Roger Caiazza
I am announcing my New Year’s resolution here in hopes of getting feedback and to spur others to provide their resolutions when we hear yet another climate talking point.
When I hear anyone say that methane is more potent than carbon dioxide because the radiative forcing produced is greater, I resolve to say that is only true in the laboratory on a molecular basis. In the atmosphere where it counts methane is not nearly as potent.
Discussion
I have heard the methane scare story all over but my primary concern is New York. As part of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) methane is irrationally disparaged as part of the war on natural gas. The rationale used always revolves around the potency of methane relative to CO2. To respond I have developed a page that consolidates reason why methane should not be vilified. I included the following arguments.
Clyde Spender explained that changes to radiation effects occur on a molecule-by-molecule basis in the atmosphere in an article here titled The Misguided Crusade to Reduce Anthropogenic Methane Emissions. The Climate Act tracks emissions by weight. In the atmosphere CO2 is more than two orders of magnitude more abundant than CH4 on a molecular basis. The Climate Act uses the global warming potential that estimates the mid-range, long-term warming potential of CH4 is 32 times that of CO2. However, that equivalence is for equal weights of the two gases! Using a molecular basis (parts per million-volume mole-fraction) to account for the lighter CH4 molecule reveals that the annual contribution to warming is a fraction of that claimed for CO2. Methane emissions on a molecular basis are increasing at a rate of 0.58% of CO2 increases. Therefore, changes in methane emissions have insignificant effects.
Andy May’s excellent summarization of Wijngaarden and Happer’s important paper “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases” takes a slightly different approach. He explains that the greenhouse effect of methane is not only related to the effect on longwave radiation itself but also the concentration in the atmosphere. Because the atmospheric concentration of methane is so small doubling concentrations change the “outgoing forcing by less than one percent”. In other words, doubling emissions or cutting emissions in half of methane will have no measurable effect on global warming itself.
Ralph B. Alexander describes another molecular consideration ignored in the Climate Act. Each greenhouse gas affects outgoing radiation differently across the bell-shaped radiation spectrum One of the reasons that CO2 is considered the most important greenhouse gas is that its effect coincides with the peak of the bell shape. On the other hand, the effect of CH4 is down in the tail of the bell shape. As a result, the potential effect of CH4 is on the order of only 20% of the effect of CO2.
The residence time of the two gases is different. Methane only has a lifetime of about 10-12 years in the atmosphere. The “consensus” science claim is that 80% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions are removed within 300 years. (Note however that there are other estimates of much shorter residence times.) This means that CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere. CH4 is converted to CO2 and is then counted in the monthly CO2 measurements as part of the CO2 flux. Because methane does not accumulate the same way as CO2 it should be handled differently. However, the Climate Act doubles down. Climate Act authors claimed it was necessary to use 20-year global warming potential (GWP) values because methane is estimated to be 28 to 36 greater than carbon dioxide for a 100-year time horizon but 84-87 greater GWP over a 20-year period.
Conclusion
I would love additional arguments why methane is not to be feared, would appreciate any corrections to my arguments, and would like to hear ways to edit my resolution for more impact.
It would also be useful to me and probably others if WUWT readers would provide similar resolutions for publication.
Happy New Year
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here and an inventory of over 370 articles about the Climate Act is also available. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
New Year’s Resolutions
Eat more bacon;
Bake bread;
Win a lottery.
Interesting you say that- I’ve never eaten bacon- until recently-you know, it was frowned upon by the woke. Now I’m enjoying it very much!
I usually have two BLTs a month:
I always eat ABLTs, the avocado just adds to the pleasure.
My big Christmas gift this year is a PITBOSS wood pellet grill & smoker.
I see many culinary adventures/experiments in my future. Thinking that come spring time my first effort will be smoked and BBQed western cut beef ribs. First the wet BBQ then the dry type.
Its fortunate that Meth she’s residence time is so short. It is also a grand design, By Nature, that Methane is oxidized into CO2 and H2O by any heat source (fire) or lightning. Our green world has evolved into a dependence on both molecules to survive and thrive. The fact that CH4 can provide both through the oxidation process is simply part of the natural evolution Earth has undergone over the last 2.5 billion years, since oxygen dependent life life took hold
Meth she’s was brought to you by Microsoft…Microsoft that thinks when you tune Methane you meant to type Meth she’s
Tune? Your predictive text is a bit aggressive, isn’t it?
You can say that again
When I was born the CO2 atmospheric concentration was less than one in two thousand. Today it is… less than one in two thousand.
Think of it as bank interest.
Was around 3c in $100… now just over 4c in $100..
Getting rich !
Over what period of time, on the 3c vs 4c? The USD has lost ?Value over that same period.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1950?amount=1
$0.1314
Yep, ABOUT 1/8th the value from 73 years ago. Boy that fed sure is great!
When taxed with that challenge about dearly beloved methane, my repose will be, Ms Le Pétomane is my hero, and always will be. In fact, I practice the technique daily, in his honour.
While New York state is unlikely to legally require their agencies to apply appropriate quality controls to information disseminated, there are such requirements on federal agencies. If the agency references incorrect data coming out of a federal agency, then one approach would be to challenge the federal agency that is the source through Section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-554). But, of course, that could be a long-term effort.
I wish there were greater efforts to challenge information produced on federal agency websites that, in my opinion, lack objectivity and integrity and give support to so many misguided agendas.
Been there, done that. No hope. The CGR of 1946 does require comments be received but does not require they be honestly answered.
Challenge the Agencies and subject your organization to government harassment, or at a minimum an eco-cult sponsored boycott. Not a great idea in a post constitution tyranny where everyone not a progressive elite is subject to the “Trump Treatment”.
Roger, I thought I read at one point that the absorption spectrum (I hope I’m using the term correctly) for methane was overlain by, or the same as, the absorption spectrum for some other greenhouse gas, like CO2 or water vapor. In other words, giving the same credit to both gases for causing warming was double-counting. Is that another reason not to fear methane?
Thanks. I forgot to mention that methane and water vapor affect the same area of the spectrum. Can someone confirm that this is appropriate?
Confirmed. I just posted the details below. Is an easy look up.
I was looking for your comment, Rud. I knew it was coming. 🙂
Methane is much ado about nothing.
Roger, a doubling of the concentration of Methane in an atmosphere containing no other IR active glasses would result in an increase in absorption of about 2.2 Watts/metre squared. In the presence of water vapour (80% RH, 14C), the increase would be about 0.4 Watts/metre squared due to the spectral overlap. Water vapour thus reduces the potency of Methane by about 82 percent at 80%RH. At 46% RH (from the US Standard Atmosphere) the reduction is less, at 75%.
