From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60203683
The BBC article on methane makes an interesting claim:
An IPCC study last year suggested that 30-50% of the current rise in temperatures is down to methane.
The study referred to is AR6, which estimates that increased levels of methane in the atmosphere have contributed 0.5C to global warming since 1850-1900:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Given that even IPCC reports have accepted that some of the warming since the 19thC has been naturally caused, that does not leave much which can be due to CO2.
Even without taking those natural factors into account, net of aerosols only about 0.6C of warming is man-made, once methane is excluded from the equation:
It therefore seems that CO2 is a vanishingly small problem.
Methane, which is 84 times as powerful as a GHG per unit than CO2, has an extremely short life span, declining in the atmosphere by half every decade.
Consequently we don’t have to start drastically reducing emissions now. Merely maintaining current emissions will mean that atmospheric concentrations will level off quickly:
Indeed, if the current push to cut methane emissions is successful, we would likely see rapid global cooling, assuming of course the IPCC calculations are right.
Given the reactions of the world’s leaders and scientists in the 1970s following three decades of global cooling, that might not turn out to be such a clever idea at all!
FOOTNOTE
I should point out that some scientists believe that methane is virtually irrelevant as a GHG, because its emissions spectrum is already fully filled by water vapour.
See here.
BBC should be shut down or at least privitized.
Privatized means sold into private ownership
Privitized is a new word meaning Hung up by ones privites
I subscribe to the latter sanction for their unscientific absurdity,
and will happily sit under the gallows knitting as the Harrabins crown jewels are stretched to their limits
Lol! what an imagination.
Round these here parts, that’d be known as “redneck bungee-jumping”.
That’s hilarious. Alistair, may we call you Mr. DuFarge? Your suggested solution would also go a long way to solve the alleged population crisis, at least as far as it’s most vocal proponents are concerned.
CAGW: Much Ado About Nothing…
“I should point out that REAL scientists believe that methane is virtually irrelevant as a GHG, because its emissions spectrum is already fully filled by water vapour.”
FIFY…
😉
The absorption peaks of methane are indeed tiny, overlap with water vapour, and methane is measured in parts per billion which quickly oxidizes to form CO2 and H20. I keep seeing the claim that it is 84 (or 110, or whatever the number of the day is) times as potent a GHG, what I have not seen is a credible paper that justifies that claim. Is there a REAL scientist out there who can credibly explain this claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_window#/media/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.svg
I raised that question on our forum The trite answer is 1 gram of methane has 84 times the absorption of 1 gram of CO2, each taken in dry conditions and in mutual isolation. So considering the relative abundance of CO2to methane =2 ppm and CO2 =400 ppm and the fact that Methane rapidly oxidises to H20 and CO2 then methane is a bit player. And then Methane absorption bands overlap water’s absorption bands. But with a bit of spin you could make it sound like CO2 will raise temperature by 2 degrees and belching cows by 176 degrees Which is exactly what the Carrie Johnson and Kamala Harris brigade ( to indict the true culprits of their countries’ voluntary liquidations want you to believe. Boris thinks with his genitals and Joe doesn’t think
Some quick googling suggests you are correct, that’s how they get that value. The logic however, is totally and completely misleading. How much energy a given molecule can absorb is irrelevant. The question is, when the molecule is at equilibrium temperature with the surrounding atmosphere, how much energy does it absorb that would otherwise have escaped to space, and instead is either re-radiated or given up via collision with other molecules. CO2 is repeatedly cited as 3.7 w/m2 for a doubling of CO2. Three pages of google search results failed to turn up a single reference to the same metric for methane.
Total bullsh*t.
The outright lie can be exposed by referring to the IPCC’s own info. This is from the third report, I do not have time at the moment to search for something more recent, but this is sufficient:
CO2 going from 278 to 365 (=1.31X) = 1.46 w/m2
CH4 going from 700 to 1745 (=2.49X) = 0.48 w/m2
If CH4 was in fact 86 times the effect of CO2, that number would be many times 0.48 w/m2. The fact that 2.5X of CH4 only gives you less than 1/3 of the w/m2 that you get from 1.3X of CO2 tells you what an absurd outright lie it is.
Page 358 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-06.pdf
“by 176 degrees”
I am surprised that they never did this “calculation” in Kelvin. Things would have looked even scarier. ;-p
Burn it all and make stuff using it.
Some of the real science:
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MethaneClimate_WijnGaardenHapper.pdf
The lie about methane is growing. I first wrote about it in 2011 (see here https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/) when the factor was 21. Then I have seen 25, 31, 35 and now the lie has grown to 84 times CO2 which is all due to water vapor and not CH4 which has no relevance as it does not absorb at longer wavelengths of the Earths peak radiation emission at around 10 micron.
Could someone help me to read this graph on absorption?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_band#/media/File:Atmospheric_Transmission-en.svg
From about 600nm to about 800nm the “absorption and scattering” of water vapor is 100%. What does this mean? Does water absorb all radiation between 600~800nm? If so, how much water vapor is needed?
“Absorption and scattering” just means the number they show is based on what got through, but if they just said “Absorption” nit-pickers would say “yeah, but how much was scattered”….To calculate how much water vapor absorbs how much IR at any given wavelength, you need HiTran or the workstation version of ModTran…
And looking a bit more at the graph, I see the bottom panel is indeed Rayleigh scattering.
Will people ever realize science is for sale. There is almost nothing you cannot order and get.
another greenhouse gas…that’s not our problem
methane is coming from China and Russia
A lot of gas is being generated by the Biden administration itself….
Gas by Biden, hot air by Trump. What chance does the planet have?
The planet is doing just fine on the climate front.
Some humans however get excited about the outcome of measuring atmospheric heat transport, and the increased temperature created by increasing size and density of cities.
“created by increasing size and density of cities.”
Here’s a question for you and I will look forward to your answer. If it is the cities are the problem how come the arctic is the fastest warming place on the planet?
