Radical green and government agitators slam methane in latest bid to terminate fossil fuel use
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
Quick: What is 17 cents out of $100,000? If you said 0.00017 percent, you win the jackpot.
That number, by sheer coincidence, is also the percentage of methane in Earth’s atmosphere. That’s a trivial amount, you say: 1.7 parts per million. There’s three times more helium and 230 times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You’re absolutely right, again.
Equally relevant, only 19% of that global methane comes from oil, natural gas and coal production and use. Fully 33% comes from agriculture: 12% from rice growing and 21% from meat production. Still more comes from landfills and sewage treatment (11%) and burning wood and animal dung (8%). The remaining 29% comes from natural sources: oceans, wetlands, termites, forest fires and volcanoes.
The manmade portions are different for the USA: 39% energy use, 36% livestock, 18% landfills, and 8% sewage treatment and other sources. But it’s still a piddling contribution to a trivial amount in the air.
Of course, the Obama EPA and Climate Cataclysm Industry ignore these inconvenient facts. They insist that methane is “a far more potent greenhouse gas” than carbon dioxide, and that its emissions must be drastically reduced if we are to avoid “runaway global warming.” So EPA and other federal agencies are preparing to unleash a tsunami of new regulations to block natural gas drilling, fracking, flaring and production, while radical environmentalists orchestrate new assaults on petrochemical plants that create plastics, paints, fabrics, computer and vehicle components and countless other products for modern life.
They want us to believe that government regulators can decree Earth’s climate simply by controlling methane and carbon dioxide – regardless of what the sun, ocean circulation, recurrent planetary temperature cycles and other powerful natural forces might do. They say it’s pure coincidence that these two trace gases (CH4 and CO2) are the only climate-affecting mechanisms that are associated with the fossil fuels and industrialized economies they despise.
They also want us to believe reducing United States methane emissions will make a huge difference. But even if US manmade methane emissions are 20% of the worldwide total, the 39% US fossil fuel portion of that US portion means even totally eliminating US methane emissions would reduce global manmade methane output by a minuscule 7.8 percent. Under a best-case scenario, that might keep atmospheric methane below a still irrelevant 0.00020% (2.0 ppm; 20 cents out of $100,000) for a few more years.
This smells like fraud. And as New York AG Eric Schneiderman so kindly reminded the climate skeptics he’s threatening with RICO, “The First Amendment does not give anyone the right to commit fraud.”
Perhaps EPA plans to go after America’s agricultural sector next. After all, as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan intoned last year, red meat is bad for us (cancer) and for the climate (animal flatulence and manure). Moreover, “insects have a very good conversion rate from feed to meat,” there are 1,900 species of edible insects on Planet Earth, and more than a billion people already make bugs part of their diet. Perhaps the IPCC and White House will serve roasted roaches at their next state dinners?
That would reduce US methane emissions a bit more. But it gets even more deceitful, more barking mad.
The un-ratified 2015 Paris climate treaty obligates the United States, Australia, Canada and Europe to continue reducing their fossil fuel use and emissions – even though they can hardly afford to kill more millions of jobs and further roll back living standards for all but their ruling elites.
Meanwhile, developing countries will not and cannot afford to lock up their fossil fuels, shut down their economic growth, and leave billions of people mired in poverty, malnutrition and disease. Indeed, under the Paris treaty, they are not required to reduce their fossil fuel use or “greenhouse gas” emissions; they need only take voluntary steps to reduce them, when it is convenient for them to do so.
That means slashing US methane (and carbon dioxide) emissions – and the jobs, living standards, health and welfare that fossil fuels bring – will have no effect whatsoever on atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
But that is irrelevant to Mr. Obama and his EPA. The fact is, this methane mendacity and madness has nothing to do with stabilizing Earth’s climate. It has everything to do with hogtying and bankrupting US fossil fuel companies, controlling industrial activities and people’s living standards – and mandating a costly transition to renewable energy, while rewarding the hordes of scientists, activists and industrialists who benefit from the $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Crisis, Inc. money train.
That raises a critical question: Just where and how will we produce those “eco-friendly” biofuels?
US ethanol production alone requires all the corn grown on an area the size of Iowa (36 million acres), and it makes up only 10% of the country’s E10 gasoline blends. Replacing all gasoline with ethanol from corn, sorghum or still-illusory switchgrass would therefore require ten Iowas: 360 million acres. But there is one other critical factor: ethanol has one-third less energy per gallon than pure gasoline.
That means we would need to plant an additional 120 million acres, 480 million acres in all, just to replace gasoline. That’s equal to Alaska, California and West Virginia combined!
Replacing all the liquid petroleum we use annually (291 billion gallons) would require twice as much land – some 45% of all the land in the United States: six times more land than we currently have under cultivation for all cereal crops – plowing even marginal croplands, deserts, forests and grasslands.
We’d also need far more fuel to grow, harvest and convert those crops into “eco-friendly” fuel. That would likely mean turning southern Canada into a vast biofuel plantation – unless, of course, the ruling classes simply impose lower living standards and vehicle ownership restrictions on us commoners.
Growing biofuel crops also requires hundreds of times more water than is needed to conduct hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations to produce the same amount of energy from oil and gas, on a tiny fraction of the acreage. Where on this water-starved planet will that precious liquid come from?
Biofuel crops also require prodigious amounts of fertilizer and pesticides. And if organic and anti-GMO factions have their way, far more land would be needed, pest control would be minimal or done by hand, and fertilizer would come from human wastes and animal manure – raising even more complex issues.
To put it bluntly, a biofuel future would be totally and disastrously unsustainable.
There’s another deep, dark secret about biofuels. Somebody needs to tell Obama, McCarthy, Clinton, Sanders and their army of “green” supporters that biofuels are hydrocarbons! They are composed of carbon and hydrogen, though in less complex molecular structures than what we pull out of the ground – which means we get less energy per gallon. And when we burn them, they release carbon dioxide!
We have at least a century of untapped oil and natural gas (and of coal) right under our feet. To lock that up, based on unproven, illusory, fabricated, fraudulent climate chaos claims, is utter insanity.
Even crazier, most anti-fossil-fuel zealots also oppose nuclear and hydroelectric power – and want future electricity generated primarily or solely with wind turbines and solar panels. To blanket our scenic, crop and wildlife lands with wind farms, solar installations and biofuel plantations – and destroy economies, jobs, living standards, health and welfare in the process – is nothing short of criminal.
President Obama and presidential candidates Clinton and Sanders assure us we can have 30% renewables by 2030, 50% by 2050, 100% by 2100 – or some similar magic, catchy, sound bite concoction.
Voters should demand to know exactly how they will make this happen. If they cannot or will not answer satisfactorily, a strong case can be made for the proposition that they are too ignorant and dishonest to hold office – and that their supporters are too stupid and anti-environment to vote. J
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Name and shame these fools in letters ‘writ HUGE’
CH4 levels on the graph from article were faked,
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/
as of 2015 the level was 1840 ppb
When are we going to make a stand against these idiots? Something drastic needs to be done. If AGW-supporting organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth can get the ear of those in power and sway public support with all their alarmist lies, why can’t we do something similar for our own, righteous, cause?
I’m fascinated, nay riveted with anticipation to see whether the terabytes of data courtesy of Mossack Fonseca peel back the banana skin on the Greenista, and equally, whether the Fourth Estate really have the nerve.
Because the solution to their “alarmist lies” results in less freedom and more state intervention, giving the state more control, something most leaders in both parties want. Out “righteous cause” yields more freedom and less state intervention, something most leaders in neither party want. That’s why this has become more a political battle than a scientific one and why, at this point, I don’t believe the science will ever influence the politics.
I don’t think we will gain the political upper hand until one of two things happen. Either some point in the future, after the climate fails to cooperate with the alarmists, and it becomes laughable to still hold alarmist views or the issue becomes more prominent and our elected officials learn that that being alarmist hurts more than helps their election efforts, assuming that the public hasn’t been swayed by the constant one-sided reporting…
The warming effect of anthropogenic methane is slight. A “big” increase in methane levels might be on the order of +0.1 or +0.2 ppmv (i.e, from 1.8 to 1.9 or 2.0 ppmv). The warming potential of methane is estimated to be 30-35 times that of CO2, so increasing CH4 by 0.1 ppmv would warm the planet about as much as a 3 to 3.5 ppmv (= ~1%) increase in CO2 — i.e., negligible.
What’s more, the effect of a spike in methane levels would be very transient, because even if you don’t burn it, methane in the atmosphere oxidizes with a half-life of only about 6 to 8 years, into minute amounts of CO2 and water: CH4 + 2·O2 → CO2 + 2·H2O.
A “big” increase in methane levels might be on the order of +0.1 or +0.2 ppmv
No. According to your plot we had an increase of about 0.15 ppmv just between 1980 and 1990. Using your factor, that is equivalent to about 5 ppmv of CO2. In fact, CO2 increased from 338 to 354 ppm, ie by 16 ppm. So the methane effect (increase) is about 30% of CO2. Smaller, but not nothing.
As to transience, past emissions were transient too, but methane has continued to increase.
None of what you have written here are verifiable facts except in the crimate community. and you know it.
Methane is measured in Parts per Billion. 0.00017%.0.0000017 parts. 17 * 10^7
And since the warming potential of CO2 is also estimated, it makes the warming potential of methane to be estimated “squared”.
If you look at the graph in the main article, you will find that model overestimate methane levels increase. Same goes here, Let’s use less estimated values and more actual measurements, and maybe this way we may find a model that works.
And that 30 times CO2 warming potential is calculated by weight. It is 7 times by volume (ppm).
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/much-ado-about-methane/
Regarding the comment by Ron Clutz about weight vs. volume of methane in the atmosphere: The Wikipedia article on atmospheric methane shows the current concentration in the 1800s being parts per billion by volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases says:
The 2005 level of methane at 1774 nmol/mol (ppb by volume), increase of 1074 ppb by volume since 1750, is calculated to have a forcing of .48 W/m^2, about 30% of the 1.66 W/m^2 from CO2’s increase over 1750 level by 100 ppm by volume. This makes methane 27 times as potent as CO2 by the units of atmospheric concentration that are normally used.
urederra
April 14, 2016 at 3:25 am wrote:
“And since the warming potential of CO2 is also estimated, it makes the warming potential of methane to be estimated “squared”. ”
Very good point!
Daveburton
Trees produce about 4% methane when absorbing CO2, i.e. they are not 100% efficient converting it to biomass. Thus for each 25 molecules of CO2 they convert one to CH4. On a 10 year basis, growing trees has a net warming effect, according to the IPCC list of forcings. We could reduce this wanton production of methane by leveling all the forests, maybe paving them. The problem that would create a huge amount of wood that would be burned to CO2 or rot to methane. There is just no way to save the planet from these evil gases.
If all else failed we could adapt, I suppose.
If we get switchgrass ethanol going strong, then biofuel alcohol will be viable. Corn alcohol takes a lot more resources than switchgrass ethanol. And switchgrass can be grown where food crops can’t be grown, or can’t be grown without irrigation. But the corn lobby is strong.
One thing about ethanol: It has a high octane rating, so car engines can have a higher compression ratio and deliver a higher percentage of the fuel’s energy.
Note that ethanol and most biodiesels are not hydrocarbons – hydrocarbons are compounds of only carbon and hydrogen. And non-hydrocarbon biofuels don’t have lower energy content due to simpler molecules, but because they have oxygen atoms in a useless state – almost like compounding hydrocarbons with water and that dilutes them. Note the energy per gram of methane which is a hydrocarbon and the main component of natural gas – highest of any common or semi-common fuel except hydrogen, and it has a simple molecule.
” Note the energy per gram of methane which is a hydrocarbon and the main component of natural gas – highest of any common or semi-common fuel except hydrogen” Hydrogen has a high energy density per gram, the problem with hydrogen, particularly for transport fuel, is the density. Even if we cool and liquify it, it has a density of only 70 kg/m3 (compared to about 800 kg/m3 gasoline).
And do we really want to rely on a cryogenic fuel for transportation?
Paul,
They once tested a storage tank for liquid hydrogen where I worked in a former (pre-retirement) life as reserve supply if the hydrogen supply to other factories from the chlorine electrolyzes would stop for any reason. When they decoupled the tank-car, some liquid hydrogen was spilled on the ground. Fascinating to see how the oxygen/nitrogen did freeze out of the atmosphere on that spilled liquid…
Not something I like to have in my car, even less for compressed hydrogen at 300 bar with a 10% chance of a heavy car accident in a lifetime…
There are biofuels and there are biofuels. Biodiesels are vegetable fats that happen to have physical properties somewhat similar to diesel. I haven’t seen an analysis of the EROI of biodiesel, but I assume it is better than corn ethanol. It’d be hard to be worse.
Yes, some ethanol feedstock requiring less irrigation and no fertilizer would probably be better than corn as an ethanol source. You still end up with a low proof “beer” that has to be concentrated — typically by distillation. Distillation is energy intensive.
