Slashdot Mirror
Emissions of Key Greenhouse Gas Stabilize
brian0918 writes "Multiple news sites are reporting that levels of the second most important greenhouse gas, methane, have stabilized". From Scientific American: "During the two decades of measurements, methane underwent double-digit growth as a constituent of our atmosphere, rising from 1,520 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in 1978 to 1,767 ppbv in 1998. But the most recent measurements have revealed that methane levels are barely rising anymore — and it is unclear why." From NewScientist: "Although this is good news, it does not mean that methane levels will not rise again, and that carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change."
What about Water Vapor (or vapour, depending on where you live)? I've heard that's a major contributor... though the talk you hear about it is... a heated discussion at the very least (flamefests usually).
Actually, no. Our knowledge is complete. Visit the Creationism Museum to learn more.
I have freaks! I did something right...
The real 800lb gorilla for methane is the Arctic. If the predictions are right then this is the calm before the storm. If the Arctic melts, which it is, it'll release vast amounts of methane. It's likely to dwarf all other greenhouse sources. Everyone seems to be ignoring the Arctic but all the CO2 sources combined can't compare so a melting Arctic should be our primary concern. If it's the canary then the canary isn't just dead but it has been reduced to a skeleton.
The single largest source of methane as a greenhouse gas is (flatulence from)cattle raised in the third world for food. The next sources in order are cattle raised in the western world, and human flatulence IIRC.
Does the stabilization of methane levels mean they're now feeding beano to cattle?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
The thing is that it takes lots of years for the effect of gas ratio changes at sea level to propagate up into the upper atmosphere.
From the vague article, these appear to be sea-level measurements - so the density of methane in the upper atmosphere (where it actually matters) will continue to grow for maybe 10 years before it starts to level off.
We are seeing the effects of methane growth rates in the 1980's and 1990's...it'll get worse before it gets better.
www.sjbaker.org
I see you are new to humor...
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
Ok, let me get this straight.
The methane gas was coming from an 800-pound gorilla?
People are drinking less cheap American beer and turning to wine and high quality ales. There is much less farting than there was 25 years ago.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So here we are, currently doing basically bugger all about global warming, but with plenty of computer simulations and estimates about how much warming will happen in how many years, and plenty of politics going on about who should pay for it, and what about second world countries, and AFAICS it's basically a game of how long can be put off doing something about this, because it's going to cost plenty of money and we don't seem to need to be doing it just right now...
Now, out of the blue, something *utterly* unexpected, inexplicable and major happens - the rate of methane emission levels out; and no one has a *CLUE* why.
Well, I can hear this ticking noise...
I sure hope we figure out interplanetry colonization soon.
You know - just in case.
Awesome so we can all just ignore this then? Cause like God would never let some thing as bad as Global Warming happen in the first place!? ...Oh wait...
Sarcasm aside I do worry what would happen if some one put it into the minds of the fundy Christians that Global Warming was the precursor to revelations and the like. With their collective political power in the first world I think we'd have a huge problem on our hands just like we do with their infection of the common understanding of science among the dumb masses. Before any one flames I'm saying this as a worried (liberal) Roman Catholic - I trust the fundies in my religion as much as the next atheist...
I ate your fish.
and that carbon dioxide remains the 800-pound gorilla of climate change.
Actually, carbon dioxide is a small player. Water is responsible for at least 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. It is amazing to me how everyone is so eager to jump on a single bandwagon when it comes to global warming. Anyone who offers contradictory information is immediately dubbed as an "oil company lover" or a "right-wing anti-environmentalist." The first unfortunate truth is that science on both sides is being funded by people with particular interests. Oil companies and industrialists would love for global warming NOT to exist just as much as many anti-corporate liberals and environmental extremists would love for it TO exist.
The second unfortunate truth is that we know very little about the Earth's climate system. It is a complex subject where everything is interdependent on everything else. We need to invest more money into figuring out how it all works and we need to figure out how to get the money to those scientists in such a way that they aren't pressured to produce results that imply specific conclusions.