Well that depends on what rag you read. it seems there are claims that somewhere else on the globe is warming faster than everywhere else.
Really, reference please?
The Arctic is the weak pole and as such is prone to warm air ingress.
The opposite applies to Antarctica, where increased equatorial convection causes increased cooling. The differing speeds of the zonal winds is a factor.
That is the simple answer.
Well then if it is a simple answer(not that I don’t accept your answer), let’s have a simple reference? I would so like to see where that is stated?
Less brains than prezzy biden has.
And less hot air than Donnie?
Why the base period of 1850-1900?
Because humans didn’t do squat before 1850 when they sold their soul to the devil and started using coal and oil.
No: only oil. Coal was already in use in the mid 1700s by industries in many Eurpean countries. (… but I suspect that the climate cultists didn’t study enough History to know that…)
Climateers don’t seem aware that in 1850, world pop was only 1.2 billion, most living in pre-industrial poverty. Estimates for NAm + Europe combined was 240 million and they made most of the industrial smoke and CO2, almost all from biomass. Today, there are ~7.9B with an average individual CO2 footprint easily 50 times that of the 1850 folk.
The pop in 1950 was double that of 1850, but only a third of today’s pop and the average individual CO2 footprint in1950 was probably less than 10% of today’s. Here is a chart showing population and energy consumption as carbon in oil equivalent.
You can see that IPCC was correct when it earlier used 1950 as the threshold for measurement of significant human caused CO2 emissions, exclusive of biomass use. It unequivocally reinforces the natural provenance of the 0.6°C from 1850 to 1950 that IPCC purloined in 2015 to add to ‘human caused’ temperature change when their model Temp anomaly forecasts turned out to be 300% too hot!
The war on CO2 is petering out as activists find out that the peons don’t like freezing in the dark, so they need to quickly find a new bad guy to trash.
Yes.
CO2 failed, so now on to methane. As global temps rise, more methane gets released. Soon, it will take us all over like The Blob just crept up on so many people!
Regarding the virus: people are now noting how the virus is failing to put us all under totalitarian control, and are beginning to wonder when the next virus will be unleashed on us? There seems to be no shortage of research funding to play Gain of Function with these viruses.
Yes, even NASA acknowledges that most of the 1.89 PPM methane is natural, which is why the NOAA graph shows seasonal variation not unlike CO2.
That’s no surprise. Most of ALL GHGs are natural.
“The Last Democrat ” your getting my hopes up. Although I’m a conservative I think both political parties need serious work, but I won’t get into that there is just not enough space.
“The war on CO2 is petering out…”
There is too much inertia in money, reputation, and legislation for the war on CO2 to peter out in the immediate future; perhaps in the proverbial 10 years and a few trillion more dollar. Solar and wind farms in the pipeline (no pun intended) as well as pending Democrat “Climate Legislation” aren’t going to go away based on facts and analysis. Other countries, e.g. the UK and European Union, have similar built up inertia. Half a Billion US dollars on “climate change” trumps a pile of studies such is discussed in this post. Ain’t gonna happen!
All that inertia in the US could hit a brick wall come November.
a
Exactly. Too much evidence, too many papers, the CO2 hoax is dying. Spin up something new: Fugitive emissions from oil and gas.
I would not believe a word the BBC says about “climate change”. They are DESPERATE for a warmer world to prove them right so not impressed with your “SCIENCE”
BBC has many employees, and many retired employees. BBC has pension obligations.
BBC is signed-on as a “green” institutional investor. As many large governments (and govt-ordained entities such as the BBC) have found out, pension obligations can be very challenging to fund.
So, a growing, guaranteed, steady funding strategy is very desirable.
So, they push CAGW to make the market, and then invest in the market, and reap the financial benefits.
BBC invests with Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management, LLC. A green investment management firm for very large investors.
So, BBS is biased toward supporting and pushing man-made global warming.
Yes, global warming was a hoax, climate change is fraud.
I find it all pathetically sad that everyone keeps talking about “climate change” as if something to obviously wrong could exist.There i simply no such thing as a global climate. Cimate is a local phenomenon, caused by local conditions.
A quick MODTRAN exercise at the web page of the University of Chicago: 420 ppm CO2, 1.9 ppm CH4, 1976 US std atm, no clouds or rain, 288.2K ground temperature, gives 267.5 W/m^2 upward, looking down from 70 km. Change only CH4 by doubling to 3.8 ppm and get 266.7 W/m^2. 0.8 W/m^2 difference. I don’t see why CH4 should get much attention, even if you believe these static values matter to the climate outcome.
Another way of illustrating the facts in the footnote. Methane is 84x CO2 when both are measured separately in an otherwise ‘pure’ atmosphere. But NOT when both exist in the presence of water vapor in the real world. Methane effect is almost completely smothered by WV in all absorption bands. CO2 only partly so.
Are there overlaps between CO2 and methane?
If you look at the link mentioned at the end of the article, you’ll see that the absorption bands of CO2 and methane don’t overlap, but both are trace gases anyway compared to water vapor.
Agreed…Ask 97% of Climate scientists how the GWP of 86 for methane is calculated and they will NOT be able to tell you, or at best come up with a gobbledy-gook explanation of IR absorption per tonne but still won’t be able to show you a computer calc based on IR absorption over 70 km. of atmosphere height and the number of available photons .and their energies.
The methane 86 GWP number is actually just playing with numbers. Your Modtran run is much more relevant. When you analyze how GWP is calculated per tonne of added CH4…it boils down to:
ppmCO2/ppmCH4 * MWtCH4/MWtCO2 * molar Specific heat ratio between gases*some Einstein constants*some half life approximations.
Considering only the first 4 terms……(400/1.7) X (16/44) = 81 all on their own. In the extreme of calculating heat absorption of 100% of each, the numbers work out to the well known specific heats of each gas.
