8 ms·

Climate change: Curbing methane emissions will 'buy us time'

35 points by vijayr02 5y ago

adrianN 5y ago
Natural gas displacing coal is good for CO2 emissions, but afaik methane leakage across the supply chain is not measured very well. I'm afraid that our usage of natural gas will continue to increase because it's so easy to greenwash. For example various lobbying groups try very hard to push for a Hydrogen economy that is largely based on natural gas.
- makomk 5y ago
  Coal isn't exactly great in terms of methane emissions either. If I remember rightly, a bunch of unexplained methane in the atmosphere was tracked down to coal mining in China in particular.
- 8note 5y ago
  There was an agreement between Canada and the US to go about measuring it well, but I think when trump got elected, it was canned. Mind you, I think nat gas usage will increase, since it lets us get rid of coal without having to have solved the hard problems around energy storage.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Natural Gas is also being heavily lobbied by power corps right now with the upcoming reconciliation bill. Not surprisingly they are all in on electric cars ;) I'm very concerned the bill doesn't prioritize enough %spend on climate and that those provisions will get watered down. anything will still be 10x or more than all previous efforts combined. Just not enough... https://www.eenews.net/articles/industry-looks-to-shape-democrats-clean-energy-plans/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/industry-looks-to-shape-demo...
alkonaut 5y ago
Who is using all the fossil gas? Where is demand coming from? Residential? Is it a common source of heating for private residences in some countries? Which ones? If these countries are signatories of climate agreements should they not subsidize (with help from those of us that don’t need it) the phasing out of it? Is electricity so expensive in some countries that burning fossil fuel for heat is cheaper than using an electrical heat pump? If that’s the case - wouldn’t a solution be to switch that around by taxes and subsidies so burning fossil fuels for heat is more expensive? (This of course assumes such countries can quickly switch electricity production if it’s using fossil to supply the electricity from renewable or nuclear).
- adrianN 5y ago
  Russian gas is what keeps large parts of Europe warm in winter. Retrofitting heat pumps into buildings is quite expensive, which is why homeowners are reluctant to do it.
  - corty 5y ago
    The electrical grid also cannot handle all-electric heating for all households, at least in Germany. France is different because of their big nuclear fleet. Very often, green energy discussions forget that doing everything (heating, traffic, industrial processes) electrically needs an increase in electric capacity by a factor of 2 or 3 at least.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Luckily switching to all electric heating will take long enough to give us time to increase generation capacity sufficiently. Everybody except the politicians setting the targets for renewable energy knows that electricity demand will be much higher in the future when everything runs on electricity.
  - michieldotv 5y ago
    Quite expensive? That's understated. My understanding now is that it comes at the cost a modest new house. Our family bought a house in the immediate periphery of a smaller city. Since most city housing here is old, the consequence of that decision is that our modest city home has abysmal energy efficiency. I have wanted to renovate ever since we bought it, in order to cut down on our carbon footprint before 2030, but I have given up on the idea that we'll be able to afford a heat pump before then. After having spoken with several architects, the building cost alone will eat up €200K without any frills. This will make our house smaller, by replacing poorly built annexes with a more compact and thus thermally efficient cube shaped annex. This comes on top of the mortgage that we took out. So ironically, in making our home more energy efficient, we would also be making it smaller and less desirable in this regard, at a great expense. Tacking on a heat pump and PV panels would inflate the cost by another 10%. That is the very real cost of making a home suitable for low energy heating systems. Don't get me wrong, I'm counting my lucky stars that I'm able to consider such an undertaking, but going through this exercise myself is just a reality check of how dire the situation really is. If we want to achieve net zero in housing, can we really do so at the cost of conventional building practices? Talking about the local situation, less than a third of homes are from after 1981 [1]. That's millions of homes slated for a similarly-priced revamp. Who is going to foot the bill? Even with government incentives, some owners don't want to spend all that money on something as intangible as low energy housing, and others simply can't afford to. [1] https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/housing/building-stock https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/housing/building-stock
zyngaro 5y ago
At some point (now) we have to consider birth control as an answer to global warming. Edit: my point is that we cannot feed the same food (rice, meat) an ever growing population and reduce greenhouse emissions at the same time.
- trekrich 5y ago
  wow you really are in deep with the global warming brain washing.
- rob74 5y ago
  Yeah, of course, less humans = less problems for the planet. But that's an extremely unpopular idea, so you won't find any politicians to support it. Plus, the current growth-based economy (which BTW is also a major obstacle for long-term sustainability) is much harder to keep up with a shrinking population.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Less humans, not so much. Less rich humans, maybe? At this point, just getting rid of people probably still leaves the earth in a tailspin of overheating
    - guest159835 5y ago
      Richest 1% (> $100,000 income) emit 50% of the emissions according to Oxfam: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  The countries with the highest emissions have already embraced that. Birth rates are well below replacement rates in the developed world.
