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Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast
- drak0n1c 7y agoMaybe we should support gas flaring, rather than opposing it. Flaring turns methane into CO2 + water vapor, which are less potent greenhouse gases.
- blueadept111 7y agoIt's a vicious cycle. Methane levels increase to dangerous levels, which causes researchers to soil their pants, which releases more methane into the atmosphere.
- mrfusion 7y ago(Disclaimer I believe in climate change with all my heart) If methane levels are higher than we thought wouldn’t that make our climate models wrong? Ie less of a heating effect from co2?
- fromthestart 7y ago>Disclaimer I believe in climate change with all my heart Ridiculous that the subject has become so dogmatic that one must prostrate oneself before stating anything even potentially critical
- Beltiras 7y agoMethane is increasing now precipitously compared to the last couple of decades. We hit an inflection point apparently in the last couple of years.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y agoIt would mean that a lower fraction of the heating effect we're observing is from CO2. However, if we've correctly estimated the impact of CO2, then that just means that there will be more absolute heating than we had otherwise predicted.
- mrfusion 7y agoWe’re both on the same side and I don’t want to seem like arguing within the team. But those two sentences seem to be contradictory?
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoI appreciate your civility, but it’s mildly disturbing hearing climate change advocacy being referred to as a team. I understand what you mean, but there shouldn’t be teams so much as many independent inquirers who come to the same conclusions
- WhompingWindows 7y agoThey aren't contradictory sentences. Methane is increasing faster than we expected it to. So, going forward, a higher % of warming will be due to methane than we expected before our recent methane measurements. This likely means more warming, as methane (CH4) is a much more potent warmer than CO2.
- MiroF 7y agoThis is a confusing comment and not particularly responsive.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y agoMy statement is intended to be an isomorph of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026594 with a different emphasis. I'm sorry you found it confusing, but it is absolutely responsive, and I resent your accusation that it isn't. If you want to be helpful in the future, you could explain what about it you find confusing, and maybe the person you're responding to could clarify whatever point was previously unclear.
- DennisP 7y agoThat would be true if methane had been higher than we thought all along. That's not the case, since it's not hard to measure the methane level. What's happening is that the methane level is increasing faster than people expected. It could be from permafrost melting, or leaks from natural gas infrastructure, or various other things.
- saalweachter 7y agoWhich in turn means our models are probably underestimating heating going forward, since the total GHG will be higher in the future than predicted.
- MiroF 7y agothere's a climate lag. also, methane isn't higher than we thought, it's just higher than we'd expect given what we know about energy production, so there's some hidden source somewhere.
- Symmetry 7y agoAny model is going to have some things that are exogenous and some that are endogenous. Climate models usually don't try to predict how much carbon people are going to emit but simply say what the response of the climate is to our emissions under various scenarios. So if this methane is man-made they shouldn't be expected to predict it. But also climate modeling is very hard. Nate Silver had a whole chapter on what climate scientists are up against in his book, The Signal and the Noise. They have to make due with very long feedback cycles and noisy data. We've known since Svante Arrhenius's work in 1895 that more carbon in the atmosphere will tend to lead to warmer temperatures. Since then we've developed complicated models trying to relate air temperature to sea temperature to water vapor in the atmosphere to plant growth and so on. But this is a very hard task. We know that complicated interactions are going on beyond the simple CO2->temperature model because of things like the weird warming pause in the 2000s before temperature roared back up to trend-lines. But so far we haven't been particularly successful at predicting deviations from the simple model. This is scary because while we lucked into some climate buffering in the 2000s there's also the possibility of positive feedback loops that might get set off. Scientists have several in mind that might exist, they're trying to predict how much warming might set them off, but they really can't be sure when and/or if they might trigger. One known possible positive feedback loop is methane release from the arctic. This is something of a known unknown, in that we know its possible but know that we don't have very good estimates of when it'll release and how much. Hence the people in the arctic. Hence people like the scientists in the article going up there trying to lessen the scope of the unknown. Given that methane levels are increasing we know something bad is happening. It might just be a burp before things settle again with most arctic methane staying locked away until global temperatures hit 4C over baseline or something. Or it might be about to get Very Bad right now. More research is required. Thankfully methane only has a half life in the atmosphere before turning into CO2 and water of something like a dozen years so there might be hope of riding out a methane release, and slow releases can be managed. It's not CO2 which also has an a half-life in the air and oceans dues to rock weathering, but that half life is so long it's beyond any planning horizon we might have unless we start geoengineering to speed it up.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoIt’s a runaway reaction with a positive feedback loop feeding into itself. Current scientific opinion is that within a certain range, increases in temperature caused by CO2 emissions can trigger a negative feedback loop but beyond a certain horizon (which we passed long ago) and up to the point of a doomsday scenario, the warmer it gets the more it causes secondary results that directly contribute to accelerating CO2 and methane emissions. Melting of permafrost being a chief source of the latter, in this case.