So the reason the GWP of CH4 is so high is because there is so little of it in the atmosphere. Add to that CO2 increasing much faster than CH4, and you end up with CH4 being not something that humanity should expend much effort on. Those who are concerned with GHG emissions should look to what could be done with regards to concentrated CO2 emissions sources such as concrete plants, rather than cow pastures.
Can’t it be simple math to see at what level methane equals the potential of CO2 for warming? If it is 84 times more potential, then just to equal potential by volume, 430 ppm divided by 84 gives us 5.12 ppm. Is my math or thinking too simple? With methane at 1.9 ppm (last alarmist value I heard), it still has a long way to go to match the expectation of CO2 contributions.
Too simple. The GHG absorption measured individually in the lab is not what happens in the real world when the gasses are mixed with water vapor. Click the footnote link for the real physics. It goes to an old WUWT physics explanation.
Thanks, the whole argument and discussion on the alarmist side still comes down ALL CHANGE IS BAD.
To bad you can lead the horse to water, but you shouldn’t drown it until it drink.
I say they’re maintaining their anti-fossil fuel agenda (undermining CO2 reduction by using nat gas.)
If methane’s IR frequency bands are extinguished within the atmospheric boundary layer, then it cannot warm the planet. Given the overlap with water vapor, it is very likely methane would have no effect except in very dry environments.
In fact, if the gas is well mixed then it will actually provide a cooling effect.
Dr. Happer, often presenting here at WUWT notes the CH4 effect :
Does anyone notice the difference?
CO2 :
So, moving from today’s CO2 concentration of approximately 400 ppm to 800 ppm (a doubling) results in an additional approximately 3 W/m^2 (277-274). This is, however, less than one percent of the Earth’s energy budget. Look, people, cloud changes, ocean currents & etc. have larger impacts fer Christ’s sake!
And bnbn overlooks the earlier WUWT lesson today, that alarmist CO₂ ppm actually starts in 1950, not mid 19th century! In 1950, NOAA measured CO₂ at 315 ppm.
And that history proves nature is responsible for most of the atmospheric increase, not mankind.
So, your chart is all about mankind maybe causing a few CO₂ ppm. While nature proves 1950s CO₂ 315 ppm rising to 2022’s 417 ppm causes almost 0 degrees warming.
I distinctly remember the CO2 concentration of 280 ppm from my science classes in the late 1950s. I know it’s anecdotal, but some numbers stick with us.
CH4 :
…and we can all stop for the pause. Were the gas fields shut in? So why was that?
CO2 again :
The edit function allows no graphic option….
Anyway even doubling CO2 or CH4 from today would make no measurable difference, in 100 years.
CO2 again :
Just to put Dr. Happer’s graphics together for perspective.
OK, bonbon, according to the graph I should choose to move to either the South Pole or Samoa. Decisions … decisions!
Exactly; doubling CH4 from 1.8 ppm to 3.6 ppm (the black line compared to the red line) leads to immeasurable impacts.
Ridiculous — the ppm is negligible. Just an attack on natural gas (they used to favor it).
some politicians are getting nervous with the current results of their stupidity and suggesting natural gas should be considered “green”. This ‘study’ is likely a threat to keep them on point.
I wonder how they’re defining “green” in this context? Are they admitting it’s not a problem or that it’s a very minor problem? Or is it simply that they’re realizing the damage they’ve done to their economies with simplistic wind and solar utopian visions? If so, it’s one thing to backtrack to save their economies, but they have to rationalize calling gas green, given their previous dislike of it and it once not being green. I should think the fossil fuel hating fanatics won’t approve of this change.
Since the EU’s ideologically-based policy (dogma) is to deny approval, support and funding for electricity production from non-wind and solar sources (wind and solar being officially classified as “green”), instead of changing the dogma they reclassify gas and nuclear as being “green.” Typical socialist bureaucratic thinking: Changing official dogma would require some current politically powerful heads to roll. Can’t have that, can we?
I am opposed to natural gas being redefined as “green” because that preserves greens’ power over the narrative. We should simply recognise the benefits of all kinds of dispatchable power and tell any green opposing them to take a running jump.
The influence of Methane on warming has varied significantly over the years. The EPA uses the factor of 25X more potent than CO2 and others used 35. But what no one talks about is that the major IR absorption band of Methane overlaps with water vapor so methane is only a potent GHG in the laboratory (in vitro) and not in the real world (in vivo). Methane also has a very short lifetime in the atmosphere so its impact is short lived.
The more logical reason for methane to have a large impact on global warming is that there are people (researchers?) that want us to stop using methane. Thus the need to make methane evil. The story must continually get worse so that they can claim that we will all die (in a day, week, month, year, or whatever they think will scare us the most.)
Yes. Much of the methane production is natural, coming from wetlands. It almost certainly was higher in the past before wetlands were drained and converted to farmland.
See where it comes from:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4789
Yes, interesting videos but don’t forget that these are just based on models, estimations and simulations, not actual satellite measurements…
“The visualization was created using output from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, GMAO, GEOS modeling system, developed and maintained by scientists at NASA. Wetland emissions were estimated by the LPJ-wsl model, which simulates the temperature and moisture dependent methane emission processes using a variety of satellite data to determine what parts of the globe are covered by wetlands.”
Actual measurements by ENVISAT satellite were quite different but have not been updated for a long time.
I understand that it is a model and not actual measurements. However, the point is, considering the source, it would not have been a surprise to see attribution to urban areas and ‘fracking’ regions. Instead, most of the source areas are shown to be opposite those.
Yes, good point.
Sir, the reasons for methane to have a large impact on global warming as stated in a PBS documentary last night are 1. The arctic permafrost is melting thus allowing unknown vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere 2. This unknown amount of methane is not accounted for in any climate models.
However, I think you are probably closer to the truth than they are.
The math on this is pretty entertaining in some areas – comparing the GHG emissions of coal vs gas.
