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Methane goes away after 20 years. Carbon Dioxide stays around for thousands of years. We should spend 100% of our resources transitioning to extremely cheap su

Methane goes away after 20 years. Carbon Dioxide stays around for thousands of years. We should spend 100% of our resources transitioning to extremely cheap sustainable electric energy. That is the only option for turning the tide on climate

boredemployee 4y ago
and what about everything else, from farting cows and crazy vulcans?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  It's burps, not farts. We will almost certainly soon be able to track cattle based emissions via satellite and use that to enforce usage of the various solutions we have (seaweed based food supplements apparently work) and/or price in the externality. Here's some work on that from the same info source used for the above: https://www.ghgsat.com/en/newsroom/cow-burps-seen-from-space/ https://www.ghgsat.com/en/newsroom/cow-burps-seen-from-space...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    And the fugitive methane from fracking? Or will we just blame the farm that was fracked under without consent which had its bore water ruined?
bognition 4y ago
Not sure what you are arguing when you say methane “goes away”. It does not disappear, it reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere to become becomes carbon dioxide and water.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  It becomes much less of a greenhouse gas, does that make more sense?
  - thatcat 4y ago
    No
  - irishsultan 4y ago
    Your original statement was that carbon dioxide stays for thousands of years, methane goes away after twenty. So the fact that "going away" in this context means "is replaced by carbon dioxide, which stays for thousands of years" seems a rather important part of the total warming potential of the two greenhouse gasses.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I agree with your second statement but your first is a bit ambigous. Methane is a much more potent GHG than Carbon (about 8-30x), and is a big chunk of the emissions (about 20%). In fact after 20 years of being worse than carbon dioxide, it mostly turns into carbon dioxide and then hangs around for millenia, meaning it is categorically worse.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  >it mostly turns into carbon dioxide and then hangs around for millenia, meaning it is categorically worse. This too is inaccurate. CO2 has a half-life in the atmosphere variously stated between 27 and 49 years. If the world magically went zero Co2 today, The atmospheric levels would decrease about 2.5%/yr
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    1000 years is definately a figure I've seen bandied about by NASA, and the Bern model suggests that some percentage is effectively permanent, so millenia doesn't seem outlandish. Where are you citing your numbers from? A quick Google suggests it's a Climate Change Denial source: http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1/ http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosph... And even they cite the climate scientists as saying hundreds of years (before going on to prove them wrong in their blog post of course): > We hear all the time form the climate science community that even if we stop burning fossil fuels (FF) today the CO2 we have already produced will still be in the atmosphere for centuries to come. We have already lit a long slow burning fuse that will lead us to climate Armageddon. How much of this is actually true?
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      You can find the numbers in the IPCC reports. Headline numbers like 1,000s of years are are always talking about about a fraction of emitted CO2. Like radiation, CO2 Decay has an infinite tail. When it is "gone" depends on how much you are talking about (50%, 90%, 99.9% ect) CO2 decay is complicated because there are several removal pathways, and some cap out, and some keep going. The IPCC doesn't talk about it in terms of half-life because it isn't true exponential decay. The 2007 Report said the following: "Carbon dioxide cycles between the atmosphere, oceans and land biosphere. Its removal from the atmosphere involves a range of processes with different time scales. About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years" * More recent reports essentially provide an asterisk that says its complicated. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chapter7-1.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chap...
onion2k 4y ago
It's also useful though. Capturing it means we can use it.
snewman 4y ago
Transitioning to sustainable electricity is necessary but not sufficient, we also need to address methane, cement and steel production, and a bunch of other things. Regarding the urgency of methane in particular: https://climateer.substack.com/p/aerosols https://climateer.substack.com/p/aerosols
adrianN 4y ago
The people involved in recycling infrastructure are usually not qualified to build wind turbines or electrolyzers, so I think we can safely do 100% of both.

boredemployee 4y ago

and what about everything else, from farting cows and crazy vulcans?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
It's burps, not farts. We will almost certainly soon be able to track cattle based emissions via satellite and use that to enforce usage of the various solutions we have (seaweed based food supplements apparently work) and/or price in the externality. Here's some work on that from the same info source used for the above: https://www.ghgsat.com/en/newsroom/cow-burps-seen-from-space/ https://www.ghgsat.com/en/newsroom/cow-burps-seen-from-space...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  And the fugitive methane from fracking? Or will we just blame the farm that was fracked under without consent which had its bore water ruined?

bognition 4y ago

Not sure what you are arguing when you say methane “goes away”. It does not disappear, it reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere to become becomes carbon dioxide and water.

gitfan86 4y ago
It becomes much less of a greenhouse gas, does that make more sense?
- thatcat 4y ago
  No
- irishsultan 4y ago
  Your original statement was that carbon dioxide stays for thousands of years, methane goes away after twenty. So the fact that "going away" in this context means "is replaced by carbon dioxide, which stays for thousands of years" seems a rather important part of the total warming potential of the two greenhouse gasses.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I agree with your second statement but your first is a bit ambigous. Methane is a much more potent GHG than Carbon (about 8-30x), and is a big chunk of the emissions (about 20%). In fact after 20 years of being worse than carbon dioxide, it mostly turns into carbon dioxide and then hangs around for millenia, meaning it is categorically worse.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
>it mostly turns into carbon dioxide and then hangs around for millenia, meaning it is categorically worse. This too is inaccurate. CO2 has a half-life in the atmosphere variously stated between 27 and 49 years. If the world magically went zero Co2 today, The atmospheric levels would decrease about 2.5%/yr
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  1000 years is definately a figure I've seen bandied about by NASA, and the Bern model suggests that some percentage is effectively permanent, so millenia doesn't seem outlandish. Where are you citing your numbers from? A quick Google suggests it's a Climate Change Denial source: http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1/ http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosph... And even they cite the climate scientists as saying hundreds of years (before going on to prove them wrong in their blog post of course): > We hear all the time form the climate science community that even if we stop burning fossil fuels (FF) today the CO2 we have already produced will still be in the atmosphere for centuries to come. We have already lit a long slow burning fuse that will lead us to climate Armageddon. How much of this is actually true?
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You can find the numbers in the IPCC reports. Headline numbers like 1,000s of years are are always talking about about a fraction of emitted CO2. Like radiation, CO2 Decay has an infinite tail. When it is "gone" depends on how much you are talking about (50%, 90%, 99.9% ect) CO2 decay is complicated because there are several removal pathways, and some cap out, and some keep going. The IPCC doesn't talk about it in terms of half-life because it isn't true exponential decay. The 2007 Report said the following: "Carbon dioxide cycles between the atmosphere, oceans and land biosphere. Its removal from the atmosphere involves a range of processes with different time scales. About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years" * More recent reports essentially provide an asterisk that says its complicated. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chapter7-1.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chap...

onion2k 4y ago

It's also useful though. Capturing it means we can use it.

snewman 4y ago

Transitioning to sustainable electricity is necessary but not sufficient, we also need to address methane, cement and steel production, and a bunch of other things. Regarding the urgency of methane in particular: https://climateer.substack.com/p/aerosols https://climateer.substack.com/p/aerosols

adrianN 4y ago

The people involved in recycling infrastructure are usually not qualified to build wind turbines or electrolyzers, so I think we can safely do 100% of both.