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Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

nature.com

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Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#131

Post by taberiand »

nerdponx wrote: post #28
ck2 wrote: post #10

Based on the past two years, good luck with that. Wonder how much damage the billions of gallons of off gassing is costing the country and world from the Bakken fracking fields (North Dakota, eastern Montana) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/at-night-giant-fie...

It seems more like this is the "clathrate gun" hypothesis coming to fruition.

I think you're right. So many models excluded these extremes as they were too unpredictable in their effects and really, should they happen, it's game over. But so frequently real world observations have been "more extreme, and faster than expected".

Well. We had a good run. Time to pack up the board.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#132

Post by refurb »

cloudfifty wrote: post #126
refurb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we “need to do that” but you know it won’t ever happen right? Scientists have already said if we stop all emissions tomorrow, across the globe, we’re still hitting catastrophic climate change. The boat to fix this left decades ago.

It's funny how reactionaries have gone from "it's not really happening", "it's not man made" to "it's too late anyways" in no time. The same goal remains; to keep doing nothing.

If by “reactionary” you mean “realist” then I agree.

Beyond the point of no return now. Time to start moving to higher ground.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#133

Post by dTal »

bamboozled wrote: post #115
philshem wrote: post #58

Here's a related, recent New Yorker article about the melting permafrost. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-sibe... https://archive.is/ZyhPf > Over thousands of years, the frozen earth swallowed up all manner of organic material, from tree stumps to woolly mammoths. As the permafrost thaws, microbes in the soil awaken and begin to feast on the defrosting biomass. It’s a funky, organic process, a…

So then what happens, the microbes eat stuff, more soil is produced, more trees and animals grow, more rain comes, more stuff gets buried, and the cycle repeats itself? Honest question, not refuting anything here just a lot of the articles stop at the melting part, what happens after that?

It's more like microbes eat stuff -> greenhouse gases released -> climate warms -> more permafrost melts -> microbes eat more stuff -> feedback loop which eventually melts all the permafrost and triples the atmospheric carbon -> cataclysmic and permanent disruption of global weather patterns. It's not a cycle, it's a one-way phase transition.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#134

Post by koide »

nosianu wrote: post #86

To see both the longer trend (graph), a comparison with the value at the same time the previous year, and the current value for CO2, CH4, N2O, and SF6 I occasionally check the Global Monitoring Laboratory (NOAA): https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ Link to methane, click on one of the four switched at the top for the others. Warning: It always is pretty depressing to visit this site. You can also check out a tab "G…

On the one hand, capital is flowing into climate tech, and on the other there are several growing communities that are addressing this problem space:

https://workonclimate.org/ https://www.myclimatejourney.co/ https://climateaction.tech/

I volunteer on the first one and am a member on the other two, and there is a relatively good (and growing!) possibility of finding a good match between what you feel and what you end up working on.

There you can find incubators and funds to launch your climate startup or job postings to work on the coolest climate tech companies (and the not so cool ones too!)

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#135

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

evil-olive wrote: post #25
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the "current outlook" section, where the TL;DR: is that this is not happening and there is pretty good reason to believe it won't over predictable time-frames.

> the "current outlook" section from the article: > according to data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) an encyclopedia like Wikipedia is, by its very nature, going to lag behind the cutting edge of published research on this topic. this article might eventually become a source cited in an edit to the Wikipedia page for that "current outlook" section.

The NOAA data is about methane in general, not clathrates.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#136

Post by tsimionescu »

xscott wrote: post #85
tsimionescu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China and India are nothing compared to the US, if you look at the relevant metrics - emissions per capita. The US is emitting the same as China or near enough not to matter, but doing so at less than a third of the population. The comparison with India is even more one-sided. Not to mention, much of China's emissions are actually coming from its factories supplying the US and Europe with goods. If we just give up on…

Emissions per capita is only relevant if you want to assign moral blame rather than solve the problem. Canada and Australia are higher per capita than the US [0], and you can demonize and crucify them all you want, but it doesn't stop more than 3% of the total problem. Similarly, you can send every person in the US back to the stone age, and you're still going to have about 80% of the problem unless you can get other…

Edit: If every country on Earth had India's emissions per capita, we would be cutting global emissions to less than 25% of what they are today.