- Beltiras 7y agoI thought it was perfectly well understood. Hundreds to thousands of megatons of methane is trapped in permafrost. When the warmest point of the year melts the now ill-named permafrost, methane gets released.
- makomk 7y agoThere's more than one cause. A large chunk of the increased methane emissions come from China industralising in a particularly dirty, coal-burning way and releasing loads of methane in the process: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-methane-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-methane-emissions.html
- DennisP 7y agoThat's one source. The article mentions others. People are trying to figure out which sources are most significant at the moment.
- meshenna 7y agoRelevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
- merlincorey 7y agoFrankly I am surprised this isn't in the article at all, as it was what I immediately thought of on reading about methane release and permafrost.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoScary stuff
- british_india 7y agoPrecisely.
- rohan1024 7y agoThere's already a news on front page at the moment which says bird population is declining in North America. The comments section mention that it's not just North America but also Britain, France and also that it could be due to declining insect population. We rarely get this kind of data from developing countries, which means these studies are rarely or not at all performed simply because they don't have resources to focus on these causes. We have no idea how much worse the situation is. Here we have methane levels increasing fast. There was another news that the third pole of earth i.e. Himalaya is melting rapidly. I am sure there are plenty more that I have missed. Do we need more evidence to act? What are we waiting for?
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoWe should act on the insect apocalypse and do things like ban neonicinoids, etc. But connecting this to climate change is an extreme stretch considering species decline has been happening for a long time before the industrial revolution. It’s simply not attributable to CO2 and greenhouse gasses
- guerrilla 7y agoThinking that changing the climate to which animals are specifically adapted to and on which they exclusively sustain themselves is likely a major contributing cause to their death is not really "stretching." It may not be the exclusive cause or a cause at all but its hardly anything but a prime suspect.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoThe connection is the disrespectful, undignified, instrumental way that humans treat everything else, animate and not, and with little concern about how their own fortunes are unalterably stitched into the life web they are busily tearing apart.
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoYes, you’re right that is the connection.
- british_india 7y agoThere is no mystery. Arctic sea floor Canadian permafrost Siberian permafrost The Arctic sea floor is releasing Methane Clathrates, i.e. the so-called Methane Clathrates Gun is firing. As for the two instances of "permafrost", both are melting en mass and that is leading to organic matter that has been frozen and accumulating for millenia to now be decomposed by bacteria, leading to massive methane releases. Methane is 30-times for damaging than CO2.
- yspeak 7y agoReads more like a religious quest then a scientific expedition.
- watertom 7y agoThe only way forward, the only chance we have is to invent technology to trap and sequester green houses gases from the upper atmosphere. Reducing human greenhouse gas output won’t happen fast enough to fix things, and I’m not sure that it’s possible to capture and trap existing green house gases, but it’s the only chance we have, because it’s the only way to stop the positive feedback loops that are currently running, warming oceans, melting glaciers, and thawing permafrost. We need to reverse warming, not slow it down. The current approach of “adding less” is absurd. If you need 2,500 calories to maintain your weight, and you are eating 25,000 calories you will get fat fast. Reducing calorie intake to 15,000 won’t let you lose weight, you’ll just get fatter slower. Our current approach to climate change is to get fatter slower, we need to lose weight. We need the capacity to capture and sequester per year, 10% more green house gases than we produce per year. Because we need to reduce the total amount of green house gases in the upper atmosphere.