Data courtesy of NASA Planetary Spectrum Generator, full analysis here: https://cw50b.wordpress.com/the-methane-myth/
glasses = gases. Damn autocomplete!
Basically, water absorbs the same wavelength range that methane does (in addition to a great deal more). This makes the atmosphere opaque at those wavelengths. In essence, methane makes the atmosphere more opaque at wavelengths that water vapor has already made pitch black.
My thought exactly. Methane’s main absorption band is heavily overlaid by water vapour’s, it’s minor band is less so. However, all CO2’s bands are heavily overlaid by water vapour’s.
Actually, not quite correct. Some CO2 band ‘shoulders’ do not much overlap the water vapor bands. So there is spectrally some independent effect. Not so with methane.
This turns out to be interesting. It is those shoulders that produce the warming for CO2 increases. Without them increases in methane actually produce cooling.
It’s water vapor. See details below just posted.
Methane has a Cp of about 2.25 J/g K. Mass of 16. Air has a Cp of about 1.004 J/g K. Mass of 29. So on a mole basis it takes more about 7 more J to increase temperature of CH4. Thus like CO2 and H2O methane in the atmosphere is a coolant.
So global methane emissions have about the same comparative impact as a fullback’s fart on a football field?
Or the French occupiers in “The Search For The Holy Grail”
Verbatim from EPA:
“The Global Warming Potential (GWP) was developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases. Specifically, it is a measure of how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to the emissions of 1 ton of carbon dioxide (CO2).”
When you integrate over the Earthly IR band you find that
CO2 has a radiative efficiency of 0.01548 W/m^2/ ppmv. while CH4 has a radiative efficiency of 0.37 W/m^2/ppmv so roughly 24 times as much absorption on a volume basis. This is because CH4 has a bigger “molecular cross section” to absorb IR with more vibration modes allowing an IR photon to impart more energy.
The molecular weight of CH4 is 16 and the molecular weight of CO2 is 44, so a tonne of CH4 will have 44/16 = 2.75 times as many molecules in as a tonne of CO2. So you end up with 24 X 2.75 about 66 times as much IR that a tonne of CH4 will absorb compared to a tonne of CO2. This approximation is without fooling with other lesser CliSci factors that can get you up to 85 times as “bad”.
The constant pressure molar heat capacity of methane is 35.69 J/K-mol and the constant pressure heat capacity of CO2 is 36.94 J/K-mol, so not really relevant to our approximation. Of course there is only 1/200 the amount of CH4 in the atmosphere and it converts to CO2 over a few years…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials#:~:text=The%20Global%20Warming%20Potential%20(GWP,carbon%20dioxide%20(CO2).
6.12 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-06.pdf
Think, think hard, on those radiative efficiency numbers…an increase of 1 ppm of CH4 is a 50% increase in our 2 ppm methane atmosphere…that would have to come from a hell of a lot of additional rice paddies, leaky gas wells, termites, etc, and is only 0.37 W/m^2 increase….very little….only worth collecting high concentrations of CH4 to burn to CO2….
That is in the ball park of what I calculated (30.9X) for my article, ( https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/ ). What length of time did you integrate over to obtain your 24X estimate?
Clyde,
I cheated by assuming the IPCC numbers stated in 6.12 of TAR, link above, of which .01548 W/m^2/ppmv is the small perturbation number, so therefore not corrected for 20, 50, or 100 years.
Even better, the effect of methane on warming is 1/300 that of CO2.
For example, see Dave White interview at Tom Nelson podcast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8KYbbabKQ&t=2384s ,at about time tag 09:20
CO2 =± 9% of warming
Methane =± 0.03%
-Natural “breakdown” of methane in the atmosphere, or by combustion, produces 2 H2O and 1 molecule of CO2..
-Methane is a natural product of all aerobic, non-plant life. Termites alone produce 20 kilotons /yr.
-Methane for human energy use is consumed. Human emissions from methane energy is 2:1 water vapor to CO2.
-Water vapor is most of warming, but the hydrologic cycle is also most of cooling.
-Burning CH4 is better than releasing it.
“Methane is a natural product of all aerobic, non-plant life.”
Actually, methane is produced when there is a deficit of oxygen..
… that makes it anaerobic.
Sorry, fellow aerobe, that’s backwards. Aerobic life lives and breathes in oxygen from the air. Anaerobic life is the opposite. The deficit you speak of happens as a recult of breathing air and oxidising nutrients, and one of the resulting products is methane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_organism
Which brings up the other point: on Earth, methane is not a fossil fuel, but a biofuel Despite some small part of it being naturally stored underground, the processes that made it and put it there were biological and geologic. Hence, methane is off the table when it comes to regulating any so called fossil fuel.
“Anaerobic digestion is a sequence of processes by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen.
The process is used for industrial or domestic purposes to manage waste or to produce fuels.”
ie methane that is produced in the gut of animals where there is a deficit of oxygen.
There are lakes of the stuff on Titan. I’d hate to meet the creature that produced them.
Well it’s obvious, innit? The clue’s in the name – it woz a Titan wot dunnit!
It comes from Uranus.
(I only opened this page to see the farts jokes, alas…And then I could not stop myself!)
Incontinence is a terrible affliction, whether it’s physical, verbal or written.
Correct, CH4 is not a fossil fuel. The moon of Saturn, Titan has considerable CH4 (over 5%) in the atmosphere where it acts like H2O on Earth. It is there in lakes and rain.
On Earth CH4 is continuously made at plate boundaries from carbonates, CO2 and water. It is emitted by some volcanoes as is CO2. CH4 is abiotic, some was present in the early atmosphere and some came with meteors. Some oil is also abiotic.
I suggest that you look up some chemical physical data on methane (such as the Chemical Engineering handbook). Methane in the air can not burn unless you have two conditions 1/ an ignition temperature of more than 650C and 2/ a gas/air mixture where in the methane amount by volume is between 5 & 15%. However, methane can be oxidised by ozone in the ozone layer or by lightning. It then oxidises to CH3OH which has been found in the upper layers of the atmosphere. CH3OH is very very soluble in water and the oceans. Methane is also very slightly soluble in the oceans. In the oceans some seaweeds use CH3OH or CH4(H2O) for growth. These are the major reasons for the short residence time of CH4 in the atmosphere. The level of CH4 in the atmosphere is quite stable at about 1.9 ppm.
Further, readers here should look up Wien’s Displacement law which relates temperature to radiation wavelength. Earth has a temperature ranging from 223K to 324K with an average of about 288K. This is a wavelength of 8.9-13.0micron with an average of 10 micron. Methane absorbs radiation at 8.0 micron. So, CH4 absorbs no radiation from the Earth. Methane is not a greenhouse gas.
Let me add another reason methane is a non-starter, perhaps more important than your three excellent points.
