Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Fear of the evil gas is reaching new peaks in the offices of The Guardian, and in climate conferences leading up to COP26.
Reduce methane or face climate catastrophe, scientists warn
Exclusive: IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Fri 6 Aug 2021 16.00 AESTCutting carbon dioxide is not enough to solve the climate crisis – the world must act swiftly on another powerful greenhouse gas, methane, to halt the rise in global temperatures, experts have warned.
Leading climate scientists will give their starkest warning yet – that we are rushing to the brink of climate catastrophe – in a landmark report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment report, a comprehensive review of the world’s knowledge of the climate crisis and how human actions are altering the planet. It will show in detail how close the world is to irreversible change.
…
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and a lead reviewer for the IPCC, said methane reductions were probably the only way of staving off temperature rises of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which extreme weather will increase and “tipping points” could be reached. “Cutting methane is the biggest opportunity to slow warming between now and 2040,” he said. “We need to face this emergency.”
Zaelke said policymakers must heed the IPCC findings on methane before the UN climate talks, Cop26, in Glasgow in November. “We need to see at Cop26 a recognition of this problem, that we need to do something on this.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/06/reduce-methane-or-face-climate-catastrophe-scientists-warn
Why do climate activists have such a problem with Methane? The answer might be that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, if you accept in my opinion dubious estimates of methane’s impact on global warming.
But there is another problem with methane.
Methane is the main reason the USA is a global climate leader. For all Europe’s noisy pretensions of climate commitment, European efforts to switch to renewables have been a pathetic failure. The USA by contrast has done much better, thanks to fracking, and a widespread largely market driven switch from coal to gas.
So how do greens keep their government subsidised renewable energy fantasy alive, in the face of such an embarrassment?
One possible solution is finding a way to belittle US climate achievements, by promoting the methane leak scare.
Kill all the termites!
JF
Julian, you should have explained why, because they don’t know … they don’t have an idea of the termite equivalent of a cow burp…
Wait!… termite fart is “good” methane, cow burp is “bad” methane, right?
… ban beefburgers and promote termiteburgers, problem solved.
You nasty termitator you. Thermite bombs inside their nests would do the job. but keep one back for a certain gentleman in Penn State Pen
For the sake of completeness: termites generate about 50% more CO2 than all of humanity (industry and breathing, etc).
While termites have their place in nature and shouldn’t be eradicated to extinction, it shows the size of the natural carbon dioxide sources, that are a couple of orders of magnitude greater than human sources, as well as the co2 sinks and how poorly understood and appreciated they are.
But methane soon breaks down in the atmosphere and its concentration is only about 1.8 parts per million. Also its IR absorption bands coincide with H2O which has an atmospheric concentration in the order of at least 20,000 ppm.
Methane must be safe and effective. Can’t have that.
‘Cull all of the farm animals – they’re the source of bad methane – we must all become vegans to save the planet’. It’s a lunatic fringe ideology that’s got a bit of mainstream traction and that same lunatic fringe now wants to be hailed as right all along, as the saviours of humanity and to be able to say ‘we told you so’ smugly. It’s a pathetic attempt to normalise their delusions and inadequacies.
Richard, I don’t care if anyone wants to go vegan, whole hog (see what I did there? 😜).
But you’ve hit some of the reasons the vegans won’t leave the rest of us alone.
Given how much methane I produce on an omnivorous diet, if I had to rely on beans for my protein I’d produce a great deal more.
Most chemical reactions are driven by temperature. The higher the temperature the faster the reaction. This is true for methane.
So global warming would solve the methane problem by causing methane in the atmosphere to break down into CO2 an H2O faster.
Greater CO2 in the air has caused the world to be about 15% greener over the past ~50 years. The world is loving that extra plant food!
The warnunists are apparently trying to revive James Hansen’s right runaway feedback claims with mention of a “tipping point”, which claim would contradict paleoclimate temperature estimates as to what the temperature was with 2000 ppm or more GHGs.
But it seems so scary, which is why the True Believer continue to use it.
Are we talking dinosaurs, Tom? Try to imagine being at the wrong end, at the wrong time, of a 50 ton seismosaurus relieving gas pains.
“Seismosaurus”. This must be a big one. Did this one make the ground move when it walked, thus the name?
