15 ms·

Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

243 points by umadon 7y ago

mdorazio 7y ago
"That said, most experts in the field suspect that all traditional sources (natural and anthropogenic) are contributing at least in small part to the surge, and that the biggest contributor might be wetlands responding to climate change (though there is some dissent on this point)." New kind of clathrate gun we didn't anticipate?
- mirimir 7y ago
  No, it's one aspect of the clathrate gun. It's all methane trapped in ice. Some in undersea sediments, and some in tundra.
cwkoss 7y ago
I bet frackers are underreporting/underestimating how much methane is leaked into the atmosphere as a result.
newnewpdro 7y ago
The scale of human activity has become so large that what may seem like fairly trivial variations can be quite impactful thanks to the multiplication factor. Until we substantially reel in the global population size the situation will continue to be rather precarious.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  What does " substantially reel in the global population size" mean. People that raise this point almost 100% exclusively mean that about "people that are not me"
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    It means we get our global numbers down to something less problematic, especially when considering basically everyone wants to live comfortably with luxuries like air conditioning, fast transportation, and next day delivery. If you're suggesting I want other people to have fewer kids while I raise a family myself, you're mistaken - zero kids here and none in my future.
  - mac01021 7y ago
    The OP did not say we need to reel it in over the course of only 1 or 2 generations. They said that, until we do, the situation will remain precarious. I'm sure you can imagine an (admittedly extremely improbable) scenario where the global population shrinks to 4 billion over the course of 500 years without significant injustice being done to anyone to achieve the shrinkage. Sadly, when it comes to greenhouse-gas-driven climate change, the timeline on which we will succeed or fail to address the problem is too short for any population size adjustments to be of any use (unless you want to achieve the adjustment by mass murder). This is probably the source of any misunderstanding between you. The OP is not contemplating mass murder, but does not appreciate the urgency of the climate issue. You appreciate the urgency and so assume the OP must be advocating an "immediate" extermination.
  - rswail 7y ago
    The best way to reduce population growth is spreading wealth (where that is defined as safe and secure food, shelter, education etc). People who don't think they need to breed to have a number of descendants survive childhood mortality to look after them in their old age don't have lots of kids.
  - devit 7y ago
    Make having children no longer be a right and instead be subject to conditions (like only one child per woman, or a large tax, or traded permits, or requirement to put millions of dollars in escrow for the child, etc.). Abort all children unless the condition is met, and if they are birthed in violation of that, take them away from the mother and imprison her. [here "woman" is intended as "person with an uterus"]
    - dev1l666 7y ago
      Or you could just tie a rope round thy neck and hang yourself to make space for another 1000 children...
    - your-nanny 7y ago
      you forgot your sarcasm tags.
- tcbawo 7y ago
  Western capitalism seems to be the one thing that has successfully incentivized people to have less kids, later in life. It's not always glamorous, but it's probably better than most alternatives.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    That's great and all but there's over a billion people in India alone and a huge fraction of them are still living in poverty, effectively contributing very little currently to factors like co2 emissions. It won't stay that way for much longer. Quality of life tends to increase, and correspondingly impact increases. We already have far too many people if you consider the quality of life is destined to normalize at the "western" end of the spectrum.
    - dev_dull 7y ago
      > Quality of life tends to increase, and correspondingly impact increases I’m not sure I agree that this is true because it ignores all of the efficiency gains (especially in electronics but in other things as well) we’ve seen the last 50+ years. Not to mention things like renewable solar which is not readily and cheaply available.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        The biggest portion of environmental damage is due to transportation, and transportation is due to single family homes causing a need for sprawl. People in India live on top of each other, and I’m sure they’d all like some space if they can afford it. They’d also like to take international vacations.
      - tty2300 7y ago
        Our electronics run on next to no power but then we throw them out constantly and buy new onea because some marketing department said we should.
      - goatinaboat 7y ago
        Not to mention things like renewable solar which is not readily and cheaply available The energy input of solar (sourcing and extracting the rare earths, the manufacturing process, installing and maintaining them in situ) is non-zero, and solar panels have a finite lifespan. These variables are often not well understood, nor factored into discussions of solar as "renewable". I don't believe there exists an end-to-end solar operation, i.e. the entire supply chain solar powered by its own products. So solar is only cheap because its inputs are cheap, and they are cheap because they are powered by cheap oil.
