By Vijay Jayaraj
Methane emissions have become a focal point of the climate debate, triggering absurd agricultural regulations negatively affecting farming communities worldwide. Targets for abuse are ruminant animals, including cattle and sheep, that produce methane (CH4) through enteric fermentation — a natural digestive process that converts grass into protein-rich meat and milk for human consumption.
Even farmers from my family in India are possible targets of anti-methane assaults on agriculture that have been made in the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and many other countries.
Efforts to reduce emissions include forcing farmers to give up acreage and to pay high climate taxes. Dairy farmers are being required to feed cows a supplement known by the trade name Bovaer, which inhibits the production of methane.
Some major supermarkets in the U.K. — like Tesco, Morrisons and Aldi — already have sourced milk from medicated cows. Although a small portion of consumers boycotted this milk, most had little choice but to buy it.
Is such regulation of agricultural methane emissions justified? Not according to an updated paper titled “Methane and Climate” by two physicists, doctors William Happer and W. A. van Wijngaarden of Princeton University and Toronto’s York University, respectively.
First published in 2020 by the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, the updated paper meticulously dismantles the prevailing narrative that methane emissions from agriculture are a threat to the planet. By carefully analyzing the physical properties of methane and its interactions with Earth’s atmosphere, the authors demonstrate that the warming potential of methane is negligible.
The Science Behind Methane’s Limited Impact
At the heart of the two professors’ analysis is comparison of the radiative forcings of methane and carbon dioxide. Radiative forcing is the difference in the net upward thermal radiation from the Earth to space through a transparent atmosphere and the lesser radiation through an otherwise identical atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In other words, it is used to understand how greenhouse gas in the atmosphere blocks some of the thermal radiation from escaping Earth into outer space.
Using radiative transfer calculations, the authors examine methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect. They find that one additional atmospheric methane molecule causes about 30 times more warming than one additional CO2 molecule.
This is because the greenhouse warming of relatively abundant CO2 is much more heavily “saturated” than that of methane. At higher concentrations, identical molecules get in each other’s way and don’t warm as efficiently as for lower concentrations. Nonetheless, atmospheric methane concentrations are increasing about 300 times slower than CO2 concentrations, so the annual warming from methane is about 1/10 that of CO2.
Methane is fairly common as the primary molecule making up natural gas and as a byproduct of various natural processes, including the decaying of organic material in swamps and forests. However, its relative presence in the atmosphere is small and its warming potential is ultimately inconsequential.
This stands in stark contrast to the apocalyptic warnings issued by some politicians and media outlets. Far from being a “super pollutant,” as it is often described, methane emerges from this analysis as a minor player in the climate system.
A Call for Rational Policy
What, then, is the path forward? Policymakers should align their decisions with the best available science. The findings make it clear that the climate models often used to justify methane regulations exaggerate its impact.
By ignoring the nuanced interplay between methane, water vapor, and other atmospheric components, climate models create a distorted picture of climate change that fuels unnecessary panic and ill-advised policies.
Farmers are not the villains of the climate story; they are essential stewards of the land who provide food for billions. Punitive measures that undermine their livelihoods are not only unjust but also dangerously counterproductive.
For farmers around the world and for billions who consume their products, this study offers a glimmer of hope amidst the irrational, even immoral, war on methane. It is time to reject the scapegoating of agriculture and to embrace sensible policies that recognize the indispensable role of farmers in feeding the planet.
The public should demand more rigor, more honesty, and more humility in those undertaking the complex science of climate change. It is time to dispense with top-down regulations from political bodies like the United Nations that advance agendas through scaremongering rather than rigorous scientific methods.
This commentary was originally published at American Thinker on February 3, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
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Once again, we are told by the newly dubbed legacy media that methane is so many times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2, but we are NEVER told how that translates into an actual global temperature rise.
And you know what? the Happer and W. A. van Wijngaarden paper doesn’t say so either.
If anyone thinks that by 2100 the rise in atmospheric methane is on track to cause any more than ~0.1K in global temperature rise they should pipe up and show their work and references.
Over the years the IPCC assessment reports claim various values for their Global warming potential number for methane as follows:
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
And of course the IPCC doesn’t say anything about how much warming methane will cause.
Post says”…we are NEVER told how that translates into an actual global temperature rise.”
I am with you Steve. How does a vibration of CO2 turn into a translation of any other molecule? IR cases vibration but translation is how temperature is increased. There are probably an infinite number of possibilities of collision. Not all will cause warming and some will cause cooling. My guess is it is at best 50/50 and CO2 does nothing.
In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtvRVNIEOMM) Tom Shula shows how all the OLR is thermalized within a few feet of the surface, driving convection and the rate of cooling. My understanding of his work is: The radiantly active gasses do not control the rate of cooling, convection doesis real but
Huh? Thermalized within a few feet ? In a clear sky, through the Atmospheric Window, about 80% of the IR in the range from 8-14 microns, Weins law MaxTemp of +88 C to -66 C ( which covers all Earthly surface temperatures), gets directly to outer space. A surface that has been warmed by the Sun to say room temperature, emits about 1/3 of its IR in that 8-14 range. The rest at other wavelengths that are absorbed by greenhouse gases, some like CO2 at 15 microns, are absorbed within a few meters even at a low concentration of CO2, but mostly by water vapor….not to mention “not clear” sky where clouds absorb the IR, and clouds cover about 2/3 of the planet as viewed from outer space.