Argentinosaurus 120 feet long, ~100 tons?
I think you would notice the ground shaking.
The ground shaking would be me running like he77.
Seismosaurus is part of the brontosaurus family, and Seismosaurus holds the record of the longest dinosaur, with specimens 150 feet long known.
Just imagine one of those things moving across the landscape.
State of Fear. It’s depressing how well it works on so many.
What is scary is that some people apparently like to be scared. Apocalyptic preaching, whether from evangelical religion or environmentalism, seems to find an eager audience.
Now we also have the gulf stream collapse for people to be frightened about!
https://globalnews.ca/news/8089039/gulf-stream-collapse-study-canada-europe/
No we don’t – it’s the PIK silly season again.
I’ve seen article after article over the last few days hyping this “Gulf Stream collapse” story.
There are lots of climate change propagandists at work distorting the truth.
Why do climate activists have such a problem with Methane? The answer might be that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2,
Uh huh, and we are NEVER told how much methane will run up global temperature. Why? because it’s nearly nothing. If someone can put up a credible argument that it’s more than
0.05°C by 2100, I’d like to see it.
The IPCC over it’s five assessment reports so far has said
AR1 63,
AR3 56,
AR3 62,
AR4 72,
AR5 85
When the AR6 comes out the IPCC will no doubt claim that methane is over 100 times more powerful than CO2
It’s not specific to methane – it’s just any wild hair they get up their a$$es. Changes by the day, new ones by the hour, and they never let go of the old ones.
Steve
If they put out their numbers we will soon see it is simply a thumbsuck.
Of course, here in the UK we need methane to heat our houses and to cook. Nobody can afford to do that with electricity and the hacktivists at the Grauniad know that.
With the Grauniad there is a simple rule
“Last month was worst July for…” add anything you like here – even TV
I’m most concerned that there seems to be an epidemic in the local area of peeps picking their noses, & scratching their backsides so it must be climate related!!! 😉 That pesky CO2 molecule does amazing things methinks!!! Time for a cold beer, so I can add more C02 & CH4 into the atmosphere!!!
You would think anything “natural” would be good. Maybe they should call it Organic Gas and claim that it is non GMO.
And gluten free as well
The gtiffter will probably call the BBC and demand joint action with the Guardian….never miss an opportunity to threaten a warmer climate…..Methane…..more Evil than CO2.
Methane is much more of a problem than CO2, because Greta can’t see it.
I bet she never farts either!!!
Now you’ve done it!
Just for the record & for the benefit of our friends from the Virginian Colonies, the Guardian is the base level lefty newspaper, & the Independent (contradiction in terms) is it’s more intellectual big cousin, just tends to use bigger words than the Grauniad, which is notorious for its spelling or lack thereof!!!
Founded on slavery and opposed to Abraham Lincoln in the American civil war, too…
“…the Manchester Guardian relished Britain’s moral superiority over the slave-trading nation of the USA in the years between British abolition in 1833 and American emancipation in 1863 to 1865. But when the American Civil War arrived, between the anti-slavery Union forces of President Lincoln and the slavery-defending southern secessionists of Jefferson Davis, the Manchester Guardian switched sides and rallied to the Confederacy. Of Abraham Lincoln, the Manchester Guardian wrote in 1862 that it was ‘an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States’.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/05/the-ugly-truth-about-the-guardian/
The Guardian has been on the wrong side of history for a long time.
Interestingly enough, so was the US Democrat party. The Republican party was anti-slavery, Lincoln was a Republican. The Democrats were the party of the Southern white voters until about the 50’s or 60’s when they realised that the black population were about to get the vote and if they didn’t grab it, they would never get elected again. So the Democrats flooded Southern black neighbourhoods with welfare payments – it was LBJ that was quoted as saying that it was ‘just enough’ to keep them voting for the Democrats for the next 200 years, but not as much as they’d actually needed.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. “Hunter S. Thompson
“All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.”
Bobby Knight
A true wordsmith was Hunter
If the Grauniad didn’t have bad spelling, it’d have no spelling at all!
The IPCC would be disbanded if there was no significant risk due to human emissions. A very powerful motivation and self interest which explains a great deal and particularly the sinister influence of political left wing agendas behind the scenes.
There will be a raft of such articles and reports leading up to COP26. How else can these Warmists maintain their dubious scary messages.?