Methane is a potent GHG in the lab because the lab uses a standard dry atmosphere.
In the real world methane’s two main IR absorption bands (at about 3.5 and 8 microns) are completely overlapped by two of the several broader and much stronger water vapor absorption bands, specifically those from about 2.5-4 and 6-9 microns. In a world averaging about 2% specific humidity, any methane effect is literally swamped by water vapor effect.
Google will take you to multiple images of both gas spectra, some even juxtaposed at a common real world strength scale.
Not true Rud, I suggest you look at some high resolution spectra.
Between wavenumbers 1248-1252 cm-1 there are ~540 spectral lines for CH4 and ~ 140 lines for H2O
Why not just quote the IPCC’s figures? It doesn’t get much more exagerrated than that. And that’s 1/3 of the CO2 effect, which is 1/3 of the Water vapour GHE, roughly. And the whole effect of 1.6W/m^2 is wholly rebalamced by 0.16 DEg of SST warming required to raise that much (1.6W/m^2) feedack from the net effects of evaporation , GHE, Albedo and S-B effect = 10W/m^2 per deg.
Typo at start of second paragraph under “Discussion” in above article: should be Clyde Spencer.
Hmm, Methane response
“”China unveils world’s deepest drilling ship that can plunge 36,000ft to harvest futuristic energy source ‘flammable ice’””
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/25105499/china-unveils-worlds-deepest-drilling-ship/
They say… “”deposits could guarantee at least 1000 years of global energy consumption.””
They are after methane hydrates. Fascinating subject – methane and water can form a structure on the molecular level that looks like ice but has voids where methane molecules fit. Ethane and propane can make hydrates as well. Hydrates are an issue when producing wet natural gas in cold weather. The hydrate can plug up the collection lines near the well head. Methanol is added to serve as an anti-freeze.
Methane hydrates, the only plausible competition for nuclear latter this century.
Here’s a methane hydrate article from 2004, four years before the “fundamental transformation” in science following the 2008 US presidential election:
When Seafloor Meets Ocean, the Chemistry Is Amazing.By Jean K. Whelan | February 13, 2004
Far more natural gas is sequestered on the seafloor—or leaking from it—than can be drilled from all the existing wells on Earth. The ocean floor is teeming with methane, the same gas that fuels our homes and our economy.
In more and more locations throughout the world’s oceans, scientists are finding methane percolating through the seafloor, bubbling into the water column, collecting in pockets beneath seafloor sediments, or solidifying in a peculiar icelike substance, called methane hydrate, in the cold, pressurized depths of the ocean.
The surface temperature is determined at the surface by four main interactive, time dependent flux terms, the absorbed solar flux, the net LWIR cooling flux, the moist convection (evapotranspiration) and the subsurface thermal transport.
It is impossible for the change in long wave IR (LWIR) flux produced by a so called greenhouse gas forcing to cause any kind of climate change. Any temperature increases are too small to measure. The concepts of radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity are pseudoscientific nonsense that are derived from an oversimplified one dimensional equilibrium or steady state climate model. There are five parts to this analysis:
1) It is impossible for the small decrease in LWIR flux (radiative forcing) at the top of the atmosphere to couple to the surface because of molecular line broadening effects in the troposphere. Part of the upward LWIR flux can pass through the gaps in the narrower lines above. The downward LWIR flux is absorbed by the wider lines below.
2) There is no thermal equilibrium or steady state, so a change in flux has to be interpreted as a change in the rate of cooling (or heating) of a set of coupled thermal reservoirs. In the troposphere, at low to mid latitudes, a doubling of the CO2 concentration from 300 to 600 ppm produces a maximum decrease in the cooling rate, or a slight warming of +0.08 °C per day. This is too small to measure in the normal temperature variations found in the turbulent boundary layer near the surface. Using the radiative forcings from the Sixth IPCC Climate Assessment Report (WG1, Figure TS.15.), the change in the cooling rate from 1750 to 2019 for CO2 is approximately +0.04 °C per day and for methane it is near +0.02 °C per day.
3) Over the oceans, the penetration depth of the LWIR radiation is less than 100 micron (0.004 inches). Here it is fully coupled to the wind driven evaporation or latent heat flux. At present the annual increase in average CO2 concentration is near 2.4 ppm per year. This produces an increase in the downward LWIR flux to the surface of approximately 0.034 W m-2 per year. There can be no ‘water vapor feedback’ in the evaporation process at the ocean surface. Any increase in ocean surface temperature increase produced by an increase in CO2 LWIR flux is too small to measure. The increase in downward LWIR flux for methane is even less than that for CO2.
4) Over land, almost all of the absorbed solar flux is dissipated within the same diurnal cycle in which it is received. There is a convection transition temperature each evening when the convection stops and the surface continues to cool more slowly by net LWIR emission. This transition temperature is reset each day by the local weather system passing through. Any surface warming produced by an increase in downward LWIR flux from CO2 – or methane – is too small to measure.
5) There can be no CO2 signal in the global temperature record. The main term is temperature change from ocean oscillations, mostly the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). There is an obvious peak near 1940 from the warming phase of the AMO (See figures 3 and 5 in H81). In addition, there is heating from urban heat island effects, changes to the weather station rural/urban mix and ‘adjustments’ related to homogenization.
More information on climate pseudoscience is available at:
https://venturaphotonics.com/files/VPCP_032.1_ClimateAlgebra.pdf
A more detailed discussion of climate energy transfer is provided in the recent book ‘Finding Simplicity in a Complex World – The Role of the Diurnal Temperature Cycle in Climate energy Transfer and Climate Change’ by Roy Clark and Arthur Rörsch. A summary and selected abstracts including references relevant to this discussion are available at:
https://clarkrorschpublication.com/.
When human CO2 emissions dropped 6% in 2020, according to the IEA, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the atmospheric CO2 kept rising at the very same rate(at least to the eye). Human CO2 emission didn’t matter at all.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Would you mind acknowledging that you have read this response? I have commented before and it doesn’t seem that you are aware that, at a monthly resolution to demonstrate seasonal variation, April was variously estimated to be 14-18% less than the previous year, with lesser amounts of decline in the preceding months, without showing a ramp-up slope or annual maximum in May distinguishable from 2019 or 2021.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
The most insane part of the methane alarm is concern about, and policies to reduce, methane from plant breakdown, animal digestion, and other agricultural processes.
These biological processes are all just part of the carbon cycle. They don’t put anything into the atmosphere that they didn’t previously take out of it.
CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis and it is returned to the atmosphere as the products of photosynthesis break down. That return can be directly to CO2, or it can be first to methane, which in turn breaks down to CO2.