Do you really expect that the left are sincere in their motives and that they really want to "make the earth a better place?" Hint- the answer is the same as whether you think the right's sincere motive is to "keep the country safe." Most politicians are the same breed. Some will try to convince you that invading Iraq is necessary to protect America and some will try to convince you that new laws are required to prevent global warming and save the environment. Neither side consistently demonstrates the ability to think rationally or objectively which is in fact the only moral way to govern.
Wetlands 76%
Termites 11%
Oceans 8%
Hydrates 5%
http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html#natural
So my first guess would be a global reduction of wetlands. Nope, I shall not look for evidence now, it is 3a.m. .
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
They're not a major source of methane in the atmosphere OR their crap puts off a ton of methane and we should use it as fuel?
Or their crap has no methane and yet can still be used for fuel (your dichotomy is false).
Anyway, http://www.ciesin.org/TG/AG/liverear.html claims that livestock causes 15 of all organic-sourced methane "emissions". Mostly due to fermentation in their stomachs, mostly from low quality feed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
CO2 is blamed for global warming yet the paleoclimate records show there is no correlation.
You seem to know a lot. So maybe you could then find me a single proper paper appearing in a real peer reviewed scientific journal in the last decade that says CO2 isn't to blame for global warming.
If you're going to spout off about how increasing CO2 emissions isn't a problem when the rest of the world thinks it is you could at least provide a link to your nonsense you're trying to pass as fact.
I guess this is what happens when so many people light their own farts.
All you did was spout excuses - as far as I could make out, the only substantive thing you were saying was that they couldn't predict weather %100 accurately, therefore we shouldn't be predicting climate change over ~30 years. And, global warming aside, carbon dioxide is the cause of the greenhouse effect. So, we'd be screwed without it. However, with too much, more heat is trapped... it is a pretty logical "assumption", and I don't see why it's blowing smoke.
Weather forecasts are pretty accurate. And these global warming predictions are even less specific to area. All you should have to do to be scared is realize that: 1) higher CO2=higher temperatures (the greenhouse effect) and 2) it takes several years for changes on the surface to propagate into the upper atmosphere.
So, we pump CO2 into the atmosphere, and even if it was possible to stop emissions tomorrow, it would still take ten years for those changes to take effect.
I guess what I'm saying is: how would you like to find out (through experience) that global warming existed when your house was flooded by melting polar ice caps, and know that you still had ten more years of worsening conditions?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I am 54 years old. 44 years ago, I remeber walking home from midnight mass in a blizzard. This was in NY City, and garbage trucks had to pile snow and the end of the streets since there was no where to plow it all. We had snow mountains for a month or so. All of this is anecdotal, and certainly not a "geological" time period.
And yet, I have noticed changes which seem to be born out by hard data that something is happening over a period of 29 years, namely that in certain key areas, such as Alaska in the western hemisphere, things seem to be warming significantly.
While I don't think anyone here is saying it's still okay to buy a Hummer because CO2 cannot be proven as yet to increase global warming, I think we need to take a really hard look at what we can do planetwide to decrease CO2 emissions at the very least.
Other comments in this thread sarcastically decry the "religion" of global warming. Let's see, I drive a Prius, have replaced all light bulbs in my house with low energy flourescents, and hope to be trained in the Climate Project's slide show that was the basis for "An Inconvenient Truth." Give me that old time religion...
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
Note: Mankind's activities have clearly increased the amount of H2O in the atmosphere since we divert entire rivers via irrigation.
Last I heard, the oceans covered 2/3rd of the surface of the Earth. It should be pretty clear that, in contrast, evaporation through irrigation on arable land (a fraction of the remaining 1/3) will be a drop in the bucket.