Tom Shula was talking specifically about the CO2 band.
Those differences are the result of different assumptions about the longevity of CO2 and CH4, and the integration times used. The method of integration may also play a role. I don’t recollect ever seeing an uncertainty associated with any of these claims for the nominal GWP. It is this same lack of precision in climatology that creates lots of problems.
“Nonetheless, atmospheric methane concentrations are increasing about 300 times slower than CO2 concentrations, so the annual warming from methane is about 1/10 that of CO2.”
That isn’t negligible.
There is no physical measured evidence that CO2 warms the atmosphere.
1/10 of zero is still ZERO !
That’s what I was thinking.
They will say its “modelled”. Its a trick in many many types of science
bnice wrote, “There is no physical measured evidence that CO2 warms the atmosphere.”
Please stop repeating that nonsense. It’s not nice.
The physical measured evidence that CO2 warms the atmosphere is from spectroscopy. The black and white graph is the Earth’s emission spectrum, measured from orbit in clear sky conditions over the tropical Pacific. (I added the colorful annotations.)
The big notch (which I’ve annotated in green) proves that CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs outgoing LW IR radiation, which otherwise would have escaped to space. (CH4 has a much smaller effect.) Energy is conserved, so absorbing radiation warms the air.
GHGs help warm the Earth by absorbing LW IR radiation emitted by the Earth, which otherwise would have escaped to space. By absorbing that energy, GHGs warm the atmosphere.
(For very sparse/minor GHGs, that’s a pretty complete description of how they work, but for major GHGs like CO2, it’s more complicated, because there’s a lot of reabsorption & readmission going on.)
You might think that absorbing all that outgoing LW IR could make GHG molecules hotter than the N2, O2 & Ar in the atmosphere. That would be true, were it not for the fact that the air molecules are continually colliding with one another. Those collisions cause continual, rapid exchanges of kinetic/thermal energy (heat content) among the various gases in the atmosphere. Hotter molecules transfer more energy to cooler ones than vice-versa, so those exchanges keep them all the constituent gases of the atmosphere in near perfect thermal equilibrium.
In other words, the GHGs act as dyes (colorants) of the atmosphere, tinting it in the far IR. It really doesn’t matter which GHG molecule absorbs a photon, its energy ends up just fractionally warming the bulk atmosphere.
If you want to understand how adding more CO2 (or CH4) causes (benign!) warming, here are some resources:
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html?0=physics#brief
[I’ve told you to stop with the impossible strawman asks-ctm]
“so those exchanges keep them all the constituent gases of the atmosphere in near perfect thermal equilibrium.”
And that thermal equilibrium is controlled by the gas laws in the presence of gravity…
… so any tiny CO2 pseudo-warming is immediately taken care of.
It cannot warm the surface.
Except the radiation impacting the surface is easily measured.
bnice wrote, “thermal equilibrium is controlled by the gas laws in the presence of gravity … so any tiny CO2 pseudo-warming is immediately taken care of. It cannot warm the surface.”
That’s incorrect. There’s nothing “pseudo” about the warming, and it absolutely does warm the surface.
Gravity is the main determinant of the dry adiabatic lapse rate in the lower atmosphere, but not the surface temperature, nor the near-surface air temperature, nor the wet adiabatic lapse rate, nor even the dry lapse rate at high altitudes.
GHGs absorb longwave infrared radiation from the Earth, with otherwise would have escaped into space, cooling the Earth. That is energy which is effectively added to the air.
The way that added energy “is taken care of” is by warming whatever absorbs it: in this case, the air.
Warmer air, in turn, makes the surface warmer than it otherwise would have been, regardless of whether the air is initially warmer or cooler than the surface.
Net heat flow is always from warmer to colder. When the surface is warmer than the air, if you warm the air you’ll reduce the rate of heat flow from surface to air, thereby making the surface warmer than it otherwise would have been.
When the surface (or ocean) is cooler than the air, if you warm the air you’ll increase the rate of heat flow from from air to surface, thereby making the surface warmer than it otherwise would have been.
So, regardless of whether the surface is warmer or cooler than the air, warming the air makes the surface beneath it warmer than it otherwise would have been.
The same principle applies to anything in contact with the air, including your own body. That’s why you can take off your coat when the air temperature rises from 30°F to 85°F. Air at 85°F still cools your body’s surface, but the rate at which it does so is greatly reduced by the increase in air temperature.
So why don’t you pipe up and say how many degrees of global warming methane will cause by 2100 or in 100 years or if it doubles in concentration.
I give it as probably less than 0.05K by 2100. What’s your number?