Burning fossil fuels expels some additional CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. If there was any rational concern about the possibility of too much CO2 or methane (there isn’t) this additional bit of greenhouse gas could possibly be an issue, but being concerned about biological life temporarily removing some CO2 from the atmosphere and then returning it is beyond nonsensical. It’s a radical hostility to life.
Some of the most economically damaging green-religion policies are this anti-agricultural-methane nonsense. Ireland, for instance, is planning on reducing it’s cattle herds 25% by 2030 to reduce agricultural methane emissions.
If you look at the government’s green-religious propaganda masquerading as science, they lump carbon cycle methane together with fossil fuel burning methane as if they are the same thing: “Methane arising from enteric fermentation [animal digestion] accounts for just below 19% of our national GHG emissions. Reducing the volume of methane originating from ruminant livestock will be required for Ireland to adhere to both EU 2030 emissions reduction targets and national ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2050.”
No, carbon-cycle “emissions” shouldn’t be counted as emissions at all, because they only put back into the atmosphere what they earlier took out. They are not a net emission.
Yet they are still being used as an excuse for “culling the herd.”
The actual agenda behind this intentional irrationality is probably undercover veganism. The people behind it are really against the existence of farm animals. They want them gone, and somehow manage to convince themselves that this is being pro-animal.
It’s the damn bug-eaters, the psychotic Bill Gateses of the world.
“No, carbon-cycle “emissions” shouldn’t be counted as emissions at all, because they only put back into the atmosphere what they earlier took out.”
This also applies to coal. ! 🙂
Burning coal is just returning the carbon back into the carbon cycle where it came from.
I would say that the coal formation removes carbon from the carbon cycle, or sequesters it, but certainly the harmful consequences for the biosphere of this sequestration, and the benefits of returning the carbon to the carbon cycle, should be accounted.
Atmospheric CO2 has fallen 90% over the last 170 million years, all the way down to deep semi-starvation levels of about 150ppm during recent interglacials, and the current 400+ppm is still dangerously close to starvation level.
Just from the long term trend in CO2, it looks like mankind might have come along just in time to keep life on earth from being extinguished by CO2 starvation.
We don’t know why the current ice age descended, but it is certainly plausible that whatever forces have been at work would cause continued cooling, until at some point the massive albedo feedback from reflecting sun away from ever larger swaths of increasingly direct sunlight would go all the way to snowball earth, at which point pretty much all life bigger than microbes would disappear.
It’s enough to make one suspicious of a hand of providence, yet the human-hating eco-religionists are determined to stop this mere 70 yr long episode of mankind pulling the planet’s biosphere back from the edge of starvation. We are the problem, they insist, when human technological progress is obviously the solution, and so far has done nothing but obvious good.
The rich own the media that is spreading the “climate change” story. They hope to make trillions more dollars.
“Some of the most economically damaging green-religion policies are this anti-agricultural-methane nonsense.”
They are crazy policies that threaten people’s lives. People who want to cut food (methane) production are insane, and their delusions should not be tolerated.
People are going to resist when you start trying to take their food away.
As I have said before,
COWS, SHEEP, PIGS etc ARE CARBON NEUTRAL.
It is chemically impossible for them to “put out” any more “carbon” than they take in.
Er, aren’t you missing a step there? ‘CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis’ only during the day – at night oxygen is taken out of the atmosphere and CO2 is returned to the atmosphere by the plants respiration.
For a plant to grow, the two processes together must result in a net absorption of carbon.
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…(Houghton et al.,1990)
There are two key statements in that. The comparison is an equal pulse of CH4 and CO2, and it’s by mass, not volume.
The usual practice is to project cause and effect out to 2100 so:
Methane is increasing at a rate of about 7 ppb every year. By 2100 that will amount to about 500 ppb or 0.5 ppm. Because CO2 at a mass of 44 per molecule compared to a mass of 16 for CO2, an equal mass of CO2 would be (16/44) times 0.5 ppm which comes to 0.18 ppm.
Current CO2 concentration is almost 420 ppm. So if you increase CO2 from 420 ppm to 420.18 ppm in single pulse, how much warming will that create? It would be nearly nothing and 86 times nearly nothing is still nearly nothing.
If you attempt to find out how much warming methane will cause by 2100 or in 100 years or if it doubles, you won’t find an answer anywhere on the internet. If you’ve followed all that it explains a few things. Regulating cattle ranches, dairy farms and rice paddies over this is ridiculous.
Don’t forget when methane is used as a fuel it releases CO2 which has nothing to do with the GWP non-sense. But in that role, it’s not 86 times more powerful than CO2 and an annual increase of 0.007 ppm isn’t going to do anything.
I believe it is all political. Those hoping to be re-elected can point to the efforts of CoP 28 and point out that the US is a signatory to the Global Methane Pledge, thereby saving use from an existential threat. It is not unlike the Prior Restraint gun control laws that even Forrest Gump could understand won’t be followed by the section of society that is responsible for violence.
Cut meat consumption by 40%. Data tells the truth and numbers do not lie. Total methane emissions from all sources including wetlands and fossil fuels are about 614,000,000 tons/year. Residual atmospheric methane is 0.00018%. 1.4 billion cows emit 86 million tons of methane annually which is 14% of total emissions. Therefore 14% of – residual CH4 – 0.00018% is 0.0000238% that is 2.38 trillionths of atmospheric CH4. Atmospheric methane needs to be at least 100 times more prolific to have even the slightest influence on climate. Insofar as UK cows are concerned which are 0.69% of the global total at 0.0000000229908% of 0.00018%. Methane The Irrelevant GHG. Methane The Irrelevant GHG. (CH4) has narrow absorption bands at 3.3 microns and 7.5 microns (the red lines). CH4 is 20 times more effective an absorber than CO2 – in those bands. However, CH4 is only 0.00018% (1.8 parts per billion) of the atmosphere. Moreover, both of its bands occur at wavelengths where H2O is already absorbing substantially. Hence, any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O. The ratio of the percentages of water to methane is such that the effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O. The amount of CH4 must increase 100-fold to make it comparable to H2O. Because of that, methane is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas. The high per-molecule absorption cross section of CH4 makes no difference at all in our real atmosphere. It cannot contribute to atmospheric warming or climate change.
When human CO2 emissions dropped 6% in 2020 because of COVID-19 the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere didn’t seem to change at all(at least to the eye).
“didn’t seem to change at all(at least to the eye)”
“didn’t seem” is kind of like speculating, isn’t it?
We get a lot of speculation from all directions when it comes to human-caused climate change. In fact, that’s about all we get. Never anything definitive.
Nothing definitive here, either.
Everything except “Cut meat consumption by 40%.” You first, I’ll stand pat. Pass the steak sauce, please.
