Apparently failure to control methane emissions is a path to climate influences which some consider to be unnatural.
Methane is turbocharging unnatural disasters – Australia must get serious about reducing emissions
Published: July 31, 2024 6.24am AEST Lesley Hughes Professor Emerita, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University
One of the most significant achievements of the 26th United Nations climate conference in Glasgow (COP26) three years ago was the launch of the Global Methane Pledge. The goal is to reduce global methane emissions at least 30% by 2030.
Methane (CH₄) is the second most significant climate pollutant after carbon dioxide (CO₂). In the words of one of the architects of the pledge, then US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, “tackling methane is the fastest, most effective way to reduce near-term warming and keep 1.5°C within reach”.
Australia signed up to the methane pledge in October 2022. It was a good start, but a promise is not a plan. To date, Australia has no official methane reduction targets, nor an agreed strategy to deal with this dangerous pollutant.
The Climate Council’s report, released today, sets out actions Australia can take right now to cut methane emissions. We need to get on with it.
Most people understand that carbon dioxide is the number one culprit when it comes to climate change. But there’s another harmful gas permeating our atmosphere and warming up our planet: methane. It’s the second most dangerous climate pollutant and it’s fuelling the unnatural disasters we’re experiencing now and into the next few decades.
There is growing recognition around the world that methane pollution is a huge contributor to warming the climate, especially in the near term. That’s because methane is highly effective at trapping heat. It breaks down in the atmosphere much more quickly than carbon dioxide, hanging around for only about a decade. But over a 20-year period it causes around 85 times the climate damage of carbon dioxide. And even when methane does break down, it adds to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That’s why slashing methane pollution now is critical to limiting the build up of harmful greenhouse gases that are fuelling global warming.
Sadly the video and report don’t appear to have anything new to offer. They want something to be done about cows (forcing farmers to feed them seaweed?), food waste and the fossil fuel industry. Organic waste bins. Food supplements for cows. And a halt to approving new coal, oil and gas.
Pretty much what they have been whining about all along.
I’m not sure how the seaweed supplements are supposed to get to the farmers without a lot of fossil fuel powered transport, and all that extra complex processing of waste would require lots of infrastructure and energy, but joined up thinking has never been a prominent quality displayed by climate fanatics.
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Duane
August 2, 2024 11:14 am
There are no “culprits” in climate change … just actors that work in concert with many other actors to produce the natural cyclical changes in climate the Earth has been experiencing for hundreds of millions of years.
The use of the pejorative is a tell that the authors are propagandists, not scientists.
Agree. The whole methane thing is really bad climate science. True, methane is a GHG in the lab in a standard dry atmosphere. But in the real world, the atmosphere is about 2% specific humidity. The two small height (not much methane in the atmosphere) narrow IR absorption bands are completely swamped by two much higher, broader water vapor absorption bands. In the real world, methane is de minimus.
True. The mid 19th century bison herds in North America were nearly as large in numbers as today’s beef and dairy cattle herds … but the bison on average weigh nearly twice as much as modern beef and dairy cattle, and food consumption, and therefore methane production, is naturally proportional to the size of the animal. So if anything, methane production today is less than when bison dominated the plains.
Plus there is also the well known effect that the type of feed affects the rate of methane production. Eating high fiber natural grasses, as the bison did, produces a lot more methane than eating low fiber grains. Today most beef and dairy cattle, when fattened up for market or to maximize milk production, are fed grain rather than grass.
The warmunist claims about the horrors of domesticated animal production clearly cannot stand the real tests of science where multiple factors must be weighed before declaring their theories are unassailable. Nothing is ever as simple as the warmunists claim it to be, with their mindless talk of “the science is settled”.
Lol. Please show us the instrument measurements for April 5th 1,347 years ago to April 5th 1,418 years ago.
Atmospheric CO2 accounts for
Then it should be real easy for you to prove it.
Start here… IPCC…Fist report…. ”We have not detected the expected (human co2) signal” And if you think they should have detected it now….you’d be wrong!
That would be H2O which is the mode prevalent GHG and accounts for the largest portion of atmospheric warming. CO2 is a comparative Bit Player in the grand scheme of things
CO2 has a turnover time of 4 years and is well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.9)
CH4 is said to be well mixed. (TAR p.6)
Tropospheric mixing time is 1 year so CH4 should be well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.9)
CH4 is not well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.19 and IPCC AR6 p.702)
There is a concentration gradient with about which I calculate to be about 7 % higher concentrations in the north of the northern hemisphere compared to the south of the southern hemisphere.
If CH4 has a turnover time of 9.1 years, why is it not well mixed?
CH4 should be more mixed than CO2 but it is not.
This suggests CH4 has a turnover time less than CO2. Less than 4 years.