- mises 7y ago
  > reel in the global population size What does this mean? Forced sterilization? One-child policies? I don't ask this to be confrontational, but because it's a difficult question and I honestly want to hear opinions. Access to contraception doesn't make a difference when the culture still says you have 8 kids. This is borne out by what has happened: continued growth of the third-world population. T
  - cagenut 7y ago
    watch these two videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vjGSiRGKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vjGSiRGKY (17m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXlJEcrinwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXlJEcrinwg (13m) the short version is "global feminism"
    - sergiotapia 7y ago
      LMAO
  - foxylad 7y ago
    By far the most effective measure is to educate and empower women.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    One thing to do is to consistently shout down voices who routinely fall back into the outdated "population growth is good because we need it for my comfortable pyramid-powered pension" argument, not realizing how much it is at odds with whatever environmentalist views they might also hold. And even if they are convinced "fuck the planetists": the old trick of deriving comfort from growth will stop working at one point, and the only open question is how close we are already or maybe even beyond.
  - dooglius 7y ago
    No, it means drastically reduce the population size; the implementation of this is orthogonal to the point.
  - your-nanny 7y ago
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Global birth rate is declining almost across the board. It’s the lowest it’s been in the US in the last 30+ years with no signs of speeding up. Also be careful what you wish for. Some of our most important social programs (such as social security) have intense insolvency issues as birth rates continue to decline.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Financial insolvency is a non issue compared to resource and environmental insolvency.
  - steve_taylor 7y ago
    You’re confusing quantity with its rate of change. If the population stops growing today and remains the same, all those people are still having an impact on the environment.
    - 317070 7y ago
      Or they don't? I mean, it is very possible to have an extremely reduced impact on your environment. You can even have a positive impact! Not at our current average life style, but maybe even at our current average life quality. Population already has a negative rate of change in the west (leaving out migration).
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  I think this viewpoint originates from a stunning lack of imagination.
  - rdiddly 7y ago
    You're right, anything is possible in Imaginaryland!
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      You look for the overlap between Imaginaryland and Possibilityland, rather than just sulking around in Whatwentbeforeland.
  - intuitionist 7y ago
    It reminds me of Mark Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism” — it’s easier to imagine the end of the world (voluntary reduction of the birth rate to zero, clathrate gun feedback loop) than the end of capitalism.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      I sometimes ask people to consider a thought experiment about planning for 50 to 100 billion people, after stepping them through the idea that while the expansion rate is starting to slow, it really isn't something we should rely on. I find most people just shut down, several stating that it isn't something we should ever think about. I find it strangely poetic that many people are perfectly willing to think about billions of people dying, but not about billions of people being born.
- sisu2019 7y ago
  okay, you first.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mynameishere 7y ago
  Hilarious how the one guy who understands math is way at the bottom. Yes, population is the core problem, and there's no avoiding that fact. There's no easy solution to it--increased education and wealth slowly reduce the birth rate, but that takes generations and is far from certain. Absolutely critical--and very easy--would be dropping immigration from countries with net-positive birth rates to zero. Good luck finding support for that among people concerned with climate change.
rkochman 7y ago
Sorry about that
davesque 7y ago
Fuck this is scary. My understanding is that methane could be involved in some theorized runaway feedback loops.
cavisne 7y ago
Probably China laughing at and ignoring any climate agreement again.
mullingitover 7y ago
Weird that there's no mention of the melting permafrost as a methane source. I thought that was a well understood potential feedback loop for climate change.
- mirimir 7y ago
  There is this, however, as mdorazio notes: > Potential drivers in the category of increased emissions include emissions from intensive agricultural practices, emissions from oil and gas operations, and increased emissions from wetlands responding to global warming. [This last potential driver is particularly worrisome as it implies the engagement of a global warming feedback loop.] So maybe "wetlands" is a veiled reference to permafrost. Which in fact are basically frozen wetlands.
- ganzuul 7y ago