BTW low meat and dairy consumption does often lead to vitimin A deficiency. Plan to develop 80% increase in cultivated vegetables like carrots and squash, ship them to poor places (or places where the Party members get most of the meat), and incorporate them into the local diet. Get over the anti GMO idiocy, and pay to implement farming golden rice (for which you’re gonna need to keep at least a few of the water buffalo). Else prepare to put up with developmental brain and lung deficiencies and optical impairment — which will cost more than maintaining a thriving meat and dairy industry.
Our diet fish lamb beef some potatoes carrots cerials milk butter cheese double cream chicken to difficult for Linda to eat she has to eat a soft diet so its fillet steak and lots of it. If we eat meat we are eating a vegetarian diet because animals eat grass and grains unfit for human consumption so whats the beef?
Roger,
Perhaps more important than the two considerations that you mentioned, both of which significantly reduce the actual greenhouse gas effect of methane as mixed in Earth’s atmosphere, i.e.,
— lower methane concentration in the atmosphere on a mole basis, and
— the peak IR absorbance band of methane being away from the peak in the LWIR emission band of Earth’s surface radiation (note that it is actually on the higher frequency “ramp up”-side instead of being on the lower frequency roll-off tail, even at an assumed average surface temperature of 310 K),
is the fact that the major LWIR absorbance band of methane is significantly overlapped by the wide absorbance band of water vapor, which predominates due to its overwhelming molecular concentration over all ranges of practical tropospheric humidity.
See this graph:
Excellent point re water vapour concentrations in the atmosphere and the spread of their LWIR absorption bands. Also the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is less than 2ppm and that of nitric oxide is less than o.8 ppm.
Good article, Roger Caiazza. Keep up the good work.
“I would love additional arguments why methane is not to be feared…”
I realize these points differ from the widely held view among skeptics that “some warming can be expected” from incremental GHG concentrations, and the debate should be over “how much” and whether it is harmful. I disagree, noting these technical reasons why the climate response should instead have been considered negligible from the start.
Again, keep up the fantastic work on behalf of all of us citizens of NY State.
I should have also said to please read the text in the description box of each video linked above for the full explanation of what the time-lapse images demonstrate.
Very nice Roger, clearly written and very informative.
From the comments here it is quite clear that the “global warming potential” of methane is inconsequential and this fact is well known. It is impossible to believe that none of the IPCC’s trusted “scientists” are unaware of this, therefore it can be reasonably stated that if the IPCC lie about methane, they will lie about all of “the science” and are committing the biggest fraud in history on the population of the entire planet. Charges should be brought. That’s what I would like to see in the new year.
Having read all IPCC tomes except for the complete AR6, I am pretty confident it is not the IPCC who primarily jumped on methane. It was the vegan hangers on who want to eliminate beef and dairy. And those vegans didn’t know much about the underlying ‘climate science’, so they simply got the methane thing flat wrong.
In the IPCC AR6 WGI report, in the text following figure TS9:
“By 2019, concentrations of CH4 reached 1866.3 (± 3.3) ppb
(Figure TS.9c). The increase since 1750 of 1137 ± 10 ppb (157.8%) far
exceeds the range over multiple glacial–interglacial transitions of the
past 800,000 years (high confidence). In the 1990s, CH4 concentrations
plateaued, but started to increase again around 2007 at an average
rate of 7.6 ± 2.7 ppb yr–1 (2010–2019; high confidence). There is high
confidence that this recent growth is largely driven by emissions
from fossil fuel exploitation, livestock, and waste, with ENSO driving
multi-annual variability of wetland and biomass burning emissions.
In 2019, ERF from CH4 was 0.54 Wm–2. {2.2.3, 5.2.2, 7.3}”
This is about 1/4 the 2019 ERF stated for CO2 in the preceding paragraph. No doubt this WGI report gave the methane worriers what they wanted.
Back in the 1980’s, scientists at Canadian Hunter Exploration in Calgary told me that by looking at isotopes of gases, they determined that the oldest natural gas pool that they could find was only 10 million years old. That means that all the TCF’s of gas pools we know of, leak out and and are replenished over a period of 10 million years. Therefore, nature contributes vast amounts of methane to the atmosphere possibly dwarfing man’s contribution.
Sleeping with the Enemy on Methane
I sent this off to SkepticalScience .com mainly just to bate the beast but mainly just to see whether their answer was any different from WijnGaarden and Happer
>
> Email: alastairgray29@yahoo.com
>
> Subject:
Methane
> Message:
Deniers unwilling to give up beef say “there is so little methane
in the atmosphere that it doesn’t make a difference” I tell them
Methane is 84 times more powerful a GHG than Co2 and it doesn’t matter how small the concentration it still makes a huge difference. Can anyone tell me if we were
to double the Methane concentration of the atmosphere how much temperature rise it would cause?
A nice young man called David Kirtley replied and we had a dialog
If David spent more time with Wijngaarden and Happer we might make a climate scientist of him. Instead of that he hangs around with Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt and no doubt polishes his AGW credentials . At least he talks and discusses unlike his mentors
Make of it what you will but in summary he e says that id=f we doubled methane in atmosphere instantaneously then after 10 years the temperature would rise by about 0.3 Deg C after 10 years whereas a doubling of CO2 would increase temp by 1,2,3 deg take your pick.
I think W and H argue more cogently but at least this guy did argue and to a certain extent his importance of Methane tends to somewhat agree with W and H
( I really wish that all these guys would argue their case in open court)
> On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 07:41:38 PM GMT,
> <contact@skepticalscience.com>
wrote:
> Hi
Alastair,
It is true that molecule for molecule methane
(CH4) is ~84 times more
powerful than CO2. This is for the first 20 years after it is released, but over
100 years that drops down to ~32 times more potent. It’s complicated but part of the issue is that CH4 emissions don’t accumulate in the
atmosphere the same way CO2 emissions do. In fact, CH4 chemically reacts
in the atmosphere to form CO2 and water vapor. The methane only lasts about a decade or two in the atmosphere. Another reason CO2 is the more important greenhouse gas is because there is just so much more of it in the atmosphere than CH4. CO2 is currently at about 415 ppm (parts permillion) while CH4 is at about 1.880 ppb. So there is about 220 times as much CO2 as CH4 in the atmosphere. Another thing to keep in mind is that our emissions of CO2 are much larger than emissions of
CH4.