A BIG problem with biofuels is that they require, and probably always will require, huge monocrop plantations that are pretty much an ecological disaster. Ecologically, an unremediated strip mine that’ll grow over and return to forest in a century or three is probably better.
Cocktail napkin time: Assume the planet’s population stabilizes eventually at 10,000,000,000 (about 9.something billion too many if you ask me. But no one will). And that each person uses about 2 gallons of biodiesel a day. (That’s about half the total energy use of today’s Japanese or Frenchman. Never mind Americans or Canadians). And assume that biodiesel yields after planting, harvesting, etc are 100 gal per acre per year (seems optimistic to me). That suggests that we need 365*2*/100 = about 7 acres per person just to grow biofuel (maybe we can grow a little food in the roadside ditches? Probably need some of that). Multiply by 10^10 people and divide by 640 acres per square mile, that works out to 109 million square miles of plantations. That looks to be roughly 30 times the area of the US, Canada, or Australia — very roughly twice the land area of the planet. Assuming the arithmetic is roughly correct — which is possible — anyone see a problem there?
I apologize for using English units. The answer is presumably the same in SI units if anyone cares to work it through.
I see no reason to assume that 10billion people is too many, unless you just don’t like people.
The world is so far from being crowded, much less over crowded that it makes no sense to talk about limiting populations.
World population was about one milliard when the telegraph got going, about two and a half when computers got going. Perhaps it is possible to have an information society in a depopulated world, but I don’t see any reason to believe it. For what’s worth, population is expected to PEAK at about ten milliard, not STABILISE there.
High compression engines generate the high combustion temperatures and pressures that are required to burn the nitrogen in the air. That’s why EPA regulations prevent the sale of high compression engines in the USA, by mandating that they be able to run properly on 87 octane gasoline. It is those higher temperatures and pressures of the high compression engine that give them the increased thermal efficiency, but the NOX output is even worse than methane as a GHG.
Trying to grow fuel that already exists aplenty is a fool’s game.
G
He’s already admitted that he would like to get rid of 90% of the people on the planet.
Switch grass has been a dismal failure and a waste of resources including $$$ and fossil fuels to build useless plants. Time to move on and stop subsidizing failed concepts. I know having work on
Don’t repeat that incomplete comment about high octane improving efficiency, Engineers all know and understand that such a high compression engine is very expensive. Ethanol is a flawed concept for fuel and resorting to expensive engine technology adds to the futility. The fossil energy required to produce and transport the fuel to marked is extensive and only works with a foolish and expensive government mandate. .
For the sake of accuracy, biofuels are indeed hydrocarbons; however, they are formed from carbon already in the environment and can be produced in a carbon neutral process. To equate them with fuels which release previously sequestered carbon is mendacious.
The problem is biofuels are a scam. We will starve and destroy the majority of wild life on the planet if the madness is continued.
Vast amounts of agricultural land are being forced into production to produce food to convert to biofuel. As the amount of agricultural land on the planet is fixed and increasing land use requirement for human consumption, biofuel requires cutting down of virgin forest or/removing agriculture production which was for food to biofuel.
Analysis of the total energy input to produce ethanol from corn show that 29% more fossil fuel input energy is require to produce one energy unit of ethanol. If the fuel input to harvest the corn, to produce the fertilizer, and to boil the water off to distill ethanol/water from 8% ethanol to 99.5% ethanol (three distillation processes) to produce 99.5% ethanol for use in an automobile, produces more green house gas than is produced than the production consumption of conventional gasoline. The cost of corn based ethanol is more than five times the production cost of gasoline, excluding taxes and subsides (before the mysterious fall in crude oil price).
Comment: The increase in atmospheric CH4 and CO2 is due to increased release of deep CH4. Roughly 5% of the earth’s core is CH4. When the core solidifies the CH4 is extruded as super high pressure. The CH4 is forced to the surface and causes tectonic plate movement. The CH4 released from the core increases when the solar cycle is high which explains why atmospheric CH4 mysteriously almost stopped increasing in 2000.
The EPA mandate for ethanol is that it will in the future emit 20% less CO2 than ‘fossil’ fuel. That assumption is met by assuming the energy input to produce ethanol is from 100% ‘green’ energy. The problem is the green energy is a scam. If the energy to construct the green energy components and the loss in grid efficiency due to inability to use combined cycle natural gas power plants which are 20% more efficient but require 10 hours to start and hence must be left on weeks is taken into account; There is almost no CO2 reduction. The green scam limit is around 10% of total electrical grid capacity.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
Rather than subsiding the production of corn based ethanol the same money could be used to preserve and increase rainforest. The loss of rainforest is the largest biological cause of the increase in CO2.
Virgin forest is cut down and burned to grow food to convert to biofuel. The cutting down of virgin forest removes habitat which is the single most important cause of loss of diversity.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Re biofuels and much policy and plans, it makes sense if the end goal us a world of 500 million agricultural farmers and the ruling elite living in a fossil fuel ivory tower.
So with only 500m world wide population (Gates Turner Rockefeller Prince Philip) then the land use for ethanol is not an issue, plus most of the US will be empty and protected from us farmers with military enforced biodiversity, that UN map is pretty “alarming”.
With the Rockefeller foundation and god knows what else involved (They have had the Zika virus since 1947 from monkey blood in Uganda) for example, a fetus attacking virus conveniently.. the drive is most definitely eugenicist. Not only do they want 500m global population they most certainly want to determine which genes survive (their vision of best of humanity)
All of this climate change nonsense seems insane, unless you look at it from the perspective of the ruper powerful (A super powerful friends group that sees most of us as “breeders” and “deficient”)
Interesting concept. Some evidence would be nice though.
Not the aesthenosphere?
I was not commenting on the economics of biofuels, merely the false equivalence, either from ignorance or intent, with fossil fuels. The point the author made relative to biofuels is dependent on this inaccuracy.
Biofuels can be hydrocarbons but also can be oxygenated fuels. The difference is significant. Ethanol at 85% and biodiesel at 20%, both oxygenated fuels, or higher cause issues with engine operation or with the fuel infrastructure. Ethanol is corrosive to pipelines at >10% and causes corrosion of soft metal components if it contains water, which is hard to eliminate from any fuel.
Hydroprocessed fatty oils produce HRD (hydrogenated renewable diesel) which is a drop-in replacement for conventional diesel, but requires a much more elaborate process to produce than biodiesel (FAME–Fatty Acid Methyl Ester).
FlexFuel vehicles can operate on gasoline with no to 85% ethanol, but are not as thermally efficient as engines dedicated to E85. E100 does not work as a transportation fuel as it is hard to ignite at low temperatures. E85 has enough compromises including 30% lower volumetric fuel efficiency. But corrosion of engine parts is also an issue as well as the need for more frequent oil changes due to contamination of the oil with combustion byproducts of ethanol including acetic acid.
The E-85 market experiment has been run in many places. Given a choice between E10 and E85, even in the corn belt, E-85 only commands a 1 to 2% market share, essentially rejected by most consumers. E85 simply doesn’t meet customers needs for a number of reasons.
Biofuels are a very complex subject with little factual data supporting the environmental benefits of their production and use. So this should be a subject for another discussion
What is mendacious is to equate carbon with CO2.
The only thing that is not “carbon neutral” is carbon-14 decay. Well, you can say that it is the reverse of carbon-14 production, so appart from the odd carbon containing meteorite that falls into the Earth, everything is carbon neutral. Fossil fuels were also formed from carbon (CO2) in the environment. And it is a good thing that we are liberating those carbon atoms from their kidnappers, so they can be used by all the living organisms in the biosphere.
Agree!!
Thanks for pointing that out. C16H34 is a hydrocarbon whether it comes from naturally produced oils forming deep in the Earth or from biomass grown artificially on the surface. Both ‘diesels’ are long chain paraffins approximately C16H34 to C22H46.
The only thing ‘fossil’ about oil is the old argument that it comes from leftover biomass that somehow escaped down into the ground for scores of millions of years.
Naming naturally formed CH4 gas as a ‘fossil fuel’ is also mendacious.
Can anyone confirm that No biologic molecule can exist at a temperature higher than the ‘critical temperature’ of salt water (somewhere around 384 C)?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_%28thermodynamics%29.
I read the ‘critical temperature’ of salt water is reached at a depth of 3 to 5 km [1.86 to 3.12 miles], depending on whether you’re in a continental or marine environment. So the notion that carbon material at the depths of the mantle is of biologic origin has absolutely no meaning. Hydrocarbons are in deep space, on Saturn’s moon, NASA discovered in 2007, no dead dinosaurs there.
How upsetting it must be that the deterioration rate of methane is remarkably fast. Nature loves it. It was the atmospheric seed from which it all began.Like CO2, nature loves a good shot of methane to cheer up.
Hey Pat Ch – did you invent the word glurge?
“Of course, the Obama EPA and Climate Cataclysm Industry ignore these inconvenient facts. They insist that methane is “a far more potent greenhouse gas” than carbon dioxide, and that its emissions must be drastically reduced if we are to avoid “runaway global warming.”
It is IMPOSSIBLE for CH4 to cause a run away warming trend.There are too few molecules and to small a portion of the IR window it absorbs in and too little of that energy being absorbed.
It is a naked attempt to scare lazy minded people into panic.
“It is a naked attempt to scare lazy minded people into panic.”
Exactly. You are describing the majority. It’s the doughnut chomping, sports loving, MSM grazing, non-thinking lackeys that they are appealing to. This is good marketing strategy. They’ve done their consumer research and numbers win. I fear that people on this site are in a miniscule population minority – very unfortunately.
The original Tim.
“It is a naked attempt to scare lazy minded people into panic.”
“This is good marketing strategy.”
It seems more like a good way to get you giant headed clowns to panic, since “climate change” consistently polls very low as a concern among your inferiors, bigots.
As the planet warms, the rate at which CH4 oxidizes into CO2 and H2O increases.
Could someone please distract the greenies with facts about H2O being a more ‘dangerous’ greenhouse gas than all the others put together … oh … that’s right … they won’t pay any attention until water becomes a giant fuel industry.
If the energy wasted on this rubbish was spent on something useful we would have an anti gravity device and a perpetual motion machine by now.
We’ve had perpetual motion machines for ages.
Otherwise known as toddlers.
“That number, by sheer coincidence, is also the percentage of methane in Earth’s atmosphere. That’s a trivial amount, you say: 1.7 parts per million. ”
So if a compound represents a small % of the total, it can’t cause problems – is that what you are saying? Arsenic at levels of ..8 to 1.8 ppm cause increased vascular disease and mortality.
Strawman argument. Go off and study some logic. I suggest a Monty Python sketch about the similarity of wood, ducks and witches.
A short course in logic and reasoning for ClimateScience! researchers.
It’s not my fault, he made me do it.
TonyL
The devil made you do it
Empty retort. Go off and construct a reply with proper reasoning. Driessen said that the fact that methane comprises a small % of the atmosphere makes it irrelevant. It wasn’t about the properties of methane itself, simply the fact that it is present in small quantities in the atmosphere. I provided an example of how absurd that logic is.
Alex: “Go off and study some logic.”
The fact that it is a small percentage does not logically mean it has a small effect. Chris has not made a fallacious argument. Whereas it is a fallacy to equate “small” with “insignificant”.
Alex: “Fallacious statements are a sign of stupidity. Unfortunately ‘stupid’ is bone deep.”
‘Nuff said.
Having 3 cubes of sugar in my coffee instead of 1 will not harm me, therefore tripling the amount of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere will have no effect.
Good, solid reasoning. The connection between the two is uncannily close.
“Having 3 cubes of sugar in my coffee instead of 1 will not harm me, therefore tripling the amount of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere will have no effect.
Good, solid reasoning. The connection between the two is uncannily close.”
Is this a serious comment, or are my sarcasm detectors malfunctioning? Alex above suggested studying logic.
From a logic perspective we must see if the conclusion actually follows from the premise. If we take your premise to be true (tripling sugar in coffee will not harm you), we can then see if the conclusion (tripling CO2 in the atmospheres will have no effect) logically follows, as implied by the “therefore”.
It is trivial to see that we can make no such conclusion using only the premise, since there is no mention of CO2 or atmosphere in the premise, only sugar and coffee. Therefore, the conclusion is not valid. This is an example of a non sequitur, the conclusion has no connection to the premise. This does not make the conclusion false, only not valid.
Of course, if the premise were false, then the conclusion could be false even if it were valid. Tripling sugar intake is likely to cause harm long term, so there is a good case to be made that the premise is false.
seaice1
Your sarc detector is malfunctioning. I was illustrating that my reasoning was equivalent to arsenic effects on the body.
No actual connection to methane or CO2 in the atmosphere
Alex, saying small = insignificant is simply not true. If you take ALL greenhouse gases, including water vapor and everything else, you still have only 3% (or less) of the troposphere. Yet that “small” amount of gases are what keeps the earth’s surface temperature from being 17C colder.
