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Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

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Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#201

It is kind of astonishing to me to witness the discussion in these comments proceeding civilly and with actual regard to the science. In my experience this is vanishingly rare. It's extremely refreshing. At risk of ruining that civility, I'd like to address some aspects of climate scepticism various other comments are touching on. It is not difficult to see that a reasonable person may ask that if the UN is correct i…

One safe space for me is the IPCC report summary document itself.

It's generally couched much more cautiously than most of the rhetoric out there.

Its authors seem to really bend over backward to try to accurately characterize the various degrees of acceptance and certainty of the myriad different aspects of the "consensus."

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically with respect to the methane cow farts, yes. That carbon comes from their plant diet (be it grass in a field or grain in a feeding lot), and the carbon in those plants came from the atmosphere. This isn't counting the fossil fuels the industry also burns, or the carbon released during the production of fertilizers used when growing that feed. But the carbon in the feed itself all comes from the atmosphere…

Yea but grass doesn't grown on methane

> Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#203
post #5
post #3

Source study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01144-z

Nature.com has a dark pattern on the accept cookie workflow. I expected better from them

I recommend enabling the annoyances filters on uBlock Origin. It removes most of this bs

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#204
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting CH4 is useful for fighting climate change, but in a different way than cutting CO2. In terms of climate change it’s not a 10 years thing and then methane instantly swaps, it’s a second by second thing where a percentage of existing methane is constantly converted. In steady state new methane from say cow farts 1:1 replaces methane from past cow farts being transformed into CO2. The only difference is an atom…

I'm more worried about untracked CH4 leaks from coal mines and LNG projects. Which dwarf farm emissions. Cow's are just part of the problem. The real threat is the LNG industry.

We can track methane concentrations from satellites so there really isn’t significant unknown sources.

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#205
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have reliable measurements of Arctic snow cover that date back to the late 1960s when satellite observations of the Earth's surface began. The earliest satellite used for snow cover monitoring was the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) series, which was launched by the United States in 1960. In the early 1970s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Advanced Very Hig…

AVHRR started collecting data in the early 1980s, not the early 70s. ChatGPT is hallucinating again. I guess this is the scenario AI ethics people feared - the internet being clogged up by AI generated misinformation. If you want to take part in this debate do you own research and cite actual data. Polar bears are doing fine, by the way. https://polarbearscience.com/2023/02/23/published-field-stud...

It seems that AVHRR was launched in 1978 [0], with fairly continuous global coverage since June 1979 [1].

So it was not in early 1970s, it was in the late 1970s, and it was not in early 1980s. You both were pretty close.

> Polar bears are doing fine, by the way.

Good to hear. For now at least. If true.

"In 2004, biologists discovered four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea. Never before observed, biologists attributed the drowning to a combination of retreating ice and rougher seas. As a result of rapid ice melt in 2011, a female polar bear reportedly swam for nine days nonstop across the Beaufort Sea before reaching an ice floe, costing her 22 percent of her weight and her cub. As climate change melts sea ice, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that two thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050." [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_very-high-resolution_... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210426213549/https://www.usgs.... [2] https://nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals...

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#206
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who changes relative priorities for emissions reduction based on new information is a climate denier?

As a person who believes man is effecting the climate, and is very worried about sustainability, but also thinks that there are some climate scientists who are off in their estimates (or can be too myopic at times like any other human) and that there is still much for us to learn and discover, yes I can confirm that if you question anything or approach things with skepticism (even though that's the way science is sup…

I don't think the experts are against skepticism, they are just deeply tired to be stuck at the stage "try to convince" when the proofs are already overwhelming and the apocalyptical consequences are already slowly (but not slowly enough) unfolding before our eyes on this planet.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#207
post #184
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wealthy billions. The poor ones don't eat as much meat and dairy. And it's a good thing ... if they did, we would need not one, but 4-5 Earths to feed everyone. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying: less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing. You seem to be arguing that this is a good thing (which I disagree with), but you keep supporting my claim with more evidence, so please,…

> don't eat as much meat and dairy > less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing You're like the man who floats on the sea on the raft made from coconuts. The more he eats, the more he thinks he flourishes. Sharks are meanwhile patiently circling around. > Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth Not everybody has the guts and means to organize few coup…

> Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash.

I call the above statement hogwash. Let’s take your proposal to the logical extreme. If inflation is hogwash, then why do we have to tax the citizens? Why not just print the money we need to run the government? Why do we have a national debt if we could just print the money we need to pay it off? We could try your proposal by I don’t think it would end well.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#208
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at the same level it was at this time of year in 1980, actually a little higher. Use Charctic to see for yourself: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-... Arctic sea ice extent is currently tracking the 2010-2020 average. Nothing much is happening in terms of Arctic sea ice extent at the moment and that's been true for a while. There has been a steady decl…

We have reliable measurements of Arctic snow cover that date back to the late 1960s when satellite observations of the Earth's surface began. The earliest satellite used for snow cover monitoring was the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) series, which was launched by the United States in 1960. In the early 1970s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Advanced Very Hig…

As a point of order, chatgpt is not a citable source. It relies on underlying sources and you can ask chatgpt to identify it’s sources for a specific response in a follow up question.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#209
post #207
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't eat as much meat and dairy > less energy consumption pretty much directly translates to less human flourishing You're like the man who floats on the sea on the raft made from coconuts. The more he eats, the more he thinks he flourishes. Sharks are meanwhile patiently circling around. > Zimbabwe tried, they did get more money, but did not get any wealth Not everybody has the guts and means to organize few coup…

> Inflation is irrelevant. I've studied economics ... it's hogwash. I call the above statement hogwash. Let’s take your proposal to the logical extreme. If inflation is hogwash, then why do we have to tax the citizens? Why not just print the money we need to run the government? Why do we have a national debt if we could just print the money we need to pay it off? We could try your proposal by I don’t think it would e…

Inability to imagine alternative ways of managing things is all too common, and too complex topic to be addressed in a single comment.

Instead I'll recommend works of David Graeber [0], mainly his treatise Debt and The Dawn. [1][2] I'll throw in his Bullshit Jobs, just because. [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything:_A_New_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#210
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what you are arguing. Yes, the average temperature of earth has chaged vastly over its history, giving different levels of habitability. At this time, we're in a really good spot for habitability, and we are seeing that we are slipping out of it. There is evidence that some of the temperature change could very well be human made, and thus easy to stop (compared to, say, the emissions of v…

Climate has changed in big ways without mass extinctions. The medieval warm period, the little ice age, mid-20th-century cooling. Just three examples. The idea the climate has been stable since the dinosaurs isn't supported by the evidence.

I mean have you looked at the charts showing the little ice age and the warm medieval period? The variation of temperature is orders of magnitude different to what we are experiencing now - I don't think that it's very relevant, is it?

While climate hasn't been "stable" as in "hasn't changed", it has remained in a very narrow band of t°, of which we are slipping out of it at a much faster rate than all your examples.

I'd argue it's quite clear we are on the way to an extinction class climate change, are you saying we are not? The hockey stick graph is pretty alarming to me.

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