Both CO2 and methane are doubled in approx 200 years. CO2 gives 0.8°C, Methane gives 0.2°C (if methane climate sensitivity is 7/30 of that of CO2 and climate sensitivity of CO2 is 0.8°C)
Bjarne’s numbers are about right, why so many down votes ?
Doubling CO2 results in about 4 watts forcing by Happer, Harde, Modtran, and others. And 1 degree C extra at surface is 5.35 watts by the Stephan Boltzmann equation. One can argue a gain on that 4 watts by a ratio of 390 watts/240watts, the GHE, but still only a degree of warming per doubling. All actual science calculations instead of mainstream media bullshit. So good on BB.
Doubling CO2 from 425 ppmv (the current level) to 850 ppmv (which, unfortunately, is unobtainable, due to fossil fuel supply constraints) would yield a forcing of about 3.0 W/m², per van Wijngaarden & Happer (2022).
Doubling CH4 (methane) from 1.93 ppmv (the current level) to 3.86 would yield a forcing of about 0.7 W/m² (also from van Wijngaarden & Happer). So CH4 is a (0.7/1.93) / (3.0/425) = ≈50× more potent GHG than CO2 (per ppmv of ADDED gas)..
Averaged over the last decade, the CO2 level has risen by about 2.58 ppmv/year.
Averaged over the last decade, the CH4 level has risen by about 0.011 ppmv/year.
So the ongoing CO2 increase has 2.58 / (50×0.011) = about 4.7× the warming effect of the ongoing CH4 increase.
Warming effect by 2100 depends on how high the levels go, and in both cases the higher the levels go the faster natural processes remove them. Added CO2 has an “adjustment time” (effective atmospheric lifetime) of about 50 years. Added CH4 has an adjustment time of only 10-12 years. So the CH4 level in the atmosphere tracks the total (natural+anthropogenic) emission rate pretty closely.
So, to increase the CH4 level very much requires increasing emissions. That is currently happening, but I doubt it’ll continue for the next 75 years. But, for the sake of analysis, let’s assume that it does.
For perspective, over the last 110 years (since 1915) the CO2 level has increased by 43%, and the CH4 level has doubled. (That’s from ice core data.)
At a steady rate of +0.011 ppmv/year the CH4 level would increase 43% by 2100, yielding about log2(1.43) × 0.7 = 0.36 W/m².
If 3 W/m² of forcing yields 1.5°C of warming (a generous estimate!), that means a +0.011 ppmv/year CH4 increase would yield a grand total of +0.18°C of warming by 2100.
Can I get a great big yawn?
I fully agree with your calculation methods, it’s just the values: (Most important) 0.8°C is the climate sensitivity of CO2. Doubling both methane and CO2 after approx 200 years
TCR might be as low as 0.8°C per doubling of CO2, but I doubt that ECS is that low. I agree that it’s certainly much less than the IPCC’s “midrange” 3.0°C per doubling. Even Berkeley Earth’s data show that ECS climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is <2°C, and TCR is <1.5°C, though you’ll never get Zeke Hausfather to admit it.
Unfortunately, we’ll never get 850 ppmv CO2 (a doubling from the current level) by burning fossil fuels, because there’re not enough recoverable fossil fuels to manage it:
Wang, J et al (2017). The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis. Futures 86, pp.58-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.04.007
Happer and Lindzen say less than 1°C
Tank you for your interest and good inputs
In 2100 methane is approx 250 ppb (30% up). With a climate sensitivity of 0.2°C it is 0.075°C up
Methane is currently at about 1930 ppbv. A 30% increase would add 579 ppbv, and a forcing of only about +0.25 W/m², which would produce at most 0.12°C of warming.
Its the usual approach, to demand things be done ‘because climate change’ which, on the theory of the advocate, will have, can have, absolutely no effect.
A wonderful example from a couple of years back when Keir Starmer, the current UK Prime Minister, proclaimed that there was a great global climate crisis and drew the conclusion that the UK should reduce emissions. A bit like Tuvalu concluding that there is a sea level crisis so it should reduce its emissions. You see similar irrational conclusions being drawn from the alleged climate crisis in California, New York and Massachusets. Or the crazed proposals in the UK National Health Service to eliminate supposed greenhouse gases from their anesthetics.
When you do this, always refuse to say how much difference your proposals will make. Because on your own theory they will have none. But that doesn’t diminish your view of how important it is to do them.
And none of them ever propose to demonstrate outside the Chinese Embassies… Wonder why.
It’s now climate upheaval.
Thanks for that. Not surprised a re branding happens every 10 years
You mean like what happens when you eat tainted food ??
I don’t understand where the 1/10 comes from.
Doesn’t it depend upon the absolute concentrations, and not the rate of change of those absolute concentrations?
To exaggerate the numbers, suppose we have 1 million CO2 molecules in the air and 100 CH4 molecules.
The CO2 goes up to 1 million and 10 and the CH4 goes up to 200 molecules, won’t the CO2 warming still be far greater than the methane warming?
We’ve doubled CH4 and it is still negligible.