Chris,
” Driessen said that the fact that methane comprises a small % of the atmosphere makes it irrelevant. ”
No he didn’t, you are spouting a falsehood, sir.
JohnKnight, Driessen said “What is 17 cents out of $100,000? If you said 0.00017 percent, you win the jackpot.
That number, by sheer coincidence, is also the percentage of methane in Earth’s atmosphere. That’s a trivial amount, you say: 1.7 parts per million.”
What precisely is the purpose of writing that statement, if not to imply that by being a small amount of the atmosphere, it’s effect (on AGW or anything else) will be small?
“What precisely is the purpose of writing that statement, if not to imply that by being a small amount of the atmosphere, it’s effect (on AGW or anything else) will be small?”
That’s not what you wrote which I commented on . . and still you’re not presenting anything the author actually did say that you are willing to disagree with, as far as I can tell.
Of course he is arguing that Chris.. what a touche moment you got off there… /sarc
If we disregard the straw man you introduced…
and pay attention to other comments
per daveburton…
The warming effect of anthropogenic methane is slight. A “big” increase in methane levels might be on the order of +0.1 or +0.2 ppmv (i.e, from 1.8 to 1.9 or 2.0 ppmv). The warming potential of methane is estimated to be 30-35 times that of CO2, so increasing CH4 by 0.1 ppmv would warm the planet about as much as a 3 to 3.5 ppmv (= ~1%) increase in CO2 — i.e., negligible.
What’s more, the effect of a spike in methane levels would be very transient, because even if you don’t burn it, methane in the atmosphere oxidizes with a half-life of only about 6 to 8 years, into minute amounts of CO2 and water: CH4 + 2·O2 → CO2 + 2·H2O.
Obviously Chris you need to take into account the overall effect..
where as arsenic can be poisonous in small quantities.. Methane will not cause run away global warming
in small quantities..
do I need to add a der?
Jim
You have far more patience than I do. Ignorance of facts, I can live with. People can become informed. Fallacious statements are a sign of stupidity. Unfortunately ‘stupid’ is bone deep.
Jim, I see this logic all the time on WUWT. For example, CO2 is only .04% of the atmosphere by volume, so how can it be causing the earth to warm? The point I am making is in reference to the “it’s a small amount so how can it cause a problem?” argument, not the specific substance being discussed.
Chris
April 14, 2016 at 2:03 am
“Jim, I see this logic all the time on WUWT. For example, CO2 is only .04% of the atmosphere by volume, so how can it be causing the earth to warm?”
Chris, most here understand the physics of warming from absorption and re-radiation of some bands of IR radiation and a large number here agree there is SOME warming, Linear thinkers, ideologues and simple useful idiots, though, don’t give credence to, nay are ignorant of, obvious negative feedbacks like thunder storms/convection that bypass the near surface “heat trap”, and the fact that each addition of CO2 is less effective in the process than past additions.
The earth system is far more sophisticated than the numb, passive view of the earth held by the Marxbrothers. The dreaded “Pause” was putting a lie to the central significance of CO2 warming, though, and that is why ideologues, grant troughers and obedient civil servants penciled in an end to it. This is laughable because they don’t understand that their egregious bandaids are not enough to stop the flattening. Stay tuned and remember this statement.
Methane at 1.7ppmv is truly a minor trace that if you “cleaned it up” would have no noticeable effect. This is the reason that they needed to project such a steep and unrealistic rise for the future. I guess the thing I find disheartening is the decline in morality politicization of thought and what it has done to science and education (I am a scientist who studied paleoclimatology in the 1950s as a student of geology, so have known most of my life that the climate changes, but only between bounds of a few degrees up or down. The unbroken record of life on earth for over a billion years is fully reliable proof of no tipping points possible). Faith based science is an oxymoron and scepticism used to be an honorable part of the scientific process.
You do see “this logic all the time” but you don’t understand it.
Gary, your last two paragraphs are completely unrelated to the point being discussed. My comment relates to the commonly trotted out statement that because methane is a tiny percentage of the atmosphere, so therefore can’t have much affect on warming. The same logic is used for CO2. Small % = insignificant is simply incorrect. Even water vapor, the largest greenhouse gas, represents 3% or less of the troposphere – does that make it insignificant as well?
Chris. Unless you can educate us on the IR absorption window of arsenic in the atmosphere, you are just wasting your breath by comparing apples to soccer balls.
Slacko said: “Chris. Unless you can educate us on the IR absorption window of arsenic in the atmosphere, you are just wasting your breath by comparing apples to soccer balls.”
Nope, he makes no mention of IR properties until later in the article. His first point, which is not contingent on the later points, is that being a small % makes something trivial. It’s just not true, just as something being a large % (like nitrogen) does not automatically make it a major factor.
@chris, you obviously missed the highly public discussion about this in the NYT where all your points were debunked by leading notable “warmist” climate scientists. There are enough essential links in the article for you to get the scientific perspective you lack.
Arctic Methane Credibility Bomb
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/arctic-methane-credibility-bomb/?_r=1
Quite.
And the potency of a greenhouse gas is reduced by saturation of IR radiation in its absorbance band.
Methane is potent because it is a trace gas. At similar concentrations to CO2 it would have similar greenhouse warming effects.
So it would be also not measurable?
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 402 ppm — 0.0402% —– Specific Heat Capacity – 0.844 kJ/kg K
Water vapor — (H2O) 40,000 ppm – 4.0000% — Specific Heat Capacity – 1.930 kJ/kg K
Methane —— (CH4) 1.745 ppm – 0.0001745% — Specific Heat Capacity – 2.220 kJ/kg K
“Ignorance can be fixed, ….. stupidity is permanent”.
Why have you listed heat capacities? You missed nitrogen 800,000ppm, 80%, Heat Capacity 1.0kJ/kg K and oxygen, 200,000ppm, 20%. Heat capacity 0.9 kJ/kg K.
Or we can look up heat capacity of air – 1.009 kJ/kg K.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, ….. your above question correlates directly with my previously posted quote of …… “Ignorance can be fixed, ….. stupidity is permanent”.
So, ….. try keeping “track” of the conversation, …….. but more importantly, try “fixing” your ignorance of what Specific Heat Capacities are and why they are important when one is calculating the warming “effects” of the per se atmospheric “greenhouse” gasses.
Attempt your “fixing” by clicking on the following “link” and then attempt to educate yourself, to wit: Specific Heat Capacity @ http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/spht.html
And to further “fix” your problem, you might want to know that it is the Specific Heat Capacities of your noted Nitrogen (80%) and Oxygen (20%) …. [and H2O vapor when present] …. in your locale that determines what your thermometer “says” the air temperature is.
Samuel Cogar. I am aware of heat capacities. They will determine the temperature for a given energy. For the atmosphere the only one that matters is the Cp for the atmosphere. The energy comes from the radiative forcing which does not have anything to do with heat capacities.
“And to further “fix” your problem, you might want to know that it is the Specific Heat Capacities of your noted Nitrogen (80%) and Oxygen (20%) …. [and H2O vapor when present] …. in your locale that determines what your thermometer “says” the air temperature is.” For a given energy content, the temperature of the atmosphere will be deternined by the heat capacity. The contribution to the total heat capacity of the atmosphere from CO2 and methane are insignificant, and water is only very slight. This is why the Cp for air is quite close to that of N2.
If we put 1kJ into a kg of air without CO2 or methane we raise the temperature by almost the same amount as if we put 1 kJ into a kg of air containing 400ppm CO2 and 1.7ppm methane. I doin’t see how this relates to the discussion at all.
So instead of assuming I am ignorant and/or stupid, why don’t you explain what the significance of the listed heat capacities is?
Says: seaice1 – April 15, 2016 at 5:31 am
seaice1, as noted by the above quoted closing statement, excerpted from your above post, ….why in hell are you asking me to explain “the significance of the listed (specific) heat capacities” …….. when you just got through EXPLAINING THEIR SIGNIFICANCE via your response to my request for you ……. “to further “fix” your problem”?
seaice1 EXPLAINED, to wit:
And seaice1, I truly loved this comment that you posted in your above response, to wit:
Me thinks your above statement completely discredits all claims of AGW or CAGW, thus relegating them to “junk science” status.
Look at the y axis of the graph at the head of the article.
Not ppm (that’s for CO2), it is ppb.
Parts per billion.
1. re methane: Methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of about 7 years if my memory is correct.
2. re nuclear, hydro, etc: The greens oppose anything that works.
Somebody please get the media to listen for a moment.
Interesting paper referenced here: https://www.niwa.co.nz/news/scientists-attribute-rising-methane-levels-to-agriculture
Conclusion: “The findings of a study initiated by NIWA scientists, rule out fossil fuel production as the major cause in the rise of methane levels in the atmosphere since 2007.”
“biofuels are hydrocarbons!”
No, they aren’t. Ethanol is not (C2H5OH). Nor is bio-diesel; it is made from long chain esters. But as slipstick says, they are carbon neutral. Growing them removes CO2 from the air – that’s where they get their carbon from. Using them returns that carbon.
Ethanol is not (C2H5OH) ?
Growing corn for ethanol involves many steps from seeding to harvesting to delivering and mixing with gasoline. All of these steps are not ‘carbon neutral’.
Bottom line is that an ethanol mix at the pump is less carbon neutral than gasoline is on it’s own.
I am not going to link toanything. Merely linking to one’s own brain should tell you that what I say is correct.
Alex,
Sorry, I actually meant to write Ethanol (C2H5OH) is not (a hydrocarbon). As to net carbon costs, it is indeed possible that they could outweigh the fact that the actual C in ethanol came from the air. The task is to find processes that avoid that. But the fuel itself is carbon neutral.
The corn itself is carbon neutral ( hate to be technical).
It’s probably a bit better, but it’s certainly not great, and it depends on the crop. IIRC sugar cane returns about 700% the net energy that corn does as ethanol, so that’s a much better biofuel crop.
Of course sugar cane is evil and communist, so the US is stuck with what they have.
Fuel production from water might be an option for the use of excess electricity from renewable sources that can’t be shaped to demand such as wind and solar. Not particularly efficient, but it allows a greater proportion of the power generation to be wind and solar without having to invest in as much storage.
The whole process is too inefficient for the energy return to be of use to a 300 million population, and that’s ignoring what this has done to food prices
Don’t forget that engines and fuel delivery systems have to be designed to operate on ethanol. So factor in the “carbon use” to do that and then add in the extra manufacturing costs.
Except that corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy to produce ethanol than the fuel produced.
Cornell ecologist’s study finds that producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/july05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
Paper
http://vivo.cornell.edu/lifesci/individual/vivo/individual16468
MRW
That’s what I said. Perhaps my wording was awkward. It takes more energy to produce ethanol than it does to produce gasoline
Take a good look at that formula for alcohol again. Yes, it’s a hydrocarbon.
Hydrocarbon: a compound containing carbon and hydrogen only
Ethanol C2H5OH
It is not a hydrocarbon because it contains oxygen. This is not really important to the discussion, but there is no point in questioning stuff that is correct and can be checked quite easily. It is not a hydrocarbon, but it does contain carbon, so when burned it produces CO2. As pointed out numerous times, this does not add to atmospheric CO2 levels because the carbon was removed from the atmosphere when the plant grew and is simply being replaced back into the atmosphere.
It is a carbohydrate. One third oxygen, but really it is closer than government work to a hydrocarbon.
No, it’s not a carbohydrate either. That is, or used to be, literally (but not chemically) a hydrate of carbon – ie C + some H2O. Like glucose C6H12O6, or sucrose C12H22O11. That can be stretched, but not to include ethanol or biodiesel, which is more like a fat.
Not that any of this matters – I’m just puzzled why the author made a big point with bold and exclamation marks, when it just isn’t true.
Nick, the formula can be rewritten C2H4.H2O = ethylene hydrate.
According to the reminiscences of chemistry I was taught in my youth in France, fossil fuels are hydrocarbons, mainly alcanes, while biofuels are carbohydrates due to one (like in methanol or ethanol) or more oxygen atoms combined in the molecule. The more there are oxygen atoms in the carbohydrates the less energy they release when burnt.
Am I right ?
Correct
Yes. Not absolutely sure about the term carbohydrates as these are more usually compounds containing oxygen and hydrogen in a ration close to 1:2, but in essence you are right. Think of the compounds containing oxygen as already being partly oxidised, so they produce less energy when burned.
Biofuels are generally alcohols (ethanol, butanol) or esters (biodiesel).
Biofuels will never replace all the fossil fuels we currently use as this would require all the land we have just to produce fuel – even with more efficient processes. Corn ethanol was never about carbon savings IMO, it was about fuel security. It was just a way to turn coal and other energy sources into liquid fuel so the USA is less dependent on imports.
Ethanol from sugar is effective at saving carbon, corn is not. Algae have potential because it can be grown in salt water ponds where there is no existing agriculture. It may be part of the energy mix, but will never replace fossil fuels entirely. This has been long understood and much discussed, for example in wikipedia.
