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Rapid Rise In Methane Emissions In 10 Years Surprises Scientists (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane have surged in the past decade, threatening to thwart global attempts to combat climate change. Scientists have been surprised by the surge, which began just over 10 years ago in 2007 and then was boosted even further in 2014 and 2015. Concentrations of methane in the atmosphere over those two years alone rose by more than 20 parts per billion, bringing the total to 1,830ppb. This is a cause for alarm among global warming scientists because emissions of the gas warm the planet by more than 20 times as much as similar volumes of carbon dioxide. In the meantime, emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main component of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- have been leveling off. The new research, published in the peer-review journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the world's attempts to control greenhouse gases have failed to take account of the startling rises in methane. The authors of the 2016 Global Methane Budget report found that in the early years of this century, concentrations of methane rose by only about 0.5ppb each year, compared with 10ppb in 2014 and 2015. The scientists speculate that agriculture may be the main source of the additional methane that has been recorded. However, they cannot be sure of all the sources, owing to a lack of monitoring. At least a third of methane comes from the exploitation of fossil fuels, including fracking and oil drilling and some coal mining, where methane is viewed as a waste gas and is frequently allowed to escape or, in some cases, flared off, which is less harmful. Unlike carbon dioxide emissions, however, which have been tracked in various ways since the 1950s, emissions of methane are poorly understood and could represent a threat that scientists have still not accounted for.
Between fracking, livestock & warming tundra, I expect methane emissions to keep rising sharply and that will handily offset any thing we can do in the short term to limit CO2 emissions.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"Rapid Rise In Methane Emissions In 10 Years Surpasses Scientists"
When you wake up and misread a title like this, you know you need a bit more sleep.
Thought for a minute there we were reporting on quite a flatulent demographic...
Stop farting
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Nuclear power. Nuclear power? Nuclear power!
We can keep burning coal and natural gas, reduce our standard of living, or build more nuclear power plants. Those are our choices as of right now. We can wait for wind, solar, and battery technology to get cheaper but that does nothing for the carbon we'd be producing while we wait.
Reducing energy use, by personal choice or by imposing it on others with taxation, is a reduction of our standard of living. That might seem acceptable by many given the potential benefits for society in the future but you are going to get push back from people that are disbelievers in global warming and those that already take cold showers, ride the bus to work, eat little meat, and so forth because of poverty. Imposing expensive energy sources on people with regulation, like wind and solar, is just as detrimental to the poor as a direct tax on energy. Subsidizing these higher cost energy sources with taxation only means reducing the wealth available to society, causing reductions in wages to those that have jobs, and reducing the chances of getting a job for those that can't find work now. Taxing the fossil fuel industry means nothing to them, they just pass that cost onto the poor people that have to buy their products to heat their homes, cook their food, and travel.
If we are to assume that burning methane is bad because of leakage to the environment and the CO2 contribution it has when burned then we'd want to find an alternative that both reduces these emissions and is just as inexpensive. If it costs more then we are again imposing poverty on people. If it does not reduce these global warming gasses then we're just making things worse. Nuclear power is both inexpensive and has a carbon footprint even lower than wind and solar.
So, if we assume global warming is bad and is caused by people burning methane and other fossil fuels, then we need to turn to nuclear power or make a lot of people very angry over their reduced standard of living. Or rather those that survive will be angry, the people that die of hunger, exposure, or being unable to purchase proper medical care will still be dead. Waiting for solar and wind energy to get cheaper is foolish. We've been giving all kinds of money to the wind and solar industry for decades, through taxation and subsidies, in the hope it would be cheaper than coal someday. How much longer do we have to do this before it meets the definition of insanity?
I think we blew past the line of insanity with ludicrous speed a decade or three ago, so fast that few people even saw it go by. We can argue about when that line was crossed exactly or we can stop the insanity and change course.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
20X acceleration in methane concentration over 16 years, I doubt we have changed our methane emissions that much over that time? Didn't we have bunch of articles some time ago about melting permafrost, bubbling tundra and the positive feedback loop this creates? Kind of sounds more probable source than cows or whatnot, we have not started to have that many more cows over such a short period after all.
Has anyone noticed the strong correlation between green house gasses and the Social Justice Liberals. In the 1950's we had a cool climate and everyone was racist. Now in 2016 we have catastrophic climatic change and everyone is always worried about micro aggressions.
We have had 8+ years of increased climate change under President Obama. However since we have elected that racist Donald Trump. I have suddenly noticed that we have an unprecedented cold spell. My theory is that racism stabilizes the climate, whereas constantly worrying about social injustice really fucks up the environment. I know it may sound crazy, but it has as much scientific validity as the latest scientific study proving that coffee may increase your risk of toe fungus as reported by the 9 o' clock news.