If your power system is in an area with coal that emits little methane during mining and where the available gas is from leaky systems, the lifecycle GHG emissions of the coal plant is lower than the gas plant.
We compared Wyoming Powder River Basin vs Texas notoriously leaky gas and found that coal vs gas was a wash – no statistically significant difference.
I’d bet anything that there is some European coal that has lower lifecycle GHG emissions than imported gas from Russia and the US. Maybe a lot of it.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/
It is not the gh gasses doing any warming.
Click on my name.
In that article I see “any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O”.
I’m no scientist, so let me ask a stupid question. So, won’t some or most of the radiation absorbed by water also be released? In that case, can’t some of it be absorbed by CH4?
“So, won’t some or most of the radiation absorbed by water also be released? In that case, can’t some of it be absorbed by CH4?”.
Some of the radiation being released by water vapour is already being absorbed by water vapour. The charts show the end effect after all of the absorption-radiation-reabsorption-reradiation cycles. So CH4 makes little difference at the frequencies with high absorption by water vapour.
still waiting for the dreaded permafrost methane apocalypse that’s always lurking
Yes u should have watched the PBS documentary last night. Your fear factor knob could have gone to 11.
So we really are responsible for AGW by mandating the restoration of the #1 source of methane, wetlands. Drain the swamps again and everything will be ok.
If by “swamp” you mean the U.S. government Foggy Bottom yeah, that would work.
The most foul reeky swamp, ever!
Now methane is 84 time more potent. It used to be 54 times more potent, and before that 47 times more potent. I don’t think everyone is looking at the same data to get their answers.
If you take a molecule that makes up only 1.7 ppm of the atmosphere, multiply it by 84 (or whatever), you don’t even get to the present ppm of CO2. So how can CH4 be more potent than CO2 when CO2 has a broader spectrum range?
Pound for pound, in other words by mass, methane is 84 times more powerful than CO2. So if methane increases by 500 ppb by 2100, a similar increase in CO2 would be about 0.18 ppm. So it’s a matter of figuring out how much warming an extra 0.18 ppm of CO2 would produce, and multiply that by 84. It comes out to less than a tenth of a degree.
I think I’ve also read that methane is 84 times more IR absorbent than CO2 measured by weight. Atmospheric concentrations of gases are normally measured by volume (“ppmv”). Since the molecular weight of CH4 is 0.36 times that of CO2 (16÷44 = 0.36), it will be 0.36×84 = 30.5 times more potent than CO2 at “warming”, not 84 times – when measured the normal way, by volume.
I have the impression that methane alarmists deliberately used the lightness of CH4 to inflate its alleged warming potential. Who cares about consistency in measurement units when you’re out to terrify the peasants and save the planet?
I should use the term “mass” but when I was at school it was still called atomic (or molecular) weight. Old dog
new tricksI think you are 100 percent correct on the by mass assessment as being deliberate.
Methane can only and solely absorb energy in Earth’s atmosphere in two very specific short radiation bands @ 3.3 & 7.5 microns of the much broader electromagnetic spectrum. A curious effect in a laboratory but irrelevant in the chaotic atmosphere where it competes with other substances. Water vapor, 5000 to 10,000 times more prevalent than methane in the air, has already absorbed virtually all that energy. Methane cannot absorb what has already been absorbed. Increased methane in Earth’s atmosphere is zero, none, nada threat to climate. Good for hack politicians and eco-nuts to work up fear, votes & donations through scientific ignorance though.
I thought the half life for methane was more like 3 or 4 years.
Even less probably
Too reactive to hang around for years.
Methane’s two absorption bands fall under those of water vapor, and since water vapor is much more abundant than methane and that the IR absorption of water is already close to saturated, methane hardly plays a role at all. But go tell that to people like Cook and al. who say the consensus thinks otherwise, THE science…
I should have guessed that Big Green would whip up the climate alarmists to dream up attacks on methane, i.e. natural gas, since most reasonable people see it as more viable option than wind and solar.
Even Kerry sees it as a “transition” source of energy.
So all we have to do is stop using natural gas and switch to coal?
No
Extract the methane and burn it to save the world
Same as the massive Enviromental cleanup we are doing in AB with oilsands, the biggest natural oil spill in history
Well, I guess the above article means that the IPCC is finally admitting that science just cannot support the meme that CO2 is the predominate driver of global warming and the more CO2 added to the atmosphere, the hotter it will get.
As Wijngaarden & Happer [2020] showed in Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases, CO2 is basically saturated in terms of ability to increase GHG capture of LWIR from Earth’s surface.
So, the IPCC is floating the trial balloon to declare methane to now be the predominant GHG that needs to be controlled/eliminated. Watch as this narrative further evolves over the next five years or so.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all to them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
My apologies, with a typo I slightly botched the Mencken quote in its last phrase. Here it is in correct form:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I don’t see any difference in the two quotations, Gordon.
Dave,
Check the third to last word of the quote.
If they admit CO2 isn’t a problem then the battle is over as we will never emit enough methane to make a difference even if we believe the Scientology
If they admit CO2 isn’t a problem then the battle is over as we will never emit enough methane to make a difference even if we believe the Scientology, in fact we save the world by gathering methane and burning it.
Gee, if methane is playing in the same league as CO2 – the answer is simple. Burn it. It’ll turn into H2O and CO2, and we won’t be any worse off. Besides, we’ll get the energy we might otherwise need coal to provide.
In concentrations of 0-5% Methane in air, the mixture is too lean to ignite or burn.
5% by volume concentration is equivalent to 50,000 ppmv. 5% by mass concentration is equivalent to about 90,000 ppmv. Hence, there is quite a ways to go to be able to ignite and burn the current 1.8 ppm mole fraction (= 1.8 ppmv).
Seriously, this CANNOT be true. The science is settled – we keep being told that the science is settled, so I officially (yes, officially) declare this untrue.