  Yeah, barking up the wrong tree is not going to help. To memory, the Siberian permafrost massively outweights all other sources of greenhouse gasses. If it is melting, we should panic.
- vneumanarc 7y ago
  Because it doesn't jive with the vegan agenda. Look at the most upvoted comments here. It's all stealth vegan propaganda masquerading as concern about the environment. Never mind that cars, ships, agriculture ( I bet most of these vegans haven't ever heard of petrochemicals or fertilizers ), smartphones, electricity, etc are all individually greater contributors to environmental damage. Also, the growing numbers of bison, deer and other ruminants around the world contributes to increase in methane levels. People forget that all ruminants ( bison, cows, etc ) all produce methane though they'll use the faux stat of them being net negative contributors. And sad as it is, veganism will actually increase fossil fuel usage as the vegetation that people eat need petrochemical fertilizers to grow and a vegan diet cannot be locally sourced like meat can, so they need to ship vegan food from all over the world. But vegans don't like facts too much. They'll throw in the nonsense about livestock agriculture being transfered for humans. Good luck surviving on corn, soy and wheat. Humans aren't ruminants. We are omnivores by nature.
spraak 7y ago
Often I see comments asking what we can do to combat this, or expressing feeling hopeless. While it is not the complete solution, one direct way is by eliminating your personal consumption of animal products. Animal agriculture is a huge contributor to methane production, especially from cows. > Overall, we conclude that methane emissions associated with both the animal husbandry and fossil fuel industries have larger greenhouse gas impacts than indicated by existing inventories. [1] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abs...
- oliveshell 7y ago
  It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Sequestration won’t do enough soon enough. This could be methane deposits evaporating from long frozen stores (permafrost and other sources). Methane is a much bigger problem for the atmosphere than carbon and sequestration won’t touch it. If quitting meat sounds tough, consider that I’ve heard the only effective thing to do would be immediately cease all ICE production/use. But oddly feeding cows seaweed would cut their methane production something like 90%.
    - cageface 7y ago
      That’s a best case scenario based on lab results, not feeding cows at scale in the field. The number looks a lot closer to 50% in other trials. In a addition there are tremendous challenges in producing and transporting enough seaweed to implement this even if the kinks get worked out without doing as much damage to the environment. It’s good to keep all options on the table but seaweed is far from the silver bullet some people want it to be.
kyberias 7y ago
Looks fairly flat in 2000-2008. What happened there?
- freebear 7y ago
  Methane lifetime in the atmosphere is 11 years, if we "only" put as much in as eleven years ago it will go flat. Pretty hard to keep the curve up if we do not get help from the permafrost which has an enormous amount of methane locked up. Looks like it will blow any day now though!
- phragomax 7y ago
  2000 is 11 years after the Soviet empire began to collapse in 1989. A lot of very dirty state-subsided industries in Eastern Europe went offline in the subsequent decade. Maybe that's what we are seeing?
bubblewrap 7y ago
My favorite doomsday scenario at the moment is that it may be earthworms who finally kill us: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-climate.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-c... They appear to be venturing into new areas and releasing carbon there, furthering global warming. There are just too many scenarios of that kind. Either we really are doomed, and climate will switch into a new kind of equilibrium hostile to humans. Or, there are lots of mechanisms in place that counteract against such effects, and which are not yet well understood. With so many climate based doomsday scenarios, how did earth survive for so long? I think there have to be at least some regulating mechanisms.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  > Will so many climate based doomsday scenarios, how did earth survive for so long? See the other 5 mass extinction events.
  - bubblewrap 7y ago
    I think they were more driven by biological evolution than by climate change, though. At least some of them (Cambrian, maybe also Dinosaurs). Humans are actually very adaptable to all sorts of climates. They've lived in the arctic and in the Saharah. Also, mass extinction events OK, but we are talking about a runaway effect of heating up the atmosphere, turning it into a Venus like planet. That doesn't seem to have happened before.
    - pferde 7y ago
      > Humans are actually very adaptable to all sorts of climates. They've lived in the arctic and in the Saharah. Lived? Yes. Thrived? Not so much.
    - lurker458 7y ago
      A Saharah like climate won't feed 7.5 billion people. If the population crashes to a few million stragglers living mostly at the poles then we'll regress back to the stone age.
zubspace 7y ago
