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You are wrong: - Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. - Methane is the second most abundant anthropog

by pera 4y ago

You are wrong: - Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. - Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for about 20 percent of global emissions. https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-climate-forcing https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

Scarblac 4y ago
You are both right. What you say is true, and yet removing all that would still not reduce warming, it would only reduce the acceleration of the rate of warming. Because we're still increasing the rate at which we emit other greenhouses gases, and even if we emitted none anymore a lot of warming is already locked in.
- cogman10 4y ago
  I don't really see the distinction here (other than in an uber pedantic sense). All efforts to combat global warming about reducing or eliminating the acceleration. If one of those methods is both cheap and has a fairly high impact (which, methane reduction appears to be) then why are we focusing on "but this doesn't eliminate global warming"? Adding renewables and nuclear to the grid won't eliminate global warming, but they slow it down. Eliminating methane appears to be a route where we can more aggressively stomp on the breaks.
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    I think it's important to avoid saying doing X will reduce warming if it doesn't do that, so that people don't start believing that it will be sufficient to do only this.
    - cogman10 4y ago
      I've never seen anyone insinuate that eliminating methane emissions would fix global warming. The only time I've seen that argument raised is for the opposite "Because this won't fix global warming, we shouldn't do it?". Global warming will require a multifaceted approach to be solve. No one solution will fix it, so literally any solution is going to have a detractor that says "This won't fix it, so why bother with it?"
      - Scarblac 4y ago
        The title of the submission insinuates it. The comment just corrected that. Of course we should do everything we can to reduce methane emissions.
        cogman10 4y ago
        > Reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming Reducing and fixing or eliminating are not the same thing. How could they have worded the title better? "Limiting methane emissions will have an outsized impact given the cost"?
    - admiral33 4y ago
      Reducing global average warming is not the same as reducing global average temperature, although that can be the result over time if the rate of warming is reduced below 0. 'X will reduce warming' is describing a reduction to the positive rate of change. It's also true that increasing global average warming can result in reduced warming and temperatures in some geographic areas so it is important to be specific with terminology depending on which aspect of the climate change debate we're talking about. You are right that the title is unintentionally misleading in this regard.
cogman10 4y ago
Methane has a pretty easy resolution as well. Capture and burn it. Even if you simply emit the resultant CO2 in the atmosphere you've drastically decreased the impact. > Methane is generally a secondary byproduct in the industrial processes from which it is emitted. Coal mines, for example, seek to vent methane from the mine workings because it can cause explosions. Historically, mining companies have not viewed the associated methane as an energy resource in its own right. It's mostly associated with fossil fuel extraction so the other solution to the methane problem is decreasing fossil fuel consumption in general.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zackees 4y ago
LatteLazy 4y ago
The amount of warming depends on the amount of gas (CO2, CH4 or other) in the atmosphere. Stopping all emissions today would not change the huge amounts all ready up there. So we are locked in for a certain amount of warming. The rate of emissions just controls how much more warming and how much sooner the existing warming will occur. This is one of the core problems with Human responses to the problem: people think they can wait until it gets 'bad enough' then stop their emissions and things will improve. But they will keep getting worse because of the lag between emissions and effects. As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane. The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions... 1: https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
- cogman10 4y ago
  > As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane. > The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions... But if you can eliminate that 20% with minimal effort or expenditure, why wouldn't you? Most of that is coming from emissions related to fossil fuel extraction. Which is a perfect opportunity for capture. CO2 emissions, on the other hand, is coming from a million different sources and doesn't have a single clean solution. There's not a one step process for eliminating 20% of CO2 emissions.
- pera 4y ago
  I think you need to consider that methane has a half-life of about 10 years in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide on the other hand is one order of magnitude higher than that. I understand now that what you are trying to say is that CO2 will still be a problem, that's a fact that nobody is denying here, but the way you stated your original post makes it sound like reducing CH4 emissions would be meaningless in regards to global warming.

by pera 4y ago

Scarblac 4y ago

You are both right. What you say is true, and yet removing all that would still not reduce warming, it would only reduce the acceleration of the rate of warming. Because we're still increasing the rate at which we emit other greenhouses gases, and even if we emitted none anymore a lot of warming is already locked in.

cogman10 4y ago
I don't really see the distinction here (other than in an uber pedantic sense). All efforts to combat global warming about reducing or eliminating the acceleration. If one of those methods is both cheap and has a fairly high impact (which, methane reduction appears to be) then why are we focusing on "but this doesn't eliminate global warming"? Adding renewables and nuclear to the grid won't eliminate global warming, but they slow it down. Eliminating methane appears to be a route where we can more aggressively stomp on the breaks.
- Scarblac 4y ago
  I think it's important to avoid saying doing X will reduce warming if it doesn't do that, so that people don't start believing that it will be sufficient to do only this.
  - cogman10 4y ago
    I've never seen anyone insinuate that eliminating methane emissions would fix global warming. The only time I've seen that argument raised is for the opposite "Because this won't fix global warming, we shouldn't do it?". Global warming will require a multifaceted approach to be solve. No one solution will fix it, so literally any solution is going to have a detractor that says "This won't fix it, so why bother with it?"
    - Scarblac 4y ago
      The title of the submission insinuates it. The comment just corrected that. Of course we should do everything we can to reduce methane emissions.
      - cogman10 4y ago
        > Reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming Reducing and fixing or eliminating are not the same thing. How could they have worded the title better? "Limiting methane emissions will have an outsized impact given the cost"?
  - admiral33 4y ago
    Reducing global average warming is not the same as reducing global average temperature, although that can be the result over time if the rate of warming is reduced below 0. 'X will reduce warming' is describing a reduction to the positive rate of change. It's also true that increasing global average warming can result in reduced warming and temperatures in some geographic areas so it is important to be specific with terminology depending on which aspect of the climate change debate we're talking about. You are right that the title is unintentionally misleading in this regard.

cogman10 4y ago

Methane has a pretty easy resolution as well. Capture and burn it. Even if you simply emit the resultant CO2 in the atmosphere you've drastically decreased the impact. > Methane is generally a secondary byproduct in the industrial processes from which it is emitted. Coal mines, for example, seek to vent methane from the mine workings because it can cause explosions. Historically, mining companies have not viewed the associated methane as an energy resource in its own right. It's mostly associated with fossil fuel extraction so the other solution to the methane problem is decreasing fossil fuel consumption in general.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

zackees 4y ago

LatteLazy 4y ago

The amount of warming depends on the amount of gas (CO2, CH4 or other) in the atmosphere. Stopping all emissions today would not change the huge amounts all ready up there. So we are locked in for a certain amount of warming. The rate of emissions just controls how much more warming and how much sooner the existing warming will occur. This is one of the core problems with Human responses to the problem: people think they can wait until it gets 'bad enough' then stop their emissions and things will improve. But they will keep getting worse because of the lag between emissions and effects. As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane. The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions... 1: https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane

cogman10 4y ago
> As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane. > The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions... But if you can eliminate that 20% with minimal effort or expenditure, why wouldn't you? Most of that is coming from emissions related to fossil fuel extraction. Which is a perfect opportunity for capture. CO2 emissions, on the other hand, is coming from a million different sources and doesn't have a single clean solution. There's not a one step process for eliminating 20% of CO2 emissions.
pera 4y ago
I think you need to consider that methane has a half-life of about 10 years in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide on the other hand is one order of magnitude higher than that. I understand now that what you are trying to say is that CO2 will still be a problem, that's a fact that nobody is denying here, but the way you stated your original post makes it sound like reducing CH4 emissions would be meaningless in regards to global warming.