The IPCC says “Considerable uncertainty exists as to the lifetimes of methane and many of the halocarbons, due to difficulties in modelling the chemistry of the troposphere.” (IPCC WG1 FAR p.59)
The turnover time is important since it is used to calculate both the total emissions and the global warming potential (GWP). If the CH4 turnover lifetime is less than 4 years then the GWP is much less than is claimed.
Also the anthropogenic portion of total methane emissions is much less.
The graph shows methane measured at Cape Grim which is 41 degrees south and Cold Bay, Alaska at 55 degrees north.
If the turnover time is less than 4 years then this has profound implications in regards to government’s policy regarding methane.
The turnover time is important since it is used to calculate both the total emissions and the global warming potential (GWP). If the CH4 turnover lifetime is less than 4 years then the GWP is much less than is claimed. ______________________________________________________________
How ’bout if you cut to the chase, and tell us how much warming methane is going to cause. See my post above.
I agree with you Steve. The warming caused by increasing methane would be too small to detect and any attempt to predict it will be meaningless given the large uncertainties.
The point I am trying to get across is that the turnover lifetime used by the IPCC is way too large and it matters.
Total methane emissions are not determined by observation. They use the turnover time to calculate total emissions with what they call a top down calculation. I was quite suprised to find out this is how the estimate total emissions. It is entirely dependent on the value of the lifetime and the value they use is wrong.
E = A/L from (TAR p.247)
where E= Total Emissions, anthropogenic plus natural.
A = the Amount of methane in the atmosphere
L = the turnover lifetime.
if A= 1922.41ppbv times 2.77 Tg/ppbv = 5325Tg ( some use 2.75 Tg/ppbv)
and if L = 9.1 years then total emissions would be 585 Tg. (1 Tg = 1 million tonnes.)
but if the turnover time L = 3 years or less then total emissions = 1775 Tg or more.
Anthropogenic emissions are estimated with a bottom up calculation to be about 375 Tg. (IPCC AR6 p.705)
So if the turnover time is 9.1 years, (it isn’t) the anthropogenic emissions make up about 64% of total emissions.
If the turnover time is 3 years or less then the anthropogenic emissions are only 21% or less. Which means that anthropogenic emissions play only a small part in the methane concentration in the atmosphere. It also means the rate at which methane is oxidised must be much larger than the IPCC estimates. I suspect that methanotrophic bacteria play a large roll in the removal of methane.
The IPCC need the lifetime to be about 9 years. Above about 12 years and the anthropogenic emissions are too large to be believable. Below about 7 years and the anthropogenic emissions are too small to be relevant.
But back to my original point. Methane is not as well mixed in the atmosphere as CO2 which means its lifetime must be less than that of carbon dioxide.
Tropospheric mixing of a gas takes about 1 year. (IPCC FAR p.9)
Methane is not completely unmixed but if its lifetime is more than 1 year, it cannot be much more. This means that all of the calculations about the GWP of methane are wrong.
It seems the IPCC has been having trouble calculating the effects of methane too. Their original estimate was that gram for gram, the effect of methane in warming the climate was 27 times that of CO2. They have now revised their estimate to 7 times as effective.
Yes, it is very important because the shape and duration of the decline of the concentration determines the Global Warming Potential when integrated over time.
Methane and farm animals have been in equilibrium for decades
That is a factor which seems to consistently be neglected.
Flood irrigation (eg rice) also releases quite a lot of methane. Apparently, switching to spray or drip irrigation would reduce this considerably, but it may not be practical.
Where does all the methane come from when farmers practice flood irrigation? I would think that after a few years you would release all the available methane and it would be no different than spray or drip irrigation.
No they have not been in equilibrium for ‘decades”. Atmospheric concentrations have been growing since the beginning of the industrial age, and have roughly doubled since then.
And the vast number of ruminants in Africa reported by the early explorers.
Current populations of cattle are:
Brazil 234m
India 193m
US 92m
Ethiopia 67m
Argentina 54m
Australia 24m
New Zealand 10m
UK 9.5m
etc
I must say that Ethiopia surprised me as it is usually quoted as being ravaged by famine.
I cannot see Brazil and India being too keen to reduce their cattle herds (much as if China was keen to reduce coal use).
Meanwhile the UK is being pressurised to reduce meat and dairy production by reducing cattle numbers, as if that will have any significant impact on worldwide methane emmissions.
Presumably to set a good example to the rest of the world, like Net Zero, in spite of it trashing the UK economy.
Also IIRC rice paddies are responsible for large emissions of methane, maybe rice production should be replaced with a dry land cereal./s
I thought I read on WUWT that ruminants ate biological material that was going to rot anyway so the amount of methane is the same as if there were no ruminants.
The minor little problem is that the 85 times the GHG effect of CO2 is measured in dry air, and the absorption spectrum of methane is overlapped by that of water vapor. Which some of the people making these claims know, and ignore. The others are like John Kerry, who do not know, and apparently do not care.