Emissions per capita are relevant if you want to discuss a realistic expectation of how low a country's emissions can go. They are also directly relevant: every citizen of a country must be fed, must be given electricity, must use transportation, and must consume goods - each of these cost CO2 in quite direct proportion to the number of citizens.

For example, China has a lot of room for improvement, but India does not, as it's already at lower emissions per capita than half the world (much lower than any EU country, for example).

Global warming is not exclusively the problem of the global south. Poor people in China or India have the same rights to affordable electricity as people in Norway or Germany, which have higher emissions than China per person, despite the fact that they have outsourced plenty of emissions to China.

Overall, if say we needed to reduce emissions by 50%, countries with higher emissions per capita will likely have to reduce MORE than that, as China and particularly India would incur much more harm to their hundreds of millions of citizens than Germany or the USA if they were to significantly reduce emissions.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#137

Post by misja111 »

omgitsabird wrote: post #78
gumby wrote: post #68

Note: I work at a startup working on removing methane from the atmosphere. Responding to several comments: yes, we need to get rid of the excess CO2. In fact when CH4 is broken down (mostly via hydroxyl† or, over oceans, Cl reactions) you end up with CO2 anyway. So, as you ask, why worry about CH4? The radiative forcing function of CH4 is, depending on your baseline, 30-80X‡ worse than C02. The rise in methane levels…

Speaking of diffuse, how do you sequester something that is at super low concentrations like atmospheric methane? As an analogy, my home reverse osmosis filter doesn't even come close to touching things that are in the parts per billion. Also, it isn't as if atmospheric methane is evenly distributed across the globe [0]. How do you expect to collect methane across borders? [0] - https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4798

Very interesting link! There seem to be huge CH4 emissions coming from China in particular. I wonder why?

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#138

Post by tsimionescu »

refurb wrote: post #72
p1necone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching climate change deniers periodically change up their bullshit because the old bullshit got too obviously wrong has been equal parts hilarious and frustrating. I guess now we're at the "okay okay fine, it's a problem, and humans are causing it. But we should still do nothing to fix it, because... China?" Screaming right past the acceptance stage and in for another loop of denial.

Why is that unreasonable? US emissions are actually lower than in the past. But the US could go to zero and if China and India don't lower emission it won't matter . Tragedy of the commons and all.

> US emissions are actually lower than in the past.

> But the US could go to zero and if China and India don't lower emission it won't matter.

Because if the US cut its emissions by half, the standard of living of US citizens (and its associated carbon cost) will become about the same as in China, and will still be a whopping 3.5 times better than India.

Looking at total emissions is actually meaningless, as reducing emissions (significantly) necessarily involves lowering the standard of living - less meat, less transportation, more expensive electricity, less stuff, less construction, less heating etc. The US and EU have a lot of place for reducing our CO2 by reducing our standards of living than India (which produces less CO2 per person than Sweden or any other country in the EU).

Sure, there is some amount of CO2 reduction that can be achieved by green power, but nowhere near enough at the scale and speed needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#139

Post by tsimionescu »

refurb wrote: post #132
cloudfifty wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how reactionaries have gone from "it's not really happening", "it's not man made" to "it's too late anyways" in no time. The same goal remains; to keep doing nothing.

If by “reactionary” you mean “realist” then I agree. Beyond the point of no return now. Time to start moving to higher ground.

There are many points of no return. There is a difference between 5 degrees of warming and 10 or 20.

Re: Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

#140

Post by addled »

bamboozled wrote: post #115
philshem wrote: post #58

Here's a related, recent New Yorker article about the melting permafrost. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-sibe... https://archive.is/ZyhPf > Over thousands of years, the frozen earth swallowed up all manner of organic material, from tree stumps to woolly mammoths. As the permafrost thaws, microbes in the soil awaken and begin to feast on the defrosting biomass. It’s a funky, organic process, a…

So then what happens, the microbes eat stuff, more soil is produced, more trees and animals grow, more rain comes, more stuff gets buried, and the cycle repeats itself? Honest question, not refuting anything here just a lot of the articles stop at the melting part, what happens after that?

The problem is that which microbes do the job depends on how much oxygen is available. If there's not enough, like when buried, the decomposition is anerobic. This produces a lot more methane than aerobic decomposition.
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