Meanwhile the compliant Media revels in all those lovely Clickbaits ringing up the tills.
I’m coming to the spiritual realization that kharma emissions are probably the most important. COP26 has an enormous bad kharma footprint and its failure is almost guaranteed.
“There will be a raft of such articles and reports leading up to COP26. How else can these Warmists maintain their dubious scary messages.?”
We can count on that. It may get even worse than in preceding years, since the alarmists seem to be feeling a lot of desperation because the people are not buying what they are selling. So, here comes the hyperbole.
If Methane is causing so much warming….then CO2 must be causing less? Less than the already low levels of warming according to the projections. So the projections on just CO2 are even more wrong? Oh dear.
In the atmosphere, about one molecule in about 500,000 is methane. No matter how “potent” it is, the idea that it is overheating the planet is pure propaganda, with no scientific evidence. Ask for the evidence and you will get none (just the output from failed climate models).
“Reduce methane or face climate catastrophe, scientists warn”
The word “scientists” has no business being in that sentence. Scientists would base statements on objective observations and would be reluctant to make ridiculous predictions about the future based on pure conjecture just for the purpose of self aggrandizement.
“A scientist is what I choose to call an activist. That’s victory for you.” Humpty Dumpty.
The Guardian gets mugged by the reality of their cheap unreliables-
The Guardian view on energy bills: a price hike that threatens millions (msn.com)
The Gummint orta do sumpink!
They have they’re going to ban gas in 2030….
Makes sense for them I suppose. Ban coal and drive up gas prices so ban that too. In lithium they trust.
The installation of new gas boilers must be banned from 2025 or the UK’s net-zero climate target will be “doomed”,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/22/ban-new-gas-boilers-uk-net-zero-target-cbi-climate-goals-heating
It’s doomed.
Pre-emptive question for griff: considering the nightmare scenario of death, mayhem, and destruction that we are currently suffering all over the planet (excuse me a moment, I need to clear dead bodies off my keyboard…there, that’s better! Oh not another one!), in which time period would you prefer to live your life?
[__] Benign low CO2 1675-1750
[__] “Dangerous” CO2 1950-2025
Cmon griffy, you don’t want people to think that you refuse to answer because you’d be admitting that the benefits of fossil fuels vastly outweigh the few minor inconveniences, would you?
Griff reads the script, he doesn’t do [critical] thinking.
Correction, griff runs the script.
The Guardian article is based on a “leaked” version of the AR6 which will be published in dribs and drabs over this summer and fall. How convenient! First of all, it’s a preliminary version so the final published work may be greatly at odds with this leak. And it gets the alarmist ball rolling long before we get to see all the equivocations in the final draft
Needless to say, this is all orchestrated to drum up hysteria for COP26 and when the body of AR6 is finally released it won’t matter what’s in it.
Yes, of course! Agitprop 101
I could be much mistaken but the whole methane debate seems to overlook some basic science.
Methane’s absorption spectrum comprises a couple of narrow bands.
Water vapour’s spectrum is very broad and covers those bands almost completely.
Water vapour’s atmospheric concentration is about 10 – 20,000 times that of methane.
Therefore methane cannot have any discernible impact as a greenhouse gas – any effect it would have is nullified by water vapour swamping its spectrum.
Just to be clear, this is not disputing methane’s performance in dry, laboratory conditions where it is indeed more potent than CO2. However the real world is different: water vapour dominates, responsible for 80-90% of the greenhouse effect.
If this is wrong, would someone please explain why.
Just to be clear, this is not disputing methane’s performance in dry, laboratory conditions where it is indeed more potent than CO2.
Really? How did you come up with that?
dry, laboratory conditions
Could that be a dessicator by any chance?
I’ve seen it mentioned quite often. One example is Joe’s post below:
“The warming per added methane molecule is about 30 times greater than the warming per added carbon-dioxide molecule.”
Quoting Happer and Lindzen
“The warming per added methane molecule is about 30 times greater than the warming per added carbon-dioxide molecule.”
Uh huh, and that translates into how much global temperature rise?
Methane is increasing 6 or 7 ppb every year, so by 2100 it will probably increase by about 0.5 ppm. So how much will temperature rise if CO2 increases from 420 ppm to 420.5 ppm? Multiply that answer by 30 and you’ll find it’s less than 0.05°C or essentially nothing. The Global Warming Potential numbers promulgated by the IPCC are, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit!