Ignoring the effect of water vapor is rationalized because it precipitates out in a few days. However, evaporation and transpiration is continually replenishing it, maintaining a nearly constant level about 4 orders of magnitude (10,000X) greater than methane. And, Man is increasing the water vapor through building reservoirs and irrigation that is depleting aquifers.
We live in California, which cannot avoid embracing any Climate Change idea put about by anyone, regardless of it’s veracity. We now have to separate our food waste into a separate container in our kitchen, then out it in a separate bin at the kerb. Once picked up, it apparently goes to a composter. Nothing has been said about how that compost is used. All to avoid food waste breaking down into methane in the landfill.
Not according to the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6) on page 705 Fig.5.14 shows fossil fuels are 114 to 116Tg/yr . Natural gas leaks are only part of that. Freshwaters are 117 to 212 Tg/yr. Wetlands are 102 to 182 Tg/yr.
No boy, you write computer models yourself, and accurately predict climate. And when they ask how it works, you show them how stupid they are, and their entire degree is worthless.
If there is anything you would like to know, I will be happy to tell you.
It also helps if you understand what you are reading. Your comments sound like you don’t, and are only parroting what you have read by some liberal arts majors.
The concentration of methane in air is about 1.9 ppm. The reason the concentration is so low is due to the initiation of combustion of the methane by discharges of lighting. There are thousands of lighting discharges everyday, especially in the tropics.
Methane is slightly soluble in water. One liter of cold polar water can hold about 35 ml
of methane. That is not much, but the polar oceans are immense. On the floor of polar oceans are vast deposits of methane ice.
There are a number of natural sources of methane such as swamps, bogs, muskegs,
decaying vegetation, wild ruminate animals, seeps from the ocean floors, and termites,
especially African termites.
Yes we do have to worry about methane. Atmospheric concentrations have nearly doubled since the beginning of the industrial era, and are the 2nd largest contributor to global warming of the planet.
Consider the bodily contribution to global warming of the average human that generates around 100 watts in a day – a bright light bulb. That is about 8,000,000,000 x 100 daily. Humans also light candles, rub sticks together, and fart in random directions. 🙂
Show your work where methane is a bigger problem than the above. 😏
The major greenhouse gas is water. CO2 and methane are trace components of the atmosphere and contribute very little to the greenhouse effect.
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is 427 ppm. This is only 0.839 grams of CO2 per cubic meter of air at STP.
On a sunny day at 21 deg C and 70% RH, the concentration of water is 17,780 ppm. This is 14.3 grams of water per cubic meter of air. At this temperature one cubic meter has 1.20 kilograms of air. The amount of CO2 in this air is 0.78 grams per cubic meter. For these weather conditions, water is 98% of the greenhouse effect. In this air there is only 0.10 grams of methane.
The claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2 and methane are the “cause” of the recent “global warming” and “climate change” is a fabrication and a lie.
“The claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2
and methane are the “cause” of the recent
“global warming” and “climate change” is a
fabrication and a lie.”
_____________________________________
The Big Lie is a lie so colossal that nobody would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously A. Hitler
The “Big Lie” is elaborate fraud being perpetrated since 1988 by the UN, the UNFCCC, the IPCC, and a coterie of unscrupulous scientists. The UN’s objective is the transfer of large amounts of funds from fines of the rich countries (i.e., the big polluters) to the poor countries to help them cope with global warning and climate change. At the recent COP28 conference, the the rich countries have promised many more large amounts of funds to the poor countries.
The IPCC has about 400 employees and a multi million dollar budget. The IPCC’s office is in Switzerland. These guys are living on the “Global Warming Gravy Train”, and have a great incentive to keep perpetrating the “Great Fraud”.
It is still so cold that almost everybody outside of the Tropics has to live and work in heated houses, use heated transportation and wear warm clothes most of the year.
NASA reports the concentration of methane as 1,929 ppb instead of 1.929 ppm. Using “ppb” make the molecule more menacing.
NASA claims they can measure the concentration of methane to +/- 1ppb. I doubt that they can do this.
E. Schaffer
August 2, 2024 4:21 pm
That 80 (or 85) times of “forcing potential” is based on pretty absurd assumptions. There is the illogical claim the lifetime of methane was simply longer than it is in reality, and that would make an out-of-box feedback!? Also they claim methane was responsible for the increase of tropospheric ozone (instead of CFCs which depleted stratospheric ozone which again increases tropospheric ozone) and assign its forcing to methane.
Then they count essentially all ruminants as anthropogenic CH4 source, while completely ignoring they have been around before. And when pointing that out, they will claim (wild) bisons for instance would only emit like 30kg of methane/year, vs 100kg with domesticated cows. Bear in mind, its the same species, they can and do cross-breed. In reality the climate impact from lifestock is negligible, but they do not like the fact.