David Archer has some online models you can play with which help illustrate greenhouse gas effects. The one which compares CO2 to CH4 is called the “Slugulator”–you can see what happens when different emission slugs” or “spikes” of the two gases are released all at once:
> http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/slugulator/slugulator.doc.html
When you go to that link you’ll see that the default settings under the “Model Parameters” are for 1 Gigaton of Carbon’s worth of emissions of both CO2
and CH4. (You’ll probably want to do this on a computer rather than a
smartphone 🙂 ) The charts below show the outcomes of this sudden spike of
each gas into the atmosphere (hover your mouse’s cursor over the lines on the graphs to see values at various years). The first chart shows how the atmospheric concentrations of each gas would change. The model starts with the “pre-industrial” levels of each gas at year 0,> 280 ppm for CO2 (the left-side y-axis), and 1.6 ppm for CH4 (theright-side y-axis). Below the charts there is a drop-down menu where you can select different time spans for the model-run. Change this to 10 years. Now you can
clearly see the “spike” release of each gas over the first year. That brings the CO2 concentration up to about 280.5 ppm. The CH4 rises to just over 2 ppm. But notice that in the following years the level of CH4 starts to fall and CO2 continues to rise. That is because the CH4 is > reacting
in the atmosphere to form CO2. Now look at the other graph of Surface Temp Anomaly. (You can change this graph to display other options like Equilibrium Temp., etc. from the drop-down menu above it.) After about 5 years, the temp increase from the CH4 tops out at about .09°C, so about a tenth of a degree.
The > warming from CO2 is just about 0.005°, and remember, some of that CO2
> (or at least the carbon in the CO2) was originally CH4.
Under the “Model Output” info at the upper right you can use the “Warming” info to get a sense of how CH4 compares to CO2. So for the > first 10 years the warming from the CO2 is .0374 “degree-years” (see this brief note from Archer explaining “degree-years”:
> http://forecast.uchicago.edu/slugulator.doc.html %5B2%5DTo be honest, I’m not > really
sure how “degree-years” would translate into something more meaningful, like degrees increase per year, or something similar. But at least it is a number that we can use to try to compare the different gases). And the warming from CH4 is .772, about 20 times more potent than CO2, but again, remember that some of that CO2 originated as CH4.
Now change the time span to show 25 years. On the concentration graph > you can
see that the CH4 has just about come back down to its original level,as it has transformed into CO2, which continues to rise. The warming from each gas now is: .165 for CO2, and 1.61 for CH4. Change the time to 100 years and now the CH4 is back down to the original level (1.6 ppm) and CO2 tops out around year 35 at almost 281 ppm (so about 0.5 ppm of the CO2 is from the CH4), and then it slowly > starts
to bend down as CO2 is taken up by the oceans. At 500 years (and beyond) you can really see that CO2 hangs around in the atmosphere for a very long time.
> You can run all kinds of different emission scenarios with this model.
> So we can answer your question about what would happen if we doubled
> the amount of CH4. To do this I put 0 for the CO2 spike, since we are >
interested in only what CH4 will do. Then, by entering various numbers > for the
CH4 spike I came upon a value of 3.66 which results in the CH4
concentration doubling from 1.6 to 3.2 ppm. This results in a temp increase by about year 7 of .3°C, which then slowly subsides as CH4 transforms to CO2. By about year 50 the temp increase comes mainly from the resulting CO2. What about a doubling of CO2? To go from 280 ppm to 560 ppm requires a spike of 560 GtC. (Set the CH4 spike to 0.) This results in a rapid > increase in temps of 2°C by year 25. And this stays near this level > for > hundreds of years. > What
about comparing our actual yearly emissions of CO2 and CH4? Right> now CO2
is increasing by about 2.4 ppm each year (https://www.co2.earth/co2-acceleration) and CH4 is increasing by about 10 ppb/year, (notice that is parts per BILLION, not million
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/). I found that a spike of > 0.023
The CO2 levels
So
GtC of CH4 causes a rise from 1.600 ppm to 1.610 ppm (which is the > same as
10 ppb: 1600 ppb to 1610 ppb). Over 100 years this single> year’s
> amount of CH4 would result in 0.0557 “warming” from the CH4 as well as
> the resulting CO2. The annual increase of CO2 (2.4 ppm) results from a
> spike of 4.81 GtC. The warming from this over 100 years equals 2.34.
The warming from one year’s CO2 emissions is about 42 times that caused by
a year’s
worth of CH4 emissions. I’ve thrown a lot of numbers at you, and a lot of different scenarios to >
consider, and it’s probably way more than you were looking for, so I
> won’t include other information about the carbon cycles of both CO2 > and
> CH4 which come into play regarding their impacts on climate change.
But if you would like more info about this
complicated topic, or if you > check my math and come across any mistakes, or if you have any further >
questions, please contact us again.
> Cheers,
> David
Kirtley, for the Skeptical Science team
>
Dear David,
> Thank you very much for your prompt and informative reply. That is a
> dandy little program that you sent me. Is it written in Python? or > if not
what is the language as I would like to play with it. >
You have now answered my question, and I have confirmed it thus. The > total
mass of methane in the atmosphere is according to Google about 5 > G Tonne
and using your model I can input a slug of a further 5 GTonne > to double it which gives a temperature rise of 0.4 deg over a 10 year period. Bad enough but not as bad as the image that 84 Times as bad as CO2 conjures up. I also noted that Methane is growing by 10 PPB per year which in terms of an annual GTonne slug is ( 10/1880) x 5 GTonne = 0.03 although we > should really double that to 0.06 GT/Yr to account for the fact that > the base figure has got to be maintained against its natural decline
> due to oxidation to CO2 in the atmosphere. > I would have to tell my denier pal then that at current growth in > Methane level we are looking at a temperature rise of about 0.006 > degrees over a 10 year period. He is not going to give up his burger
habit for that.
> I do have one further question. I observe see below that Methane has > two
peaks at 3.2 Micron and 8 micron. The 3.2 micron peak does not contribute much to warming as there is very little upgoing radiation at this wavelength. The 8 Micron peak is a different story occurring right at the peak of the outgoing IR spectrum. However this band overlaps an absorption band of water > vapour. Would it
not then be the case that the absorption of IR at this wavelength is already substantially saturated, and the effect of> methane on global warming will be muted
> Regards,
> Alastair
>
> Hi Alastair,
>
> I don’t
know much about computers and code, but there is a link to >
“Source Code” for the models used by David Archer: > http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/slugulator/slugulator.doc.htm
>
> As for
your questions about methane and H2O and saturation, first I
> would
refer you to our rebuttal about saturation:
> https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
> Although
the common formulation of this idea deals with the saturation
>
> of CO2,
the concept can be transferred to other GHGs. But ultimately,
> the idea
of “saturation” blocking any further greenhouse effect from
>
additional GHGs is flawed, as the rebuttal points out.
>
>
Secondly, there is a paper from 2010 by researchers at NASA-GISS
>
(https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010JD014287)
>
> which
tried to tease out each GHG’s contribution to the greenhouse
> effect.
They used computer models and performed two sets of tests:
>
>
“They did one set of tests where they subtracted each of these
>
[GHGs]—such as CO2—one at a time, to see how much less heat would
> be
> trapped.
