Guest eye-rolling by David Middleton
From the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America…
In unpublished paper, former White House climate adviser calls methane ‘irrelevant’ to climate
By Scott Waldman, E&E News Nov. 27, 2019 , 12:35 PMOriginally published by E&E News
A climate skeptic with ties to the White House is back—this time as the co-author of a new paper that could help the Trump administration roll back climate rules.
William Happer, an emeritus Princeton University physics professor, previously worked within the White House to conduct a hostile review of climate science. While that effort didn’t go far, Happer at the same time worked on research into methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
[…]
A summary of Happer’s latest research was released by the CO2 Coalition, the group he founded and on whose board he now serves, which claims that the world needs more carbon dioxide emissions to thrive. Happer’s latest research claims that “much of the concern over climate change and greenhouse gases comes from misunderstanding basic physics.” The paper lays out a case as to why methane emissions are not worrisome, and says proposals to regulate emissions therefore are not justified.
“Given the huge benefits of more CO2 to agriculture, to forestry, and to primary photosynthetic productivity in general, more CO2 is almost certainly benefitting the world,” the authors wrote. “And radiative effects of CH4 [methane] and N2O [nitrous oxide], another greenhouse gas produced by human activities, are so small that they are irrelevant to climate.”
Happer’s research was submitted to EPA by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry and the Koch network. In its EPA comments, the foundation argued that methane does not contribute to air pollution that harms public health.
The world’s leading science agencies have found that increased carbon dioxide emissions will reduce crop yields and crop health and increase heavy precipitation events that destroy vegetation, and that worsening droughts—as well as longer periods of more intense heat—will kill plants and threaten humanity.
[…]
Science! As in she blinded me with…
As frackingly stupid as this article is, I think this is the stupidest bit:
The world’s leading science agencies have found that increased carbon dioxide emissions will reduce crop yields and crop health and increase heavy precipitation events that destroy vegetation, and that worsening droughts—as well as longer periods of more intense heat—will kill plants and threaten humanity.
I don’t think a more vapid, empty-headed, falsehood-filled paragraph has ever been written by human beings, perhaps with one exception: The 1941 ultimatum delivered by Japanese Ambassador Nomura to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, while the IJN was attacking Pearl Harbor. (Speaking of World War II… Midway – Two Thumbs Up!!)
Getting back to the subject… Dr. Happer is correct. If anything, he gives methane more credit than it deserves by calling it “irrelevant to climate”.
The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%.
Science Daily
Let’s just accept these numbers for the purpose of this exercise. CH4 causes 4-9% of the greenhouse effect (GHE).
Without naturally occurring greenhouse gases, Earth’s average temperature would be near 0°F (or -18°C) instead of the much warmer 59°F (15°C).
NASA
The general assumption is that the average surface temperature of the Earth would be about 33 °C cooler than it is without the GHE.
Given that CH4 causes 4-9% of the GHE, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be 1-3 °C cooler than it is without CH4. However, the Earth’s atmosphere has always contained at least some CH4.
In the standard run the CH4 release reached the maximum value during the Carboniferous coal swamp era (Figure 6f). Consequently, the atmospheric pCH4 increased to 10 ppmv (Figure 7) during the middle Phanerozoic. The next two peaks were reached in the Cretaceous and Jurassic, with maximum contents of 1.5 ppmv approaching the pCH4 level prevailing in the modern atmosphere.
Bartdorff et al., 2008
Did you catch that? Allow me to repeat it:
The next two peaks were reached in the Cretaceous and Jurassic, with maximum contents of 1.5 ppmv approaching the pCH4 level prevailing in the modern atmosphere.
Cretaceous and Jurassic pCH4 level were lower than today, while the maximum of the Phanerozoic Eon occurred 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period.
Combined plot…
The highest Phanerozoic pCH4 level coincides with the only period over the past 540 million years when it was as cold as the Quaternary Period. That’s a geological CH4 face plant. I couldn’t make this sort of schist up if I was trying.
According to the IPCC, Earth’s average surface temperature would be about 1 °C cooler than it is without our evil GHG emissions.