Instead most anthropogenic methane indeed comes from fossil fuel production. There are places, like Turkmenistan, where they let it go right into the atmosphere, totally unchecked.
Regrettably people know little to nothing over methane, except for the nonsensical “forcing potential” figures.
The amount of methane in 1 cubic meter of air 1.38 milligrams. A cubic meter of air has a mass of
1.29 kilograms at STP. Can this trace amount of methane absorbed enough IR light to heat up such a large amount of air?
hahahaha professor emeritus my mad cow butt. If the levels of methane are nearly as critical as the level of CO2, then let’s do our part to get more methane out there!
Methane (CH₄) is the second most significant climate pollutant after carbon dioxide (CO₂).
But over a 20-year period it causes around 85 times the climate damage of carbon dioxide.
There is no recognition of the role of water vapor and they imply that the impact of methane is of the same order of magnitude as CO2, which it is not. As is typical, they don’t acknowledge that the Global Warming Potential is defined for equal weights of gases, even with different molecular weights. They don’t acknowledge that the gases are measured as mole-fractions and that is how they should be compared so that we are using actual data.
They also refer to the higher GWP for the 20-year time despite the participants in the Montreal Protocol agreeing that the 100-year estimate (smaller) is most appropriate for mixed gases.
Anyone who plays loose with the facts and doesn’t explicitly lay out the caveats of their argument should be considered propagandists rather than scientists.
Bad news for the Serengeti. The vast herds of Wildebeest (Gnu) and zebra that will require eradication. And then, if they disappear, virtually every other species in Africa with any sort of dependency on them will vanish too, the whole pyramid of life (much as fossil fuel (currently) without any reliable alternative is our reliance, our bottom of the pyramid). Currently, odd cliques of climate warriors are doing the bidding of players with mounds of cash. People are being grubstaked to be disobedient in law, going to prison, being prompted to transgress by moguls for whom there is scant evidence as to their real aims, philosophies. People that are denying the vote by imposing their contrary influence. Perhaps it’s about time that such people were named as provocaters, rather than being sanctified, Brought to book as agitators and a corrupting influence?
Keitho
Editor
August 3, 2024 12:16 am
Surely whether cows convert biomass to CO2 via methane or the biomass rots or is converted by termites and the like the “greenhouse” effect is the same. Just the good old carbon cycle rolling on like always neither adding or subtracting from the big carbon picture.
Ex-KaliforniaKook
August 3, 2024 8:49 am
I read this article and come to realize that Buffalo Bill probably deterred climate change by decades or more by killing off all those millions of buffalo.
Couldn’t watch the entire video. A few seconds worth was enough for me to begin to feel my IQ melting away. What asinine drivel. It is true there is no limit to human ignorance or deceit.
Christopher Chantrill
August 3, 2024 4:55 pm
CO2 at 400 ppm is 0.04% of atmosphere
Methand at 2 ppm is 0.0002% of atmosphere.
There are no “culprits” in climate change … just actors that work in concert with many other actors to produce the natural cyclical changes in climate the Earth has been experiencing for hundreds of millions of years.
The use of the pejorative is a tell that the authors are propagandists, not scientists.
Kill all the evil methanogens and methanotrophs!
Utter nonsense.
Agree. The whole methane thing is really bad climate science. True, methane is a GHG in the lab in a standard dry atmosphere. But in the real world, the atmosphere is about 2% specific humidity. The two small height (not much methane in the atmosphere) narrow IR absorption bands are completely swamped by two much higher, broader water vapor absorption bands. In the real world, methane is de minimus.
CO2 is a GHG only when the context is a greenhouse. In the real world atmosphere, it is a plant nutrient.
Use of the terms Greenhouse and GHG come from the initial scare of “Runaway Greenhouse Effect” that did not happen over the past 5+ decades.
If we are going to counter propaganda with science, we must absolutely stop using the propaganda phraseology and use accurate scientific language.
Non-condensing radiative gas is way too hard for most people to figure out, let alone remember.
Cows, both dairy and beef have really done nothing more than replace the millions of wild bison herds with domesticated herds of cattle
Seems it’s more difficult to milk a bison.
Especially the Males
and to think- the Native Americans would put a bison pelt over themselves, then crawl on all 4 to get close while hunting them
Yet the Climatists have been milking the methane scare for all its worth.
True. The mid 19th century bison herds in North America were nearly as large in numbers as today’s beef and dairy cattle herds … but the bison on average weigh nearly twice as much as modern beef and dairy cattle, and food consumption, and therefore methane production, is naturally proportional to the size of the animal. So if anything, methane production today is less than when bison dominated the plains.