SimonJ (you don’t really need a ‘sarc’ tag, do you?)
The new narrative. Bill Gates, Vanguard, Blackrock and co. want to sell us synthetic lab meat. Time to buy stock of firms that synthesize meat flavors …
Highly processed foods which are very bad for your body and (for the Greenies) emit more GHG’s than the meat they are trying to replace.
Plant based meat substitute = the unhealthy option.
Yes, I keep pointing out that the process to try and make vegetables look and taste like meat results in highly processed junk food.
The potato chips I like are potatoes, canola oil and salt, and supposedly those are bad for me, but Beyond Meat with a list of ingredients I need a chemistry degree to decipher is healthy?
This whole beyond meat industry reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with the bit on lesbians using male shaped sex aides, when you join the other team you should have to give up the equipment.
Seems increasingly pathetic and needy for people to have vegetarian options to pretend they are still eating meat.
I think that analogy falls down a bit – lesbians don’t like what the equipment is naturally attached to, not the equipment itself.
But I wholeheartedly agree with your final conclusion – it’s a pretense of vegetarianism.
“Time to buy stock of firms that synthesize meat flavors”. What a shame, I have no spare cash to put into that, my cash is all in coal companies. Maybe when my coal shares stop going up I’ll switch ….. or maybe not.
My neighbor synthesizes meat flavors from grass and grain. He also manages to get the exact same texture and nutritional value.
My neighbor smokes salmon – I’d like to see that done with grass and grain!
Speaking of water vapor, it isn’t even shown in the AR6 graphic about GHGs!
And 30–50% of zero is?
So, we need more methane, too? Okely dokely, we will get right on that!
Chi’drens? 30-50% of nothing is still nothing. Did they show the images for volcanic eruptions? I bet not. The one that just popped in Tonga most likely put more methane into the atmosphere than human industry has ever even produced.
“The one that just popped in Tonga most likely put more methane into the atmosphere than human industry has ever even produced.”
No it didn’t. If you think I’m wrong let’s have a reference otherwise more lies from the chief liar. Here’s my reference and while it doesn’t mention methane specifically it says
“Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/
Methane is a greenhouse gas. So the possibility that the one Tongan volcano “put more methane into the atmosphere than human industry has ever even produced” is about as ludicrous as a comment could be. Well done you win this year’s “pants on fire” award…. Come to think of it, didn’t you win it last year with your Ford Lightning comment?
You really just can’t get over being such a simple-minded child. Thats cute. Mommy left her computer on again, didn’t she?
Yep that’s about the level of intellectual integrity I thought you would come back with.
Poor widdle simple, it gonna cry now? Should I call the waaambulance for you, sweety?
Some little calculators cannot handle uuuuge numbers like 1890 parts per billion.
Doubling uuuge numbers like 1890 PPB CH4 can have no measurable climate effect, and that is not roundoff!
Indeed it is. The current concentration is about 1890 PPB, or about 1.89 PPM, compared to 420 PPM for CO2. Allowing for the the claimed 85X greater capacity for forcing than CO2, the CH4 would be equivalent to about 161 PPM CO2 in forcing potential. Or, about 28% of the CO2-equivalent forcing. For the longer term forcing of about 32X, the methane would account for about 13%.
Half of nothing is still nothing.
Will beans be banned?
Save beans – kill the termites!
Houses world over agree.
One of the aspects of methane in greenhouse warming is that there is a fairly clear feedback loop via, methane seeps through permafrost. The permafrost areas are somewhat of a barrier to fossil methane as well as methane released from decaying organics bound up in the permafrost, at least that is the concern. The impact of warming on atmospheric CO2 is not so obvious, although we know from ice core data that a rising temperature leads the CO2 up. However, how that occurs is less clear, at least to me anyway. But, back to the methane. My thought is that any perturbation in the earth’s heat balance that triggers increasing permafrost methane could snowball into further warming. The question is, why hasn’t this already happened? I think this is one of the major weaknesses in tipping point arguments; anything can trigger a feedback loop, if they are sitting there waiting to be triggered. It doesn’t have to be manmade.
I always considered the link between temperature and CO2 to be due to plant growth. Increased temperature (especially in the equatorial and tropical areas) leads to increased plant growth which, in turn, leads to more CO2 being emitted by plants. The greening of the planet has an obvious natural effect on CO2 levels which also leads to increased plant growth and so on.
Seems like plants would be a net transfer of CO2 from air to soil. That’s how we got coal.
Coal required rapid burial of abundant plant material in anoxic conditions. Most coal developed before a fungus that breaks down lignin evolved. Today, Some brown coal and lignite is developing, but the amount is nothing like during the Carboniferous. Orogeny is necessary to drive off the water and other volatiles to increase the energy density found in bituminous and anthracite grade coals.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120628181721.htm
This is a situation where “The present is [not] the key to the past.”
Was what looks like a singular down-vote based on my popularity with you, or was there something I wrote that you disagree with, but were too lazy to contest?
On net, plants absorb CO2, they don’t emit it.
Plants are net zero wrt carbon. A plant absorbs C while growing, but releases it all after dying. Even if a plant is eaten, its C eventually gets released again. Planting more plants only takes up more C once.
However, we are concerned about the fast Carbon Cycle, which means months to years, not hundreds of years.
Trees not only respire CO2 at night, but do so also in the Winter. That means that net, trees sequester CO2 during the growing season, but source it when they are dormant. Eventually, fungi and bacteria (and fires) recover almost all the carbon and put it back into the atmosphere.
It has been far warmer than today in the past 8000 years, with the arctic tree line hundreds of km farther north than today meaning the tundra has thawed many times before
And no catastrophic runaway warming ever
You keep trying to defend the narrative through the back door
Still wondering at your game?
I should be clear to the careful reader that I was pointing out the weakness of the tipping point argument, especially via permafrost methane. I was not defending anything.