  - yrro 5y ago
avereveard 5y ago
"will buy China time" The niche between current temperature and end of the world temperature will be exploited by growing nations until something is done about rich countries exploiting their low cost production to work around green laws I'm done recycling, reusing and downsizing until legislation is enacted to prevent my effort toward the environment to become someone else profit.
- rob74 5y ago
  Is this China you speak of located on another planet?
  - avereveard 5y ago
    no, and that is the point, until we put pressure there, all effort done here is worthless.
    - gmac 5y ago
      How well do you think it will work to try to pressure China into cutting their emissions before you've made at least some effort to clean up your own? Effort done here is not worthless at all.
      - guest159835 5y ago
        Sure, let's ignore China. China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Exceeded the Developed World: https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-countries/ https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-...
        gmac 5y ago
        I'm not ignoring China. I'm saying: if you're asking China to change its behaviour, I doubt you'll get very far unless you begin by showing willing to change your behaviour too. Let's take some other anti-social behaviour as an analogy. Imagine person A is in their car, idling their engine, outside an elementary school at pick-up time[1]. Now imagine person B comes up and asks them to stop. How well do you think that works if person B gets out of a car which is also idling its engine when they come and make the request? Your argument seems to be that person B's car is smaller. I don't think that helps much, but it's also not in any meaningful way true. China's emissions are large only because China is large. Per-capita emissions are what matter here (otherwise it would solve the problem of China being a large emitter if China were to split itself into a dozen smaller countries — which is clearly nonsensical). China's per-capita emissions are less than half those of the US[2], and some of them are emitted in producing goods for export to the US. [1] I live opposite an elementary school, and this is sadly not unusual. [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
Let say we succeed to stop methane leakage from cows (algae feed, etc.) and also leakage from coal, oil and gas extraction. How are we going to stop Siberian permafrost melting (it has huge amounts of methane ice) it has potentially 100 to 1000Gt (currently 5Gt in atmosphere CH4) which is enough to tip the temperature to 2-3C? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/02/climate-crisis-siberian-heatwave-led-to-new-methane-emissions-study-says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/02/climate-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmzTSYRJJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmzTSYRJJE This is from 8 years ago but it is very relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Cut down trees and introduce large fauna? With nothing to trample it down, the snow insulates the permafrost preventing it from cooling in the winter. Not really a realistic suggestion though.
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    I read the other day that in recent wildfire in Siberia, burned as much trees as it was planted in the entire world. And planted trees are young saplings they do not have ability to sequester same amount of CO2 like full grown trees. I think it is this one: 'Russian fires burned 4.7 billion trees, seven times more than were planted' https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fires-russia-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fire... Just for the comparison 1 trillion trees project as of 30 May 2021, 164 restoration projects participate in the campaign and 13.96 billion trees have been planted worldwide.[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign And if we take that idea was founded in 1977 that means 44 years ~320 million trees planted per year... And that damage is only Siberia, what with Australia, Canada, California, Alaska, Amazon ...
    - Razengan 5y ago
      Damn fuck that’s depressing.
sunshineforever 5y ago
I personally think the only way to handle climate change will be to force the more selfish US citizens to change their lifestyles. Just being realistic I don't think they will change without a civil war type scenario. Or the threat of a war. They won't listen unless they are forced to. Period.
- krona 5y ago
  Energy consumption per unit GDP tells a different story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    Except we use that efficiency to consume more, hence increasing GDP. We have also been picking the low hanging fruit. It is going to get progressively more difficult.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  its NOT individual person's fault. Its large dirty businesses that create majority of the pollution. Only way to fight global warming is to target them to pay for their externalities. You can help, you can recycle. But all of the businesses could be forced to use environmental responsible packaging. Thats the kind of externalities I am talking about. How come when a tanker spills oil in gulf we as tax payers pay for the clean-up, how come when a power lines start forest fires we have to pick up the bill?? And so on...
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
Is there a marine biologist here? Would it help to genetically modify plankton so that multiply more and sequester more CO2 than usual? But again having some kill switch after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues?
- Razengan 5y ago
  > after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues? That’s the core trouble with everything isn’t it, and what got us into this mess in the first place.
lumberingjack 5y ago
You can't reduce gas emissions from landfills if you are then what goes into the landfill is not getting there and it's staying in people's yards as compost that's not a reduction that's just moving it to another place

