For the first 2 decades or so, methane is about 86 times worse than CO2: >While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms

For the first 2 decades or so, methane is about 86 times worse than CO2: >While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2. >In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. >But policymakers typically ignore methane's warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation's emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane's warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC. >There is no scientific reason to prefer a 100-year time horizon over a 20-year time horizon; the choice of GWP100 is simply a matter of convention. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/?redirect=1 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...