I have noticed several posts claiming that the CH4 band is already saturated, so more or less CH4 does not matter. I have not studied that and have no opinion on it, but the premise of what this post was presenting was about more CH4 being a problem; if that be the case, then why hasn’t the problem already occurred sometime in the past?
Premising feedbacks ‘sitting there waiting to be triggered’ out of thin air, sorry CH4, seems careless, to this careful reader. Even trigger-happy!
Doubling both CO2 and CH4 whether by oceans, engin’s, or anythin’ , can have no measurable effect, whether you have an opinion or not on saturation.
The claim is that warming will cause permafrost to emit more methane. Actual scientists using actual instruments have measured actual permafrost and found this not to be the case.
Bacteria in the soil also get more active as temperature increases, and these bacteria eat the methane before it can make it to the atmosphere.
The source of the CO2 that gets emitted as the world warms is also well known. It comes from the warming oceans.
The scientific method should be applied:
Hypothesis: CO2 & Methane cause the climate to change by warming.
Data: Co2 & Methane have increased and the climate has not warmed.
Conclusion: The hypothesis needs to be changed.
No, they will follow Newton – Hypotheses non Fingo – I make no hypothesis. The science is settled!
The predominant source of “man-made” methane emissions comes from the practice of raising farm animals, mainly cattle, for food (via food digestion and manure decay) and the cultivation of rice paddies.
The predominate source of naturally-occurring methane emissions arises from organic decay occurring in natural wetlands.
So, the “obvious answers” to minimizing releasing methane, that dastardly greenhouse gas, into Earth’s atmosphere is to eliminate (a) raising of cattle as human food, (b) elimination of rice as a food source, and (c) elimination of natural wetlands from Earth’s surface.
Yeah, sure, let’s get on this right away . . . idiots!
Reply to Gordon Dressler.
Look at this paper by Paul Homewood where he has posted a graph titled Global Methane Emissions.
A steady climb until 2008 and then a flat line till 2018 .What was the problem with farmed livestock over those 10 years .
There was NO problem .
Not one atom of additional carbon or molecule of CO2 is added to the atmosphere by farmed livestock ,the process is a CYCLE.
I am speculating that the steady rise was caused by natural gas venting from oil wells and then later natural gas leaks in pipe lines and pumping stations .
I have been told by oil and gas engineers that the venting and the gas leaks were mostly remedied during the first years of this century .
So what caused methane emissions to rise from 2009?
Coal.
World coal production was steady over those 10 years at 4.7 billion tonnes.
From 2009 coal production ramped up mainly for Asian consumption to peak at 8.2 billion tonnes in 2018.
A lot of methane is released during mining and transport with more being released during combustion .
I have nothing against coal but I have to defend live stock farmers as I have been a dairy and beef farmer all of my life .
I understand methane escapes during mining & transport but I don’t understand the “during combustion”. If methane is in the coal, burning coal burns the methane (what was still contained) then it’s no longer methane.
Leaving methane in the ground to naturally escape to be 30 or 84x worse GHG than CO2 seems worse than mining methane to be burned into a weaker GHG [CO2].
We’re doomed guys.. even the trees have got it in for us!
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/trees-release-methane-what-it-means-climate-change
“At the global scale this could be huge”
“The emissions from an individual tree are small,” Covey said. “But there are several trillion trees. At the global scale this could be huge.”
Some math skills and logic may be wanting. If half is from human derived methane (the map seems to exclude any natural sources or fossil fuel sources such as agriculture), and most of the rest from CO2 then there is almost nothing left for the most important greenhouse gas water vapour, which in their models is supposed to cause about 2/3 of the anthropogenic warming due to feedbacks. There is also no room for solar activity, cloud cover, cosmic ray cloud nucleation, natural ocean/atmosphere cycles, and many other potential influences not yet understood. This is a fairy tail, not a scientific argument. And the tellers are snake olio salesmen, not scientists.
They’re also paid very well
Methane keeps us warm and cooks our food
They can jog on
Incredible new ‘models’ suggest methane is naughtier than the dreaded CO2 , how much more will cost civilisation with their new remedies except China of course .
50% of bugger-all is still bugger-all. Apparently the Warmistas have the only computers that don’t give a divide by zero error.
Recently I downloaded and am reading Wijngaarden and Happer ” Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most
Abundant Greenhouse Gases” It is a right riveting read. Based on quantum mechanical treatment of greenhouse gases and concludes that methane and CO2 are trivial contributers at current concentrations. As a physics graduate 50 years ago , my quantum Mechanics photon capture cross section and other elementary concepts are somewhat rusty. However these guys do seem to have got their act together.
Now to give balance to my research and hopefully to demonstrate that the emperor has no clothes, I need something from the other side. I am fine with Tyndall and Arrhenius in 1896 for a qualitative treatment but of course that predates quantum mechanical treatment of molecular Infra Red absorption and re-emission.
Searching through the web, albeit cursarily, I can find Trenberth’s pictures in IPCC reports and any amount of guff about
“Scientists say that . . . . ..”
Surely to god the alarmist brigade somewhere among their 97% consensus must have the moral authority of some peer reviewed proper Physics papers setting out their quantitative assessment of greenhouse gas effect.
I would be obliged if any reader could quote could send me any such bibliography material (Peer reviewed of course for what that’s worth) that you may have to hand.
Time to step up to the plate Griff, Lloydo et al
My model predicts silence.
My money is on Pat.
Is it not odd that the problem Planck solved was an infamous UV runaway, a major disaster for the pre-quantum era?
Dr. Happer refers to Planck and Schwarzschild. Arrhenius and Tyndall belong in the pre-quantum era.
Then along came Einstein :
The Quantum Theory of Radiation A. Einstein (Received March, 1917)
https://inspirehep.net/files/9e9ac9d1e25878322fe8876fdc8aa08d
See how Einstein links the Maxwell gas velocity distribution to the quantum,
and Einsteins concluding remark on momentum and thermodynamics.