So, please stop buying in the IPCC’s bullshit.
Thanks for that ‘by the numbers’ perspective. This is assuming that conventional climate theory means anything at all, but it’s all pretty much uncorroborated, it seems to me?
Anyway, this provides some insight into why the “30 times more effect per molecule” becomes “86 times more” (versus molecules of CO2), or even more than that! There is a certain desperation to make methane have more and more power as a Greenhouse Gas, so that some sort of interesting temperature rise could possibly be blamed on it..
Well, stepping in for Simon or Nick on this, you have to consider that it’s going to get so hot and dry over land that there won’t be any water vapor left. The oceans and lakes will all dry up and then the methane will really kick in. I’m pretty sure that’s how it will go. Any of you clapping monkeys have some peer reviewed citations to refute my settled poli, er science?
You are correct MikeHig, Methane only has an effect where there are no H2O spectral lines to cover the two that exist for methane. The only time you get any effect from methane is in a laboratory setting where the air has been dissicated. Once methane breaks down into CO2 and H2O, there is some minor effect from the newly created CO2. But even the spectral lines or CO2 are partially covered by water vapor minimizing it’s affect.
Mike,
it is not wrong. Here is a graph showing the effect of doubling the concentration of the three main ‘greenhouse gasses’ compared with Relative Humidity. It’s Rocket Science because the data comes direct from NASA.
For the full story see: https://cw50b.wordpress.com/cagw/
Compared to the 400+ ppm CO2, current concentration of methane in the atmosphere is slightly less than 2ppm having increased 2.5x from pre-industrial levels.
This is a problem? Please can somebody tell me why?
This is a problem? Please can somebody tell me why?
Because the popular press says so. The IPCC says that pound for pound methane is 86 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat. Neither the IPCC nor anybody else says how much that translates into increasing global temperature.
Methane will increase by about 0.5 ppm by 2100. An equal increase by mass of CO2 would be about 0.18 ppm. All you have to do is figure out how much an increase in CO2 from 420 ppm to 420.18 ppm would run up temperature and multiply that by 86. Comes out to less than 0.05°C.
Here’s the quote from the IPCC:
IPCC AR5 Chapter 8 Page 710 Paragraph 8.7.1.2
The Global Warming Potential Concept
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is defined as the time-integrated RF due to a pulse emission of a given component, relative to a pulse emission of an equal mass of CO2…
My guess as to why methane is the new bogeyman is that the IPCC and its cronies understand that the gig is up on blaming CO2, so it needs to roll out something really scary. And methane gets the job.
It might have to do with the coming pressure to build more NG fired power plants to backup wind/solar. Plus as people freeze this and future colder winters, the pressure for NG heat will also pick up. Can’t have that.
…plus China burns a lot of coal while the US burns a lot of nat gas. In other words, from the alarmist perspective, China good, US bad.
Ah, the Guardian, a truly deplorable rag…..but to the main point: check out methane’s absorption bands and compare with water vapour – really big overlap. Any energy that would be taken up by ch4 is equipartitioned away by vast amount of h2o in the atmosphere, just don’t expect Guardian to tell you. Maybe Will Happer has something on this
William Happer and Richard Lindzen:
“In another spasm of crusading fervor, some climate warriors want to do away with traditional farming and ranching because they are sources of minor greenhouse gases, such as methane from ruminant livestock, paddy rice, etc., and nitrous oxide, mainly from fertilizer use.
(In this context, the word “minor” should be explained: The warming per added methane molecule is about 30 times greater than the warming per added carbon-dioxide molecule. Carbon dioxide molecules are being added to the atmosphere at 300 times the rate of methane molecules. So the warming added each year from methane is about 10 times less than the small warming from carbon dioxide.)
This could threaten the livelihoods of farmers in countries whose governments have signed on to the Paris agreement. But, as noted above, the warming from methane is only one-tenth of the modest, beneficial warming of more carbon dioxide.
The crusade against methane and nitrous oxide will be all pain and no gain for farmers and for those who consume their produce.”
https://climatechangedispatch.com/there-is-no-climate-emergency-heres-why/
My BS detector makes me stop reading when it meets the expression “tipping point”.