One thing I don't understand is why political leaders aren't all over this? Think about a nation going full green and the effect it could have on neighbouring countries? Or a president understanding, that this problem was of highest importance could be a leader of a global change! Think about the fame! But what do we have instead? Ignorance, unwillingness, a dangerous continuation of the status quo on the state level andin the general polulation. Think about exxon who knew this was a problem since the '70 and there's no change in sight. A dark (or should I say hot?) future awaits us.
- crispinb 7y ago
  > One thing I don't understand is why political leaders aren't all over this 1. Political leaders in many countries (eg. Australia) have been deeply corrupted by the fossil fuel industry. And they're mostly legally immune because they essentially allow that industry to write the laws (including those permitting them to take up fossil fuel company sinecures when they quit politics). 2. Even when you have less-corruptible or more courageous political leaders, they have to try to convince populations which have been subject to relentless corporate propaganda (eg. from Exxon-funded sources as you suggest) for 4 decades. Propaganda has its limits, but it does work.
  - bamboozled 7y ago
    At some point it might even need to become a national security / defence force issue. I mean, what was the point of all the wars, death and destruction if the military just allow themselves to suffocate? That would seem like a strange end.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      Well this is an astonishingly clear example of corruption of our political system by the fossil fuel industry. Even in nations where militaries pretty much get what they ask for, almost regardless of budget (eg. the US & Australia), they are waved off by governments when they put climate collapse forward as a major security issue (which they often do).
- 7y ago
lowdose 7y ago
Great hyperbole with words like "surge" and "skyrocketed" to summarize an increase of 12% in 35 years.
- xhgdvjky 7y ago
  the percentage is meaningless out of context. you cannot say what is a surge if you don't know how stable it was before and how stable the equilibrium is.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    Using words like skyrocketed explicitly take the increase out of context. These kind of alarming articles give climate deniers ammunition in the future when values have doubled and the equilibrium remained state.
freebear 7y ago
The risk of abrupt methane release in the east siberian arctic shelf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ This graph is more fun but not up to date https://www.methanelevels.org/ https://www.methanelevels.org/
aaron695 7y ago
Methane dissapears in 8 years. Who gives a fuck. You spend a 100 billion $ stopping a years supply, all that work is for nothing in 8 years time. The world has gone mad. How about we do something crazy like continue on improving energy creation and use and stop the FUD for the unclean masses to pretend hell still exists and god is angry.
dackdel 7y ago
all the cows farting in happiness after modi gets elected in india
- perfunctory 7y ago
  cows don't fart (or at least that's not the problem), they belch.
SamPatt 7y ago
"Starting in 1990s, the growth in global methane levels began to slow down, and global methane became relatively stable over the period of 2000-2006. A resurgence of global methane was not anticipated and came as a surprise." If it's been rising for centuries and is continuing to rise now, shouldn't the six year period of stability be the anomaly, not the fact that it's continuing to increase?
bjourne 7y ago
Keyword is "unexpected." Despite all our climate models, we have almost no clue about the future of the earth. The IPCC reports are all guesses and the real situation could be much, much worse than anticipated.
halfjoking 7y ago
Not sure how this is "unexpected." For 20 years there have been articles/studies saying that the "calthrate gun" containing all the methane stored in Siberia and the arctic is the best reason we need to keep CO2 levels below 400 ppm. Now CO2 is at 415 ppm and we're starting to see the accelerated release of methane and it's "unexpected." Why not interview one of the people who said this is exactly what was going to happen 10 years ago, and ask them what happens next?
- assblaster 7y ago
  How does CO2 level above 400 cause release of methane from Siberia? There is no established direct link between CO2 atmospheric levels and release of methane.
  - davedx 7y ago
    More CO2 = more warming. The polar regions are so far seeing the most extreme temperature increases: see e.g. https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NCEP.png https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NC... Higher arctic temperatures = permafrost melts, releasing trapped methane. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4
    - assblaster 7y ago
      So CO2 --> methane is an indirect link at best, and methane levels have been increasing linearly for the last thirty years. https://climatenexus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ch4_trend_all_gl.png https://climatenexus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ch4_tren... There is no magical CO2 level of 400 that suddenly causes methane to be released from permafrost.
      - brylie 7y ago
        You might be reading the post too literally. The 400 PPM is a target that is easy for humans to discuss. The general idea that increased atmospheric CO2 leads to accelerated methane releases due to thawing of arctic permafrost still holds true, and humans need to set CO2 targets to mitigate this issue.
idlewords 7y ago
Critical to finding the source of these emissions is first establishing who smelt it.