It sure looks like the oligarchy never forgave Planck, Schwarzschild, Einstein and invent some runaway disaster again! They want to Great Reset back before 1900!
I know that idiots like Al Gore say that the “Science” was settled by Arrhenius” but you and I both make the point that we are discussing quantum phenomena. However I am interested in addressing whence the AGW crowd derived their authority and which papers laid the groundwork for IPCC shenanigans and shonky models. Armed with this bibliography I can then
n systematically refute (or otherwise) their theoretical basis
Here’s a really wild card for you…..
Extra Methane increases Global Greening
How. Why.
Plants are smelly things, because they release Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Why do they do that? It took a lot of resource to make those chemicals so what is the point of just letting them float away in the wind?
Because: Ozone
Ozone is truly desperate and destructive stuff, especially for plants.
Is that a reason for them making the VOCs – to soak up low-level ## atmospheric Ozone before it hurts them? VOCs are very flammable substances and Ozone is an incredibly potent oxidiser – it makes perfect sense.
But how do plants know and when to release VOCs, surely they must have some sort of sensing system?
## Wherever there is Ultra Violet light and Oxygen, there is Ozone.
That’s where it comes from, especially way up aheight in the stratosphere = something that warmists and catastrophists alike ‘keep under their hats‘. It rather derails their CFC narrative.
Enter Methane (CH4)
CH4 is a VOC and, as many commentators have commentated, CH4 has a short life when it’s in the atmosphere.
Obviously question, where does it go?
Answer, Ozone eats it
Extra methane in the atmosphere close to the ground equates to lowered Ozone levels close to the ground = the place where plants are to be found.
The plants will be sensitive to that and thus reduce their production and release of VOCs
If that is the case, plants thus have extra resource available for the basic business of growing and being green. resource that they otherwise gave away for no return apart from, ozone defence
Thus = Global Greening.
Also from the Ozone shield that CH4 provides = less damage from whatever Ozone still does get to them.
Escaped gasoline, petrol, kerosene, nail polish remover etc etc would also work in plants’ favour also.
PS Is there possibly an explanation of why large city centres are now plagued by ground-level ozone.
All cars and trucks now have much more fuel-tight engines plus of course catalysers to burn off escaping fuel – fuel that would have self destructed itself and ozone had they met.
Unintended Consequences, fun aren’t they?
.
More precisely, it gets converted to CO2 and H20 by oxidation.
Note the tiny contribution by aviation contrails to the right. AR6 claims a 0.06W/m2 forcing by 2019. Interestingly that does not include feedbacks, which are however included in the CO2 and Methane figures.
More importantly, total cirrus cloud (CC) forcing is said to be a net 5W/m2. The contrail contribution to CC would thus be tiny, only about 1%. Contrails, so the IPCC, would hardly increase CC at all.
With recent lock downs affecting air traffic, we have a lot more data on the subject. And they confirm what Travis et al (2002), a strong increase in DTR (daily temperature range) after 9/11 of 1.8K. Thereby implying that contrails make up for a large share in CC.
Despite there was no complete shut down of air traffic, CC reductions fall into the 30% range.
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/14573/2021/
This is massive and hints towards contrails being the main driver of AGW.
“An IPCC study last year suggested that 30-50% of the current rise in temperatures is down to methane.”
Here are the big tells:
a) CO2 is disappointing climateers big time. First, their models proved to be running 200-300% too hot compared to measured T anomalies a decade ago, even though they had maxed out upward adjustments to temperatures. Why they thought themselves ‘saved’ by the 2015 el Niño shows they were living on the fumes of hope. Gavin Schmidt finally had to come out and say “models are running away too hot and we don’t know why”.
b) the EU in their self inflicted energy woes are now giving gas and nuclear “sustainability” accreditation.
Its easy! The models are wrong. One can start with the cloud parameterizations.
Schmidt’s admission and the “discovery” of methane as a problem is a tacit admission that the models are all wrong and so are the scientists in the 97% that agree with the models.
This is very good news. Now all we have to do is let the land developers fill in the wetlands and build condos. Bingo less methane emissions from one of the biggest sources. /s
Well, if methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and is also a very effective source of energy – released by combustion that converts methane to CO2 – it looks like the “green” thing to do would be to get all or much more of our energy from methane.
A couple of weeks ago, there was an interesting paper discussed
here on the relative amounts of anthropogenic and natural CO2 in the
atmosphere, as determined by the dilution of 14C from the exchange
reservoirs (such as plants and oceans) by CO2 from fossil fuels, which no longer contain 14C, see https://tinyurl.com/47ubjspy .The original paper is here https://tinyurl.com/mr4y9uwf
The authors concluded “We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming”.
Methane from oil or gas wells is a fossil fuel and will contain
no 14C, so the methane that leaks from those wells comes within the purview of the paper above. It means that leaking methane is nothing to be
worried about, regardless of its being 84 times more effective as a
greenhouse gas than CO2, and adds further confirmation to what has been said here.
Prove it with real world measurements.
In the military we used grid coordinates, a convenient predefined sections of the world. Pick several with comparable features. Use NASA satellites that measure atmospheric composition, another for temperatures. Surface temperature readings at same time as satellite readings. The atmospheric composition with greenhouse gases should create a local greenhouse conditions that should be measurable.
If not the theory should be assumed false. Or, come up with some better test.
Try not to be confused by the intentional shift in UNITS when speaking of CH4 — — current methane atmospheric concentrations amount to LESS THAN 1.9 ppm… yes, that is one point nine parts per million.
After forty years of victimisation, CO2 must be becoming rather exhausted and so it is time for the IPCC and the BBC to move on to a new less known sacrificial climate lamb like methane.