I stopped at the word Guardian.
Hmmm , CO2 and methane are killers .
When will they blame nitrogen ?
….or Oxygen?
It was this hysteria that killed people in Texas last winter. Fear of methane forced the gas companies to use electric pumps instead of using the gas they were pumping. When the wind turbines froze there was no electricity to pump the gas and the cold killed folks that had no other way to get warm
I forgot that interesting factoid, thanks for reminding me.
Yes, switching to electric driven compression is all about the reduction of emissions from burning some of the natural gas being shipped to turn the turbine and therefore the compressor
There is nothing wrong with switching to electric
As long as the electric supply part is reliable.
The electric motor is much simpler and robust than a gas turbine
Ponder this: why do climate models leave out methane concentration in their calculations? Because varying methane from 10% to 1000% of its current atmospheric concentration makes essentially no difference in its downwelling longwave radiative effect. For details on this “shocking” fact (can’t insert graph here) scroll down to nearly the bottom of this article: https://realclimatescience.com/2021/04/predicting-the-climate-in-100-years-3/
From the article: “Exclusive: IPCC says gas, produced by farming, shale gas and oil extraction, playing ever-greater role in overheating planet”
What overheating planet? There is no overheating planet. The people making these claims are not living on this planet. They are living on Bizarro World.
Seems that since not enough people are afraid of CO2, now it’s methane. Don’t heat your house, because we have no idea what we’re doing, but, you know — prevention. All this brings to mind the sage observation: “it’s very difficult to get someone to understand a problem when their salary depends on not understanding it.”
Did the IPCC et al not get the memo? Gavin Schmidt, head of GISS and J. Hansen, Father of Inundation by Boiling Seas Climate, advise climate models are running a way too hot and there is a good possibility we are 6yrs into a 30yr cooling stretch!
They didn’t go into whether this cooling period will join up with the “Ice Age Cometh” 35yrs of cooling, largely already massively adjusted (-0.5°C) out of existence by the Climate Wroughters).
The cooling doesnt need to drop far to erase the piddling 1980-1998 warming period that has caused all the multi-$trillion savaging of the West’s economy. Then all the warming since the LIA will have occurred by the late 1930s before CO2 had a chance to cause anything, except for the earliest beginnings of the Majestic Global Greening.
When this nightmare is over, is there someway to cut marxist Europe off from membership in the “West”? Is there someway to admit India to the club? I believe they should be identified as leaders of the British Commonwealth, being the strongest member.
Oops +0.5°C adjustment out of the depths of the cold end.
Er ,Um, whatabout all that methane coming out of the undersea vents. Is that man-made too?
And if methane is convered to CO2 and H2O, will we see a reduced climate-change effect? ect?
Shh. Undersea vents and seeps simply do not exist for these people. If a spot of tar-like residue is seen on a beach, then it can only be from a spill or pipeline leak. Methane is produced by humanity’s industrial activity or meat animals, no other source you see. I’m hardly even exaggerating, I’m afraid – it’s truly bizarre.
Fracking has declined for two basic reasons.
The biggest reason is because there has been a huge drop in gas prices. It makes no sense to hunt for more gas when you are in a surplus situation.
The second is because the eco-lunnies have been banning it in many places.
I always find it fascinating how the peak-oilers automatically assume that every drop in production is proof that we have finally reached peak oil, even if there are perfectly logical explanations for said drop.
BTW, that chart has got to be one of the stupidest extrapolations I have ever seen.
There are those who seem to thrive on Apocalypses and can’t get enough of them to satiate their appetites. As for me, I have Apocalypse fatigue.
We were all supposed to die by 2000, first from the coming Ice Age, then from CAGW. Before that, I, and others, lived through the Nuclear Holocaust threat from the USSR and and the threat from polio, which were real and now many more, some of which were threatening to human health, like lead in water and air and more that were simply fantasies. We have solved most every serious issue (and some not so serious–DDT) and have moved on to creating problems from the “solutions” to non-problems such as creating COVID in a lab for a virus that had little chance of ever infecting humans, or replacing reliable energy with expensive, intermittent, unreliable wind and solar which are destructive to Earth, humans, bats, birds, insects and animals.