- abathur 7y agoI agree that we'll probably need capture, but just want to inject a concern I have with seeing capture as salvation: Any capture/sequestration tech that produces marketable byproducts may have a big leg up on any tech that has to depend on large purely-altruistic investments. Technology tends to get more efficient with time/investment/scale. If any capture/sequestration processes achieve profitability (maybe even just marginal profitability after an initial capital investment), it may not be straightforward to turn them back off .
- kaybe 7y agoAll scenarious in the latest IPPC report (SR15 - Global Warming of 1.5 ºC) require carbon sequestration, so it's really not optional anymore if we want to stay below 1.5°C warming. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...
- sitkack 7y agoWe need both. 1. Stop doing it 2. Reverse it. We can't reverse the amount of carbon without stopping our emissions. And it is important that we don't _allow_ people to hand wave one away for the other. We need at least both, we also need to track mitigations in helping the environment (trees, animals, rivers) to operate in these new regimes.
- calimac 7y agoThe Democratic Debates
- alkibiades 7y agowhat if i don’t care? many of these worries are alarmist. from the IPCC report it seems like some coral will die and the temperature will raise a few degrees. which is bad, sure, but not apocalyptic. i doubt my children’s life will change unless i buy ocean front property and refuse to move for 100 years
- tom_wilde 7y agoWhat about their children and their children's children and ... (you get the idea) It s a bit myopic no?
- alkibiades 7y ago1. you really don’t think in 100 years we’ll have better technology? look where we were 100 years ago. 2. once again it seems like they’ll just adapt as humans always have. my point is this apocalyptic behavior by activists is counter productive and offputting. it means we can’t have a reasonable discussion about solutions and trade offs because “the world is ending in 12 years”. this led to me just giving up because we can’t have conversation
- tom_wilde 7y agoWell.. for both your points here there are no guarantees. Progress isn't linear and just because we can adapt doesn't mean we will. What is known is that our entire eco-system is failing to adapt fast enough to keep up with the rate of change - what makes you think we can beat it? Its disappointingly reductive to throw the towel in and, really, that point of view is no better than 'the world is ending in 12 years' To deal with a problem you must first acknowledge that it exists - any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand.
- pdonis 7y ago> any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand Not if the action makes things worse than they would have been if you'd done nothing. And given our very poor understanding of how the climate and ecosystems work, any action we take that is not an obvious benefit (like "bring more people out of poverty" or "make our infrastructure more robust", both of which are things we certainly should be doing) is much more likely to make things worse than to make things better.
- cryptozeus 7y agoArticle is more like a movie script then sharing facts and numbers. I believe in climate change but this kind of article not helping with anything.
- jmartrican 7y agoThree guesses, Russia, China, or US oild fields.
- carapace 7y agoGeopolitics in a Hotter World – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010) https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/ https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo... Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY Long, good, hard to summarize but I'll try: Things are worse than publicly talked about; there are a few options (geo-engineering). "People always raid before they starve." - - - - We have the solutions already. Cut-n-paste from a comment yesterday, apologies if you've seen it already, I think it's worth it: For practical advice on what to do I recommend Toby Hemenway's videos in re: Permaculture http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/ http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/ Especially "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and the sequel "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture". Permaculture is a school of applied ecology (the word itself is a portmanteau of PERMAnent agriCULTURE) that has adherents and practitioners world-wide. It's not the only form of regenerative agriculture either. See also https://www.greenwave.org/our-work https://www.greenwave.org/our-work Oceanic 3D farms! And now they are building reefs?
- dougmwne 7y agoDamn, in the first 5 minutes of Dyer's talk there's the best argument for Brexit that I've ever seen.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago100 companies account for over 70% of emissions. As a single citizen there's not a lot you can do other than ride the plane into the mountain.