Plus there is also the well known effect that the type of feed affects the rate of methane production. Eating high fiber natural grasses, as the bison did, produces a lot more methane than eating low fiber grains. Today most beef and dairy cattle, when fattened up for market or to maximize milk production, are fed grain rather than grass.
The warmunist claims about the horrors of domesticated animal production clearly cannot stand the real tests of science where multiple factors must be weighed before declaring their theories are unassailable. Nothing is ever as simple as the warmunists claim it to be, with their mindless talk of “the science is settled”.
Utter baloney. Atmospheric CO2 accounts for the largest portion of the fastest rate of planetary warming in 10,000 years
Yes, your comment is utter baloney.
You can’t even produce any empirical scientific evidence that CO2 causes any warming at all.
There is no CO2 warming signal in the UAH TLT data.
Lol. Please show us the instrument measurements for April 5th 1,347 years ago to April 5th 1,418 years ago.
Then it should be real easy for you to prove it.
Start here… IPCC…Fist report…. ”We have not detected the expected (human co2) signal” And if you think they should have detected it now….you’d be wrong!
I have read your comments. You really do not understand this subject.
a theory only- declaring it as a fact is simple minded
That would be H2O which is the mode prevalent GHG and accounts for the largest portion of atmospheric warming. CO2 is a comparative Bit Player in the grand scheme of things
The fastest rate of planetary warming in 10,000 years.
Really?
But your claim does not address any of my post which you intellectually challenge is “utter baloney.”
Carry on, old scout. Even a clock that has ceased working is right twice a day, unless it is a 24 hour clock, that is.
Happer and Wijngaarden have shown that quite clearly.
Didn’t you mean “Udder nonsense”?
Udder nonsense.
Fixed it for you!
You mean udder nonsense.
Policy makers are never told how much methane will run-up global temperature.
Given that atmospheric methane is increasing about 7 parts per billion every year, policy makers need to know what the effect of that will be.
So, fill in the blank:
By 2100 methane is projected to increase
global temperature by___ degrees Celsius.
If the claim is any more than 0.05C° you should show your work or source.
There is neither work nor source, only navel gazing.
CO2 has a turnover time of 4 years and is well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.9)
CH4 is said to be well mixed. (TAR p.6)
Tropospheric mixing time is 1 year so CH4 should be well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.9)
CH4 is not well mixed.(IPCC FAR p.19 and IPCC AR6 p.702)
There is a concentration gradient with about which I calculate to be about 7 % higher concentrations in the north of the northern hemisphere compared to the south of the southern hemisphere.
If CH4 has a turnover time of 9.1 years, why is it not well mixed?
CH4 should be more mixed than CO2 but it is not.
This suggests CH4 has a turnover time less than CO2. Less than 4 years.
The IPCC says “Considerable uncertainty exists as to the
lifetimes of methane and many of the halocarbons, due to
difficulties in modelling the chemistry
of the troposphere.” (IPCC WG1 FAR p.59)
The turnover time is important since it is used to calculate both the total emissions and the global warming potential (GWP). If the CH4 turnover lifetime is less than 4 years then the GWP is much less than is claimed.
Also the anthropogenic portion of total methane emissions is much less.
The graph shows methane measured at Cape Grim which is 41 degrees south and Cold Bay, Alaska at 55 degrees north.
If the turnover time is less than 4 years then this has profound implications in regards to government’s policy regarding methane.
There is a concentration gradient….
The turnover time is important since it is used to calculate both the total emissions and the global warming potential (GWP). If the CH4 turnover lifetime is less than 4 years then the GWP is much less than is claimed.
______________________________________________________________
How ’bout if you cut to the chase, and tell us how much warming methane is going to cause. See my post above.
I agree with you Steve. The warming caused by increasing methane would be too small to detect and any attempt to predict it will be meaningless given the large uncertainties.
The point I am trying to get across is that the turnover lifetime used by the IPCC is way too large and it matters.
Total methane emissions are not determined by observation. They use the turnover time to calculate total emissions with what they call a top down calculation. I was quite suprised to find out this is how the estimate total emissions. It is entirely dependent on the value of the lifetime and the value they use is wrong.
E = A/L from (TAR p.247)
where E= Total Emissions, anthropogenic plus natural.
A = the Amount of methane in the atmosphere
L = the turnover lifetime.
if A= 1922.41ppbv times 2.77 Tg/ppbv = 5325Tg ( some use 2.75 Tg/ppbv)
and if L = 9.1 years then total emissions would be 585 Tg. (1 Tg = 1 million tonnes.)
but if the turnover time L = 3 years or less then total emissions = 1775 Tg or more.
Anthropogenic emissions are estimated with a bottom up calculation to be about 375 Tg. (IPCC AR6 p.705)
So if the turnover time is 9.1 years, (it isn’t) the anthropogenic emissions make up about 64% of total emissions.