Based on Earth’s past history, there are three ways we know Nature could destroy most of Mankind and/or Earth’s life. These are another Carrington Event which would destroy civilization, a strike by a meteor of the size that took out the dinosaurs, or another Ice Age. We are doing nothing to plan for, adapt, and/or prevent these from occurring.
Man can, also, do serious harm to Earth and all creatures with a nuclear war and we do nothing to ameliorate, or even recognize that threat which today is coming from China. Instead, we invent Apocalypses via harmless and essential gases for life which are trace elements in Earth’s atmosphere and are all overwhelmed by the power of water vapor and other climate realities many of which we are still unaware and remain unknown to us.
To the real Apocalyptic threats, we can add the insane desire by certain elites to create a NWO in which they will be Masters of the Earth and humanity will be their slaves and will live without reliable energy or any modern technology. This, too, is ignored, despite these elites not being at all shy about stating their goals and visions for our future.
President of the UN Foundation
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” –Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
As for Methane and whatever they come up with next, I’m done chasing hobgoblins that exist only in the minds of those who are paid, or benefit from finding new specters under our collective beds with which to frighten us.
KcTaz,
You left out the fourth way that Nature will destroy Mankind and life on Earth!
Far more pernicious, and inevitable without intelligent intervention, is the depletion of CO2 from our atmosphere due to the mineralization of carbonaceous compounds into armor and habitat for small marine organisms like foraminifera, coccolithophores and corals! Due to these creatures, and the deposition of calcium carbonate directly in certain environments; CO2 has been decreasing for almost 150 million years! When CO2 dropped to ~180ppm during the last period of glaciation 20,000 years ago, plants were literally starving for one of their vital nutrients and would have died off at higher elevations due to the lower partial pressure! The treeline would have been forced thousands of feet lower by this!
The inadvertent restoration of CO2 back into the atmosphere from where it came is one of the most beneficial activities Mankind can perform for the survivial of life on Earth; without it nearly ALL life will die out in the near geologic future as the concentration drops below 150ppm; the death threshold for most plantlife! Calling CO2 a pollutant and trying keep it at historically low levels shows about as much intelligence as trying to ban water because people can drown in it! Only someone that is ignorant, rabid or insane would call for that!!
“how do greens keep their government subsidised renewable energy fantasy alive, in the face of such an embarrassment?” la la la a la la la la la la la la la la la la la la a la la la la la la la la la la la la la la a la la la la la la la la la la la la la la a la la la la la la la la la la la
Perhaps Will Happer’s assertion that the CO2 greenhouse band is now saturated is beginning to get traction and unless the alarmist can conjure up another bogeyman then the game may be up. Methane has a half life of only eight years, so that arguement is hollow too.
In the meantime once again temps in the 3.4 region turn downward as a new active region rounds the corner in the northern hemisphere of the sun. It’s the greatest coincidence in history, and it happens every time over and over again.
SDO…. https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Note that once again I correctly forecast this on the 5th. … https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/31/frigid-polar-air-brings-very-rare-snowfall-icy-rains-to-southern-brazil/#comment-3309097
google : on warmer earth most of arctic may remove methane
I thought the real story was that as our CO2 warms the world, we thaw the permafrost releasing “a lot” of methane therefor exceeding another tipping point
And yes, then we all die.
But the permafrost thawed in the past with no tipping point
So we need another story please
You can’t apply a model to something that was affected by politics and OPEC’s desperation to maintain market share.
The Obama attack on energy in order to create a photo op of dragging frozen grandmas out of the ghetto by shutting down Yuca mountain and ending electrical generation by coal was thwarted by shale gas. Too late the EPA developed rules for the oilfield on methane escape that would have shutdown all drilling. Since the drilling mud always contain some natural gas that is vented from the circulating pits, the rules would have prohibited this minor venting with massive fines. The Biden crime spree is currently attempting to implement these regulations, that Trump nixed. I am sure they will use the IPCC fraud as the excuse.
Methane is 0.0002% of the atmosphere and readily interacts with oxygen.
It has little or no impact on the climate even though it 30 times more massive than co2 which in its self has little or no impact.
But … but …but I was sure that I’d read in the Guardian that climate catastrophe was happening HERE AND NOW. That we’re already experiencing a climate crisis, climate breakdown, a mass extinction.
You mean we’re only “on the brink” ? Phew that was close.