Take away the CH4 we’ve added to the atmosphere since “The Ice Age Cometh” and Earth’s average surface temperature would be 0.04 to 0.09 °C cooler than it is. I’m already not losing sleep over the ~1 °C … So, 0.04 to 0.09 °C doesn’t even rise up to insignificant.
Even if we accept the IPCC assertion that nearly 30% of the anthropogenic radiative forcing is due to CH4, it still only amounts to 0.29 °C. If I have a choice between eating and a 0.29 °C lower temperature, I’ll take eating. Particularly when CH4 levels 5 times that of today coincided with the Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian)-Early Permian ice age.
According to the sacred climate models, if not for The Climate Wrecking Industry, the planet would be colder than “The Ice Age Cometh”…
This proud member of the Climate Wrecking Industry says, “You’re welcome.”
And… No! The Climate Wrecking Industry hasn’t caused the recent rise in atmospheric CH4.
Ruling things out
The post-2007 uptick in global methane levels roughly coincides with the rapid deployment of natural gas “fracking” in the United States, making fugitive emissions a logical suspect. But attempts to verify the connection have produced counter-intuitive results, according to Stefan Schwietzke, a methane expert from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (a NOAA-University of Colorado Boulder partnership).Schwietzke’s research suggests that methane emissions from fossil fuels are higher than countries’ self-reported inventories suggest, and they may even be increasing. And yet, he explained via email, methane derived from fossil fuels is enriched with carbon-13—a rare, heavy isotope of carbon—and air samples show that the amount of carbon-13-flavored methane is dropping worldwide.
The drop seems to rule out fossil fuel emissions, wildfires, or biomass cook stoves as the reason for the post-2007 methane surge. All those sources of methane, to a greater or lesser extent, are enriched in carbon-13, not depleted.
It’s a counterintuitive finding: methane from fossil fuels is higher than we thought, but it seems to be making up a smaller share of total global emissions. In his email, Schwietzke wrote, “The decline in the 13-C isotope of methane in the atmosphere indicates that microbial sources must have an increasing share of total methane emissions globally.”
Climate-Dot-Gov
Notes
“American Association for the Advancement of Science of America” and “Science! As in she blinded me with…” are humorous (at least to me) pop culture references to the movie Dodgeball and Thomas Dolby’s 1982 hit song, She Blinded Me With Science.
References
Bartdorff, O., Wallmann, K., Latif, M., and Semenov, V. ( 2008), Phanerozoic evolution of atmospheric methane, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB1008, doi:10.1029/2007GB002985.
Berner, R.A. and Z. Kothavala, 2001. “GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time”. American Journal of Science, v.301, pp.182-204, February 2001.
Royer, D. L., R. A. Berner, I. P. Montanez, N. J. Tabor and D. J. Beerling. “CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate”. GSA Today, Vol. 14, No. 3. (2004), pp. 4-10
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no insulator has ever added any heat to any system……the greenhouse effect is an insulating effect and by definition cant possible ADD heat to the atmosphere.
That is not the definition. If you read the definitions of the IPCC, Hartmann, Wikipedia, and my description, you see in which way the GH effect works. The energy fluxes connected to the GHE are real and measured.
How do you explain that solar radiation on the Earth is 165 W/m^2 and the infrared radiation from the atmosphere is 346 W/m^2. Where it is coming from? Any energy greater than 240 W/m^2 on the surface is the result of the GHE. It is a fact that any energy source must have an effect on the surface if it has an effect on temperature. The solar insolation of 340 W/m^2 at the TOA does not have real effect on the surface temperature, because it is not absorbed by the surface.
How do you reconcile the measured GHE with the ideal gas law. If we double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and plug in the relevant numbers into the molar form of the IGL it seems that pressure has to change a lot to get to the IPCC estimates for the effect on temperatures. Also, in the troposphere, convection matters more than radiation for heat transfer. The other thing I find confusing is that the ocean surface has a hard time losing heat through radiative forces, especially where humidity is high. Evaporation is the key for heat loss. The radiative story seems incomplete, though its easy to see where the numbers you state come from.