If the turnover time is 3 years or less then the anthropogenic emissions are only 21% or less. Which means that anthropogenic emissions play only a small part in the methane concentration in the atmosphere. It also means the rate at which methane is oxidised must be much larger than the IPCC estimates. I suspect that methanotrophic bacteria play a large roll in the removal of methane.
The IPCC need the lifetime to be about 9 years. Above about 12 years and the anthropogenic emissions are too large to be believable. Below about 7 years and the anthropogenic emissions are too small to be relevant.
But back to my original point. Methane is not as well mixed in the atmosphere as CO2 which means its lifetime must be less than that of carbon dioxide.
Tropospheric mixing of a gas takes about 1 year. (IPCC FAR p.9)
Methane is not completely unmixed but if its lifetime is more than 1 year, it cannot be much more. This means that all of the calculations about the GWP of methane are wrong.
It seems the IPCC has been having trouble calculating the effects of methane too. Their original estimate was that gram for gram, the effect of methane in warming the climate was 27 times that of CO2. They have now revised their estimate to 7 times as effective.
Global Warming Potential of CH4 over the years:
FAR 1990 GWP 63
SAR 1995 GWP 56
TAR 2001 GWP 62
AR4 2007 GWP 72
AR5 2013 GWP 85
AR6 2021 GWP 82.5
82.5 times the GWP of CO2 on a ton by ton basis, but so many more tons of CO2 plus the water band.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/93bfb8fd-dbe7-4ee3-8cbf-f0cb148713e0
Quite so Peter
Yes, it is very important because the shape and duration of the decline of the concentration determines the Global Warming Potential when integrated over time.
I agree.
I am hoping that people who know a lot more than I pick up on this and run with it.
oops. I said roll. it should have been role, I am a bad person.
Me thinks their Me thane concern is overblown
Methane and farm animals have been in equilibrium for decades and going back to the bison (aka buffalo) era on the plains, it is less now than then.
Buffalo (aka bison) fixed it for ya.
Buffalo and bison are distinct animals. There are no indigenous buffalo in North America.
That is a factor which seems to consistently be neglected.
Flood irrigation (eg rice) also releases quite a lot of methane. Apparently, switching to spray or drip irrigation would reduce this considerably, but it may not be practical.
Where does all the methane come from when farmers practice flood irrigation? I would think that after a few years you would release all the available methane and it would be no different than spray or drip irrigation.
Much the same place that methane comes from with ruminants. Anoxic aqueous digestion of cellulose breakdown products by methanogenic archaea.
Flood irrigation – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0929139323004274
Ruminants – https://jasbsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40104-017-0145-9
No they have not been in equilibrium for ‘decades”. Atmospheric concentrations have been growing since the beginning of the industrial age, and have roughly doubled since then.
Check out livestock numbers worldwide.
SO WHAT ! Methane has absolutely zero effect on the atmosphere…
And pretending that millions of bison don’t emit a lot of methane.
Sheer stupidity. !
And the vast number of ruminants in Africa reported by the early explorers.
Current populations of cattle are:
Brazil 234m
India 193m
US 92m
Ethiopia 67m
Argentina 54m
Australia 24m
New Zealand 10m
UK 9.5m
etc
I must say that Ethiopia surprised me as it is usually quoted as being ravaged by famine.
I cannot see Brazil and India being too keen to reduce their cattle herds (much as if China was keen to reduce coal use).
Meanwhile the UK is being pressurised to reduce meat and dairy production by reducing cattle numbers, as if that will have any significant impact on worldwide methane emmissions.
Presumably to set a good example to the rest of the world, like Net Zero, in spite of it trashing the UK economy.
Also IIRC rice paddies are responsible for large emissions of methane, maybe rice production should be replaced with a dry land cereal./s
I thought I read on WUWT that ruminants ate biological material that was going to rot anyway so the amount of methane is the same as if there were no ruminants.
Cows etc cannot possibly put out more “carbon” than they take in.
They are carbon neutral.
Their wacky “solutions” always require MORE fossil fuels than if we just left it alone!
When Joe Biden announces his ice cream boycott, there will be more for the rest of us.
The horror.
Nancy would never allow it.
The minor little problem is that the 85 times the GHG effect of CO2 is measured in dry air, and the absorption spectrum of methane is overlapped by that of water vapor. Which some of the people making these claims know, and ignore. The others are like John Kerry, who do not know, and apparently do not care.
No one ignores it
Most people want their lies to at least seem credible. So they act as if it did not exist.
Ignoring the effect of water vapor is rationalized because it precipitates out in a few days. However, evaporation and transpiration is continually replenishing it, maintaining a nearly constant level about 4 orders of magnitude (10,000X) greater than methane. And, Man is increasing the water vapor through building reservoirs and irrigation that is depleting aquifers.