They set out the arithmetic in the abstract. Methane is 30x more effective pre molecule, but methane ppm is rising 1/300 as fast. The first is a low ball estimate, and the second is also low. They say in the abstract it is since 2008, and in te Fig, over the last 10 years. I think an old manuscript is being recycled there. It probably is the 2008-2017 vlue, but methane rise is faster since then:
1.9 parts per million. Be afraid. Be very afraid!
Time 2006
Blah…blah…blah…blah…blah…blah
So how much is methane gonna run up global temperature?
Oh wow. More animals. And that’s despite the rampant global warming ecological destruction. Who’d have guessed.
More ruminants, mainly. But that is just one source. Escape from oil/gas processing is another.
And none of it has any affect on the climate whatsoever. !
post says:”They set out the arithmetic in the abstract.”
There is the overriding error. The arithmetic isn’t grounds in reality.
I agree, Nick. An added molecule of methane has about 50× the radiative forcing of an added molecule of CO2 (but added CH4’s 9-12 year adjustment time means that it only lasts in the atmosphere for about 1/4 to 1/5 as long as added CO2).
Averaged over the last decade, the CO2 level has risen by about 2.58 ppmv/year.
Averaged over the last decade, the CH4 level has risen by about 0.011 ppmv/year.
So the CO2 level is rising 235× faster than the CH4 level.
The entirety of warming from CO2 is negligible, at only 2% of greenhouse gasses, and not even close to as strong as the main one at 98%. This itself is still small compared to the cooling effects of the hydrological cycle itself, which is the most important and significant cooling mechanism of the atmosphere, swamping surface radiative cooling by orders of magnitude.
Methane itself has an infinitesimally small effect on the radiative cooling, let alone convective cooling. CO2 is negligible. Methane isn’t even negligible.
Dear Nick,
Methane also has a half-life of 7.5 to 9 years (depending on who to believe). Concentrations are also higher in wet than dry years when soils are an effective methane sink.
Furthermore, the clever-dicks at CSIRO who measured methane production from ruminants, forgot to measure the enormous amount of methane emitted by free-living fungus and bacteria, termites, cockroaches and other cellulose consumers, beetles and other macro invertebrates that do the same job of breaking down low quality (meaning low protein) biomass in national parks, as ruminants do in paddocks. It was that nature made an enzyme that could break down cellulose/lignin, that ended the Carboniferous period.
With most of Australia (and most other continents) NOT occupied by domestic ruminants, the methane problem represents three-fifths of bugger-all of nothing. However, in New Zealand where the crazies have afforded the same rights as humans to Mt Kikamoocow and some river …… wave a magic dipstick and anything is probable. No wonder young people looking for a future unburdened by what has bin, are leaving there in droves.
As as most Australian soils are generally low in nutrients, frass produced by Christmas beetles in Eucalypt forests and woodlands (otherwise known as beetle-poop), truncates the nutrient cycle, which is important for those ecosystems.
Its not just cattle and sheep, all beetles, including CSIRO’s dung beetles are copious methane producers. Add it all up and multiply, there is probably a greater liveweight of critters producing methane per grazed hectare (2.47 acres), than there are cattle and sheep even in New Zealand. Like everything else they want to bias, CSIRO just did not measure it.
The methane cycle is a natural biogeochemical cycle and if it did not exist cellulose and other structural carbohydrate derivatives including lignin would not be broken down – except of course by fire.
As Nick knows, rather than take pre-emptive hazard reduction action, Victorians love the smell of burnt kangaroos and koalas and the spectacle of an out-of-control burn they can blame on climate change.
Cheers,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
.
P.s, what did you think of my post on homogenisation (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/04/changing-data-to-agree-with-the-narrative-the-sad-story-of-acorn-sat/).
“Methane also has a half-life of 7.5 to 9 years”
Yes, and that is taken into account. Over the first 20 years it is about 80 times more effective, ppm per ppm, but that diminishes to about 28 times over a 100 year lifetime. But new methane is bobbing up all the time.
ps Your post had a lot of special instances. BoM posts the raw data in CDO, but clearly those variations should be allowed for. Or probably should, but I’ve found with global data that using raw values doesn’t make much difference. Swings and roundabouts. But with ACORN it makes more difference to regional averages, possibly due to the change in enclosures.
Dear Nick,
Except by CSIRO ‘scientists’, the biological methane cycle is well understood.
Don’t confuse that atmospheric methane is not PPM, it is ‘measured’ as PPB,
I have found no evidence that the difference between natural (ecosystem) methane and agricultural methane has been accounted for by CSIRO
With regard to my post, no Australian weather stations including ACORN-SAT show any warming trend. So how come, when bundled together, a trend emerges?
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
.
“With regard to my post, no Australian weather stations including ACORN-SAT show any warming trend. So how come, when bundled together, a trend emerges?”
Good question! I look forward to seeing the answer.
I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer for the answer.
Perhaps there is no good answer and that’s what is causing the wait..
Spurious trends from non-stationary time series. Tavg is made up of two time series being combined. Everyone just assumes linear regression can be used to predict.
It has a short half life. The Methane emitted in say the 80s is pretty much gone now.
“That isn’t negligible.”
Neither is this.