- jacknews 7y agogreat to see female scientists highlighted
- cr0sh 7y agoA somewhat flippant comment, but I'm involved tangentially with the "cyberpunk" aesthetic; often, people involved ask "where is our cyberpunk?" All I can tell them is "Yes, we got our cyberpunk - unfortunately, we didn't get the Diamond Age, or even Neuromancer - we instead got David Brin's Earth..." As far as why methane levels are rising so fast - I suspect it has to do with the thawing of arctic permafrost (ever seen videos of "bogs" in Russia and Siberia that move like a waterbed?), and possibly also methane hydrates at shallower depths releasing their gases because of ocean warming (and maybe other factors). Of course - this is all speculation and I am far from being the person to answer this in any true manner. But if I had to make my guess - that's the most likely reason. As far as if we can stop it? Well - I think we're far too late to do anything. We probably should've started back in the 1970s or earlier (that would be my best guess) - and people back then were talking about this kind of thing. But nobody ever listens to the geeks and eggheads; I mean, what the hell do those dorks know? They only dedicate their lives and brains to such things, and we all know they can't party, right? So - enjoy what we have left, because we're only seeing the start of massive die-offs that will eventually get to us. Don't worry about the Earth though - it will be fine.
- kaybe 7y agoY'know, it's not binary, the divide is not climate change/no climate change. So maybe it is too late to stop everything completely, but it is really really not too late to stop it from becoming far far worse. Look at this plot: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/figure-2.3-1024x768.jpg https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/figu... You can see where we are and what else is possible if we keep going. (Let's hope we don't trigger feedback effects which are not included in the plot though.) Here are possible paths forward to stay below 1.5°C: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3... And yes, they are hella optimistic, but they are (physically) possible. Let's at least give our best and fight! (Details and plot captions in the full IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/)
- acd 7y agoBy Henry’s gas law. The amount of gas dissolved or released depends on the temperature of the fluid. This is why for example you need to chill sodas to carbonate it during manufacturing. Thus could it be that dissolved methane is being released from ocean and lakes as earth is heating? The gas law would imply that. As the liquid that contains methane heats the dissolved methane will be released to the atmosphere. Same gas law Henry’s law is also active during scuba diving nitrogen absorption. Henrys gas law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law Methane example of Henry’s law for dissolved methane in a well https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/using-henrys-law-for-dissolved-methane-in-a-well.720096/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/using-henrys-law-for-d...
- ComputerGuru 7y agoWe’ve mainly been focused on carbon sequestration directly aimed at capturing atmospheric CO2, but ton-for-ton, methane isn’t significantly worse for climate change. I’m not aware of any ongoing (research, even) efforts for sequestering methane, does anyone know? (As opposed to research into reductions which is also An extremely worthy cause (better to prevent 1 ton of methane than to sequester anywhere from 20 to 80 tons of CO2), although it seems no one is interested in any follow through. We’ve pretty much definitively identified a fairly low cost path forward to significantly reduce worldwide methane outputs related to food production by simply tweaking bovine diets, but it seems no one cares to actually implement it.)
- jbattle 7y agoFrom what I can tell, methane has an atmospheric PPM of ~2 (compared to 400++ for CO2). The lower concentration, and the fact that methane generation is very diffuse presumably makes sequestration Hard.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoYes, when measured at surface levels, but I believe that, unlike CO2, methane is extremely concentrated within a region of the stratosphere (being significantly lighter than CO2 and O2); it’s not hard to imagine strategically placed sequestration “facilities” being able to get to it better. But I’m on my phone and it’s hard to find out what the max ppm at the elevations it is most concentrated at are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/File%3AAtmosphericMethane.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/F...
- ryanmercer 7y agoUh, melting permafrost?
- decebalus1 7y agoThe biggest problem I have is that we're not going to have a proper dystopian collapse of civilization/raider/zombie/fight-for-resource type of thing. Most likely just a cvasi-police-state-corporate-run boring dystopia (which we already kind of have) managing and partitioning remaining resources/habitable locations.