If we want to save the white polar bears living in the arctic we need to go back to slavery. If we want to have a nice climate where we can finally settle the South Pole and swim in lake Vostok, we need to elect one of those whinney liberals to president.
To me this is the only rational argument for liberalism. I really don't like the cold.
Most likely the cause is fracking. Mining companies have been under-reporting and trying to cover up the levels of methane released by fracking for the past decade. We know this from several scientists in the United States that have done ground water testing and shown entire water supplies which can be lit by a match.
I vaguely remember something about a huge spill of methane in California US. Said to be 100.000 tons of methane gas, though I can't help but wonder if maybe the real number could be even higher.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35659947 ("California methane leak 'largest in US history'")
Sorry to interupt your impending doom
But methane has an incredibly short life in the atmosphere
Are you a fuckhead troll, or a dumbshit fuckhead? Methane has 20X the warming ability of CO2, it stays in the atmosphere for an average of eight years, and when it finally does break down it breaks down into carbon dioxide and water vapor.
Wait, you started a comment in the subject. You must be a dumbshit fuckhead.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The damn rate of increase leveled off. That means we have a constant linear increase instead of over linear. It is still increasing. This is what , the third or fourth time I see this error here ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
From the abstract: "the thermal maximum is characterized by warming up by 3-9degreesC in winter and by 2-6degreesC in summer". So 6 degrees in prehistoric times is the relevant temperature (plus 9 degrees in winter is much less than plus 6 degrees in summer) which we surpass quickly nowadays: http://siberiantimes.com/ecolo...
We have already unlocked runaway processes.
Holy shit dude, kill -9 it before it does some real damage.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Every kilowatt generated by wind stops coal from producing almost twice that in thermal power. So yes, it does have an impact on reducing carbon as soon as it is implemented.
Why? Technology has already adapted and it became viable to have LED lighting hit the market. This is an assumption that precludes adaptation by the market to fill a market niche.
This is not a political issue here, it's a question about if you have an open or closed mindset. Innovation happens all the time. Living standards will just change, and the idea of what a higher living standard is will change.
Nuclear is extremely carbon intensive in the mining phase to extract the ore using traditional mining methods, if you are not pumping mega litres of sulfuric acid to do in-situ extraction (and destroying water tables in the process). 500tons of ore for 1 kilo of uranium, ~150 tons of uranium for the core of one reactor, 1/3 refuel every 18 months or so IIRC. It's roughly one third of the energy the reactor will produce over its lifetime.
Nuclear is extremely carbon intensive in the enrichment process as CFC114 is much more potent than methane as a greenhouse gas. IIRC, thousands of times more potent. You can't *not* enrich the fuel either.
Nuclear is extremely carbon intensive in the decommissioning and demolition phase, an energetic cost yet to be realized by the industry, because traditional methods of demolition cannot be used.
On the other hand the way wind scales is probably the biggest thing it has in it's favour, because existing sites can be retrofitted with upgraded technology, which lowers the energetic cost of maintain wind capacity.
Why not in parity with the Price-Anderson act, which has been extended repeatedly since the dawn of time for the nuclear industry which needs government assistance to cover its insurance liabilities. Or, why don't we just repeal the act and see how long the nuclear industry can remain?
One of Roosevelt's core 'New Deal' Act the PUCHA was repealed to benefit the nuclear industry with little fanfare from the press. Only for it to be subverted by the coal and oil industry who use proposals to build nuclear plants so they can get tax breaks for not building them. This is corporate welfare on a scale that makes social welfare looks like a kids pocket money. PUCHA was put in place to prevent a re-occurrence of the US depression from utilities doing *exactly* what they are doing now to raid the taxpayers wallets.
You can read it here in the 2005 US energy policy act SEC 600-635, and at the end of the document for the repeal of PUCHA.
me thinks you assume too much.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If the amount is increasing then this is irrelevant. Whatever the lifespan of the methane may be, it is long enough that it's being replenished faster than it's being removed.
A lot of the time it isn't measured and they don't even know, which is a lot more simple than a coverup. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to not giving a fuck.
The models used to predict and support climate change theories are only as good as the assumptions that go in to them. Here is more proof that the assumptions are based on an incomplete knowledge of the processes at work. So the science behind climate change is flawed and we are being fed half-truths BUT BUT BUT
Climate change is likely happening for reasons we don't fully understand however why does fear of it have to be the reason we do things? Why does it take fear to motivate us to use resources more efficiently, harvest resources less destructively, and consume more prudently? Why can't we do those things simply because it is the only rational and reasonable way to proceed?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
20 bpb represents around a 1.1% increase not a .000002% increase. It went from 1810 to 1830 bpb.