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/u-s-cattle-inventory-smallest-in-73-years
“Eat less, mostly plants.”
Turn off all the reliable power generating systems. Then kill all the cattle and sheep. None of which will have any effect on the imaginary problem.
Sounds more and more like Nongqawuse every day!
Exactly! The push for veganism is almost entirely religious based, deriving mostly from the Seventh Day Adventists; with extra funding provided by the CIA through USAID!
The Climastrologists and SDAs are both in agreement that the ancestral human diet is harmful, and led to the fall from Paradise! Almost completely disproven, their dogma gets broad support from the global elites who prefer the public sickly and stupid; two of the numerous complications from LFHC diets!
I thought it was a (vegan?) apple that led to Adam and Eve being evicted from their Garden of Eden?
Turn off the power. Eliminate meat. The population drops from 8 billion to 1 billion (or less) and guess what, anthropogenic methane emissions due to human digestive biology drops 87.5%!
0.10 * 0 is 0. I’m fine with that.
At 1ppm in air CH4 is negligible and should not even be discussed
It’s methane kkkkkkk coming to kill you
Show me the warming. Don’t scribble some numbers on a napkin and calls it facts.
Approximately 1/2 to 2/3rds of annual emissions of methane are natural methane that we cannot do anything about. The rest of the methane, over which we might have some control, is a mix of anthropogenic sources. The Global Methane Pledge is a commitment to reduce the estimated 33% of total annual methane (CH4) emissions derived from fossil fuels, by at least 30%, compared to 2020. Considering past performance with respect to CO2, it is unlikely that the 30% reduction will take place. In other words, the potential warming that can be reduced is less than 10% of the annual increase of 0.014 PPMv methane, or less than 0.0014 PPMv; that is roughly equivalent to 0.04 PPMv of CO2, when the 2-sigma uncertainty measurements for CO2 is ±0.7 PPMv. That is, the potential reduction in CH4 is an order of magnitude less than the uncertainty in the equivalent CO2 concentration. When the thing being measured is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the uncertainty of the thing it is compared to, I would call that negligible.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
Twice nothing, is still nothing.
Story tip:
Norway oil cutting “green” investments
This is significant. Norway is a net climate panic profiteer. The parliamentary coalition has collapsed over the issue of taking on EU climate policies and ESG. We shall see if they rebuild the coalition over this sort of move, or are forced out in the next election.
In another paper the same professors claim, that the climate sensitivity of methane is 7/30 of that of CO2 and if you calculate from that, the per molecule forcing from methane is 42 times that of CO2. Which paper should I rely on?
The (7/30)× figure was “per doubling.” If there’s about 220× as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is CH4, then a doubling of CO2 adds 220× as many molecules as a doubling of CH4.
So (7/30)×220 = 51. The paper approximates the ratio as 200× (a somewhat out of date figure), which makes the per-molecule forcing from CH4 = (7/30)×200 = 47. Acknowledging the uncertainties, let’s just call it “about 50×.”
That’s not far from your 42× figure, but a little higher than the 30× figure mentioned in the paper.
The first quarter of a temperature increase is achieved with one-fifth of the greenhouse gas required, since the rate of temperature increase decreases logarithmically with increasing concentration.
—
Therefore, 84 ppm(vol) CO2 (420:5) is required to achieve the same temperature increase as an additional 2 ppm(vol) of methane. Each new methane molecule is therefore 42 times more warming than each new CO2 molecule.
Using the van Wijingaarden and Happer (2022) figures of 0.7 W/m² for a doubling of CH4 and 3.0 W/m² for a doubling of CO2, for a small incremental increase, say 0.01 ppmv (which is a typical one year increase for CH4), the forcing ratio 51×:
(log2((1.93+0.01)/1.93)*0.7) / (log2((425+0.01)/425)*3.0) = 51.25
In other words, adding 10 ppbv of CH4 has 51× the warming effect of adding 10 ppbv of CO2.
For larger incremental increases, the ratio changes because of the approximately logarithmic decrease in CH4’s forcing, as you noted. So…
Adding 100 ppbv of CH4 has 50× the warming effect of adding 100 ppbv of CO2:
(log2((1.93+0.1)/1.93)*0.7) / (log2((425+0.1)/425)*3.0) = 50.10
Adding 1 ppmv (1000 ppbv) of CH4 has 41× the warming effect of adding 1 ppmv of CO2:
(log2((1.93+1)/1.93)*0.7) / (log2((425+1)/425)*3.0) = 41.45
Adding 2 ppmv of CH4 has 35× the warming effect of adding 2 ppmv of CO2:
(log2((1.93+2)/1.93)*0.7) / (log2((425+2)/425)*3.0) = 35.34
Proposals from the UK government are to move to an Environmental Land Management scheme for paying farmers for providing environmental benefits instead of growing food. This will involve taking land out of farming and replacing with trees, wetlands, wild areas (and solar panels).
This seems to ignore the fact that wet ground and trees both release methane, so will it be replacing one source of methane with another?