Nelson. If it is easy to show why the LW radiation downwards is 346 W/m^2, why you do not do it? I have shown the numbers and the final result for the contributions of each factor in the GHE. Here they are: water vapor 33.6%, latent heating 33.6%, clouds 13.3 %, sensible heating 8.9%, carbon dioxide 7.4%, ozone 2.6%, methane & nitrogen oxide 0.7%.
At least you should be happy that sensible heating is much greater than CO2.
I have read that methane absorbs 20 times as much IR radiation as CO2 at the same concentration, so that 1.8 ppm of methane would be equivalent to 36 ppm of CO2. Since CO2 is about 400 ppm, that would mean that methane absorbs 9% as much IR radiation as CO2, but that does NOT mean that methane represents 9% of “global warming”, which is dominated by water vapor (about 95%).
If water vapor represented 95% of the 33 C warming attributed to the atmosphere, the remaining 5%, or 1.65 C, would be due to CO2, CH4, and any other trace IR-absorbing gases. If methane represented 9% of this 1.65 C, it would only contribute about 0.15 C of warming. Even if the methane concentration were doubled, it would have a negligible effect on climate.
Incidentally, since methane absorbs 20 times as much IR radiation per molecule as CO2, burning a mole of methane to one mole of CO2 and two moles of water vapor actually reduces the net effect on the radiation balance, compared to emitting the methane to the atmosphere. Anyone in the oil or natural gas business will attempt to capture as much methane as possible to be sold as natural gas, while methane emissions to the air represent a loss of valuable product. The profit motive for the producers will induce them to minimize methane emissions, while burning their product actually reduces the greenhouse effect, so that the profit motive and protecting the environment work in the same direction!
Alarmists tend to worry about methane because they believe there are no methane sinks (as green plants represents a CO2 sink), and that any emitted methane will accumulate in the atmosphere. But methane is a much lighter molecule (molecular weight = 16) than the other gases in the atmosphere (N2 = 28, O2 = 32, CO2 = 44), and has a higher molecular speed than the other gases, so it tends to rise into the stratosphere, from which some methane escapes from the Earth’s gravity. While CO2 concentrations have been rising, methane concentrations are relatively stable in recent decades.
The agencies claiming CO2 doesn’t green the Earth is demonstrably false and shows how corrupt and beholden to the deep state they are.
Quote: “If water vapor represented 95% of the 33 C warming”. What is the research study behind this figure? I have found 8 studies but there is no such figure.
While CO2 concentrations have been rising, methane concentrations are relatively stable in recent decades.
Really?
Really!
1 part per million increase in 20 years. (yawn)
Why don’t you guys get excited about the millions starved to death by alarmism annually? BTW, the millions are humans, and not particles.
Got agenda?
Gator December 5, 2019 at 12:33 pm
1 part per million increase in 20 years. (yawn)
20% in 30 years is not relatively stable.
Got agenda?
No, but you clearly do, always the same old drivel, never once address the science.
Wrong again Phail. I addressed the “science”, and pointed out that your 1 ppm in 20 years is a joke. Only in your world would a rise of 1 part in a million constitute a 20% rise overall!
Got alarmism? LOL
And yes Phail, I must admit that I have an agenda, and it’s called “saving human lives”, or as you call it, “drivel”.
No wonder you guys always lose debates!
There are always people who jump into a discussion by claiming that there is no such thing as LW radiation from the atmosphere (called also back radiation) or this radiation has no warming effect on the surface.
Just one evidence. The Earth emits LW radiation by the surface about 396 W/m^2. It is according to Planck’s law (about 16 C degrees) and it has been confirmed by direct measurements. In addition to this, the Earth’s surface is able to release sensible heating 24 W/m^2 and latent heating 91 W/m^2 by evaporating about 1 meter of water each year. Totally the surface is able to produce energy flux of 396+91+24 = 511 W/m^2. Because there is a clear observation that only 165 W/m^2 of solar energy is absorbed by the surface, where is the rest energy of 346 W/m^2 coming from to close the energy budget? These people stop commenting just right here. No answers.
Heat is energy transfer, not partial energy transfer.
Partial energy transfer does not warm a system, the heat does it (notice the difference?).
