besides that:
Methane recycling and generation is not new, in fact it’s what we call an “old cow”.
In Europe you can find many thousands of examples of energy generation (heating and electricity) where chicken, hog and cow shit is used in “methane breeders” which power a generator. It’s cheap energy and therefore it’s an economical application.
I really hope you see the point I am trying to make.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist posting this…..
Regardless whether the methane model is correct or not, the important point here is that this peer-reviewed asserts that the other greenhouse gases are on par with CO2. Rather than reducing the presumed risk associated with CO2, it increases the overall risk by all GHGs. Thus there are more ways to control the lives of everyone on earth… just tie something to global warming and you have the mechanism to restrict, manage, allocate, whatever, virtually anything.
When I started looking at the issue of AGW I used to laugh at the silly notions of a left-wing conspiracy to control the masses. I am still not convinced as to intent, but I am firmly convinced that the practical outcome of this movement will be the same. Control of life by governments at a level not seen since the fall of the iron curtain.
It seems to me that scientists who have backed the IPPC line so far are finding their CO2 dogmatism increasingly untenable, and will quite likely “discoveHr” something new that gives them a lifeboat to escape from the sinking AGW vessel.
After all, Copenhagen looks more and more like a dead duck, and if so than all the hysterical calls from Gore, Hansen, Prince Charles et al will be seen for the bogus scaremongering they are.
Methane capture (or any other action) as a method to prevent “global warming” makes no sense. It may make sense economically though as a way to get off foreign oil dependencies and to lower the cost of production for certain fertilizers. Of course, that would feed more sheeple, which would produce more methane… Never mind 🙂
Les Johnson (13:57:53) “capturing methane from the resulting pile of [politicians verbiage] does make sense”
Interesting ideas Les.
This appears to be a movement toward saving face for the GISS/Gavin assembly. By deflecting climate fears to methane they think the political agenda of climate change can be salvaged.
In reality the two items are separate. The science from the politics. Lord Monckton did a fine job of that last night. It would be best for the alarmists to accept the defeat of any political agenda disguised as science.
Of course, a health campaign to mitigate consumption of Whoppers would not be bad.
As with CO2, CH4 has very little effect on global temperature and H20 vapour is by far the most important GHG.
However, as we are heading (at speed) into a cold century, we will be needing commercially viable methane capture to help keep us all warm.
With small government subsidies CH4 can become a worthwhile energy source.
Les Johnson – consistency of whether or not methane is a problem – someone needs to explain 10 years of atmospheric methane stability with a couple of upward blips in 2007 and 2008 attributed to natural causes:
Rigby, M., R. Prinn, P. Fraser, P. Simmonds, R. Langenfelds, J. Huang, D. Cunnold, P. Steele, P. Krummel, R. Weiss, S. O’Doherty, P. Salameh, H. Wang, C. Harth, J. Mühle, and L. Porter (2008), Renewed growth of atmospheric methane, Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2008GL036037: since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature – and not the direct result of man’s contributions.
Dlugokencky, E. J., et al. (2009), Observational constraints on recent increases in the atmospheric CH4 burden, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L18803, doi:10.1029/2009GL039780: In 2007 the extra methane emissions came from northern wetlands, and in 2008 they came from tropical wetlands.
It sounds like we get 25 times more bang for the buck (sequestering methane) and a potential new energy source at the same time.
This is the low hanging fruit (cherry picking) that we should go after first.
After we have demonstrated that sequestering Methane works and the climate warming decreases in response, then we can work on the harder stuff : )
I was reading that a large amount of methane is burned-off in lightning strikes.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40101
bucko36 (13:47:25) :
“Jerker Andersson (12:25:51) :
Where are the cow farts?”
Somewhere back in my memory, I remember hearing that the “termites” of the world were the largest contributors of “Earth’s” Methane.
I thought it was “Termite burps”
My climate record seems to be skipping.
Can someone give it a good whack!
I’m going out for a burger, before someone tells me
cow farts are killing Polar Bears.
paul: Nope. The article you referenced from a previous WUWT posting, had a main theme was that global CH4 was not increasing due to release from the permafrost.
This article’s thrust is that methane can be used for something else.
There is no inconsistency.
A few points from a non-scientist:
1. World climate changes from warmer to cooler without any intervention by humans and it always has.
2. In the past million years or so there have been a number of ice-ages and quite likely at some time in the future there will be others.
3. In the historical record we have clear evidence of centuries that were significantly warmer that we are now.
4. On all occasions of such warming life was easier for humans. On all occasions when it was significantly colder than now life was harder for humans.