We live in California, which cannot avoid embracing any Climate Change idea put about by anyone, regardless of it’s veracity. We now have to separate our food waste into a separate container in our kitchen, then out it in a separate bin at the kerb. Once picked up, it apparently goes to a composter. Nothing has been said about how that compost is used. All to avoid food waste breaking down into methane in the landfill.
Which methane is then collected and burned to generate electricity or cleaned, dried and piped to market as natural gas.
Judging by the odor emanating from our local major composter, it breaks down to methane wherever you put it.
In Australia, why don’t they eradicate the real methane threat — mound building termites? /s
The most potent source of methane is natural gas leaks.
Not according to the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6) on page 705 Fig.5.14 shows fossil fuels are 114 to 116Tg/yr . Natural gas leaks are only part of that. Freshwaters are 117 to 212 Tg/yr. Wetlands are 102 to 182 Tg/yr.
No source of methane is potent until it is collected and piped for commercial use.
Gas leaks are just a waste of money.
Methane is the same regardless of the source. As to the relative abundance, the available evidence does not support your opinion.
Another academic holding forth on something (climate) that he knows nothing about.
She
Is that the pronouns they are using today?
In climate science the rarer the gas is in the atmosphere the more powerful.
You must go to college to learn that.
If you didn’t go to college, your alternative is to read the textbooks….and learn how methane is 25x as potent a greenhouse gas as co2.
No boy, you write computer models yourself, and accurately predict climate. And when they ask how it works, you show them how stupid they are, and their entire degree is worthless.
If there is anything you would like to know, I will be happy to tell you.
25X Moron.
25 times ZERO is still ZERO. !
And no, methane has zero measurable effect on the atmosphere.
Just like CO2 has zero measurable effect on the atmosphere.
It is very obvious you flunked college.
It also helps if you understand what you are reading. Your comments sound like you don’t, and are only parroting what you have read by some liberal arts majors.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
The concentration of methane in air is about 1.9 ppm. The reason the concentration is so low is due to the initiation of combustion of the methane by discharges of lighting. There are thousands of lighting discharges everyday, especially in the tropics.
Methane is slightly soluble in water. One liter of cold polar water can hold about 35 ml
of methane. That is not much, but the polar oceans are immense. On the floor of polar oceans are vast deposits of methane ice.
There are a number of natural sources of methane such as swamps, bogs, muskegs,
decaying vegetation, wild ruminate animals, seeps from the ocean floors, and termites,
especially African termites.
We don’t have to worry about methane.
Yes we do have to worry about methane. Atmospheric concentrations have nearly doubled since the beginning of the industrial era, and are the 2nd largest contributor to global warming of the planet.
Consider the bodily contribution to global warming of the average human that generates around 100 watts in a day – a bright light bulb. That is about 8,000,000,000 x 100 daily. Humans also light candles, rub sticks together, and fart in random directions. 🙂
Show your work where methane is a bigger problem than the above. 😏
Not all bulbs are bright! (I’ll refrain from pointing a finger.)
Some blobs have a broken filament… and are thus always dim. !
Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
You are flat out wrong!
The major greenhouse gas is water. CO2 and methane are trace components of the atmosphere and contribute very little to the greenhouse effect.
At the MLO in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is 427 ppm. This is only 0.839 grams of CO2 per cubic meter of air at STP.
On a sunny day at 21 deg C and 70% RH, the concentration of water is 17,780 ppm. This is 14.3 grams of water per cubic meter of air. At this temperature one cubic meter has 1.20 kilograms of air. The amount of CO2 in this air is 0.78 grams per cubic meter. For these weather conditions, water is 98% of the greenhouse effect. In this air there is only 0.10 grams of methane.
The claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2 and methane are the “cause” of the recent “global warming” and “climate change” is a fabrication and a lie.
“The claim by the IPCC since 1988 that CO2
and methane are the “cause” of the recent
“global warming” and “climate change” is a
fabrication and a lie.”
_____________________________________
The Big Lie is a lie so colossal that nobody
would believe that someone could have the
impudence to distort the truth so infamously
A. Hitler
The Climate Crisis fits that definition perfectly
The “Big Lie” is elaborate fraud being perpetrated since 1988 by the UN, the UNFCCC, the IPCC, and a coterie of unscrupulous scientists. The UN’s objective is the transfer of large amounts of funds from fines of the rich countries (i.e., the big polluters) to the poor countries to help them cope with global warning and climate change. At the recent COP28 conference, the the rich countries have promised many more large amounts of funds to the poor countries.
Hopefully, this fraud can not go on forever.
With a large portion of the loot transferred to the pockets of the middlemen and women, and their cronies.
The IPCC has about 400 employees and a multi million dollar budget. The IPCC’s office is in Switzerland. These guys are living on the “Global Warming Gravy Train”, and have a great incentive to keep perpetrating the “Great Fraud”.