Climastrology is still with the caloric pseudo theory that was falsified a long time ago, they think heat is some sort of a fluid that can be ‘trapped’ and ‘stored’ and that partial amounts of that fluid can ‘heat’ a system. Heat is not a state function of a system and as such, it cannot be stored, trapped… and definitely a part of it cannot warm. In fact, a system can cool drastically even with practical infinite ‘partial heat’.
Btw, adding and subtracting out infinities is a neat trick in physics, as long as they cancel out…
Besides that, there is also mechanical work, mass transfer and so on, which adds to complexity and depending on the definition of the pseudo effect which I will call pseudo warming (the climastrological one, as opposed to the physical one), the system can pseudo-cool insanely while receiving a huge amount of heat, or it can pseudo-warm while physically it’s actually cooling drastically.
How come that can be? Either by ignoring some chemical reaction in the system or something like that… or pseudo scientifically defining your cargo cultist ‘warming’, for example with an anti-physical anti-parameter such as the pseudo-temperature for a system that is not in thermal equilibrium. You can immediately get pseudo warming for a strongly cooling system or pseudo-cooling for a strongly warming system.
It doesn’t even need to be a complex system like Earth, for example it’s enough of having it half filled with air at normal pressure and temperature and half with molten iron. A gedankenexperiment would reveal to you that partial energy transfer crap (for Nature does not care of your labelling or of your artificial imagined borders) is not that helpful and that indeed, the system can cool while pseudo-warming or warm while pseudo-cooling. But ‘science’ by fairy tales helps a lot brainwashing gullible useful idiots.
Now, to find out how misleading the notion of temperature can be, even if physical, check out the negative temperature for lasers. The trick? extending the definition for a non-equilibrium system – but be aware that when you don’t have dynamical equilibrium, nobody was able to define it properly and I include here the climastrologers, there is no road for kings like them. That’s how you get negative temperature to be hotter than a positive temperature. As such, cooling is warming and warming is cooling, in an orwellian form, so you have to be very, very careful with the notions.
Or check out the temperature of black holes, certainly with all that hot matter going, all that radiation… all that energy, they must be really, really hot, isn’t it? Especially the supermassive black holes… climastrology would dictate that by its fairy tale ‘theory’. I would suggest you to look up for it, you might have a surprise.
Now, those are with a properly defined physical temperature, the matters are way much worse with the anti-physical pseudo temperature used by the climastrology.
This is nothing new!
On its own, methane is a strong absorbor of thermal radiation, but in the atmosphere its absorption band is the same as one of the more abundant water vapour bands, so is not as significant as often claimed. The methane is chemically reactive so has a short lifetime in the atmosphere. See: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/ Note: Five years ago!
There is a more recent and detailed article by two New Zealanders: JOCK ALLISON AND THOMAS P. SHEAHEN, GREENHOUSE GASES – A MORE REALISTIC VIEW, The Journal Sept 2018 v6.pdf
This article contains general information about the properties of GH molecules and general information about the absorption bands of GH gases. The real calculations based on the spectral analyses by the researchers are totally missing. The numerical contributions of GH gases in the GH effect are also missing. There is no calculation for supporting the numerical contribution of 90% by water vapor. Researchers seem to have no skills for carrying out these kinds of calculations because otherwise, they would have done so.
Great. Now do Titan. Methane occupies the same roll on Titan that water vapor occupies on Earth…
Strange methane being such a strong greenhouse gas that there is zero warming effect on Titan.
The warmers list methane sometimes as 25 times the warming effect of CO2, sometimes 56 times the warming effect. I’ve seen them claim it as 75 times the warming of CO2.
My favorite thing to say is “Define the warming effect of CO2.” Fact is they don’t define CO2’s heating effect.
So defining other gases as percentages of CO2 GHG effect is fraud.
They’ll say anything about methane. The sky is the limit because it’s all a winger.
The greenhouse effect doesn’t work very well without enough sunlight to warm the surface of the planet.
Correct me where I’m wrong –
The highest Phanerozoic CH₄ coincides with the only period over the past 540 million years when it was as cold as the Quaternary Period. That’s a geological CH₄ face plant —> The highest Phanerozoic pCH₄ level coincides with the only period over the past 540 million years when it was as cold as the Quaternary Period. That’s a geological CH₄ fact.