Yes Paul, it is a fraud. See if you can find anywhere proof that methane absorbs more radiation than CO2. It is in fact less than one fifth. They may claim that methane CH4 burns in the atmosphere to give CO2 on a one to one basis but it does not burn. So that is false.
See this post https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ When methane (or natural gas) CH4 is burnt it produce H2O which is absorbs about 10 times the IR of CO2 but some greenies which are paid by oil companies propose that natural gas when burnt gives less greenhouse gases than the burning of coal or oil. That is also a lie. Water vapor H2O is the main greenhouse gas which does have an affect on climate when it condenses to form clouds but the IPCC and the US EPA do not regard water vapor as a greenhouse gas. That is a major reason why the whole of AGW or “Climate Change” is a scam fueled by incompetents who call themselves “climate scientists”
There is a saying throw a enough mud and some will stick. Tell big lies repeatedly and frequently some less intelligent people such as politician will get to believe some of it. (think Goebbels of the German National Socialist party said something like that)
(think Goebbels of the German National Socialist party said something like that)
It’s root is Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew. The man who made propaganda an effective mass manipulation tool, and called it “PR”
It has been known forever that corn ethanol is net energy negative. Point blank, you need fossil fuels produce it. In the US, corn ethanol requires the full combination of subsidies, mandates, and tariffs against imports.
On another planet methane might be a greenhouse gas, but on Earth there is just not enough of it.
Question: Someone says that something has an effect, but acknowledges the effect is too small to measure. If the effect is too small to be detectable, how can anyone claim the effect is really there? Is that person really making any sense?
Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, much larger than CO2. Yet CO2 swamps the contribution of CH4. What would that tell anybody about the relative effect of CH4 vs. H2O?
Most studies put it at slightly positive. About 1.2 or 1.3 to 1.
You can do a lot better than corn.
Other way around. It’s a more significant greenhouse gas per tonne the less of it there is.
Because the mechanism of water leaving the atmosphere by rain and hail and the like is not really rate limited, there’s a very different climate consequence of releasing a tonne of CO2 compared to a tonne of water.
Releasing a tonne of water will make it rain more the following week or so. Releasing a tonne of CO2, and it will still be operating as an extra bit of greenhouse effect a century later. (And because the atmosphere will be warmer it will hold more water vapour on average).
It would depend on timescale.
YouGottaBeKiddingMe bad.
Negative, Seth, negative. Greenies always dismissed work that shows negative, claiming things like burning the cornstalks as extra energy. Nonsense, do the math on how things are done, not on how you think things *could* be done. Now that the greenies have got an eyeful on how bad it really is, most of them concede negative. Do better, switchgrass, cellulosic ethanol does not exist and *nobody* knows how to do it.
Matter of fact, I went to a big international biology conference a few years back and people were talking about if it *might* be possible to genetically engineer algae to do the trick. No clue.
Small bits are more effective per unit. But the unit is small, so the effect is small, you can’t get something from nothing. Does not matter. H2O totally smothers CH4 absorption in the 7-8 um band. You can add the logarithmic effect of CH4 to the logarithmic effect of H2O. Sorry, you have to do it that way. When two species absorb at the same wavelength, the effects are cumulative. It is incorrect to pull one species out and consider it’s effect separately. And make no mistake, H2O totally smothers CH4.
The condensation of H2O is a nonsense argument. It rains, and you get evaporation. The atmosphere is never without water. If it is present, it has an effect. If it is not present, it does not. The individual residence time of any specific molecule in irrelevant. Photons don’t care. So multiplying a putative greenhouse effect with a putative lifetime to produce a new more powerful greenhouse effect is double nonsense. And that is where a lot of those crazy 30X, 80X “times worse” numbers come from.
Oh look, he invoked the water vapor positive feedback assertion. Careful, you might hit a tipping point. Be especially careful when increasing water vapor in your model. You may want it to get warmer, but all you get is more convective cooling, and *gasp* 0.1% more clouds.
I really don’t believe that Seth is interested in hearing or reading about any scientific facts associated with the natural world that he lives in.
Me thinks that “peer approval” from his likeminded friends is the only thing that concerns him.
In typical lefty fashion, should this nonsense about methane come to pass and the bleeding obvious of economic mayhem ensues, it will just be another case of:
“Well, don’t blame, this wasn’t supposed to happen.” Lefties have always been strong on dubious theory, but not so much on the practical results of their actions – in order to confuse the issue, they brand practical realists with the term ‘anti-science’, when they should clearly be applying this to themselves.
It’s better not to classify facts as left or right, because people can ignore truth quite readily for the sake of aligning themselves with who they consider to be their group.
I suppose you’re correct.
It’s not left or right it’s the ignorant (or criminal) progressives i.e. Obama, Gore, Clinton, McCain, Romney, nearly all of the left and most of the Republican establishment.
I believe they knew the answer a hundred years ago…
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives.
The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
Illustrated London News (ILN), 4/19/24
G.K.Chesterton
It’s important that they be seen as doing good thereby signalling their virtue.
As noted above the earth’s liquid core is composed of roughly 5% CH4. When the liquid core solidifies the CH4 is extrude at very, very, high pressure. The liquid CH4 is pushed to the surface of the earth. Depending on conditions higher in the mantel the liquid CH4 is partial converted to liquid petroleum and to black coal.
The super high pressure CH4 dissolve metals which then drop out at specific pressures. This explains why there are concentration of metals up to a million times concentrated higher in the surface of the mantel.
Thomas Gold book ‘The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels’ includes roughly 50 unique observations to support of abiogenic origin of crude oil, black coal, and natural gas.
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387952536?token=prtst0416p
The solar magnetic cycle changes cause there to be an increase or decrease in deep earth CH4 to be released from the core and the deep deposits of CH4. It is the CH4 changes that cause earthquakes.
One interesting side effect of the deep CH4 that is released from the core and then pushes up to the surface, is CH4 sudden release which causes some types of earthquakes. Below 60 km the mantel is plastic and cannot therefore be stressed.
The very deep earthquakes are caused by the sudden release of the CH4. That explains why massive regions of the ocean floor suddenly fall as occurred in a series of recent Pacific region earthquakes. The same phenomenon explains why there were drops of up to 30 feet of land in the famous Alaskan earthquake of 1964. Supporting mantel cannot disappear to cause very, very, rapid drops in the earth’s crust, CH4 release from the mantel on the other hand will cause sudden drops when it is suddenly released from the mantel.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~coleen/earthquake.jpg
The same CH4 release caused the Mississippi, New Madrid earthquake.
http://www.new-madrid.mo.us/index.aspx?nid=132
There are two theories to explain how water and hydrocarbons came onto the earth: 1) The late veneer theory and 2) The deep CH4 theory.
Roughly 100 million years after the earth was formed a Mars sized object struck the earth. That event formed the moon and stripped the mantel of light elements. There are two theories to explain why there are light elements on now on the earth’s surface.
The late veneer theory hypothesis: Comets struck the early earth after the big splat event covering the very hot earth with hydrocarbons. The late veneer hypothesis requires that the earth had a Venus like atmosphere (atmospheric pressure of say 60 atmospheres) for the early earth, except with methane.
There are multiple problems with the later veneer hypothesis (See Thomas Gold’s Book Deep Hot Biosphere for details. One of the key problems is the observation that the percentage of heavy gaseous elements in the earth’s current atmosphere does not match that of comets (Comets are residues of the early solar systems. The comet elemental composition does match that of the sun). The late veneer theory’s explanation for the miss match of isotopes in the earth’s atmosphere to that of comets is that the early solar system had a close encounter with another solar system which temporary provided a limited source of comets to cover the earth but not significantly change the element composition of the sun.
The second hypothesis is the deep earth hydrocarbon theory. This theory hypothesizes that massive amounts of hydrocarbons (5% of the total core mass) are located in the earth’s core. As the core cools these hydrocarbon (CH4) are released. At very high pressures the CH4 forms longer chain molecules.
The release of CH4 is still occurring as the upper surface of the ocean is saturated with CH4 which indicates that CH4 is being released from some source.
The Nobel Prize winning astrophysics Thomas Gold’s book the Deep Hot Biosphere provides more than separate 50 logical pillars based on observations ( I can provide an additional 20 logical pillars) which support the assertion that deep core CH4 (CH4 is extruded from the core as it solidifies, the super high pressure liquid extruded CH4 continually breaks/flows through the mantel and is hence the origin (non-biological, primeval origin), for petroleum, natural gas, black coal, CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, and the earth’s oceans.
Organic metals form in the very, very, high pressure liquid CH4. The liquid CH4 as it passes through the mantel thereby picks up and concentrations specific heavy metals such as gold, uranium, thorium, iron, mercury and so on which explains why there are heavy metals in crude oil and why there are heavy metals in black coal.
The super high pressure liquid CH4 extruded from the core as it solidifies with dissolved organic metals in it explains why helium is found in oil deposits and in natural gas deposits which is commercial source of helium and explains the super concentrations of metals in the earth’s mantle (as much as million times concentrated). The source of helium is the radioactive decay of Uranium and Thorium.
The super high pressure liquid CH4 carries metals out of the liquid core in solution. As the pressure in decreases as the super high pressure liquid move to the surface specific metals drop out and hence become concentrated in the mantel, in this case below the oil and natural gas deposits. As helium is a gas at all pressures in the earth, the helium gas from radioactive decay cannot break the mantle and pass into the oil and gas deposits. The super high pressure liquid CH4 breaks the mantel as it forms the oil and natural gas deposits.
The super high pressure CH4 that is extruded from the core of the earth as it solidifies provides the force that separate and moves the ocean floors, driving the ocean floor underneath the continental crust. The CH4 in the ocean crust is left under the continental crust which explains why there are bands of mountain ranges at the edge of the continents and why there are massive gas deposits/liquid petroleum as the edge of continents, in mountain ranges, and immediately offshore of continents.
The deep gas abiotic oil hypothesis has been scientifically discredited and is obsolete.
Good to see a range of anti-science here though. It was getting very climatey.
No, it hasn’t. Thomas Gold has been discredited. Gold, an astrophysicist, purloined Russian science (1979, he spoke Russian) during the Soviet years claiming it as his own. After the fall of the USSR, the existence of over 4,000 scientific papers published since 1951 on their decades of geologic and abiotic oil research came to light. None of them have been translated into English. Dr. JF Kenney who worked with these pioneering Russian scientists brought these facts to light starting in 2002 or 2003.
Kenney introduces the abiotic oil hypothesis in this brief paper here: An introduction to the modern petroleum science, and to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins.
http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm
Article on Canadian research “Organic carbon on Mars is abiotic” with a source link.
http://origeminorganicadopetroleo.blogspot.com/2012/10/organic-carbon-on-mars-is-abiotic.html
MRW,
I’m not a geologist, so I’ll defer to any here as experts. But I wonder, aren’t the methane seas on Titan abiotic?
As far as I know: yes.
Unlike petroleum, methane isn’t stable at high pressure & temperature regimes. Gold plagiarized the Russian-Ukraine theory of petroleum genesis, then turned it upside down in breach of thermodynamic constraints.
“Regrettably, Gold was as ignorant of statistical thermodynamics as he was of ethics.” – J.F. Kenney
http://www.gasresources.net/plagiarism%28overview%29.htm
It is very unlikely that the Earth’s core is either liquid or a repository for primordial hydrocarbons.
Hydrocarbons are generated in the mantle/lithosphere as a consequence of rock water reactions bearing the ugly name “serpentinisation.” You don’t need a fantastic epicyle at the core of the planet.
Comments:
1) I see we have some cult of CAGW members who have come to push the pathetic fossil fuel myth. Obviously they have zero scientific references and of course they never provide an explanation for the more than 50 paradoxes that disprove the biogenic theory of crude oil, ‘natural’ gas, and black coal.
2) Guys explain how heavy metals get into crude oil and how heavy metals get in to black coal. Explain how helium gets into crude oil and ‘natural gas’ deposits. Explain why there are sudden drops in the earth surface when the CH4 is released. Explain why there is massive amounts of methyl hydrates at the edge of continents.
P.S. The super high pressure CH4 that is extruded from the core of the planet as it cools moves and raises the continents and ocean floor. The oldest section of the ocean floor is 200 million years. As the ocean floor is pushed beneath the edge of the continents which explains why the are bands of mountains on the edge of contents. Studies of the speed of wave movement through the earth confirms the earth’s liquid core contains a significant amount of light elements.
3) Explain what biological material is converted into crude oil and natural gas. And of course explain the source paradox. There are super, super, massive concentration of oil and natural gas in regions where there are no large biological sources.
4) High pressure converts liquid CH4 into long chain molecules. Oh by the way the standard theory for the origin of crude oil and natural gas in the Ukraine and Russia is the abiogenic theory which was discovered in the 1930s. The Ukraine institute of science threaten suing Gold for presenting it as a new theory.
5) Explain why certain crude oil deposits refill (Gulf and Middle east).