The UK has 9.6 million cattle compared to Brazil and India who have a total of 428 million, and even Ethiopia has 68 million. In the USA cattle have replaced a similar number of bison in terms of methane output.
So as with Net Zero the UK government looks to be destroying part of the economy in pursuit of a minimal benefit.
The BBC is today publicising lab-grown meat as being a way of saving the planet, apparently the carbon footprint is two thirds of that from grazing animals.
We are running close to the original storyline of the novel “Soylent Green” was based on.
The idea that methane produced by ruminant animals (more accurately by the bacteria that live in their stomachs) has any effect on the climate even if you assumed that methane was a particularly troubling potent “greenhouse” gas is dishonest. It is taking one step in a cyclic process in which methane is produced and labelling that as “harmful emissions”. But, where did the methane come from? It was produced by methanogenic bacteria breaking down plant matter to release carbon and hydrogen (in the form of methane) from the simple and complex sugars. But, where did the carbon for those sugars come from? It came from CO2 in the atmosphere, which, together with water was converted into sugars via the miracle of photosynthesis. The methane produced by the stomach bacteria in the cows is relatively quickly broken down in the atmosphere into water and CO2 and the cycle begins again. With a steady cattle herd, the entire thing is a wash. And, if the grass isn’t eaten by some animal, to be eventually broken down into CO2 and water, that job is done by bacteria and fungi in the soil.
The idea that livestock farming “produces” methane is dishonest. It’s like saying that a river “produces” water.
I know, but in matters of climate change dishonesty is the coin of the realm, isn’t it?
Good point, and DRAX gets a pass for using wood pellets made from freshly cut forest. 12.1 million tons of CO2 in 2023.
UK Ag says 24.2 million tons of CO2 equivalent in methane emissions from animals in 2020, presumably they used the 28x factor to get the equivalent. (equivalent global warming effect!)
The amount of methane in the atmosphere is measured in parts per billion. Seventeen I think. So forget methane.
Based on nine months of data, the average methane level in the atmosphere for 2024, measured at Mauna Loa, is going to end up at about 1932 ppbv of dry atmosphere (1.932 ppmv), an increase of 10 ppbv over 2023. Over the last decade, the level has been rising by an average of about 11 ppbv per year.
Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
RE: CH4 Emissions
RE: No Need To Worry About This Trace Greenhouse Gas.
The Global Monitoring Lab. reports that the concentration of CH4 in dry air is 1,926 ppbv This is also 1.926 ppmv. Why 1,926 ppbv instead of 1.926 ppmv? Because 1,926 ppbv makes CH4 look like a more “menacing molecule”.
One cubic meter of dry air contains 0.0014 g of CH4 and has a mass of 1.29 kg at STP.
Absorbing out-going IR from the earth’s surface, this tiny amount of CH4 can heat up
such a large mass air by very small amount if at all.
The reason the concentration of CH4 in air is so low is due to the initiation of its combustion by discharges of lightning. Everyday there are several million discharges of lightning, especially in the tropics (cf. Wikipedia). A hydrocarbon, CH4 is readily oxidized by ozone.
There are many natural sources of CH4 such as swamps, bogs, muskegs, fens, decaying vegetation, wild ruminate animals, seeps from oceans, insects, and termites, especially tropical termites. Some sources of CH4 due to activities of humans are sanitary land fills, sewage treatment plants, coal mining, domestic farm animals, and oil and natural operations, and leaking natural gas pipelines.
The oil companies has been accused being big CH4 polluters. However, how does of their CH4 emissions compare to all of the above sources? They been given a bad rap.
Since concentration of CH4 in air is so low, we really do not have worry about this minor trace greenhouse gas.
“Dairy farmers are being required to feed cows a supplement known by the trade name Bovaer, which inhibits the production of methane.”
So, Whole Foods and similar markets will put a label on their dairy products from such farms saying, “Fart Free”. 🙂
But It is known that there is complete biomass layer around the entire world (read article: https://youtu.be/j2M99LhYv2Q) which has dumped enormous quantities of methane into the atmosphere and into the sea for millions of years. It is farcical to suggest that a few animals – or humans – might dramatically worsen that to the extent of changing climate. That is lunatic science at its worst. You can even see the methane bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico and it has long been suggested that some of the ships lost in the Bermuda triangle over the centuries may well have been victims of large bubbles of methane that simply destroyed their buoyancy.
Methane is about 1 part per million of air.
My house contains nearly a gram of methane.
Can I rely on this to heat my house in winter?
Not sure where you got 1 ppm when methane is usually listed in ppb.
Maybe your family farts too much?
/humor
Too many beans ?
Based on nine months of data, the average methane level in the atmosphere for 2024, measured at Mauna Loa, is going to end up at about 1.932 ppmv = 1932 ppbv of dry atmosphere, an increase of 10 ppbv over 2023. Over the last decade, the level has been rising by an average of about 11 ppbv per year.