243 points by umadon 7y ago

"That said, most experts in the field suspect that all traditional sources (natural and anthropogenic) are contributing at least in small part to the surge, and that the biggest contributor might be wetlands responding to climate change (though there is some dissent on this point)." New kind of clathrate gun we didn't anticipate?

mirimir 7y ago
No, it's one aspect of the clathrate gun. It's all methane trapped in ice. Some in undersea sediments, and some in tundra.

cwkoss 7y ago

I bet frackers are underreporting/underestimating how much methane is leaked into the atmosphere as a result.

newnewpdro 7y ago

The scale of human activity has become so large that what may seem like fairly trivial variations can be quite impactful thanks to the multiplication factor. Until we substantially reel in the global population size the situation will continue to be rather precarious.

throwaway2048 7y ago
What does " substantially reel in the global population size" mean. People that raise this point almost 100% exclusively mean that about "people that are not me"
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  It means we get our global numbers down to something less problematic, especially when considering basically everyone wants to live comfortably with luxuries like air conditioning, fast transportation, and next day delivery. If you're suggesting I want other people to have fewer kids while I raise a family myself, you're mistaken - zero kids here and none in my future.
- mac01021 7y ago
  The OP did not say we need to reel it in over the course of only 1 or 2 generations. They said that, until we do, the situation will remain precarious. I'm sure you can imagine an (admittedly extremely improbable) scenario where the global population shrinks to 4 billion over the course of 500 years without significant injustice being done to anyone to achieve the shrinkage. Sadly, when it comes to greenhouse-gas-driven climate change, the timeline on which we will succeed or fail to address the problem is too short for any population size adjustments to be of any use (unless you want to achieve the adjustment by mass murder). This is probably the source of any misunderstanding between you. The OP is not contemplating mass murder, but does not appreciate the urgency of the climate issue. You appreciate the urgency and so assume the OP must be advocating an "immediate" extermination.
- rswail 7y ago
  The best way to reduce population growth is spreading wealth (where that is defined as safe and secure food, shelter, education etc). People who don't think they need to breed to have a number of descendants survive childhood mortality to look after them in their old age don't have lots of kids.
- devit 7y ago
  Make having children no longer be a right and instead be subject to conditions (like only one child per woman, or a large tax, or traded permits, or requirement to put millions of dollars in escrow for the child, etc.). Abort all children unless the condition is met, and if they are birthed in violation of that, take them away from the mother and imprison her. [here "woman" is intended as "person with an uterus"]
  - dev1l666 7y ago
    Or you could just tie a rope round thy neck and hang yourself to make space for another 1000 children...
  - your-nanny 7y ago
    you forgot your sarcasm tags.
tcbawo 7y ago
Western capitalism seems to be the one thing that has successfully incentivized people to have less kids, later in life. It's not always glamorous, but it's probably better than most alternatives.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  That's great and all but there's over a billion people in India alone and a huge fraction of them are still living in poverty, effectively contributing very little currently to factors like co2 emissions. It won't stay that way for much longer. Quality of life tends to increase, and correspondingly impact increases. We already have far too many people if you consider the quality of life is destined to normalize at the "western" end of the spectrum.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    > Quality of life tends to increase, and correspondingly impact increases I’m not sure I agree that this is true because it ignores all of the efficiency gains (especially in electronics but in other things as well) we’ve seen the last 50+ years. Not to mention things like renewable solar which is not readily and cheaply available.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The biggest portion of environmental damage is due to transportation, and transportation is due to single family homes causing a need for sprawl. People in India live on top of each other, and I’m sure they’d all like some space if they can afford it. They’d also like to take international vacations.
    - tty2300 7y ago