6) Explain the massive Vietnam crude oil deposit in granite.
7) I notice the biogenic fans do not acknowledge and do not even discuss the fact that geological research does not support the assertion that the early earth had Venus like atmosphere (60 atmospheres) of CH4. It the early earth had super high pressure atmosphere there would be small amounts of components formed that only form at high pressure. There is none. Also note the noble gas content of the atmosphere does not match that of comets or the sun. That is explained by the abiotic theory as big splat removes the light elements and most of the early earth’s atmosphere. The earth’s atmosphere forms over time as the CH4 is released from the deep core. That also explains why the continental crust increases with geological time and why there only shallow oceans a billion years ago. The core of the earth is estimated to have started to form 1 1/2 billion years ago.
It is of course possible to determine using chemical thermal dynamic analysis to determine whether a chemical reaction will or will not occur, at a specific temperature and pressure (see this attached peer reviewed paper for the analysis). Plant residue will not change to liquid petroleum at the temperature and pressures where the liquid petroleum is found. The fact there is no natural reaction that will convert biological residue to liquid petroleum in the conditions where the liquid petroleum is found is show stopper number one for the biogenic hypothesis for the origin of oil.
The biogenic supporters will not discuss biogenic show stopper number 1 as there is no solution. Perhaps show stopper number 2 would be trying to explain the super, super, large middle east, Alberta, and Venezuela petroleum deposits.
As this paper notes chemical thermal dynamic analysis shows that long chain carbon molecules will not spontaneously be formed, except at great pressures (at pressures that occur at roughly 100 km below the surface of the earth.). To support their assertion they perform an experiment that produces long chain hydrocarbons from CH4 using a diamond anvil that can recreate the pressure at great depths.
The following are excerpts from this paper.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/99/17/10976
http://www.wnd.com/2005/12/33676/
WA:
You really shouldn’t trust WND as a source for geological information. Or probably for any information whatsoever.
Oil source rocks and geophysical principles are actually fairly well understood. And they have nothing to do with “dead dinosaurs”.
For example, from Geoscience (Bạch Hổ is “White Tiger”):
You put anything into the earth long enough, and it absorbs stuff. A couple of million years is more than long enough to absorb some heavy metals.
I’ve already explained why the earth drops in some earthquakes.
Are you being paid to embarrass yourself?
Thomas Gold was a good astrophysicist. Unfortunately he didn’t bother to learn much (ie. anything) about geology. The evidence for biological origin of coal, petroleum and a lot of natural gas is overwhelming. Moreover the mechanisms that might convert methane in situ into complex hydrocarbons tidily inserted into sedimentary sequences are not only completely unknown, they appear to be highly unlikely.
There is a possibility that some natural gas is abiotic. But no one is drilling holes in places it might collect and no one is likely to any time soon.
The evidence for biological origin of coal, petroleum and a lot of natural gas is overwhelming.
=======
The alleged evidence is underwhelming, actually. Most of the “evidence” cited for biological origin can be found on Titan and Comet Haley.
If your favorite fable violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics…
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.long
..you probably won’t find any real evidence to support it.
Gold’s abiotic theory is not even junk science, it is magical thinking. Thoroughly debunked over the years it somehow manages to live on (thanks to the internet). As a Geologist working in the industry it amazes me that people will ignore 50-60 years of observations confirming the biogenic origin of all the world’s hydrocarbons. I’m ignoring the simple hydrocarbons formed through serpentinization.
Methane can have a non-biological source, therefore all hydrocarbons are non-biological?
Is that really the theory you want to hang your reputation on?
Aarne, I strongly suspect it’s like those people who still insist that airplanes could not have brought down the twin towers.
The desire to think yourself special because you have a revelation that others do not understand can be overwhelming to those who have nothing else going for them.
In reponse to MarkW:
“MarkW April 14, 2016 at 9:59 am
Methane can have a non-biological source, therefore all hydrocarbons are non-biological?
Is that really the theory you want to hang your reputation on?
MarkW April 14, 2016 at 10:01 am
Aarne, I strongly suspect it’s like those people who still insist that airplanes could not have brought down the twin towers.
The desire to think yourself special because you have a revelation that others do not understand can be overwhelming to those who have nothing else going for them.”
I am puzzled with your comments to me. I can only figure that you did not understand what I posted or that you are just trolling.
I have never heard that mantel disappears in any quake. As for the 1964 quake, plate tectonics was in its infancy, and it help provide tremendous support for the new theory.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3018/pdf/fs2014-3018.pdf says in part:
If CH4 can be blamed for a 30 foot drop, how can there be a 36 foot uplift? Subduction zone release makes so much more sense.
The deep earth release CH4 explains why there are earthquakes that originate at 40km and deeper in the earth. The mantel is hot and plastic below around 20km therefore there is no method for stress to build up at great depths.
The fossil theory of CH4 cannot explain why there is sudden release of massive amounts of CH4 from the earth. What suddenly change to cause the release of CH4? What is the biological source to create the CH4 deposit, deep in the ocean? Note the marine environment is very efficient, only 7% of dead biological material makes it to the ocean floor. There is no sunlight deep in the ocean.
The abiotic explanation is the earth’s liquid core is gradually solidifying which causes super high pressure CH4 to be extrude from the core of the earth. There is therefore a large continual source of CH4 moving into mantel, a portion of which continually moves into the atmosphere.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bermuda-triangle-mystery-solved-by-enormous-gas-blowouts-ocean-floor-1549223
The same CH4 release caused the Mississippi, New Madrid earthquake.
http://www.new-madrid.mo.us/index.aspx?nid=132
If the mantle is hot and plastic, then there is no mechanism for sudden releases of CH4.
In reply to
MarkW
April 14, 2016 at 10:03 am
If the mantle is hot and plastic, then there is no mechanism for sudden releases of CH4.
William,
The liquid high pressure CH4 breaks through to the surface of the planet which causes a sudden release of pressure in the deep earth. See article concerning the finding of massive blow outs on the surface of the ocean.
Very instructive article about methane that teaches that on our planet this gas is not mainly the result of biochemical processes of degradation of biological materials, as ecologists and ignorant people are believing but is intrinsically present in huge amounts since billions years in the Earth’s core.
Therefore, knowing that the crust may release at every moment huge amounts of this gas (without we humans, can even notice it), we may wonder if this very efficient greenhouse gas isn’t another big component of the natural variability of the climate since as soon it is released it begins decaying into CO2 and disappears within a few decades.
Anyways it is obvious that we have absolutely no control knob on the methane concentrations in the atmosphere like some climate activists are boasting we have.
Jack,
Part of CH4 may be abiotic (as far as I have read not at all in the earth’s core, as it is produced in the mantle), but most is from biogenic origin. As in William’s story oil and coal are from abiotic origin: that is complete nonsense. One can see the imprints of leaves in coal of the plants where the coal was made of.
Fact is that in the previous warmer interglacial (the Eemian of ~110,000 years ago) methane levels were ~700 ppbv, the same in this interglacial until ~1750, but nowadays around 1800 ppbv. The difference is caused by human emissions, as is clear from the increase over the past centuries:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_ch4.jpg
Its effect on temperature is probably not even measurable…
So..earth farts?
This is the kind of pollution that I find the worst – the internet is getting clogged with it. We have turned loose the infinite number of monkeys but none have replicated a Shakespearean play and will never do so. William, calm down. Because its in print doesn’t necessarily mean it’s about reality. Indeed, most often the reverse is true.
Another cult of CAGW paradigm pusher.
We are not going to run out of hydrocarbons to burn. The continents float on massive deep deposits of CH4 that has been extruded from the liquid core of the planet as it solidifies. The slow release of CH4 explains why the ocean volume has increased over time and explains why the early super strong solar winds did not remove all of the water from the earth’s atmosphere.
There are massive amounts of ‘natural’ gas (CH4) which are now accessible via deep drilling (20,000 feet) techniques.
See Carnegie Institute of Sciences Deep Carbon Workshop presentations if you interested in this subject.
https://www.gl.ciw.edu/workshops/sloan_deep_carbon_workshop_may_2008
Salby is correct the majority of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 (Salby’s calculation using two independent analysis techniques is that at most 33% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to anthropogenic sources) is due to natural causes, not anthropogenic emission.
I see the cult of CAGW has no answer to the piles and piles of anomalies and paradoxes concerning the fossil fuel urban legend.
The Thomas Gold/Russia/Ukraine deep earth theory explains why: 70% of the planet is covered in water, provides the reason why there are massive concentration of hydrocarbon such as the 1.2 Trillion barrel heavy oil concentration in the Canadian province of Alberta (deep source of CH4 provides the pressure to push the CH4 through the mantel picking up heavy metals during the flowing process, the puzzle with the biological theory is why the massive concentration, what is source of the pressure and so on. Deep earth micro organisms eat the methane converting it to heavy oil and leaving biological residue), the reason why Saudi Arabia was 25% of the world’s oil with a single field that has 50% of their total, explains why the solar wind has not stripped off water from the planet (i.e. CH4 is continually released from planet core which disassociates to form H2O and CO2), explains the composition of the atmosphere, explains why the atmosphere C12/C13 has remained constant with geological time (there is constant new source of high C12 from the core contained in CH4.)
http://www.rense.com/general63/refil.htm
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/focus
There have been massive CH4 fields found in Canada, with deep drilling techniques.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bc-emerges-as-major-natural-gas-player/article1247539/
http://www.offshore-mag.com/articles/print/volume-55/issue-4/news/general-interest/middle-east-geology-why-the-middle-east-fields-may-produce-oil-forever.html
Deep Earth CH4 hypothesis explains super, super large oil deposits and natural gas deposits. See Qatar.
The deep earth hypothesis can explain why Saudi Arabia has 25% of the planet’s oil reserves half of which is contained in only eight fields. Half of Saudi Arabia production comes from a single field the Ghawar.
Some of the basic observations Gold has that provides support for the abiotic origin of natural gas, crude oil, and ‘natural’ gas.
P.S. I see the cult of CAGW never responses to the paradoxes and anomalies that the fossil theory cannot explain. What happen to ‘peak’ oil which is always around the corner?
William, you obviously write scads more than you read if you’ve identified me as “a CAGW paradigm pusher”. I am a geologist and an engineer and I can tell you unequivocally that what you are wasting your time on is a very fringe belief indeed, one that seems to excite people outside the industry more than those within it.
Now, very often what we have in these controversies (like CAGW for example) is a partial truth in competing claims, but zealots go holus bolus into the brave new stuff and never look back. I would reserve sensible judgement on this methane coming all the way from the core – this is speculation without a mote of evidence. Organic material on the sea floor entering subduction zones is certainly possible, but these tight conditions are more likely to scrape the mud off on the upper lip so even it is unlikely to be as big a contributor as you think.
In making me a CAGW pusher, I presume you are trying to tell me that this makes methane/oil “renewable”. Well, in the same sense coal is also renewable (if we stop draining the swamps) but the human race may have disappeared before it becomes coal again. The race might have to disappear to ensure enormous boggy forests are left alone to do this job. Re oil, I don’t believe the reservoirs produced 150 year ago have been noticeably filling up again although better methods have been able to squeeze out more of what is there. Get a grip William and at least chop your posts down about 80-90% to make it readable.
Land falls after an earthquake in a subduction zone because it was formerly being buckled by the pressure generated by the fault. When the pressure is removed, the buckle goes away.
Please learn some basic geography and stop embarrassing yourself.
Howdy Mark.
Any response to the piles and piles of above anomalies?
Or is name calling all you have?
P.S. The Thailand tsunami was created by a 500 km^2 area fall (about 10 m) in ocean floor. No subduction zone. Of course the Madri Missippi massive natural gas release occurred in the centre of a continent.
You cult of CAGW guys are amazing. You are 100% scientifically incorrect. I can and will in my own thread present 20 of the easiest to understand observations that support the CH4 is extruded from the liquid core as it solidifies theory vs the late veneer comet theory which is what the fossil theory/Bern model is based on.
William Astley
..
The 2004 “Thailand tsunami” was caused by an undersea megathrust earthquake was caused when the Indian Plate was subducted by the Burma Plate.
..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_and_tsunami
What I said is correct in terms of ocean floor falling. There was a series of articles discussing why the ocean floor fell and the extraordinary deep source of the earth quake.
Further support that deep released earth CH4 is associated with thrust type earthquakes and is the cause of very deep earth quakes where there is no thrust zone.
There are multiple observations where the deep CH4 theory is the only explanation. The following is a super deep earthquake where there is no thrust zone.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150609-mystery-quake-among-deepest-known
Well, one half or side of the land would, wouldn’t it? Since it’s subduction, the other affected half would have to rise.
Is it not the case that the absorption spectrum of methane overlaps heavily with that of water vapour? Given the dominance of water in the atmosphere, the impact of methane – in terms of potential warming – is reduced dramatically.
Biofuels are certainly borderline as an energy source. So I essentially agree with this essay, despite it’s a bit ranty.