I’m going to check out the UNFCCC. Stay tuned.
2 x 0 = 0 or, if you prefer, 2 x (negligible) = (negligible)
“are the 2nd largest contributor to global warming of the planet.”
Such ARRANT NONSENSE. !
methane has made zero contribution to global warming, ..
.. just as CO2 has made no measurable contribution to global warming
(present empirical measurements is you think I am incorrect.)
From almost zero to close to zero. Kinda like the brain cells in your head.
Methane and co2 are both products of a thriving biosphere. Why would you want to stop it?
It is still so cold that almost everybody outside of the Tropics has to live and work in heated houses, use heated transportation and wear warm clothes most of the year.
Could they measure atmospheric methane concentration at the beginning of the industrial world and did they measure it around the world?
NASA reports the concentration of methane as 1,929 ppb instead of 1.929 ppm. Using “ppb” make the molecule more menacing.
NASA claims they can measure the concentration of methane to +/- 1ppb. I doubt that they can do this.
That 80 (or 85) times of “forcing potential” is based on pretty absurd assumptions. There is the illogical claim the lifetime of methane was simply longer than it is in reality, and that would make an out-of-box feedback!? Also they claim methane was responsible for the increase of tropospheric ozone (instead of CFCs which depleted stratospheric ozone which again increases tropospheric ozone) and assign its forcing to methane.
Then they count essentially all ruminants as anthropogenic CH4 source, while completely ignoring they have been around before. And when pointing that out, they will claim (wild) bisons for instance would only emit like 30kg of methane/year, vs 100kg with domesticated cows. Bear in mind, its the same species, they can and do cross-breed. In reality the climate impact from lifestock is negligible, but they do not like the fact.
Instead most anthropogenic methane indeed comes from fossil fuel production. There are places, like Turkmenistan, where they let it go right into the atmosphere, totally unchecked.
Regrettably people know little to nothing over methane, except for the nonsensical “forcing potential” figures.
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/methane
The amount of methane in 1 cubic meter of air 1.38 milligrams. A cubic meter of air has a mass of
1.29 kilograms at STP. Can this trace amount of methane absorbed enough IR light to heat up such a large amount of air?
It has created a problem trying to find genetically ‘pure’ bison.
Harvesting large amounts of seaweed could not be a good thing for ocean biospheres.
hahahaha professor emeritus my mad cow butt. If the levels of methane are nearly as critical as the level of CO2, then let’s do our part to get more methane out there!
Methane is best when turned straight into CO2 by combustion.
Mother Nature’s “spark plugs” do a really good job of initiating the combustion of
methane.
There is no recognition of the role of water vapor and they imply that the impact of methane is of the same order of magnitude as CO2, which it is not. As is typical, they don’t acknowledge that the Global Warming Potential is defined for equal weights of gases, even with different molecular weights. They don’t acknowledge that the gases are measured as mole-fractions and that is how they should be compared so that we are using actual data.
They also refer to the higher GWP for the 20-year time despite the participants in the Montreal Protocol agreeing that the 100-year estimate (smaller) is most appropriate for mixed gases.
Anyone who plays loose with the facts and doesn’t explicitly lay out the caveats of their argument should be considered propagandists rather than scientists.
If you haven’t read it, please read the following:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
Bad news for the Serengeti. The vast herds of Wildebeest (Gnu) and zebra that will require eradication. And then, if they disappear, virtually every other species in Africa with any sort of dependency on them will vanish too, the whole pyramid of life (much as fossil fuel (currently) without any reliable alternative is our reliance, our bottom of the pyramid). Currently, odd cliques of climate warriors are doing the bidding of players with mounds of cash. People are being grubstaked to be disobedient in law, going to prison, being prompted to transgress by moguls for whom there is scant evidence as to their real aims, philosophies. People that are denying the vote by imposing their contrary influence. Perhaps it’s about time that such people were named as provocaters, rather than being sanctified, Brought to book as agitators and a corrupting influence?
Surely whether cows convert biomass to CO2 via methane or the biomass rots or is converted by termites and the like the “greenhouse” effect is the same. Just the good old carbon cycle rolling on like always neither adding or subtracting from the big carbon picture.
I read this article and come to realize that Buffalo Bill probably deterred climate change by decades or more by killing off all those millions of buffalo.
We should erect more monuments to him.
Couldn’t watch the entire video. A few seconds worth was enough for me to begin to feel my IQ melting away. What asinine drivel. It is true there is no limit to human ignorance or deceit.
CO2 at 400 ppm is 0.04% of atmosphere
Methand at 2 ppm is 0.0002% of atmosphere.
But Nitrogen is 780,000 ppm. OMG!
Climate pollutant.
Wow. Marxism at its best.