Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by thfuran » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

ftrobro wrote: post #301

squeaky-clean wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like mammalian herbivores are a recent invention. If a constant amount of mammalian herbivores in the world would cause a constant acceleration of greenhouse effect then the greenhouse effect would have increased exponentially for millions of years already. Factory style livestock farming is a recent invention. There's no way a similar amount of herbivores existed a million years ago in the wild compared t…

You're missing the point. An increase in the number of mammalian herbivores just means an increased point of equilibrium for methane. But there will still be an equilibrium. In contrast, using fossile sources of carbon (oil etc) will increase the greenhouse effect every year even if the usage is constant.

And you seem to be missing the point that increasing the equilibrium concentration of atmospheric methane is something we very much do not want to do. And that agriculture isn't actually a closed loop.

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

#322

Post by slackfan » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #232

slackfan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am being pedantic, but there is no such thing as settled science. No matter how solid a theory is, no matter how well-proven, it will remain unsettled in perpetuity.

What utter tripe. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and we know their chemical properties exceedingly well. Endlessly splitting hairs that it's not "settled" when someone puts another digit of accuracy at the end of the accepted mass of a proton isn't being pedantic, it's just being pompous.

And yet comparing a simple chemical composition of water and the effects of a particular gas on a large and very poorly understood system is somehow less tripe?

Please.

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

#323

Post by ninkendo » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #39

hinkley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carbon footprint of cows is still horrendous.

> The carbon footprint of cows is still horrendous. A constant number of cows produce a constant amount of methane which plateaus quickly due to its very small atmospheric half-life. "Additional methane emission categories such as rice cultivation (RIC), ruminant animal (ANI), North American shale gas extraction (SHA), and tropical wetlands (TRO) have been investigated as potential causes of the resuming methane grow…

> A constant number of cows produce a constant amount of methane

Right, which is why arguments about going vegan advocate for having fewer cows, which kind of renders the rest of your argument moot.

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

#324

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

fwlr wrote: post #243

kredd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant portion of population will always act against status quo even if the data is accurate to the T. Something about “don’t let perfect be enemy of the good” heavily applies to climate modeling, in my opinion. Worst case scenario, we convert to better sources of power through a ton of investment, and make general populace’s life “cleaner” anyways.

There’s always the Lizardman Constant[1], and on top of that there’s people demanding unreasonable perfection of data, sure. But I think the post you’re replying to has a good point: public opinion of “public health” has taken a significant hit in reaction to the handling of Covid, as more information came out that contradicted earlier messaging (vaccine confers immunity -> vaccine lessens symptoms, most notably). It…

[deleted]

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

#325

Post by brabel » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #304

brabel wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what can possibly cause warming is only the effect of the difference in temperatures between the CO2 gas and the surface. This shows you have a complete misunderstanding of the basic physics going on. If you have a source of radiation directly hitting a surface, some of the radiation will warm the surface by being absorbed by the surface material, but some of that radiation will be reflected back into space. Whe…

No, you're the one misunderstanding the physics. The reflected radiation is in a different spectrum than greenhouse gas absorption spectrum. The greenhouse effect is supposed to be about the difference in thermal radiation absorption frequencies, not sunlight absorption frequencies. You can read again about greenhouse effect to see that you misunderstood it. CO2 is the same as air in sunlight spectrum, which is the r…

You seem to be looking for a slightly misleading representation of what the "greenhouse effect" actually means to go on an irrelevant tangent about whether or not CO2 and methane cause global warming. If you ignore the term "greenhouse" and just think about the physical process by which the Earth's temperature changes, you will see that what I said is much more accurate than your silly interjection about what greenhouse means. I am sure you understand that the Earth is not in any sort of thermal equilibrium, but you keep saying that. It's like you just ignore the Sun, which is what drives the whole process, and only consider what would happen if you had a solid and a gas under thermal equilibrium, and then changed the gas, which is completely irrelevant to how atmospheric temperature changes depending on the contents of the atmosphere (and assuming changes in Sun radiation are neglibigle). I really think you're intentionally trying to murk the waters to troll us all.

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

#326

Post by throwaway09223 » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

least wrote: post #188

throwaway09223 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why is this a problem?" It's a problem because of the aforementioned disproportionate energy consumption. > "Animals also produce higher quality protein with higher bioavailability" Hey look, you don't have to pitch me on meat -- I'm basically a carnivore. Personal preferences don't change the underlying engineering dynamics. > "and provide nutrients that people cannot get from plants." I love meat and I'll defend…

> this just isn't a rational argument. Taurine, Creatine, Carnosine, and B12 are not found in significant amounts in plants. Heme Iron is much more bioavailable than Plant Iron or Iron supplements. Plant-based diets can also inhibit the absorption of many more nutrients, including Iron and B12. You cannot get the right type of omega-3 fatty acids through a normal plant-based diet, either, you must supplement it with…

Again, you don't have to convince me. I eat meat too.

I agree, meat calories are higher quality for a variety of reasons -- you don't need to argue this point to me.