However:
And so it is. This is because it is so rare in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is less potent because adding more of the same gas largely absorbs outgoing IR that would often have been absorbed by another carbon dioxide molecule a little higher in the atmosphere.
No, governments don’t try to bankrupt companies. They try to get re-elected. Bankrupting companies is counterproductive.
Not think about the carbon cycle. Where did the carbon come from for the biofuel compared to the fossil fuel?
If you got “the atmosphere when the plant that is the basis of the fuel was growing” and “the atmosphere 200 million years ago in the carboniferous era, when the plant is the basis of the fuel was growing”, well done. Give yourself a prize.
Now can you see why one affects current carbon dioxide levels in that atmosphere, and the other one doesn’t?
Good.
“No, governments don’t try to bankrupt companies. They try to get re-elected. Bankrupting companies is counterproductive.”
Disingenuous nonsense. Clinton promising to close down coal, and her only option is regulation and bankruptcy, Peabody just did go under. Obama has been waging a war too. “Exxonknew”.
What on earth are you talking about?
“And so it is. This is because it is so rare in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is less potent because adding more of the same gas largely absorbs outgoing IR that would often have been absorbed by another carbon dioxide molecule a little higher in the atmosphere.”
Thank your for admitting saturation is already occurring. NASA said this in 1970
Um, no.
People in government like to get re-elected. It’s their main thing.
Economic recession is bad for the elected government. What they want is happy little constituents.
Not for its own sake.
Yes they did. And they do. But Obama open up a lot of ocean for drilling. And oil gets a lot of tax breaks, especially exploration.
The response to an increase in a greenhouse gas certainly is approximately logarithmic. About 3°C per doubling for CO₂.
“Saturation” implies that there’s not more warming for additional adding of CO₂. that won’t happen until well above the CO₂ toxicity concentration for humans.
“Yes they did. And they do”
BullS**t…… Nobody knows,, its just an unproven hypothesis, with basically ZERO evidence to back it.
Yes, Exxon probably knew that the Greens were mouthing off about it.. but who really cared back then.
Come to think of it……..
Who really cares now, except for votes they think they can milk out of the feely- touchy agenda.
Maybe you’ve missed the evidence. About 97% of climatologists are convinced by the evidence. Either you or all them are mistaken.
In July 1977, Exxon’s senior scientist James Black told the company’s management committee:
There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels… present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.
Which the scientific community knew at that time, but there was (and is) a large disingenuous push to claim that there is no such general scientific agreement.
At the time of the Paris talks, about 54% of the world would have said it was a very serious problem.
But that was before the last three months, the recent finding that models are underestimating warming, and this years unseasonably early start to the melt in Greenland
And of course ecologists, philanthropists and economists are concerned.
Think of it like this. Climate sensitivity is expressed as a warming per doubling of gas concentration. To double CO2 we need to add several hundred ppm. To double methane we need to add 1.7ppm. Therefore methane will have a much greater effect per ppm than carbon dioxide, even if it has a lower sensitivity overall.
seth,
The response to an increase in a greenhouse gas certainly is approximately logarithmic. About 3°C per doubling for CO₂.
The physical response for a CO2 doubling is around 1°C, not 3°C, based on measured IR absorption in a 1996 “standard” atmosphere of clouds and rain. Climate models make average 3°C of it, as these include a lot of positive feedbacks which in reality don’t exist: water vapor (no “hot spot” in the upper troposphere of the tropics), clouds (reverse of the models), etc… Real warming, even including the recent El Niño, are half the warming as “projected” by the models.
Models are not reality. If the models don’t reflect reality, the assumptions underlying the models are wrong and the models have zero value.
About 97% of climatologists are convinced by the evidence. Either you or all them are mistaken.
If you believe in the myth of the 97%, then you aren’t able to distinguish between what is really known by scientists and what is fabricated by activists… What is the evidence? The earth has warmed since the LIA (~1600). CO2 has increased significantly for any effect mainly since ~1950, thanks to humans. Half of the warming was before 1950 and most scientists (around 2/3) believe that humans are responsible for at least half of it since then. Thus about 1/4 of the warming or 0.2-0,3°C since 1600 may be human. That is all…
Time frames matter. Plus plausible deniability.
If the damage doesn’t happen until after the politician leaves office, then politically the damage doesn’t matter.
Beyond that if the politician can find someone else to blame for the damage the politician caused, then one again the damage doesn’t matter politically.
Finally, if the politician can gather sufficient donations in exchange for activities that damage the economy, then the politician will go ahead with damaging activities.
You really need to get out and study the real world. It’s not all black and white, single cause, single affect stuff.
Peabody’s problem was lousy timing of an expansion attempt; the government was not a factor.
“….Now can you see why one affects current carbon dioxide levels in that atmosphere, and the other one doesn’t?…”
Seth, you should tone down your sarcasm. CO2 reduction by corn based biofuel is approximately 20% based on the same amount of energy flow. (in the other words,it introduces about 20% of solar energy into the final product.)
It is a crime against humanity, similar to burning corn in locomotives as was the case during the great depression. (read Steinbeck’s book Grapes of Wrath)
Seth, then we dare not make methane rarer in the atmosphere. Am I right?
It has everything to do with hogtying and bankrupting US fossil fuel companies, controlling industrial activities and people’s living standards – and mandating a costly transition to renewable energy, while rewarding the hordes of scientists, activists and industrialists who benefit from the $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Crisis, Inc. money train.
“No, governments don’t try to bankrupt companies. They try to get re-elected. Bankrupting companies is
counterproductivejust an added Socialist benefit.”Are you trying to add cover for Obama and the watermelons or are you ignorant?
That should help you understand.
Seth: “No, governments don’t try to bankrupt companies. They try to get re-elected. Bankrupting companies is counterproductive.”
Leftists hacks try to destroy companies and industries all the time….
Obviously it’s counterproductive for Leftist’s to destroy industries and jobs, but Leftists couldn’t care less about the economic consequences as their primary desire is to stay in power and to get as many people as possible on the government dole becuase it assures their votes to keep the government largess flowing… There will always be more people on the dole than entrepreneurs running corporations… It’s a numbers game..
Leftists will, of course, take $billions of political “donations” from corporations in exchange for special favors in the future, with the understanding that politicians can trash them in public for populist posturing…
It’s all a big game of smoke and mirrors with political and Left-leaning corporate elites running the show…
The fact is methane is not at dangerous levels, it is not going to be at dangerous levels for the foreseeable century or two, and that’s without natural changes like a cold snap in the next 2 centuries that would hammer out some of the natural sources that are an much larger than human contribution, like termites, who also emit significantly larger amounts of CO2 than humans.
It’s pure scaremongering to push policy.
On the other hand, it’s a greenhouse gas, and greenhouse gasses are at dangerous levels.
In the past, CO2 has been 20 times higher than it is today and, surprise, surprise, the Earth didn’t melt and plant and animal life increased,,You are correct about CO2 being at a dangerous level…dangerously LOW !!!
No they aren’t. Nothing is dangerous about them.
No they aren’t at dangerous levels. If anything they are at levels that are starving the plant life for which we ALL depend upon for our very survival. There is no runaway greenhouse effect–ooo there’s a blast from the past–on Earth because our planet is NOT VENUS!!! Won’t be Venus and can not be Venus–why? because we are the 3rd rock from the sun, not the 2nd.
Once again Seth, the geologic history of the earth disproves your theory. In the geologic past your ‘dangerous’ so-called greenhouse gasses, CO2 and methane, were many times more abundant in the atmosphere. Life flourished; it was not catastrophic. It was generally warmer, but sometimes colder. It has been cooling rapidly (geologically speaking) for several million years now.
The idea that humans can now control the climate by twiddling a couple of trace gas control knobs is purely political. And the scientists who promote it are in thrall to the politician’s money.
This is an example of the absurdity that warmists trot out,pushing the idea that trace gases with limited IR absorption,absorbing small amount of IR energy is somehow capable of overcoming much larger H20 effects in its various forms. In the tropical regions CO2 and CH4 are dominated by Water Vapor to the point of its irrelevancy, it is also where the main source of atmosphere warming is located.
The much talked about “Hot Spot” still fails to show up despite your silly claim that CH4 is at “dangerous levels”, while outgoing long wave energy at least double the postulated warm forcing of your two gases you whine about. It has been at least 15 years now that warmists have pushed the “hot spot” idea yet still doesn’t show up at all.
Again from here, http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2012/05/the-science-of-why-the-theory-of-global-warming-is-incorrect/ is this that warmists continually ignore or overlook at how weak your two gases are in warming the planet:
“If the Earth were to warm by 1.1 °C, the amount of energy lost would be almost 4 W/m2 greater than what it lost in 1984. If the Earth were to warm by 3.0 °C which is what is predicted by a doubling of CO2, then the amount of energy lost would be > 10 W/m2 the energy loss that existed in 1984.
The science of this is very clear. The rate at which the Earth loses energy will increase at more than twice the rate that the theoretical CO2 forcing is capable of causing warming to take place. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot stop the Earth from losing more energy if it warms up…”
This has been known for a while now,yet warmists continue to advocate an impossible idea that CH4 and CO2 can cause run away warming.
I agree SunsetTommy, it hasn’t in the past 4.5 billion years, so why would it start now !! Both have been higher, while temps were lower and both have been lower while temps were higher ! If anything, CO2 is dangerously low !
Not even close to being true, but who cares when their is an economy to destroy.
If you believe 400 ppm CO2 is dangerous, then you must also explain how C3 plant stomata are still able to utilize ~1200 ppm of CO2 in photosynthesis. C3 plants either evolved to do that over millions of years of dangerous levels or it was recent divine intervention based on whim. Which solution do you choose?
seth says:
On the other hand, it’s a greenhouse gas, and greenhouse gasses are at dangerous levels.
You are wrong as usual, seth. Who feeds you your misinformation? John Cook? Hotwhopper?
Current CO2 levels are about as low as they’ve ever been in geologic history:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
(click in chart to embiggen)
The biosphere needs much more CO2, not less.
EVERY scary claim made by the alarmist cult has turned out to be exactly wrong; backward. Seth’s false assertion is just one example of many.
“….There’s another deep, dark secret about biofuels. Somebody needs to tell Obama, McCarthy, Clinton, Sanders and their army of “green” supporters that biofuels are hydrocarbons! They are composed of carbon and hydrogen, though in less complex molecular structures than what we pull out of the ground – which means we get less energy per gallon. And when we burn them, they release carbon dioxide!…?
But the growing the crop feed stock is absorbing the same amount, so it is CO2 neutral, so they say.
On over all energy balance, biofuels bring approximately 20% of solar energy into the final product. I agree with the commenters above that corn based ethanol is a crime against humanity and environment.
I really think that congress should require all unelected government officials to conduct all their business in person and only be allowed to travel by train, animal drawn wagon, or a sailing ship. These rules would greatly reduce carbon emissions due to excess government travel expenditures and really help to reduce global warming. All the hot air and exhaust gas would be limited to very small areas.
Ok, lets get into the logistics shall we?
“That means we would need to plant an additional 120 million acres, 480 million acres in all, just to replace gasoline. That’s equal to Alaska, California and West Virginia combined!”
So…my question is: just WHO is going to farm it? Nevermind the water component for the moment; who is going to farm that much corn for ethanol? And what are THEY going to eat? Can’t be the bugs because those will all be necessary to pollinate the vast amount of corn crops and aerate the soil. So that leaves what exactly to eat? Certainly not any other crops that might be essential to life–you know that pesky food thing we have to consume because all available farming land will be given over to make fuel.
Seriously. Why is it with this type of alarmist rhetoric we never get any logistics on how it is going to work? Oh wait, that comes later doesn’t it–because the first part of this new world order is to establish the right of the rulers to demand obedience.
As for reducing the amount of methane in the atmosphere–that’s an easy solution, tell ships to stay out of the Bermuda Triangle–lest they tempt the ocean to unleash it’s methane bubbles and sink them with no trace. If there are no ships, there is no temptation. 🙂
While it’s nice that there are plenty of people here willing to point out the basic science mistakes in Dreissen’s essay, why am I the first to do so at cfact.org?
..Well what did you think all those “illegals” are for ??
Good question deserve good answers.
Who: Enviros and especially Bernie Sanders type supporters of democratic socialism. We will collectivize them and put them on “community farms”.
What will they eat: A quick list produced this list – cutworms, seed-corn maggot, southern corn rootworm, corn wireworm, corn leaf aphid, corn flea beetle, corn earworm, fall armyworm, european corn borer, corn sap beetle, and japanese beatles. No Problem, glad I could help.
Methane, shmethan. The amounts are too small to be of consequence.
Ric says,
==========================
“While it’s nice that there are plenty of people here willing to point out the basic science mistakes in Dreissen’s essay, why am I the first to do so at cfact.org?”
===========================
Thanks for venturing into such areas. The more rational educated voices commenting on alarmist sites the better.