35 points by vijayr02 5y ago

Natural gas displacing coal is good for CO2 emissions, but afaik methane leakage across the supply chain is not measured very well. I'm afraid that our usage of natural gas will continue to increase because it's so easy to greenwash. For example various lobbying groups try very hard to push for a Hydrogen economy that is largely based on natural gas.

makomk 5y ago
Coal isn't exactly great in terms of methane emissions either. If I remember rightly, a bunch of unexplained methane in the atmosphere was tracked down to coal mining in China in particular.
8note 5y ago
There was an agreement between Canada and the US to go about measuring it well, but I think when trump got elected, it was canned. Mind you, I think nat gas usage will increase, since it lets us get rid of coal without having to have solved the hard problems around energy storage.
dillondoyle 5y ago
Natural Gas is also being heavily lobbied by power corps right now with the upcoming reconciliation bill. Not surprisingly they are all in on electric cars ;) I'm very concerned the bill doesn't prioritize enough %spend on climate and that those provisions will get watered down. anything will still be 10x or more than all previous efforts combined. Just not enough... https://www.eenews.net/articles/industry-looks-to-shape-democrats-clean-energy-plans/ https://www.eenews.net/articles/industry-looks-to-shape-demo...

alkonaut 5y ago

Who is using all the fossil gas? Where is demand coming from? Residential? Is it a common source of heating for private residences in some countries? Which ones? If these countries are signatories of climate agreements should they not subsidize (with help from those of us that don’t need it) the phasing out of it? Is electricity so expensive in some countries that burning fossil fuel for heat is cheaper than using an electrical heat pump? If that’s the case - wouldn’t a solution be to switch that around by taxes and subsidies so burning fossil fuels for heat is more expensive? (This of course assumes such countries can quickly switch electricity production if it’s using fossil to supply the electricity from renewable or nuclear).

adrianN 5y ago
Russian gas is what keeps large parts of Europe warm in winter. Retrofitting heat pumps into buildings is quite expensive, which is why homeowners are reluctant to do it.
- corty 5y ago
  The electrical grid also cannot handle all-electric heating for all households, at least in Germany. France is different because of their big nuclear fleet. Very often, green energy discussions forget that doing everything (heating, traffic, industrial processes) electrically needs an increase in electric capacity by a factor of 2 or 3 at least.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Luckily switching to all electric heating will take long enough to give us time to increase generation capacity sufficiently. Everybody except the politicians setting the targets for renewable energy knows that electricity demand will be much higher in the future when everything runs on electricity.
- michieldotv 5y ago
  Quite expensive? That's understated. My understanding now is that it comes at the cost a modest new house. Our family bought a house in the immediate periphery of a smaller city. Since most city housing here is old, the consequence of that decision is that our modest city home has abysmal energy efficiency. I have wanted to renovate ever since we bought it, in order to cut down on our carbon footprint before 2030, but I have given up on the idea that we'll be able to afford a heat pump before then. After having spoken with several architects, the building cost alone will eat up €200K without any frills. This will make our house smaller, by replacing poorly built annexes with a more compact and thus thermally efficient cube shaped annex. This comes on top of the mortgage that we took out. So ironically, in making our home more energy efficient, we would also be making it smaller and less desirable in this regard, at a great expense. Tacking on a heat pump and PV panels would inflate the cost by another 10%. That is the very real cost of making a home suitable for low energy heating systems. Don't get me wrong, I'm counting my lucky stars that I'm able to consider such an undertaking, but going through this exercise myself is just a reality check of how dire the situation really is. If we want to achieve net zero in housing, can we really do so at the cost of conventional building practices? Talking about the local situation, less than a third of homes are from after 1981 [1]. That's millions of homes slated for a similarly-priced revamp. Who is going to foot the bill? Even with government incentives, some owners don't want to spend all that money on something as intangible as low energy housing, and others simply can't afford to. [1] https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/housing/building-stock https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/housing/building-stock

zyngaro 5y ago

At some point (now) we have to consider birth control as an answer to global warming. Edit: my point is that we cannot feed the same food (rice, meat) an ever growing population and reduce greenhouse emissions at the same time.

trekrich 5y ago
wow you really are in deep with the global warming brain washing.
rob74 5y ago
Yeah, of course, less humans = less problems for the planet. But that's an extremely unpopular idea, so you won't find any politicians to support it. Plus, the current growth-based economy (which BTW is also a major obstacle for long-term sustainability) is much harder to keep up with a shrinking population.
- 8note 5y ago
  Less humans, not so much. Less rich humans, maybe? At this point, just getting rid of people probably still leaves the earth in a tailspin of overheating
  - guest159835 5y ago
    Richest 1% (> $100,000 income) emit 50% of the emissions according to Oxfam: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
The countries with the highest emissions have already embraced that. Birth rates are well below replacement rates in the developed world.
- yrro 5y ago

avereveard 5y ago

"will buy China time" The niche between current temperature and end of the world temperature will be exploited by growing nations until something is done about rich countries exploiting their low cost production to work around green laws I'm done recycling, reusing and downsizing until legislation is enacted to prevent my effort toward the environment to become someone else profit.