The ruling elite will find a reason to ban any source of energy because they want to send us back to the stone age and reduce the population. When we used coal the complaint was; particulates, sulfur, and mercury. But then people developed scrubbers that could greatly reduce those problems. And people started using natural gas. But the complaint then was that we were running out of gas and laws were proposed to reduce the use of it. Then new ways of getting it were found like fracking. So a new boogy man had to be found. Carbon dioxide fit the ticket. All fossil fuels produce it and it cannot be eliminated because it is a natural product of combustion. Among all fossil fuels natural gas produces less CO2 per unit of energy than any other. Also in terms of real pollutants it is very clean. Further it can be used in combined cycle plants to achieve very high efficiencies of up to 60%. Intelligent people realized that we need fossil fuels to survive. They began to think that natural gas was the best option. So a means had to found to demonize that too. Voila ; methane leaks.
The elite will find a reason to condemn any source of power because it doesn’t fit with their agenda.
From the article: “Indeed, if the current push to cut methane emissions is successful, we would likely see rapid global cooling, assuming of course the IPCC calculations are right.”
I don’t assume the IPCC is right because there is no evidence to back up these claims.
Alarmist climate science is made up of unsubstantiated assumptions, assertions, and claims, and this methane meme is just another one of them.
They keep changing their story, and moving the goal posts. Just as long as it fits the narrative; that we nasty humans through our behavior are causing a “climate crisis” which will destroy the planet, unless we “go green”.
The climate drones don’t know they are shooting themselves in the foot with a machine gun.
What does this do? It smacks the 97% consensus on CO2 and temperature “change” down that was 99% certain! It makes the 100s of thousands of temperature adjustments to match CO2 rises wrong for them as well as freddy science.
When I first saw info on methane in the atmosphere a decade and a half ago it was little different from what it is now. NASA said it’s nearly all natural. Having jiggered climate data feverishly for over 30 years, I’m 100% certain, that, if climateers switch horses to methane, we will soon see 2021’s 1.9ppm ‘grow’ to 2.5 and greater.
I recall Mark Steyn’s statement at the Senate hearing on data tampering, that the consensus is certain with 95% confidence on what the weather will be like in 2100, but have no idea what 1950’s temperatures WILL be.
Linden had this to say to an Irish conference on climate last year.
“Our task is to show the relevant people the overall stupidity of this issue rather than punching away at details.”
I’ve argued for some time now, that for sceptics there is no point in arguing the science to deaf ears. A great job was done by sceptics on the science, but there is no chance for debate on it now. Ridicule is the way forward. They have shot themselves in the foot everyday for at least 15yrs and wow! Methane is their new ‘sauve quiet peut!’
https://www.yourdictionary.com/sauve-qui-peut
It is broadcast to the losers by their gov on the final hours of a war.
The CO2 hoax has already crashed, this pandemic is over; both have failed to give Globalists world control. Still they raise another boogeyman aimed directly at natural gas and oil producers. They’re simply moving the goal posts it has nothing to do with science and everything to do with power and control. Tyrants always use force to drive their people where they want them to go. Whereas leaders tread a reasonable path and lead their people to the destination. Today we’re being driven like never before………
The footnote is more important than anything in the article.
I would like to see the scientific basis of their assumption that, in the absence of changes in atmospheric CO2 and methane (or any other gas-de-jour), earth’s climate would have remained entirely static over the last century or so.
If anyone knows of such evidence please provide a link.
It would be extremely interesting to see a demonstration of how in a dissipative nonequilibrium rotating climate frame, with chaotically circulating oceans, climate stasis is even possible. For a single day – let alone a century.
Look up the IR absorption band for methane. There is no way that methane can be responsible for ANY warming. Once again we have a situation where people are just taking someone’s word for it.
The entire problem with the climate is the same as the problem with covid information, scientists have all been clouded over with politics. And politics controls the spending, which further politicizes science.
if
and human industrial processes emit less than 75% of CO2
and most of atmospheric methane is released due to natural processes
and temperatures are increasing at less than the rate of the most optimistic modeling
then humans are off the hook, and warming is a natural process unlikely to be affected by human actions.
I feel so much better, somehow.
The lying and total dishonesty about this is far over the top. The reason why these fraudsters continue their hype about methane is that they are losing the battle about CO2. Ed Berry’s carbon model is now backed up with independent research where the physicists in this paper confirm the results of Berry’s work with their own calculations arriving at the same conclusion that human emissions of CO2 account for only roughly 25% of the atmospheric increase since the start of the industrial revolution and not 100% as the IPCC claims.
The IPCC’s carbon equations are obviously wrong, which means even if atmospheric CO2 were causing the warming the IPCC claims, they would have to decrease the attribution significantly if not entirely from their claims.
The founding principles from atmospheric science treat CO2 as a GHG of only secondary significance in the troposphere that is not controlling on earth temperatures because the water vapor/ cloud feedbacks are anticipated negative, contrary to failed climate model assertions.
Further, methane’s absorption spectrum at 3.3 and near 8 microns is totally dominated by water vapor, neutering the effects nearly completely.
These nut jobs need to stop this dishonesty and come clean. The political class that funds this junk science is ruining the economic engine of this country for reasons that will make no difference to the climate or atmospheric CO2 levels.
That latest paper backing up Berry can be found in Health Physics here:
World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil… : Health Physics (lww.com)
No it doesnt.
1) Its absorption frequency is saturated by water vapour
2) The earth produces little energy at that frequency, Wiens law
3) Methane is highly reactive and oxidises rapidly
The amount of methane that has come from bogs and swamps over the millennia vastly exceeds whatever we can add, and probably does each year today, there is that much rotting vegetation around the world.
This is clearly a Vegan move to outlaw meat.
Per the IPCC:
CO2 forcing versus mean 1800-1850 = 2.0 W/m2
Methane forcing versus mean 1800-1850 = 0.2 W/m2
ONE-TENTH of the CO2 forcing.
That’s a long ways from half.
w.