Hoo- boy. Object lesson here in how not to construct an argument against the completely bogus and mendacious claims of the Climate Liars. Don’t trot out, and most certainly don’t start off with the weakest argument, which in this case is the % argument, which, as one of the more astute (which isn’t saying much) trolls here pointed out, is irrelevent. The problem is, that it gives them an “in” (they think) to trot out their long-debunked and totally illogical arguments. We have to do better than that. The arguments against their bogus methane-scare arguments is basically the same as the ones against their bogus CO2 claims, times ten. The connection between the brief, completely unremarkable warming we experienced in the 80’s and 90’s and man’s CO2 output has never been made, despite their emotion-laden, ardent desires for it to have done so. For them to then trot out the far less significant “greenhouse gas” methane, hoping to ride in on the coattails of their CO2 monster is laughably idiotic, and yet one more example of their increasing desperation.
I don’t bother arguing about the consensus percentage baloney,because there are better ways to attack the consensus fallacy.
I point out the consensus errors that have set back science research and caused deaths,sometimes many deaths due to the reliance on consensus arguments that hang onto a dead end in an idea or belief. Sometimes I just point out the superiority of the basic “Scientific Method” ideal over the empty consensus rhetoric to show what good science is really about.
People need to learn to know what good science research looks like.
There is an 800 pound gorilla lurking in the biofuel debate – basing critical energy supplies on an agricultural monoculture.
Up until the 1950s, bananas were larger and more delicious than the pale shadows that are imported today. The United Fruit Company planted vast areas of the tropics with the one-best-variety, out of thousands. Along came a virus and wiped out the entire industry in a couple of years. You can still visit the ghost towns and chat with the old-timers whose careers and lives were left in the dust.
History is replete with the failure of monoculture crops – one might say that nature abhors a monoculture.
So, massive conversion to biofuels is nothing short of racial suicide, even loonier than basing energy supplies on the very weather and climate that they claim is changing unpredictably.
Good subject to call out the trolls–yes, I mean you Seth. What part of “the IPCC mocels do not reflect reality” is not understood?
The purpose of the new methane arguments is to continue the effort to create an energy shortage so that the photo op of dragging frozen grandmas from the ghetto can be aired ad nauseum.The corrupt central government authorities despise the energy infrastucture in the US because they have been unable to inject their largesse as they have in healthcare, banking, auto industry, et al and there is a vast amount of theft that as yet is left untapped that they can exploit as they concentrate more authority over the energy sector. The collapse of the coal industry using specious arguments has succuessfully removed reliable electrical power generation, but the advent of the natural gas replacement has delayed the shortages they envisioned. Therefore the powers have ramped up the fallacious arguments concerning hydraulic fracturing dangers and the realtively new efforts to reduce methane. One cannnot drill and complete wells in the oil and gas fields without some random escape of methane. As the EPA prepares new rules to require zero methane emissions the cost will effectively reduce the expansion of the hydrocarbon fuels necessary to make up for the destruction of coal fired electrical power.
I can envision the senatorial show trials in order to deny government responsibility preordained to reach the conclusion that once again capitalism has failed and the only viable solution is to have the government take it over.
Where to start….
In George Washington’s day, Doctors, by consensus thought that blood letting let out
the “Bad Humors”, so Washington was bled four times on the day he died, the last
was reported to be 18 ozs.
But for “Consensus” , Washington might still be alive today. /S
The US government’s own studies say that ethanol has 49% of the BTUs in gasoline.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/fuel_comparison_chart.pdf
The BTU content is the source of mileage.
KIWIROB,
Only small minds say that the “discussion is over.”
I have proved that natural gas perks up all around the earth, but it is not evenly
distributed Up welling natural gas, not just methane, provides the energy which
microbes use to make upland topsoil rich.
Methane was part of the earth”s original atmosphere, and CO2 was a much larger
part of the atmosphere than it is today.
http://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/02_02_01.html
Hydrocarbons have always perked out of the earth, been oxidized, and subsequently
been deposited in layers at the bottom of the ocean. Layers of carbonaceous rock
200+ million years of layers of it can be seen in a trip down the Grand Canyon
in the U. S.
This rock is repossessed by tectonic action with heat, pressure, and minerals
available at great depth, to again become hydrocarbons which then rise, some
to be modified to larger molecules. The earth should be thought of as both
a hydrocarbon distillery and a hydrocarbon cracker.
The article above, attributing the increase in atmospheric methane to Agriculture
is partially correct. Converting undisturbed land area to agriculture disturbs
the largely balanced native culture, which tends to be in balance with the
amount of energy (from natural gas) available.
Soil freezing in winter substantially blocks the rise of the up welling gas, and
thawing allows a burst of to rise unoxidized to the atmosphere. Substantial amounts
of moisture also forces the gas to rise faster than it can be oxidized, causing
the bursts of hydrocarbons seen in the atmosphere.
The USEPA says that upland soil is a sink for methane. It is not. The gas which
they find in the topsoil is up-welling from below. Methane, introduced to the
atmosphere, rises. The scientists who test soil only test for a combustible gas,
and finding one, call it methane.
Studies which have used a gas chronograph have found the other components
of natural gas.
It is accepted science that the outer planets have hydrocarbons in their atmosphere
and Titan has lakes of the stuff.
All of the extra-solar system planets which have had their atmospheres analyzed
have been found to have hydrocarbons in their atmospheres.
I think, as do others, that up-welling hydrocarbons at tectonic plate margins,
“lubricate” or facilitate slippage. In the case of the San Andreas fault, I believe
that the vast amount of hydrocarbons removed from that area have reduced
the smaller quakes which should have been happening, but the forces are
accumulating.
I further believe that deep gas wells on the New Madrid fault might prevent the
next big quake.
“Jerry Henson April 14, 2016 at 8:06 am
“…consensus thought that blood letting…”
Blood letting is the only “treatment” available today for people who suffer from haemochromatosis.
Quote from the post above:
“U.S. ethanol production alone requires all the corn grown on an area the size of Iowa (36 million acres), and it makes up only 10% of the country’s E10 gasoline blends. Replacing all gasoline with ethanol from corn, sorghum or still-illusory switchgrass would therefore require ten Iowas: 360 million acres. But there is one other critical factor: ethanol has one-third less energy per gallon than pure gasoline.
That means we would need to plant an additional 120 million acres, 480 million acres in all, just to replace gasoline. That’s equal to Alaska, California and West Virginia combined!
Replacing all the liquid petroleum we use annually (291 billion gallons) would require twice as much land – some 45% of all the land in the United States: six times more land than we currently have under cultivation for all cereal crops – plowing even marginal croplands, deserts, forests and grasslands…….”
It is my understanding from what I’ve read online that coal can be made into a type of fuel (alcohol fuel?) known as butanol which has about 92% of the energy content of gasoline. I recall a story I read many years ago which claims that butanol can be blended in with gasoline at any ratio (of butanol to gasoline) with little to no alterations needed to a car’s or truck’s fuel system.
I don’t know if the economics of a project like this would make sense right now with crude oil and gasoline as inexpensive as they are. If greenies however are determined to shut down coal fuelled power plants, then coal to butanol could possibly be looked at as an alternative to ethanol. If the economics are there, this would make sense to me despite the greenies opposition to it because we are producing a fuel domestically with a higher energy content and are preserving all those jobs in the coal industry. I have little doubt that communities that depend on the coal industry are in serious danger of dying out right now.
No doubt the corn farmers won’t like it if the ethanol mandate is replaced with butanol from coal. However, if the enthanol mandate is indeed driving up food costs as claimed, the morality of it should rightfully be questioned and alternatives given serious consideration.
CD in Wisconsin,
The main route from coal to liquid fuels (mainly diesel oil) is the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, where coal is transformed into a host of hydrocarbons. See Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
Germany used it in WWII by lack of oil supply and lots of coal. The same for South Africa, when they were banned from the markets for their Apartheid policy. They then started the Sasol company, which still is the largest company in the world to use that type of synthesis, be it that they have changed from coal (only economical from open pit mines) to natural gas as feedstock, nowadays a lot cheaper:
http://www.sasol.com/about-sasol/company-profile/overview
Not only for diesel oil, but also feedstock for a lot of chemicals like plastics.
I don’t think the greens would be happy with coal as feedstock… Only biomass as feedstock may be allowed, but then we are back to the primary problem: the area of land you need to plant all these trees…
Reading above the depth of scientific knowledge expressed maybe someone can advise on this query.
Hydrogen fuel derived from methane is becoming a popular force as a renewable. When hydrogen burns water vapour is produced. But water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Would this be significant or not?
spen,
Not very significant: it has a temperature limited maximum in air and simply rains out within a few days if the limit is exceeded, which is always the case when temperature drops in the energy (and water vapor) path of air (and water) from the equator to poles… Locally it may give a little more precipitation, but that is about all.
Of course, as long as hydrogen is made from methane, it is not renewable, despite all propaganda for hydrogen cars and busses (we have a few of the latter here on certain lines). Only if they use either hydrogen as byproduct from chlorine electrolyzes (which is the case here) or from water electrolyzes fed by wind or solar, hydrogen is “sustainable”… I only wonder if the direct yield of batteries and electric motors is not better that via hydrogen and fuel cells… Direct use of natural gas in a motor seems to me a lot better too than first converting it into hydrogen…
In the Southeast U.S., 100-year old trees are cut with fossil-fueled engines, pelletized using electrical energy from the grid, shipped in the most polluting fossil-fueled vehicles on earth to the U.K., and burned to produce more atmospheric CO2 than the coal they replace — a process financed through a voodoo-ish system of “gusher-up economics.”
The degree to which this process reduces dangerous methane emissions does not appear to have been documented.
I think this is a rather foolish article.
To claim that a certain substance must be harmless because it constitutes only 1.7 parts per million is pretty senseless. There are plenty of stuffs around that are very harmful in much lower concentrations than that. There is no point whatsoever in telling how many percentage of the atmosphere the methane level amounts to. The important thing is that the concentration is increasing.
Then 71% comes from manmade emissions, I think that is pretty much.
Inconvenient facts?
Sorry, as I see it, the most inconvenient here is that this silly article has been published.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen,
I do agree that using small concentrations as argument doesn’t make sense. Neither does the argument that 71% comes from human emissions.
The only real argument is if that causes harm. Which is easily answered: not at all. Even not if it increased a tenfold as was the case in the far history of this planet…
Jan,
“To claim that a certain substance must be harmless because it constitutes only 1.7 parts per million is pretty senseless.”
That would depend on what the certain substance was, don’t you think?
“There are plenty of stuffs around that are very harmful in much lower concentrations than that.”
And plenty more that are not harmful at greater concentrations, right?
“There is no point whatsoever in telling how many percentage of the atmosphere the methane level amounts to..”
It does if you are trying to understand what effect methane has on global temps, obviously . .
“The important thing is that the concentration is increasing.”
Why would that be important unless a tiny bit is harmful? Your reasoning isn’t even circular ; )
John
He does not make any effort to understand what effect the methane has. His only argument is that it must be harmless since it has so low concentration.
The irony is however, that the low concentration is exactly what makes methane a more potent greenhouse gas.
Opposed to CO2, which is 200 times as abundant as methane, and therefore has a more saturated absorption spectrum, the methane spectrum is not close to being saturated.
The greenhouse effect of methane therefore increases linearly with concentration, not logarithmically as CO2.
/Jan
Ferdinand
Very few issues in climate science is easily answered, and this is certainly not one either.
Do not think climate science is easy and have obvious answers. The science in not settled.
/Jan
“He does not make any effort to understand what effect the methane has. His only argument is that it must be harmless since it has so low concentration.”
He didn’t say it must be harmless . . YOU injected that.
He stressed that it’s an infinitesimal component of the atmosphere, so naturally it’s unlikely to cause significant warming . . and logically speaking that’s a very strong argument all by itself. Certainly enough to begin an essay dealing with economic/socialist matters. It’s not a scientific paper, attempting to PROVE methane is not going to cause a global heat-death spiral for goodness sake . .
Ferdinand says:
The only real argument is if that causes harm. Which is easily answered: not at all.
That argument and answer also applies to human-emitted CO2.
Jan Kjetil Andersen,
As far as I know, the only “harm” from increased CH4 (and CO2 – as dbstealey reminded me) is from an increased temperature. In all known periods of the earth’s existence, once it cooled sufficiently down to sustain life, warmer periods were beneficial for life, colder periods did harm life on earth.
Neither the 30% increase of CO2 or the CH4 doubling has had any negative effect – until now. All negative effects are from computer models which all fail to follow the real increase in temperature, which is less than half the “projections” and thus the alleged negative consequences…
Ferdinand, if I understand you correctly you agree with me in that using the small concentration as an argument make no sense at all.
You may also agree that the contribution to global warming from Methane is probably not negligible.
But you say that we should not worry for this because global warming is good, cooling is bad
If I have I got your position correct, I can say that we agree on the first two and I think the third topic is so big that it should be discussed in an article aimed specifically to that.