      Our electronics run on next to no power but then we throw them out constantly and buy new onea because some marketing department said we should.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      Not to mention things like renewable solar which is not readily and cheaply available The energy input of solar (sourcing and extracting the rare earths, the manufacturing process, installing and maintaining them in situ) is non-zero, and solar panels have a finite lifespan. These variables are often not well understood, nor factored into discussions of solar as "renewable". I don't believe there exists an end-to-end solar operation, i.e. the entire supply chain solar powered by its own products. So solar is only cheap because its inputs are cheap, and they are cheap because they are powered by cheap oil.
mises 7y ago
> reel in the global population size What does this mean? Forced sterilization? One-child policies? I don't ask this to be confrontational, but because it's a difficult question and I honestly want to hear opinions. Access to contraception doesn't make a difference when the culture still says you have 8 kids. This is borne out by what has happened: continued growth of the third-world population. T
- cagenut 7y ago
  watch these two videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vjGSiRGKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vjGSiRGKY (17m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXlJEcrinwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXlJEcrinwg (13m) the short version is "global feminism"
  - sergiotapia 7y ago
    LMAO
- foxylad 7y ago
  By far the most effective measure is to educate and empower women.
- usrusr 7y ago
  One thing to do is to consistently shout down voices who routinely fall back into the outdated "population growth is good because we need it for my comfortable pyramid-powered pension" argument, not realizing how much it is at odds with whatever environmentalist views they might also hold. And even if they are convinced "fuck the planetists": the old trick of deriving comfort from growth will stop working at one point, and the only open question is how close we are already or maybe even beyond.
- dooglius 7y ago
  No, it means drastically reduce the population size; the implementation of this is orthogonal to the point.
- your-nanny 7y ago
dev_dull 7y ago
Global birth rate is declining almost across the board. It’s the lowest it’s been in the US in the last 30+ years with no signs of speeding up. Also be careful what you wish for. Some of our most important social programs (such as social security) have intense insolvency issues as birth rates continue to decline.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Financial insolvency is a non issue compared to resource and environmental insolvency.
- steve_taylor 7y ago
  You’re confusing quantity with its rate of change. If the population stops growing today and remains the same, all those people are still having an impact on the environment.
  - 317070 7y ago
    Or they don't? I mean, it is very possible to have an extremely reduced impact on your environment. You can even have a positive impact! Not at our current average life style, but maybe even at our current average life quality. Population already has a negative rate of change in the west (leaving out migration).
inflatableDodo 7y ago
I think this viewpoint originates from a stunning lack of imagination.
- rdiddly 7y ago
  You're right, anything is possible in Imaginaryland!
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    You look for the overlap between Imaginaryland and Possibilityland, rather than just sulking around in Whatwentbeforeland.
- intuitionist 7y ago
  It reminds me of Mark Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism” — it’s easier to imagine the end of the world (voluntary reduction of the birth rate to zero, clathrate gun feedback loop) than the end of capitalism.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    I sometimes ask people to consider a thought experiment about planning for 50 to 100 billion people, after stepping them through the idea that while the expansion rate is starting to slow, it really isn't something we should rely on. I find most people just shut down, several stating that it isn't something we should ever think about. I find it strangely poetic that many people are perfectly willing to think about billions of people dying, but not about billions of people being born.
sisu2019 7y ago
okay, you first.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mynameishere 7y ago
Hilarious how the one guy who understands math is way at the bottom. Yes, population is the core problem, and there's no avoiding that fact. There's no easy solution to it--increased education and wealth slowly reduce the birth rate, but that takes generations and is far from certain. Absolutely critical--and very easy--would be dropping immigration from countries with net-positive birth rates to zero. Good luck finding support for that among people concerned with climate change.