They also did another set of tests in which they removed all
> the
greenhouse contributors, and then added them back individually.”
> —
> https://news.agu.org/press-release/taking-measure-of-the-greenhouse-effect/
>
> The
results of these model runs are given in Table 1 of the paper. So,
>
> for
instance, the first set of tests involving H2O showed that water
> vapor is
responsible for 39% of the greenhouse effect; the second set
> of
> tests
showed H2O’s share to be 62%. So the minimum effect of water
> vapor
> is 39%
and the maximum is 62%. Why the difference?
>
> In a
blog post, Chris Colose explains:
>
>
“greenhouse gases exhibit complex spectral overlap (primarily by water
>
> vapor
and clouds, and in second by water vapor and CO2). The maximum
> effect
would be if the greenhouse gas were acting individually, while
> the
minimum effect would be when only that agent is removed, and these
>
> numbers
can be quite different … What’s more, if you removed two
> agents
together (say water vapor + CO2) the effect would be different
> than if
you remove CO2, put it back, remove water vapor and put it
> back,
> and then
record the sum of those two effects (ignoring feedbacks such
> as
> water
vapor dependence on temperature). In particular, the sum of the
> effect
of each absorber acting separately is greater than if they act
>
together.”
> https://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/adding-up-the-greenhouse-effect-attributing-the-contributions/
>
> So it
does appear likely that methane and water vapor, which as you
> noted
both absorb the same wavelengths of IR, would moderate their
>
individual greenhouse effects when working together in the atmosphere.
>
> Here is
another post about the paper from Gavin Schmidt, one of the
>
authors: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/
>
> Cheers,
> David
>
On 2021-02-24 06:40, alastair gray wrote:
> Hello
David,
>
> Thanks
for your reply. unfortunately the link to the source code did
> not
work.
>
>
Regarding the rebuttal on saturation, the analogy with the water
> cistern
is not really appropriate.Assuming input flow of 100 l per hr
> then if
I the outlet flow is also 100 l /hr then the system is truly
> in
equilibrium and the level will stay constant. However if I
> restrict
the exit flow to 99 l/minute the tank will fill up and
> continue
filling and will never reach equilibrium. The rise in liquid
> level is
linear.
> With CO2
however the variation of heating effect is logarithmic -That
> is why
we can say that there is a climate sensitivity of X deg for
> every
doubling of Co2 concentration. Therefore it is correct to talk
> about a
saturation in that each and every molecule of CO2 has less
> effect
than its predecessor. This logarithmic effect is about the one
> thing
that deniers and truth tellers can actually agree on.
>
> The
sensitivity is I believe about 1 deg per doubling which will be
>
multi[plied by 3 or so due to water vapour feedback so double CO2 from
> the
present level of 400 to give a temperature 3 degrees warmer when
> the
concentration reaches 800 ppm.
> Now if I
go backward in time if I halve the CO2 content to 200 ppm as
> at the
end of the last ice age about 1000 years ago the temperature
> should
be about 3 degrees cooler. but that is not right because at
> that
time we had a holocene optimum where temperatures were about the
>
same as or warmer than today’s. Then again in a hypothetical world a
> CO2
concentration of 100 PPM would indicate a temp 6 degrees below
> today’s
. The logarithmic thing must ultimately break down otherwise
> you
would get to the position of saying if I have an atmosphere with
> only 1
molecule of CO2 then doubling that to 2 molecules will increase
>
temperature by 3 deg which is absurd
>
> I am
afraid the physics of Colose and Schmidt are beyond me but if I
> read it
correctly then the contributions of Methane , NO2 and other
> things
are bit players and quite a lot less than 84 times more
> powerful
than CO2 – like only 5% of the effect of CO2. Maybe Gavin
> should
publicise this a bit more because, like my denier friend, I do
> rather
enjoy a spaghetti Bolognese, or a big slab of steak from time
> to time.
>
> Another
thing I don’t really understand is,- If a pulse of CO2 into
> the
atmosphere raises temperature by X deg which is increased to 3X by
> water
vapour feedback then this extra temperature would cause a
> further
increase in water vapour which would cause a rise in
>
temperature which would be tripled by feedback and then
>
………..eventually the world would boil. This is what amplifiers
> do
where when the mike is to close to the speaker. The whole system
> becomes
unstable. What intervenes in the atmosphere to avoid this
> runaway
positive feedback?
>
> Regards,
Alastair
>
Hi Alastair,
“the analogy with the water cistern is not really appropriate.” Well, no
analogy is perfect. But wouldn’t Bernoulli’s principle and Torricelli’s
law indicate that a new equilibrium level might be reached if the tank
were tall enough? (Full disclosure: I just learned about these
concepts.) As the water level gets higher the pressure increases and the
rate of flow from the outlet would increase. Wouldn’t the water level
reach a point where the outflow would once again equal the inflow?
Interesting problem.
“Now if I go backward in time if I halve the CO2 content to 200 ppm as
at the end of the last ice age about 1000 years ago the temperature
should be about 3 degrees cooler.”
I think you mean “10,000 years” rather than “1000”. And the CO2 was at
~260 ppm at the end of the last ice age, not 200. See:
were around 180-200 ppm during the depths of past ice age glacial
periods: 
climate sensitivity would indicate that those periods would have been ~3
degrees cooler than the interglacials. But the actual global temps were
around 6-8°C cooler. What gives?
It’s important to remember that there are multiple forcings and
feedbacks always going on with the climate. For instance, there are the
variations in Earth’s tilt and orbit which impact the timing of the ice
age cycles (Milankovich cycles:
https://skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html). The earth’s albedo
would have been much more higher during glacial periods with those vast
ice sheets reflecting sunlight. Etc.
And that gets to your last question about “runaway positive feedback”.
The reason the Earth would have a runaway greenhouse effect is because
there are also negative feedbacks operating at the same time. And
secondly, the logarithmic nature of CO2’s impact means that each
doubling of concentration gets bigger and bigger so there are
diminishing returns on how high the temps go. See:
https://skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming-intermediate.htm
Cheers,
David
>
The belief that Greenhouse Gasses cause a change in the exit of heat energy to space is contrived nonsense.
Ice predominantly controls the exit of long wave radiation to space. Ice also limits the amount of solar energy getting to the surface. Humans observe the ice as clouds but it also hangs about the atmosphere without being visible as clouds but still influences heat uptake and heat loss.
The water that forms the cloud is pumped up high in the atmosphere by convective instability and this process regulates ocean surface temperature to a sustainable 30C. The rare exceptions to this thermostatic limit are semi-enclosed waterways and coastal regions where convective potential cannot form.
When you can explain how the attached atmospheric profile occurs and understand the associated convective potential, you may begin to understand how Earth’s energy balance is actually regulated – hint- it has nothing to do with CO2 – a trace gas.
