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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

#61

Post by junofan »

henearkr wrote: post #21
hinkley wrote: post #13

We just had a conversation the other day about climate change and methane, and some people were saying 20x as strong as CO2, and others were saying and sometimes correcting them to 28. According to this article the correct answer is 20. That’s still over an order of magnitude difference. It still doesn’t change the priorities much, it means you can leak 40% more methane from a system before it’s worse that coal, but…

Yes. It doesn't change anything to the problem. But lots of people will say it does (the climate deniers).

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

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

#63

Post by goodluckchuck »

brookst wrote: post #33
slackfan wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I realize you're just trolling, but science is quite settled that anthropogenic climate change is a real ting. Minutae about whether methane is 28x as bad as co2 or merely 20x as bad remains to be settled. Please don't exploit people's good faith interest in getting the exact truth to advance bad faith claims.

> science is quite settled that anthropogenic climate change is a real ting.

This study seems to suggest there has been a lot of research into how methane causes warming, but little research into how it may cause cooling.

> The corresponding climate impacts, however, have been only indirectly evaluated and thus remain largely unquantified.

Then - right off the bat - this study finds a substantial cooling effect.

This hardly rules out the possibility of additional undiscovered cooling effects.

It suggests to me that additional research is needed into how all these greenhouse gasses may have cooling effects.

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

#64

Post by kennywinker »

replygirl wrote: post #38
azan_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate deniers are not people who discuss whether methane is 28x or 20x as strong as CO2, but rather people that do not believe in global warming (or our responsibility for it) at all; that's not skepticism, that's blind faith.

Relative to what things looked like 10-20 years ago, is there still a meaningful contingent of climate change deniers? As far as I can tell, most of those people have accepted the reality but disagree on how we should approach it. Even in the most extreme case--looking at Republicans in the US Congress, steeped in fossil propaganda and owing many of their elections to gerrymandering--and using a broad definition of c…

At this point we have to consider people who deny that climate change is caused by humans to be climate deniers, since they are advocating for no change in behavior which is the same as people who outright deny that it's happening.

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

#65

Post by myshpa »

ta8903 wrote: post #9

How will this affect internet arguments about going vegan?

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...

"... the concepts of “planetary boundaries” (PBs) and a “safe operating space for humanity” ... are intended to represent Earth system processes, which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change potentially endangering human existence

The nine PBs currently recognized are the following:

1. Land-system change;

2. Freshwater use;

3. Biogeochemical flows - nitrogen and phosphorous cycles;

4. Biosphere integrity;

5. Climate change;

6. Ocean acidification;

7. Stratospheric ozone depletion;

8. Atmospheric aerosol loading; and

9. Introduction of novel entities.

Of the nine PBs, five are in the high risk or increasing risk zones, with agriculture the major driver of four of them and a significant driver of the remaining one. It is also a significant driver of many of the PBs still in the safe zone.

Reduced meat and dairy consumption is likely to be crucial."

While methane is often cited as the most harmful aspect of animal agriculture, it's only one of many. Let's not forget about increased usage of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics, ocean dead zones, as well as the spread of zoonotic diseases. Additionally, animal agriculture can contribute to soil degradation and erosion, damage the water cycle, and lead to droughts and depleted aquifers.

Furthermore, it's essential to recognize that consuming animal products is no longer a necessity but rather a personal choice. This choice not only results in the loss of lives of gentle animals (as only those were chosen for domestication), but it also damages nature and wildlife.

So probably not much.

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

#66

Post by kvgr »

orev wrote: post #59
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if it did increase warming more than CO2, once methane emissions reach a steady level, reducing methane emissions won't change a thing, compared to CO2 emissions. This is also similar to meat production emissions. Most of carbon emissions in meat productions are of carbon which was captured from the air as a part of the production cycle, by the plants which fee…

Plants that feed the cattle are overwhelmingly fertilized using fertilizer derived from petroleum products, so it’s not an accurate picture that the feed plants are carbon capture methods.

All plants we eat are fertilized. We can stop fertilizing and all die.

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

#67

Post by Loquebantur »

shrubble wrote: post #40

This is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate. This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn't been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models? That shockingly simplisti…

The reason your comment is bad isn't you pointing out some "truth". The reason is your comment being misleading. You pretend, the accuracy of climate models was insufficient for any relevant conclusions to be made. That is just nonsense.

The interesting part is people clinging onto anything calling that impending climate catastrophe (or its human cause) into question.

Individual subjective short-term benefits outweighing rationally obvious mid- to long-term consequences is usually considered the domain of teenagers. Or of people living in very uncertain (life-threatening) circumstances, devaluing any future considerations.

Either way, those opinions can't carry weight in such a context, as their reasons share no common domain of validity with global long-term considerations.

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

#68

Post by tzs »

shrubble wrote: post #40

This is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate. This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn't been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models? That shockingly simplisti…

From models, basic physics, and observed effects scientist make forecasts about climate change, and they adjust models based on observations.

If scientist make 100 forecasts based on current models they won't all be spot on. It might turn out that say 85 of them turn out to be pretty close, 5 of them turn out to be wrong in that things actually turned out worse than the models forecast, 5 of them turned out better than the models forecast, and 5 of them didn't happen at all.

The "deniers" look at those last 5 or 10 and dismiss the models and all conclusions from them as worthless, ignoring that the models got it mostly right and that the things they got wrong are nowhere near important enough to change the overall result. They at most just change the timeline a little.

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

#69

Post by kennywinker »

thevtm wrote: post #2

We are free to fart outside once more!!

Human farts on AVERAGE contain about 5% methane, and 9.6% CO2 - but depending on your gut biome you may not fart out any methane at all. There's not great data on this (sample size n=16) but the ballpark figure I found was 30-40% of people fart methane.

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

#70

Post by xyzzyz »

djleni wrote: post #56
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane naturally turns into CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if it did increase warming more than CO2, once methane emissions reach a steady level, reducing methane emissions won't change a thing, compared to CO2 emissions. This is also similar to meat production emissions. Most of carbon emissions in meat productions are of carbon which was captured from the air as a part of the production cycle, by the plants which fee…

Could you explain further? How does: > reducing methane emissions won't change a thing, compared to CO2 emissions. Follow from: > once methane emissions reach a steady level

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 not significantly different than the climate in 2005 (eg. you’d hardly be able to observe any difference without making a lot of very careful measurements, you wouldn’t “feel” any difference on your own skin).

And that’s if we remove literally all methane. Most of the methane in atmosphere is a result of natural processes, not caused by human activity. Thus, if we stop all methane emissions caused by human activity, we can maybe at best slow down climate change by 10 years. In terms of practical effects as felt by human beings, this is accurately described as “won’t change a thing”. Actually, to be more specific, slowing climate change by 10 years won’t make any difference, but stopping all methane emitting activities would be tremendously negative to human flourishing.

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