From the paper referenced in this article:
“So, the contribution of methane to the annual increase in forcing is one tenth (30/300) that of carbon dioxide. The net forcing increase from CH4 and CO2 increases is about 0.05 W m−2 year−1 . Other things being equal, this will cause a temperature increase of about 0.011 °C year−1″ (my emphasis)
With all due respect to the CO2 Coalition and to Dr. Happer and Dr. Van Wijngaarden, it’s time to stop repeating the core claim which no one knows is valid. The claim is that the so-called “forcing” – the static radiative effect – is capable of producing an accumulation of absorbed energy on land and in the oceans as sensible heat gain. We already know that other things are NOT equal! When the dynamic energy conversion performance of the general circulation is properly considered, there is no good scientific reason remaining to suppose that a “warming” result should be expected down here from the rising concentrations of CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
The modelers know the fundamental physics of compressible fluids applied to the circulating atmosphere. This is why energy conversion matters to the disposition of the longwave absorption involved in the so-called “forcing.” More here. Please read the full text description of this short time-lapse video for the full explanation.
https://youtu.be/hDurP-4gVrY
Thank you for your understanding as I continue to post about this.
(In short, energy conversion in the atmosphere is [internal energy + potential energy] <-> [kinetic energy] which is overwhelmingly powerful in the general circulation.)
Funny how a simple CO2 molecule can force anything. Seems like we need to revoke Kirchhoff’s Law.
Well said David. 🙂
I have always found it rather strange that GCMs (General Circulations Models).. seem to forget about the general circulation of moving air and energy in the atmosphere.
Does ” the static radiative effect” actually exist anywhere on a planet which is rotating ?
Your nice little youtube clips, say, “no”. !
Oh, the GCMs do compute the mass and energy flows in the circulation. But the models are structured and tuned to be both 1) Stable for the preindustrial control runs and 2) Responsive to applied “forcings” including CO2, CH4, N2O, etc., and also to aerosols and volcanoes, to be able to generate the pre-defined emissions scenarios. It’s an utterly circular exercise. That is why I sometimes post that skeptics should stop conceding the “forcing” + “feedback” framing of the investigation of rising CO2.
Skeptics should also stop conceding the veracity of Schwarzschild’s radiative-centric model of energy transfer throughout the entirety of the troposphere. For starters, the photons that are emitted from the Earth’s surface and absorbed by GHGs are not continually emitted and absorbed like pinballs until they reach the less dense upper troposphere and escape to space. Rather, they are overwhelmingly converted into sensible heat within meters of the surface by collisions with non-GHGs and this sensible heat is then convected to the upper troposphere where GHGs that have been excited by collisions with non-GHGs can overwhelmingly emit photos to space.
The processes in Schwarzschild’s model are based on energy transport via photon absorption and emission in an atmosphere without convection...
First problem is that CO2 may absorb, but in the lower atmosphere, basically never get a chance to re-emit.
Second is that the Earth’s atmosphere has convection.. in fact, all air movement is governed by the gas laws, not radiation.
Schwarzschild’s law is not valid in Earth’s atmosphere… period.
Good points.
“…this sensible heat is then convected to the upper troposphere…” However, it is not just convection in the sense of thermals, thunderstorms, etc. The circulation is maintained mainly by horizontal heating gradients. I posted about this a month ago in the open thread.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/05/open-thread-126/#comment-4017497
Then the concept of energy conversion applies throughout the depth of the troposphere also, so “this sensible heat” doesn’t persist uniquely as internal energy for transport. That’s why I keep posting this video with its explanation in the description. https://youtu.be/hDurP-4gVrY
David D wrote, “The claim is that the so-called “forcing” – the static radiative effect – is capable of producing an accumulation of absorbed energy on land and in the oceans as sensible heat gain.”
Nobody claims that.
Most fundamentally, incoming radiation warms the Earth and its atmosphere; outgoing radiation cools the Earth and its atmosphere.
If there’s a “positive radiative imbalance,” i.e., more incoming radiation than outgoing radiation, the Earth will warm. But warming causes outgoing radiation to increase, and outgoing radiation cools the Earth, so the warming will cease when temperatures have increased by enough to increase outgoing radiation (energy lost) to equal incoming radiation (energy gained).
That’s a very fundamental “negative feedback,” which tends to stabilize the Earth’s temperatures.
Negative feedback is why the burner on your electric kitchen stove doesn’t continue to get hotter and hotter, even though you’re continuing to pump energy (electricity) into it: the hotter it gets, the faster it loses heat. So if you increase the voltage to the heating element within the burner, it only gets hotter until the rate of heat loss has increased enough to match the increased energy input.
A positive radiative imbalance can be caused either by an increase in incoming radiation (e.g., a brighter Sun), or by a decrease in outgoing radiation (e.g., because a GHG in the atmosphere absorbs some of the outgoing radiation).
Radiative emissions (which cause cooling) accelerate with the fourth power of temperature, per the Stefan-Boltzman relation: E = ε⋅σ⋅T⁴. So as temperatures rise it becomes progressively harder to raise temperatures. That’s a negative (stabilizing) feedback (usually called, oddly enough, “Planck feedback“). Convective and evaporative cooling also accelerate with increased temperature.
Also, we know that added CO2 has a logarithmically diminishing effect on radiative forcing, which also contributes to temperature stability.