/Jan
The article states that methane is 1.7 parts per million.
You state above “To claim that a certain substance must be harmless because it constitutes only 1.7 parts per million is pretty senseless. There are plenty of stuffs around that are very harmful in much lower concentrations than that. ”
I’m not saying you’re wrong but I don’t know of any. Can you name a few?
John
There I disagree with you. Methane is more potent than CO2 just because it is in small amount.
Besides, other even more potent greenhouse gases are found in much smaller concentrations than Methane. IPCC lists 19 long lived greenhouse gases in AR5. Sixteen of those are in concentrations of less than one thousandth of the methane concentration.
Table 2.1 https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
/Jan
Thall:
Well, for a starter, that concentration of free morphine in your bloodstream would certainly kill you.
That level of heavy metals in your food would be very harmful to your health.
If we go to climate science, IPCC lists 19 long lived greenhouse gases in AR5. Sixteen of those are in concentrations of less than one thousandth of the methane concentration.
Table 2.1 https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
(Units are PPT for all other than CO2, CH4, and N20)
/Jan
(Myself)~ “He stressed that it’s an infinitesimal component of the atmosphere, so naturally it’s unlikely to cause significant warming . . and logically speaking that’s a very strong argument all by itself ”
(You) ~ “There I disagree with you.”
Where is this “there”? I don’t think you understand, I spoke of logic, not what is necessarily true in an ultimate sense. If you disagree that it is logical to think it unlikely that a minuscule component of the atmosphere will have a significant effect on global temps, we have no basis upon which to discuss these matters.
“Methane is more potent than CO2 just because it is in small amount.”
Sorry, double-talk is not my native tongue ; )
John:
I don’t think small amount is a good argument for having a small impact. As I said, many elements are very harmful in smaller amount than the atmospheric methane concentration.
It is not double talk. The issue is that when a greenhouse gas constitute a large part of the atmosphere, it will not make so much difference to add more. Because methane is a small component of the atmosphere, each part added have more effect than it would have if methane already was more abundant.
You can for instance compare it to Tetrafluoromethane (CF4). CF4 constitute only 0.079 PPB. That means that methane is 22 000 times more abundant in the atmosphere than CF4. One part of CF4 in the atmosphere give a greenhouse effect 27 times greater than one part of methane, and 7000 times more than one part of CO2.
/Jan
Jan, the post was not about a very small part of the atmosphere in isolation. The clear message was that the warming properties of methane are not a concern because there is so little of it, that even doubling or tripling it will have very little warming affect. It has zero to do with poisons.
You yourself said, “You may also agree that the contribution to global warming from Methane is probably not negligible.” Yet if we had 400 PPM methane it would be a problem. Just because some things are deadly in low concentration, it does not mean other things are not harmless in low concentration and harmful in higher concentration.. Context is everything, and you missed the context.
“As I said, many elements are very harmful in smaller amount than the atmospheric methane concentration. ”
The subject is warming of the planet, sir. The question is likelihood, not mere possibility. Amount is obviously relevant to livelihood, and I have no interest in discussing complex matters with a person who can’t (or won’t) grasp that.
Concerning the greenhouse effect from well mixed gases, methane is the second biggest contributor after CO2. The current greenhouse effect caused by human emissions of methane is about one third of the same effect from CO2.
/Jan
“The important thing is that the concentration is increasing.”
It is only “important” in the fevered minds of Alarmists. The climate couldn’t care less, just as it doesn’t care about the increased CO2. No real-world effect has ever been shown.
In yet another appeal to ridicule, MarkW says:
“The desire to think yourself special because you have a revelation that others do not understand can be overwhelming to those who have nothing else going for them.”
===========
The desire to play armchair psychologist instead of dealing with the substance of a peer reviewed paper debunking the biological fable must be an overwhelming one for those feeble-minded folks who have nothing but faith and fallacies to support their anti-scientific belief in “fossil fuel.”
Why didn’t you address the content of the PNAS paper I referenced, Mark?
Is thermodynamics to hard for you?
Are you sure you want to pin your reputation to a theory that requires dead stuff to flow uphill spontaneously?
Just because a molecule contains carbon does not mean it captures heat energy.
Before you permit yourself to get all scare-defied over more methane being released into the atmosphere, and even if you buy into recent (since WWII) surface temperature rise being as a result of increased greenhouse gasses, do your research and find that methane is an irrelevant gas in the theoretical causes because of the limited bands of energy it can possibly absorb and from those two bands upon which it can act, it must share that potential with one more prevalent, which has already done the job almost completely in those bands leaving nothing much for methane to work upon. Those who promote gloom & doom from impending release of stores of methane wrongly assume the gas would have unlimited stores of energy upon which it could draw to heat the planet should that release occur. Therein lies the failure of this sub-theory even assuming such release is possible and imminent. There is no such pool of energy.
The energy beamed by the sun comes to Earth in the form of short waves, is absorbed by the planet, and some is transmitted back to space in the form of long waves in various bands of energy. Warmists’ Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory holds that greenhouse gasses intercept by absorption and transmit back to Earth a percentage of the long wave radiation energy in the form of kinetic heat in natural balance until humans destroy the balance by over supplying unnatural amounts of greenhouse gasses by which such process and added heat causes more of the principle greenhouse gas, water vapor, to be produced accelerating the process in an ever heightening loop of heating Gaia. Methane is a “greenhouse gas.” The misnamed process acts nothing like a greenhouse, BTW, and empirical measurements, the acid test of science, do not reflect water vapor increasing as required in proportion to CO₂ increases or even out of proportion. No increase of water vapor at all in fact has been measured among the several failures of the theory to be sustained by empirical measurement.
Methane (CH4) by its physical properties has only two narrow absorption bands at 3.3 microns and 7.5 microns in the overall broad electro-magnetic spectrum from which it can absorb energy. Theoretically, CH4 is 20 times more effective an absorber than CO2 – in those bands. However, CH4 is only 0.00017% (1.7 parts per million) of the atmosphere. Moreover, both of its bands occur at wavelengths where H2O is already absorbing virtually all energy. Because water vapor is much more plentiful in the atmosphere than methane (or any other GHG), H2O absorbs vastly more energy and is by far the most important greenhouse gas. On any given day, H2O is a percent or two of the atmosphere (1.0-2.0% or 5,882 to 11,764 times as prevalent as methane in the atmosphere, or 5882÷20=294.1 [or 588.4] multiple the absorber as methane); we call that humidity. Hence, any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O in the only radiation bands methane absorbs energy. Once the energy in a band of the spectrum has been sucked dry, no additional absorptive gas can absorb more. Painting a black window another coat will not keep out more light. In other words, the ratio of the percentages of water to methane is such that the effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O because the absorption of infrared energy in the bands of the spectrum affected by methane has already been saturated by H2O absorption. The amount of CH4 would have to increase 100-fold to make it comparable to H2O and even then it would no longer matter because water vapor has beat it to the punch.
There is not much ambient energy in those two little short, stray bands of the radiation spectrum to start with and most of that has already been worked over by H2O from time immemorial leaving only the scraps to poor CH4, which can never effect climate to any appreciable or worrisome amount. Because it absorbs energy in a laboratory does not mean it works that way in a chaotic atmosphere with other agents and processes present.
Learn more of what the science neophytes should have investigated before fearing methane, which is an irrelevant greenhouse gas (graphs, observed facts & all that tedious math kind of stuff) —
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/10/stop-the-devastation-of-peoples-lives-by-speculating-with-no-data-remembering-cattle-and-methane-emissions/
Methane is fine vehicle to instill fear, the politicians greatest ally, on an uninformed populace though. It is the rare person whose knowledge on the substance reaches even the level of understanding the stuff coming from their gas stove is raw methane…easy targets for manipulation.
Well said !! + 4 stars
The Cassini mission mapped Titan’s methane seas (the dark areas):
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/media/images/71714000/jpg/_71714327_untitled-1.jpg
http://en.es-static.us/upl/2014/08/Ligeia-Mare-and-Lake-Superior-v2-e1407950982339.jpg
There’s a lot of methane in the Solar System. Oceans of it. And we’re worrying about parts per billion?
Chalk up another climate scare that didn’t come true.
I believe Vegans are contributing more than their share of both methane and Co2 due to the massive amounts of plant material they eat causing lots more methane and Co2 to be released by burping and farting .
Make it illegal to be a vegan for the planets sake !
Don’t let William Astley see your methane seas – we will be getting reams and reams more than he already graces us with. He already has pegged me as a CAGW pusher, too, so you can see writes and copies more than he reads.
Gary Pearse,
You are no ‘CAGW pusher’. I’ve followed your comments here for years, and they are always rational, and make sense. It would be great if everyone were as rational.
I don’t have a dog in this particular fight. If I were to take a position, it would be the same as Ferdinand Engelbeen’s: some methane is abiotic, and some is the product of biologic activity. I don’t know what the ratio would be. But we know that biologic activity produces methane, and we know that methane is found in places with no known bio activity.
However, I strongly disagree with J.K. Andersen’s belief that methane is a problem at current (and projected) concentrations. It is always a specious argument to claim that some minuscule amount of morphine (for example) can kill, therefore other compounds must perforce act the same. Water can kill in small amounts, too. Put your face in 4″ of water and keep it there. That’s a killer, no?
The big picture is this: neither methane, nor CO2, nor the very minor global warming of the past century, nor any other alarmist scare has any validity. They were all wrong. There are no empirical measurements quantifying any global damage or harm from the rise of either methane, or CO2, or global T. Thus, per Occam’s Razor, the simple explanation is that those minor changes are “harmless”.
So let me turn the question around for Mr. Andersen, who made the conjecture that the rise in methane is dangerous. Thus, the onus is on you to support your conjecture with solid, credible evidence. Skeptics of your conjecture have nothing to prove.
As stated, the onus is on you, Mr. Andersen. What have you got?
Thank you for your well-written comment Mr. Stealy.
My intention was not to prove anything.
I just pointed out that I simply do not think that the author’s argument that small concentration means small impact, is a very good argument at all.
My main reason for this is that the IPCC’s AR5 report list 19 well-mixed greenhouse gases, and methane is the second most influential of those.
Furthermore, there is little doubt that human emissions have caused the rise in atmospheric methane; this is evident from Ferdinand Engelbeen’s curve above.
There is also little doubt that this increase give some increased greenhouse effect, and that the effect is approximately one third of the increased greenhouse effect due to the elevated CO2 level.
Whether this is dangerous or not is a very big question. Basically it depends on two factors; firstly, how big the climate sensitivity is, and secondly how much damage, if any, will rising temperatures make.
I think both of these factors are too big topics to start on that here, but we may discuss them later under articles which address each of these topics specifically
Best regards
/Jan
Jan;
“I just pointed out that I simply do not think that the author’s argument that small concentration means small impact, is a very good argument at all.”
If I said your argument is that a small amount means a large effect, I would distorting your position, right?
This is what you originally wrote;
“To claim that a certain substance must be harmful despite it constitutings only 1.7 parts per million is pretty senseless.”
He never claimed it “must be’ harmless, and if I said “Your claim that it must be harmful is senseless”, I would be a . . liar, right?
Oops, I got my quotes and misquotes mixed up ; ) This is what I wanted to say;
“To claim that a certain substance must be harmless despite it constituting only 1.7 parts per million is pretty senseless.”
He never claimed it “must be’ harmless, and if I said “Your claim that it must be harmful is senseless”, I would be a . . liar, right?
I think I have made my point
The author does not discuss the physics of methane in the atmosphere. His only argument is that since the concentration can be compared to a monetary amount of 17 cents versus 100 000 dollars, which we know is negligible; a chemical compound with the same concentration in a solution must also have negligible effect.
This is an utterly naive argument.
I am afraid that I cannot help those who still think that the author has a good argument, so I say thank you for the debate.
/Jan
JK Andersen,
If you can show any evidence of global damage or harm from methane, then you have a reasonable argument.
But so far, you seem to be arguing from emotion.
Liar,k
He did not make the claim you said he did.
This is the basic logic of the matter to me;
The smaller any given component of the atmosphere is, the less likely it is that component will have a significant effect on the whole.
The concept of it “must be” so, is just a straw man you introduced, ’cause all I see from him is the stressing of just how tiny this minuscule methane menace is . . Perhaps that bugs you, but that don’t make it illogical . . just the opposite I figure, slick ; )
I see now that Des writes above that the graph from the article was faked:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/13/methane-mendacity-and-madness/#comment-2192363
I am not sure that I will use the word “fake” myself, but one can question why the plot of the CH4 observations stop in 2011 right before the recent rapid growth up to 1840 ppb.
One can also ask where in the IPCC reports he has found the graphs of the alleged projections made by IPCC. I have not found any such detailed projections there.
When you refer to four reports and each of them has close to 2000 pages, I think it is reasonably to include page number in the reference; unless you do not want the readers to see for themselves of cause.
/Jan
I meant “of course”
… of course
/Jan