The same can't be said for the production of CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels versus organic processes. And I have never seen spontaneous precipitation of liquid or frozen CO2, but I have seen a lot of rain and snow when humidity levels get high enough. It's pretty clear to me that there are non-biological processes for the regulation of water-vapour content in the atmosphere that don't have an equivalent for CO2. It seems therefore plausible to me that CO2 would have a higher risk of continuing increase than water vapour.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
http://www.carbonpositive.net/viewarticle.aspx?art icleID=442
"Scientists have discovered why atmospheric levels of methane have stabilised in recent years, but their findings are bad news for industry and agriculture where rising emissions of the greenhouse gas have been revealed.
The scientists, including researchers from France's Climate and Environment Science Laboratory and Australia's national science agency CSIRO, found that a reduction in natural emissions of methane from wetlands has been masking rising emissions from human-related activity."
Sic! Intuition still works, and, believe me, I did not read this before.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
While the bulk of the arctic ice is in the ocean, Greenland and the tundras (candian, Russian, American) have huge volumes of ice. There will be issue if all of this ice melts. The greenland glaciers will raise the ocean some none trivial amount. And the tundra ice melt is more important for the sun that it reflects. If that stops, the perma-frost is defrosted AND large amounts of CO2 AND CH4 (methane) will be released.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think it may be related to the rise in natural gas prices, and the natural urge for gas producers to go plug up leaks at those prices.
Natural gas production is the leading source of Russian methane emissions, for instance. And in 1990, Russia leaked as much as 26 million tons of methane. It was probably worth their while to plug some of these leaks at current prices.
There is, of course, a vast difference between predicting weather - which is a local phenomena, with significant specificity - and predicting the climate trends - which is averaging general trends globally. Consider, for instance, that it is very hard to stand on a beach and predict the exact height and shape of the next wave and precisely where and when it will break. On the other hand predicting the approximate height and time of the next high tide is rather easier. GCMs are, indeed, currently rather poor at making predictions down to the level of day to day local weather. They have, however, been very accurate at predicting year on year global climate.
As noted above, contrary to your claim, the models have proved to be remarkably robust and accurate. They are also, contrary to popular perception in some circles, not just a big pattern matching machine that are "trained" on past data. They are models that are fed in physics. Yes, there are some tweakable parameters, as there should be in any model where there is some uncertainty. The greatest area of uncertainty in models currently is clouds, since they can be both a positive or negative feedback depending on the exact nature of their formation. Of course this problem is taken very seriously and there is a lot of study. The last IPCC report had considerable detail summarising that work. The simple reality, however, is that the models have worked pretty well, and have, in fact, made significant predictions that have since been observed.
Historical temperatures from ice-cores are determined by ratios of hydrogen or oxygen isotopes in the ice. The guts of the issue is that when combined in water the different isotopes, being different masses, fractionate out at slightly different temperatures, thus the exact isotope ratio is a function of many things, but a very signficant factor is the prevailing temperature at the time the water became vapout before precipitting out. Thus the ratio, while not an exact indication of specific temperatures (unless the many other factors are also accounted for), is a good indicator of general temperature trends over long time scales. For more detail see here. The result is that, using ice cores, we can plot temperature and carbon dioxide independently.
Furthermore, more recent temperature reconstructions (as in reconstructions of only the past 1000 years or so) rely not on ice cores but on a wide variety of sources including coral, tree rings, glaciers, and more. Usually many of these different methods are cross referenced with each other to create any single reconstruction. The results can be seen in this plot of 10 different reconstructions by different independent teams. The results, as you can see, while different, all show the same trend. If you're still uncertain, feel free to use the
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Damn! And I just farted! Methane levels are now rising from where I sit.
Well, I guess it was good while it lasted!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is not good news because if people think that the problem is not serious enough to warrant attention, society will not change its bad habits.
Unless, of course, the problem wasn't serious enough to warrent attention in the first place, as many environmental skeptics have been saying all along.
Multiple news sites are reporting that levels of the second most important greenhouse gas, methane, have stabilized
NOOOOOOOOOO!