Convective potential is responsible for creating cyclones. A single cyclone can reduce the surface temperature by 3C or more over hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. These are the ultimate heat release valve for oceans and shift incredible amounts of heat from oceans to be released over land. Most of the east coast of Australia has experienced storms that have dropped up to 600mm of atmospheric water over vast regions of land in just the last month. This water was liberated by heat going into the oceans. And some loons are trying to convince us that a trace gas that represents grams per square metre in the entire atmospheric column can alter the energy balance – they have no clue.
All climate models have tropical oceans sustaining more than 30C. This is physically impossible with the present atmospheric mass.
The movement of energy within the atmosphere is controlled by the gas laws.
CO2 cannot alter this control.
Only H2O has the ability to change alter this control, because it is the only substance that can be gas, liquid or solid with the atmosphere.
Analysis of ballon data proves that the gas laws hold over the whole troposphere with an absolutely linear energy gradient wrt molecular density.
Roger, are the authors of the NY state’s Climate Act aware of your ideas on this and other topics? I have no doubt that the state leaders in MA certainly are not. They show zero doubt in the climate emergency. No expression of doubt is tolerated. None is offered. They’ve cloned John Kerry’s brain- at least the climate part.
Joseph,
New York’s Climate Act is political policy at its worst. New York regulates its GHG emissions using GWP-20 because of methane and that is directly a result of Howarth. The legislators who authored it relied on the scientific input of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University who has claimed authorship of the methane portions of the Climate Act. I have never seen any indication that he is aware of my skepticism and I doubt that he would acknowledge anything I have written. I don’t think he has much background in atmospheric physics and, frankly, I doubt he would ever try to understand all the arguments described here.
I have submitted comments on regulations and reports arguing that methane is not an issue, There has never been a substantive rebuttal to those comments. Technical staff at the agencies have their hands tied because Howarth got a lot of the methane crap into the Climate Act law. There is no room for skepticism in the agencies so they just toe the line and ignore my comments,
As you say no expression of official doubt is acknowledged, tolerated, or allowed to upset the narrative. I should note that there are some politicians, even a few Democrats, that have figured out that there problems with the Climate Act.
Here are some high-resolution spectral numbers posted by Bones here at WUWT 9 1/2 years ago.
LINK
Cross sections for CO2 in cm^2 per molecule
http://vpl.astro.washington.edu/spectra/co2pnnlimagesmicrons.htm
Cross sections for CH4 in cm^2 per molecule
http://vpl.astro.washington.edu/spectra/ch4pnnlimagesmicrons.htm
Cross sections for H2) in cm^2 per molecule
http://vpl.astro.washington.edu/spectra/h2opnnlimagesmicrons.htm
For well mixed atmospheric gas constituents, the fraction of beam absorption per meter of gas column by each type of molecule at a given wavelength will be proportional to the molecule’s cross-section at that wavelength and also proportional to the number of molecules of that type. These have to be summed over the earth surface thermal emission bands in order to see which molecules absorb the most energy. Water vapor, because of its great numbers of molecules is dominant, but there is significant absorption by both CO2. The low numbers of CH4 result in much less energy absorbed by it. It has a fair sized cross-section but very low numbers.
=================
Here are some additional links to comments in the 9+ year old thread to read as some are from a scientist such as atmosphere chemist Phil who cautions that high resolution numbers show that water vapor doesn’t cover all of CH4 bandwidth.
LINK Willis Eschenbach
LINK Ken Gregory
LINK PHIL
LINK George E. Smith
Story tip…
Spain’s Socialist Government Confirms Nuclear Plant Phase Out Will Begin In 2027 – Climate Change Dispatch
Maybe they will get their night-time electricity from solar… like they did at one stage.
They recently added a 7th LNG terminal at Gijon to the existing ones at Bilbao, Murgados, Huelva, Escombreras, Sagunto and Barcelona. Regularly seeing Russian LNG discharges at all ports (perhaps Europe’s biggest Russian LNG customer at the moment), although they do get supply from other sources too.
Joseph,
New York’s Climate Act is political policy at its worst. New York regulates its GHG emissions using GWP-20 because of methane and that is directly a result of Howarth. The legislators who authored it relied on the scientific input of Robert W. Howarth, Ph.D., the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University who has claimed authorship of the methane portions of the Climate Act. I have never seen any indication that he is aware of my skepticism and I doubt that he would acknowledge anything I have written. I don’t think he has much background in atmospheric physics and, frankly, I doubt he would ever try to understand all the arguments described here.
I have submitted comments on regulations and reports arguing that methane is not an issue, There has never been a substantive rebuttal to those comments. Technical staff at the agencies have their hands tied because Howarth got a lot of the methane crap into the Climate Act law. There is no room for skepticism in the agencies so they just toe the line and ignore my comments,
As you say no expression of official doubt is acknowledged, tolerated, or allowed to upset the narrative. I should note that there are some politicians, even a few Democrats, that have figured out that there problems with the Climate Act.
Roger
This was supposed to be in response to Joseph Zorin at December 29, 2023 2:34 pm
Worth pointing out that Wijngaarden and Happer produced a separate paper concentrating specifically on methane, available here:
https://co2coalition.org/publications/methane-and-climate/
Great reference – thanks
Actually, I’m usually rather frugal. 🙂
Roger, trees emit methane and in the bark, colonies of symbiotic bacteria eat methane for their life energy and mass. They break carbon-hydrogen bonds with an organic chemical in ther bodies. Apparently they consume about 50% or so of emitted methane. This is a huge! It was discovered over a hundred years ago and little research had been done so far.
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/03/methane-converting-bacteria/
PThe “huge” part is this: alarmists claim that 60% of methane emissions are due to human actions. Since they are not aware that trees emit the gas, then, with over 3 trillion trees on earth (counted by Google over 10yrs ago) and growing, forests, bogs and swamps, beaverponds, natural seeps, etc., have to be responsible for a huge percentage of the methane in the atmosphere! Indeed, with forests having expanded over 35% in the last 40yrs, it probably accounts for the growing emissions (agriculture has more than doubled output on about 20% less land (gone into new bush)
All living things emit methane. Who knew? Maybe expanding habitat, diversity and the creatures and trees is not a good thing if you’re from the Dark Side!
It wasn’t so long ago that termites were considered to be one of the top two methane producers. Now, they are rarely mentioned.
Not to mention that the amount is so tiny it can barely be measured and something that tiny cannot affect anything let alone something so vast and complex as the climate
The new methane regs are just another chapter in the ever-thicker Democrat playbook for domestic oil and gas harassment. The regulators know it, the industry knows it, anyone paying attention knows it, and the eco-cult and their Chinese supporters know it and love it.