rkochman 7y ago

Sorry about that

davesque 7y ago

Fuck this is scary. My understanding is that methane could be involved in some theorized runaway feedback loops.

cavisne 7y ago

Probably China laughing at and ignoring any climate agreement again.

mullingitover 7y ago

Weird that there's no mention of the melting permafrost as a methane source. I thought that was a well understood potential feedback loop for climate change.

mirimir 7y ago
There is this, however, as mdorazio notes: > Potential drivers in the category of increased emissions include emissions from intensive agricultural practices, emissions from oil and gas operations, and increased emissions from wetlands responding to global warming. [This last potential driver is particularly worrisome as it implies the engagement of a global warming feedback loop.] So maybe "wetlands" is a veiled reference to permafrost. Which in fact are basically frozen wetlands.
ganzuul 7y ago
Yeah, barking up the wrong tree is not going to help. To memory, the Siberian permafrost massively outweights all other sources of greenhouse gasses. If it is melting, we should panic.
vneumanarc 7y ago
Because it doesn't jive with the vegan agenda. Look at the most upvoted comments here. It's all stealth vegan propaganda masquerading as concern about the environment. Never mind that cars, ships, agriculture ( I bet most of these vegans haven't ever heard of petrochemicals or fertilizers ), smartphones, electricity, etc are all individually greater contributors to environmental damage. Also, the growing numbers of bison, deer and other ruminants around the world contributes to increase in methane levels. People forget that all ruminants ( bison, cows, etc ) all produce methane though they'll use the faux stat of them being net negative contributors. And sad as it is, veganism will actually increase fossil fuel usage as the vegetation that people eat need petrochemical fertilizers to grow and a vegan diet cannot be locally sourced like meat can, so they need to ship vegan food from all over the world. But vegans don't like facts too much. They'll throw in the nonsense about livestock agriculture being transfered for humans. Good luck surviving on corn, soy and wheat. Humans aren't ruminants. We are omnivores by nature.

spraak 7y ago

Often I see comments asking what we can do to combat this, or expressing feeling hopeless. While it is not the complete solution, one direct way is by eliminating your personal consumption of animal products. Animal agriculture is a huge contributor to methane production, especially from cows. > Overall, we conclude that methane emissions associated with both the animal husbandry and fossil fuel industries have larger greenhouse gas impacts than indicated by existing inventories. [1] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abs...

oliveshell 7y ago
It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.
- ianai 7y ago
  Sequestration won’t do enough soon enough. This could be methane deposits evaporating from long frozen stores (permafrost and other sources). Methane is a much bigger problem for the atmosphere than carbon and sequestration won’t touch it. If quitting meat sounds tough, consider that I’ve heard the only effective thing to do would be immediately cease all ICE production/use. But oddly feeding cows seaweed would cut their methane production something like 90%.
  - cageface 7y ago
    That’s a best case scenario based on lab results, not feeding cows at scale in the field. The number looks a lot closer to 50% in other trials. In a addition there are tremendous challenges in producing and transporting enough seaweed to implement this even if the kinks get worked out without doing as much damage to the environment. It’s good to keep all options on the table but seaweed is far from the silver bullet some people want it to be.

kyberias 7y ago

Looks fairly flat in 2000-2008. What happened there?

freebear 7y ago
Methane lifetime in the atmosphere is 11 years, if we "only" put as much in as eleven years ago it will go flat. Pretty hard to keep the curve up if we do not get help from the permafrost which has an enormous amount of methane locked up. Looks like it will blow any day now though!
phragomax 7y ago
2000 is 11 years after the Soviet empire began to collapse in 1989. A lot of very dirty state-subsided industries in Eastern Europe went offline in the subsequent decade. Maybe that's what we are seeing?

bubblewrap 7y ago

My favorite doomsday scenario at the moment is that it may be earthworms who finally kill us: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-climate.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-c... They appear to be venturing into new areas and releasing carbon there, furthering global warming. There are just too many scenarios of that kind. Either we really are doomed, and climate will switch into a new kind of equilibrium hostile to humans. Or, there are lots of mechanisms in place that counteract against such effects, and which are not yet well understood. With so many climate based doomsday scenarios, how did earth survive for so long? I think there have to be at least some regulating mechanisms.

jniedrauer 7y ago
> Will so many climate based doomsday scenarios, how did earth survive for so long? See the other 5 mass extinction events.
- bubblewrap 7y ago
  I think they were more driven by biological evolution than by climate change, though. At least some of them (Cambrian, maybe also Dinosaurs). Humans are actually very adaptable to all sorts of climates. They've lived in the arctic and in the Saharah. Also, mass extinction events OK, but we are talking about a runaway effect of heating up the atmosphere, turning it into a Venus like planet. That doesn't seem to have happened before.
  - pferde 7y ago
    > Humans are actually very adaptable to all sorts of climates. They've lived in the arctic and in the Saharah. Lived? Yes. Thrived? Not so much.
  - lurker458 7y ago
    A Saharah like climate won't feed 7.5 billion people. If the population crashes to a few million stragglers living mostly at the poles then we'll regress back to the stone age.

zubspace 7y ago

One thing I don't understand is why political leaders aren't all over this? Think about a nation going full green and the effect it could have on neighbouring countries? Or a president understanding, that this problem was of highest importance could be a leader of a global change! Think about the fame! But what do we have instead? Ignorance, unwillingness, a dangerous continuation of the status quo on the state level andin the general polulation. Think about exxon who knew this was a problem since the '70 and there's no change in sight. A dark (or should I say hot?) future awaits us.