My point is that these reasons are not essential reasons. You can survive without Taurine, Creatine, Carnosine because they are all synthesized by the body. Is it preferable to supplement with them in a diet? Yes. Are there more than a billion vegetarians on earth who don't supplement these? Also yes.

We can and should accept both of these facts:

1) Meat is a better calorie source.

2) Meat is less efficient in terms of energy consumption and this is a problem.

You can't disprove #2 by arguing about #1.

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

#327

Post by revelio » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

myshpa wrote: post #277

revelio wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your wiki link: "AVHRR data have been collected continuously since 1981" ChatGPT was off by a decade! I hope nobody will confuse an anecdote about a handful of bears from 2004 with robust science.

Robust science? You mean NY Times or Chicago Tribune?

No, with the work done by people actually observing and counting polar bear populations.

At any rate, going back to the original non-bear related claims that you're picking a fight with, those outlets were in both cases reporting measurements and claims made by scientists.

Indeed, you could argue that they aren't reliable and the reality was different, but then you'd have to concede that in the past "consensus climate science" has been wrong across the board and thus that this is also a possibility today.

I think in reality the claims made about basic weather stats back then were probably true, or at least as true as they could get at the time. Climatology was too new and too small to have been politicized in the same way it is today. And newspapers had a different ethos around trying to present facts neutrally, they also were less politicized than today. But by all means, argue that the global consensus of scientists (both US and Soviet no less) was wrong.

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

#328

Post by Maursault » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

least wrote: post #218

Maursault wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some forms of protein... can't be realistically substituted by normally eating humans. uh... > Its a fact that ie vegans lack: B12, Most vegans consume enough B12 to avoid clinical deficiency by eating foods fortified with B12, including plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals, and B12 supplements > D3, The vegan source of vitamin D3 comes from algae, produces the most body-ready form of vitamin D…

> Most vegans consume enough B12 to avoid clinical deficiency by eating foods fortified with B12, including plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals, and B12 supplements No, they probably won't get enough with just fortified foods. Most vegans will need an actual B12 supplement. > The vegan source of vitamin D3 comes from algae, produces the most body-ready form of vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. This i…

All you've done is contradicted the statements I've made, which are verifiably true. I'm not sure why you would waste your time. Every statement you've made, every single thing you've just written, is provably false. Eat all the meat you want. You've earned it.

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

#329

Post by revelio » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #60

KennyBlanken wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't just natural gas leaking out of the distribution system. It's also the enormous methane output of the cattle industry. There are thirty million cows in the US alone. Each is producing 150 to 300lb of methane per year.

It is also the fact that both wetlands and melting permafrost emit methane, and both sources seem to be increasing their emissions as the world warms. This is a scary feedback loop, and that’s before we get to things like undersea clathrates.

Such dangerous feedback loops are conjectured but not actually a threat. It can be proven with historical evidence like this paper, which shows that during the Roman times it must have been much hotter than today, like somewhere between 3-7 degrees hotter, based on the discovery of bison fossils in the Alps. This is well beyond the level climatologists claim would cause runaway feedback driven global warming and mass extinction, yet that didn't happen. The historical records don't contain any reference to climate meltdowns around that time, and humanity obviously wasn't wiped out by anything.

http://www.museumgolling.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/9_Sch...

These wisent remains from alpine caves are all from sites now in the subalpine to alpine zone. From this it can be concluded that the beech limit but also the forest line during the »wisent time« (6,000 to 1,200 years before today) was much higher and the average summer temperature had to be at least 3 to 6 °C higher than today

Oaks (Quercus) at an altitude of 1,450 metres around 2,000 years ago also indicate a climate approximately 4 to 7 °C warmer than today

There's a lot of evidence pointing in the same direction.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67281-2

This record comparison consistently shows the Roman as the warmest period of the last 2 kyr, about 2 °C warmer than average values for the late centuries for the Sicily and Western Mediterranean regions.

Yet according to scientists, "Temperature rises over 2 degrees could bring catastrophic and potentially irreversible impacts, including pushing three billion people into chronic water scarcity."

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/30/world/global-warming-crit...

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

#330

Post by xyzzyz » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

tpnCC wrote: post #279

xyzzyz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane in atmosphere today is at 2 ppm, carbon dioxide is at 420 ppm. If methane is 20 times more potent, this implies that atmospheric methane is equivalent to 40 extra ppm of carbon dioxide. If we removed literally all methane from the atmosphere, this would be equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide concentration to 380 ppm. This would bring us back to climate of 2005. By any reasonable measure, climate in 2023 is…

There is a detail missing in your Calculation. Global Warming Potential of Methane over a 20 year Time period is a bit more than 80 times that of CO2. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin... So, redrawing your path by your method, if we remove ALL of the Atmospheric Methane today, we would be reducing GHG concentrations by about 160ppm CO2 equivalent, which takes the overall CO2 concentrations…

> Global Warming Potential of Methane over a 20 year Time period is a bit more than 80 times that of CO2.

Where in the linked document it says that? Because I do not think it’s true.