The bottom line is that warmer climates are more stable than colder climates, a fact which debunks “tipping point” / “runaway warming” hysteria.
Interestingly, it turns out that most climate alarmists confidently believe contradictions, because they uncritically accept estimates of basic climate parameters, like TCR, ECS, ERF, radiative imbalance, etc. without ever trying to check them for consistency. The result is that often they’re like the White Queen, believing many contradictory things, except that, unlike the White Queen, they don’t know it.
https://twitter.com/ncdave4life/status/1744880643362693373
If you’d like to calculate your very own estimate of the Earth’s radiative imbalance, I made an online spreadsheet to make it easy. You can enter your best estimates for various climate parameters, and it will show you what that implies w/r/t the radiative imbalance:
https://www.sealevel.info/radiative_imbalance_calc.htm
Give it a whirl! Enter your best guesses for things like the warming to date, percentage of warming that’s from human GHG emissions, etc., and it will calculate YOUR implied estimates for common climate parameters.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
“Nobody claims that.”
It’s true that it is not directly explained that way, so I state what the implication must be.
And for good measure, please understand that it is the ocean warming (OHC) that is used to anchor an estimated range of values for EEI because it cannot be established from satellite sensing of shortwave and longwave fluxes alone.
“As in previous versions of EBAF, we use the objective constrainment algorithm described in Loeb et al. (2009) to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their ranges of uncertainty to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux and heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system, as determined primarily from ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA) data.”
Source: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0208.1
See more in the abstract and section 3) TOA Flux Adjustments in this paper.
But no one knows to begin with that the incremental CO2 and CH4 radiative “forcings” are responsible for the (reported) heat gain in the oceans through the assumed influence on EEI.
One more thing. You have not responded to my primary point about properly considering the dynamic operation of the atmosphere.
“Properly considering the dynamic operation of the atmosphere” is beyond my ken, but, as I mentioned, “Convective and evaporative cooling also accelerate with increased temperature.” Details here:
https://sealevel.info/feedbacks.html#convection
Nice work within the “forcing + feedback” framing of the question of what to expect from rising concentrations of CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.
But please consider stepping out of that framing to:
1) Watch from space via NOAA’s CO2 Longwave IR band 16 visualizations in time-lapse video form, to appreciate that the planet is a huge array of highly variable longwave emitter elements. The variable emitter is powered, not passive. The formation and dissipation of clouds is a huge factor resulting from the overturning circulations.
2) Watch the energy conversion video and read the full explanation in the text description. References are given. Lorenz described the concept. ERA5 computes it. 10 minutes of your time.
There are four short time-lapse videos here. Three deal with the Band 16 visualizations, the other deals with energy conversion.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8vhRIT-3uaLhuaIZq2FuQ
Thank you again for your replies. My aim is to persuade those who correctly regard incremental CO2 as harmless to also realize that the evidence does not support an expectation of even mild “warming” (i.e. sensible heat gain) from the incremental radiative effect of rising concentrations. No one knows that.
Aiui the various figures for methane’s warming potential are derived from lab experiments using dry air.
In the real atmosphere water vapour is present at concentrations 10 – 20,000 times that of methane. Further, water vapour has a wide absorption spectrum which overlaps heavily that of methane.
So any heating that methane might have generated does not happen because water vapour saturates the applicable wavelengths.
Correction/clarification would be welcome as this point seems to be overlooked.
Yep. The IPCC gives methane a GWP based on a mythical dry atmosphere. In the real world methane is swamped by water vapour and its absorption spectrum is totally overlapped.
Integrated over what length of time? That is virtually the same as what the alarmists claim for the Global Warming Potential (28-30X) integrated over 100 years, for equal weights of methane and CO2. It is what isn’t said that I find interesting: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/06/the-misguided-crusade-to-reduce-anthropogenic-methane-emissions/
The claimed molecule-to-molecule warming is about 3X what I demonstrate in the article at the above link.
Just a thought!
If CH4 is a problem now was it in the 18th Century when upto 80 million Bison alone roamed the plains? In the world there are well over 120 species classed as ruminants, and in the 18thC there could have been ‘many’ billions on earth.
Why is CH4 a problem now and not in the past?
Are there any plans to feed billions of ruminants all over the world seaweed to reduce their emissions?
Very nice Vijay. We only have one problem, government. Get the government out of the farming and ranching business. All they do is screw stuff up you don’t have to look any further than the USSR, China, North Korea and Sri Lanka.
I just checked my atmosphere gauge (ok, Wikpedia):
78.08% nitrogen
20.95% oxygen
1% avg. water vapor
0.93% argon
0.04% carbon dioxide
0.0002% methane
If you think CO2 and NH4 are boiling the Earth, I gotta bridge in Baltimore, cheap.
What isn’t mentioned is that, unlike CO2, methane (CH4) readily oxidizes into CO2 and 2H2O, thus no longer having an impact on “global warming”. The study mentioned that the air is so saturated with CO2 that no further impacts by adding more will occur.
Has anyone done a study on how fast methane is oxidized?