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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

#141

Post by ehvatum »

breakyerself wrote: post #119
t0bia_s wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He just trying to point out what is media agenda now. Keep people in fear. Which is true and last two years are proof of it.

The media agenda is the same media agenda that there has always been and that's to make money. Whoever told you there's a media agenda is the one with the agenda that they aren't telling you about.

Remember when the media pointed their cameras away from Hillary as she feinted at the 911 memorial ceremony? If not for one man with a cell phone, this copy-selling story be unknown.

Do you think Jeff Zucker ran CNN so as to maximize profit?

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

#142

Post by 5560675260 »

nosianu wrote: post #109
useragent86 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What are you talking about? Where did I make an end of the world prediction? It is you who brought that up. Of course nothing is going to end. Nice strawman. You even try to bring COVID into the discussion? What are you doing, and why?

Judging by the sentiment displayed in your post, you are affected by various doom and gloom climatic end of world predictions. And you do allude to it right here:

> I look at that data and I think to myself, in a few decades we will have problems, many indirectly from more and more troubled nations who will bear the brunt of the climate change, that that silly little piece of software I write seems meaningless if I start thinking about the bigger picture.

If anything, you're the one creating a strawman out of GP's attempt to get you out of the slump.

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

#143

Post by spenczar5 »

gumby wrote: post #90
spenczar5 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty interesting/terrifying. Could you say more about the startup? At least its name?

Which is terrifying: the methane threat or that someone is addressing it? We're in the stage of scaling up a process from lab scale to deployment scale. Most of the theoretical and experimental science in this area has been done at institutions in Germany, France and Denmark and while the company is international the engineering development is in SV. TBH there's a lot more to do than just some engineering and validat…

Heh, I meant that the threat - and our relatively poor understanding of it - is terrifying.

Thanks for the additional detail.

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

#144

Post by xscott »

tsimionescu wrote: post #136
xscott wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - eac…

> Emissions per capita are relevant if [...] each of these cost CO2 in quite direct proportion to the number of citizens.

Forgive the aggressive editing of your quote, but multiplying emissions per capita times the number of citizens is exactly emissions per country.

> want to discuss a realistic expectation of how low a country's emissions can go

Theoretically, most countries emissions could go to zero with nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, and/or geothermal. You can dive into the touchy feely stuff about people's quality of life, but it's easy to imagine a high quality of life in a country that went pure nuclear (zero added CO2). No new technology (battery storage) needed. However, if we're being realistic, you shouldn't expect any country to change much at all, and you'll find out how many people fear nuclear more than they fear fossil fuels.

In the link I posted above there are 15 sovereign nations which produce a higher CO2 per capita than the US. (As an aside, several of those countries have a strong interest in selling oil, so you aren't likely to sway them.) If you treat per capita as the important metric, and you successfully convince those 15 countries to go pure solar/nuclear/whatever, you've solved less than 5% of the problem. Lock your heels and stick to your guns, refuse to admit you're wrong, but this is an inefficient approach.

Contrast that with converting just China, the US, and India, to wind/geothermal/whatever and you've solved 50%.

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

#145

Post by bamboozled »

addled wrote: post #140
bamboozled wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s a problem for people alive today, but the earth will just rinse wash repeat no ?

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

#146

Post by breakyerself »

refurb wrote: post #123
breakyerself wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because accepting the potential demise of modern complex society and the collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity world wide and a mass exctinction event because "Fuck it China and India are bad so lets just party until the end." Is fucking stupid. The proper framing is we need to reduce emissions and so does China and India so how do we facilitate that. The answer is to 1.) Reduce our own emissions to have the moral…

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.

That's complete bullshit. Global warming isnt a binary of either we're fucked or we're not fucked. It's a gradient of more fucked the look get we wait to phase out emissions. It's never too late because it can always be Made worse by continuing to emit more.

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

#147

Post by breakyerself »

tsimionescu wrote: post #138
refurb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don't need to reduce our standard of living. We need to change our energy sources to renewables and nuclear. Incentivizing density over sprawl would be good too. As well as efficiency. The only people arguing we need to drastically reduce energy usage are people arguing against doing anything. It's a strawman.