rob74 5y ago
Is this China you speak of located on another planet?
- avereveard 5y ago
  no, and that is the point, until we put pressure there, all effort done here is worthless.
  - gmac 5y ago
    How well do you think it will work to try to pressure China into cutting their emissions before you've made at least some effort to clean up your own? Effort done here is not worthless at all.
    - guest159835 5y ago
      Sure, let's ignore China. China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Exceeded the Developed World: https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-countries/ https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-...
      - gmac 5y ago
        I'm not ignoring China. I'm saying: if you're asking China to change its behaviour, I doubt you'll get very far unless you begin by showing willing to change your behaviour too. Let's take some other anti-social behaviour as an analogy. Imagine person A is in their car, idling their engine, outside an elementary school at pick-up time[1]. Now imagine person B comes up and asks them to stop. How well do you think that works if person B gets out of a car which is also idling its engine when they come and make the request? Your argument seems to be that person B's car is smaller. I don't think that helps much, but it's also not in any meaningful way true. China's emissions are large only because China is large. Per-capita emissions are what matter here (otherwise it would solve the problem of China being a large emitter if China were to split itself into a dozen smaller countries — which is clearly nonsensical). China's per-capita emissions are less than half those of the US[2], and some of them are emitted in producing goods for export to the US. [1] I live opposite an elementary school, and this is sadly not unusual. [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

Let say we succeed to stop methane leakage from cows (algae feed, etc.) and also leakage from coal, oil and gas extraction. How are we going to stop Siberian permafrost melting (it has huge amounts of methane ice) it has potentially 100 to 1000Gt (currently 5Gt in atmosphere CH4) which is enough to tip the temperature to 2-3C? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/02/climate-crisis-siberian-heatwave-led-to-new-methane-emissions-study-says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/02/climate-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmzTSYRJJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmzTSYRJJE This is from 8 years ago but it is very relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ

dan-robertson 5y ago
Cut down trees and introduce large fauna? With nothing to trample it down, the snow insulates the permafrost preventing it from cooling in the winter. Not really a realistic suggestion though.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  I read the other day that in recent wildfire in Siberia, burned as much trees as it was planted in the entire world. And planted trees are young saplings they do not have ability to sequester same amount of CO2 like full grown trees. I think it is this one: 'Russian fires burned 4.7 billion trees, seven times more than were planted' https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fires-russia-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/11/siberia-fire... Just for the comparison 1 trillion trees project as of 30 May 2021, 164 restoration projects participate in the campaign and 13.96 billion trees have been planted worldwide.[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_Tree_Campaign And if we take that idea was founded in 1977 that means 44 years ~320 million trees planted per year... And that damage is only Siberia, what with Australia, Canada, California, Alaska, Amazon ...
  - Razengan 5y ago
    Damn fuck that’s depressing.

sunshineforever 5y ago

I personally think the only way to handle climate change will be to force the more selfish US citizens to change their lifestyles. Just being realistic I don't think they will change without a civil war type scenario. Or the threat of a war. They won't listen unless they are forced to. Period.

krona 5y ago
Energy consumption per unit GDP tells a different story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Except we use that efficiency to consume more, hence increasing GDP. We have also been picking the low hanging fruit. It is going to get progressively more difficult.
me_me_me 5y ago
its NOT individual person's fault. Its large dirty businesses that create majority of the pollution. Only way to fight global warming is to target them to pay for their externalities. You can help, you can recycle. But all of the businesses could be forced to use environmental responsible packaging. Thats the kind of externalities I am talking about. How come when a tanker spills oil in gulf we as tax payers pay for the clean-up, how come when a power lines start forest fires we have to pick up the bill?? And so on...

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

Is there a marine biologist here? Would it help to genetically modify plankton so that multiply more and sequester more CO2 than usual? But again having some kill switch after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues?

Razengan 5y ago
> after x number of generations so it does not causes other issues? That’s the core trouble with everything isn’t it, and what got us into this mess in the first place.

lumberingjack 5y ago

You can't reduce gas emissions from landfills if you are then what goes into the landfill is not getting there and it's staying in people's yards as compost that's not a reduction that's just moving it to another place