crispinb 7y ago
> One thing I don't understand is why political leaders aren't all over this 1. Political leaders in many countries (eg. Australia) have been deeply corrupted by the fossil fuel industry. And they're mostly legally immune because they essentially allow that industry to write the laws (including those permitting them to take up fossil fuel company sinecures when they quit politics). 2. Even when you have less-corruptible or more courageous political leaders, they have to try to convince populations which have been subject to relentless corporate propaganda (eg. from Exxon-funded sources as you suggest) for 4 decades. Propaganda has its limits, but it does work.
- bamboozled 7y ago
  At some point it might even need to become a national security / defence force issue. I mean, what was the point of all the wars, death and destruction if the military just allow themselves to suffocate? That would seem like a strange end.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    Well this is an astonishingly clear example of corruption of our political system by the fossil fuel industry. Even in nations where militaries pretty much get what they ask for, almost regardless of budget (eg. the US & Australia), they are waved off by governments when they put climate collapse forward as a major security issue (which they often do).
7y ago

lowdose 7y ago

Great hyperbole with words like "surge" and "skyrocketed" to summarize an increase of 12% in 35 years.

xhgdvjky 7y ago
the percentage is meaningless out of context. you cannot say what is a surge if you don't know how stable it was before and how stable the equilibrium is.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Using words like skyrocketed explicitly take the increase out of context. These kind of alarming articles give climate deniers ammunition in the future when values have doubled and the equilibrium remained state.

freebear 7y ago

The risk of abrupt methane release in the east siberian arctic shelf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ This graph is more fun but not up to date https://www.methanelevels.org/ https://www.methanelevels.org/

aaron695 7y ago

Methane dissapears in 8 years. Who gives a fuck. You spend a 100 billion $ stopping a years supply, all that work is for nothing in 8 years time. The world has gone mad. How about we do something crazy like continue on improving energy creation and use and stop the FUD for the unclean masses to pretend hell still exists and god is angry.

dackdel 7y ago

all the cows farting in happiness after modi gets elected in india

perfunctory 7y ago
cows don't fart (or at least that's not the problem), they belch.

SamPatt 7y ago

"Starting in 1990s, the growth in global methane levels began to slow down, and global methane became relatively stable over the period of 2000-2006. A resurgence of global methane was not anticipated and came as a surprise." If it's been rising for centuries and is continuing to rise now, shouldn't the six year period of stability be the anomaly, not the fact that it's continuing to increase?

bjourne 7y ago

Keyword is "unexpected." Despite all our climate models, we have almost no clue about the future of the earth. The IPCC reports are all guesses and the real situation could be much, much worse than anticipated.

halfjoking 7y ago

Not sure how this is "unexpected." For 20 years there have been articles/studies saying that the "calthrate gun" containing all the methane stored in Siberia and the arctic is the best reason we need to keep CO2 levels below 400 ppm. Now CO2 is at 415 ppm and we're starting to see the accelerated release of methane and it's "unexpected." Why not interview one of the people who said this is exactly what was going to happen 10 years ago, and ask them what happens next?

assblaster 7y ago
How does CO2 level above 400 cause release of methane from Siberia? There is no established direct link between CO2 atmospheric levels and release of methane.
- davedx 7y ago
  More CO2 = more warming. The polar regions are so far seeing the most extreme temperature increases: see e.g. https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NCEP.png https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NC... Higher arctic temperatures = permafrost melts, releasing trapped methane. e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4
  - assblaster 7y ago
    So CO2 --> methane is an indirect link at best, and methane levels have been increasing linearly for the last thirty years. https://climatenexus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ch4_trend_all_gl.png https://climatenexus.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ch4_tren... There is no magical CO2 level of 400 that suddenly causes methane to be released from permafrost.
    - brylie 7y ago
      You might be reading the post too literally. The 400 PPM is a target that is easy for humans to discuss. The general idea that increased atmospheric CO2 leads to accelerated methane releases due to thawing of arctic permafrost still holds true, and humans need to set CO2 targets to mitigate this issue.

idlewords 7y ago

Critical to finding the source of these emissions is first establishing who smelt it.