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

#148

Post by tsimionescu »

xscott wrote: post #144
tsimionescu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - eac…

> Emissions per capita are relevant if [...] each of these cost CO2 in quite direct proportion to the number of citizens. Forgive the aggressive editing of your quote, but multiplying emissions per capita times the number of citizens is exactly emissions per country. > want to discuss a realistic expectation of how low a country's emissions can go Theoretically, most countries emissions could go to zero with nuclear,…

> Theoretically, most countries emissions could go to zero with nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, and/or geothermal.

I think this is the bad assumption that is causing you to think emissions per capita are not important. Power generation is only a fraction of the problem. Most clearly, GHG emissions from cows and pigs will not go down even if all electricity energy is produced with 0 emissions. Incidentally, India's widespread vegetarianism may be a big component of how its emissions are so low.

Then, transportation will not magically become electric even if the whole grid is green. Perhaps cars are a solved problem, but electric trucks, electric air planes, and electric cargo boats are definitely not solved problem, not for anywhere near today's costs.

There are of course numerous other industrial processes which emit massive amounts of CO2 that can't be electrified at all - cement production, smelting, plastic recycling, many chemical processes etc.

Also, new nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind are not competitive with already built coal or natural gas power plants - so moving to a new entirely green grid would massively increase the costs of electricity, which in turn will increase the costs of basically all consumer goods.

And while many in the USA and Europe could afford to pay twice the price of electricity and all basic necessities (though nowhere close to all), few would in India or China.

Now, would it be important and good to pressure and fund China, US and India to replace what they can of their electrical grids with nuclear and other green energies? Absolutely! But it only addresses a small part of the problem, and does so at tremendous cost.

Edit: electricity generation accounts for ~50% of China's GHG emissions, ~35% of India's and ~25% of the US's. So even entirely greenifying their grids will not reduce world GHG emissions by anywhere near 50%.

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

#149

Post by breakyerself »

ehvatum wrote: post #141
breakyerself wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media agenda is the same media agenda that there has always been and that's to make money. Whoever told you there's a media agenda is the one with the agenda that they aren't telling you about.

Remember when the media pointed their cameras away from Hillary as she feinted at the 911 memorial ceremony? If not for one man with a cell phone, this copy-selling story be unknown. Do you think Jeff Zucker ran CNN so as to maximize profit?

Yes Zucker absolutely ran it to maximize profit. CNN broadcast Trump rallies 24/7 in 2016 because it was good for ratings. CNN was a major factor in Trumps nomination and election to president. You just cherry pick events that suit your narrative. All of these companies are businesses and they're in it for the profits. They may put on a liberal or conservative face, but it's just to exploit a niche in the market. They're corporations with shareholders at the end of the day. Which is a strong constraint on what ideas they'll explore and what issues they'll cover.

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

#150

Post by xscott »

tsimionescu wrote: post #148
xscott wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emissions per capita are relevant if [...] each of these cost CO2 in quite direct proportion to the number of citizens. Forgive the aggressive editing of your quote, but multiplying emissions per capita times the number of citizens is exactly emissions per country. > want to discuss a realistic expectation of how low a country's emissions can go Theoretically, most countries emissions could go to zero with nuclear,…

> Theoretically, most countries emissions could go to zero with nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, and/or geothermal. I think this is the bad assumption that is causing you to think emissions per capita are not important. Power generation is only a fraction of the problem. Most clearly, GHG emissions from cows and pigs will not go down even if all electricity energy is produced with 0 emissions. Incidentally, India's wides…

Take your argument to its logical conclusion and maybe you'll see the contradiction: Qatar has the worst CO2 emissions per capita, so clearly that's where you should focus your efforts.

> Also, new nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind are not competitive with already built coal or natural gas power plants [...] costs

While this is completely true, if you stick to financial justification for changes, you aren't going to succeed anywhere. If any of the other methods were more cost effective in the short term, they'd already have switched.

I doubt it's fruitful to talk about any of this. You seem pretty certain you're right, and I doubt I could change your mind on anything.

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