5. Rising sea-levels were not in evidence during times of historical warming when it was warmer than now so we can safely say it can get a good deal warmer than it is now before we have any significant risk of sea-level rise.
6. We don’t know if the next natural cycle will be warming or cooling.
So my question is: Why, Why, Why should we do anything at all to cause cooling of any sort whatever, even an insignificant cooling? In the next few decades we might (and we might not) be glad of every last degree the temperature goes or stays up. Let us first ask the scientists to put their house in order about what is going to happen next BEFORE we do anything to cool the planet whether relating to CO2, methane or anything else.
Wow! Some of you scientist types are cowed by a peer reviewed document saying CH4 is a problem. You do not learn do you?
Here is some simple logic:
If there is no God we are doomed anyway by all sorts of earthly and space threats.
If there is a God then it is extremely unlikely that He cares how we handle cow farts. I would reckon He is more concerned about moral issues than logistical ones.
The general public is more sensible than some on this blog; after the CO2 scare is discredited they will not be fooled anytime soon thereafter. Some will think that is illogical but that is only because their premises are wrong not the general public’s. You will spend years discrediting the CH4 scare only to learn what the general public will already know; it is bogus.
Meanwhile, some will be hacking at the roots of the general cultural insanity. To each his own, I guess.
But hey, methane is a nice energy source. If it makes economic sense to collect and burn it, then go for it. Otherwise chill, is my advice.
At some time in the future, Methane will be the energy source we use the most.
We might as well start building up better infrastructure now to re-capture it from natural and other sources. Natural gas is 98% Methane so a lot of that is already in place but when the oil and natural gas starts to run out, re-captured and manufactured Methane will be the energy source.
Giving up eating meat to save the planet is the daftest idea I’ve ever heard.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1223671/Giving-meat-save-planet-daftest-idea-Ive-heard.html
World may go bankrupt by fighting Global Warming!
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/columnists/Bernard-Ingham-The-world-may.5771391.jp
Terryskinner (16:23:57) :
“So my question is: Why, Why, Why should we do anything at all to cause cooling of any sort whatever, even an insignificant cooling?” Terry Skinner
Excellent point. When in all human history has heat been a problem?
Stephen Wilde (12:28:17) :
All of this complex discussion relies on the assumption that the composition of the air can affect global equilibrium temperature.
Your analysis is faulty on a number of points.
The Earth’s climate system gains heat through sunlight (solar insolation) entering the oceans and loses heat through radiation from the atmosphere out to space.
All other effects on the Earth’s climate’s heat balance are minor.
Therefore, climate change occurs either because more/less solar radiation enters the oceans or more/less radiation is lost to space from the atmosphere.
Which means the theory behind GHG warming is sound, because increased GHG concentrations should, all else being equal, decrease the amount of radiation lost to space.
Unfortunately, ‘all else’ is never equal when it comes to the Earth’s climate and its many complex feedbacks.
Therefore we have to rely on empirical measurements to determine what is actually happening in the Earth’s climate.
Empirical measurements show methane and water vapour contribute more warming than CO2, and Ocean Heat Content (which is where heat accumulation will occur) doesn’t show much if any heat gain (Argo data).
Frankly, to argue that GHGs can’t warm the Earth’s climate is silly. They clearly can, although with large feedbacks. The issue is where is the evidence that they are? And which GHGs are causing the most measurable warming? (Answer = not CO2)
The article above is correct on all points.
Fred H. Hayne:
The idea of using easily-captured methane for fuel instead of letting it go to waste is a good one.
(OT) I read your climate analysis the other day. It makes sense to me as far as my knowledge of physics goes (lower division college level). The variations in atmospheric water vapor could easily compensate for tiny additions of CO2 to the atmosphere since there’s not much there anyway. It’s hard to imagine such small amounts having enough kinetic energy to impart to other molecules to have a measureable effect on atmospheric temperature.
Any luck getting someone(s) to review your paper yet?
“Our calculations suggest that all the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases together have a net impact that rivals the warming caused by carbon dioxide.”
Looks like the CO2-forcers are “perforce” going to have to cut their doubling figure in half, right? After all, The Model hath spoken.
Smokey:
The methane map in this article shows clearly that most of the methane emissions come from China, Russia, India and Brazil [the BRIC countries].
And it sounds like the BRICs owe us a lot of money, perhaps even enough to buy our way out of the CO2 guilt debt! I feel better already.