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Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought
- quaintdev 3y agoClimate change deniers are going to have field day with this one.
- digitalsushi 3y agoI'm fine with that because they are becoming less relevant as increasingly extreme weather makes believers of skeptics
- boomchinolo78 3y agoDenier is such a loaded word, call them skeptic. In this case at least, seems their skepticism was warranted.
- jamiek88 3y agoNot really. It’s 20x instead of 28x is hardly ‘methane is actually ok’. Science is hard.
- mlyle 3y agoI think everyone has "always" known that methane is not a key driver of climate change. Its relatively short atmospheric life and relatively low concentration make it have a modest effect relative to CO2, even if it is more potent. A 30% reduction serves to further show that the priority needs to be CO2 in general, and everything but the low hanging fruit for methane emissions is a distraction. Of course, the possibility of runaway effects and short term positive feedback loops from methane release from permafrost, etc, is still a concern. I guess a 30% reduction there is somewhat good news.
- azan_ 3y agoClimate deniers are not people who discuss whether methane is 28x or 20x as strong as CO2, but rather people that do not believe in global warming (or our responsibility for it) at all; that's not skepticism, that's blind faith.
- replygirl 3y agoRelative to what things looked like 10-20 years ago, is there still a meaningful contingent of climate change deniers? As far as I can tell, most of those people have accepted the reality but disagree on how we should approach it. Even in the most extreme case--looking at Republicans in the US Congress, steeped in fossil propaganda and owing many of their elections to gerrymandering--and using a broad definition of climate change denialism, deniers are (very slightly) in the minority
- kennywinker 3y agoAt this point we have to consider people who deny that climate change is caused by humans to be climate deniers, since they are advocating for no change in behavior which is the same as people who outright deny that it's happening.
- replygirl 3y agoI've heard these arguments: (a) that we don't have the evidence to confirm that climate change is anthropogenic, and (b) that we shouldn't change our behavior. My understanding is (b) is not tied to (a), but rather that most claims of (b) come out of different views on conservation, what "nature" is, what's achievable with technology, and how different approaches to climate change might impact human quality of life. And (b) is not really that we _shouldn't_ change our behavior, but that the most popular ideas for how we should are varying degrees of infeasible, harmful, or fascistic. The "right" on this issue is largely misunderstood. Those pushing for a shift to renewables and a lifestyle change in wealthier nations deserve better literature on what their opposition is advocating for and against: https://compactmag.com/article/energy-lysenkoism https://compactmag.com/article/energy-lysenkoism
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- HyperSane 3y ago20x vs 28x worse than CO2 hardly proves them correct.
- SquareWheel 3y agoIn the context of scientific skepticism[1], denier or denialism[2] is the correct label. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- it_citizen 3y agoIf it is loaded in the sense that they will keep their beliefs despite the vast amount of data proving that not only it exists but it is happening, I am fine with that.
- hannob 3y agoI haven't seen those "skeptics" who said "maybe methane has a slightly smaller impact and CO2 a bigger one". Can you point me to sources here?
- gsich 3y agoAs if the exact number matters to them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- usrusr 3y agoOtoh their allies, the climate change fatalists, might lose their "what about methane". (in reality they are usually not allies but the same persons, switching between denial and it's too late anyways some times even mid-sentence)
- ifyoubuildit 3y agoWhat is the point of making this comment? What does it add to the conversation? Are you just looking for commiseration? Do you get some satisfaction if you then find a loony on the socials having their field day?
- jansan 3y agoUnlike CO2 the influence of methane on atmospheric warming (in W/m²) has not changed during the last 50 years. I appears there is almost zero impact on climate change by man/woman-made methane. Am I a denier by pointing that out?
- Geee 3y agoMany people don't deny the first-order effects. However, the second-order effects are speculative, and there is and should be more skepticism towards them, especially when someone is suggesting authoritarian policies based on them. Sadly, most of the green movement is just Marxism in new clothes and for them the climate change is an opportunity to push their authoritarian and dystopian policies. They use words such as 'oceans boiling' and 'extinction' as a part of their propaganda which are total and utter lies. The goal for Marxists is to stop human progress and wealth generation. Implementing their policies would result in a way worse world than a world with climate change.
- thevtm 3y agoWe are free to fart outside once more!!
- froggychairs 3y agoSomething something 198Fart
- kennywinker 3y agoHuman farts on AVERAGE contain about 5% methane, and 9.6% CO2 - but depending on your gut biome you may not fart out any methane at all. There's not great data on this (sample size n=16) but the ballpark figure I found was 30-40% of people fart methane.
- _1cao 3y agoSource study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01144-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01144-z
- hinkley 3y agoNature.com has a dark pattern on the accept cookie workflow. I expected better from them
- topaz0 3y agoScientific publishing is one of the most parasitic industries out there. To be clear the authors of studies that get published at places like nature have very little leverage on this kind of thing -- it is the rent-seeking publishers that are driving it.
- 93po 3y agoI recommend enabling the annoyances filters on uBlock Origin. It removes most of this bs
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- katherin_231 3y ago[dead]
- cratermoon 3y agoSo we're not quite as doomed as previously thought?
- sdfjkl 3y agoYup. In the sense that the unstoppable guillotine blade is descending slightly slower onto our necks. Yay!
- slackfan 3y ago[flagged]
- Covzire 3y agoDutch farmers must be thrilled.
- hinkley 3y agoSo we go from 28x to 20x. That changes the slope of a line but not the direction, or the magnitude.
- Aachen 3y ago30% change sounds large, until you multiply it by the fraction of the problem that methane forms. It's still a welcome impact reduction, if true, but yeah you're quite right.
- brookst 3y agoI realize you're just trolling, but science is quite settled that anthropogenic climate change is a real ting. Minutae about whether methane is 28x as bad as co2 or merely 20x as bad remains to be settled. Please don't exploit people's good faith interest in getting the exact truth to advance bad faith claims.
- qtzaz 3y agoIf it is settled based on data that is as reliable as this (40% off!) then it is not settled at all.
- goodluckchuck 3y ago> science is quite settled that anthropogenic climate change is a real ting. This study seems to suggest there has been a lot of research into how methane causes warming, but little research into how it may cause cooling. > The corresponding climate impacts, however, have been only indirectly evaluated and thus remain largely unquantified. Then - right off the bat - this study finds a substantial cooling effect. This hardly rules out the possibility of additional undiscovered cooling effects. It suggests to me that additional research is needed into how all these greenhouse gasses may have cooling effects.
- ta8903 3y agoHow will this affect internet arguments about going vegan?
- hinkley 3y agoThe carbon footprint of cows is still horrendous.
- ta8903 3y agoRight, that's still true.
- stefantalpalaru 3y ago> The carbon footprint of cows is still horrendous. A constant number of cows produce a constant amount of methane which plateaus quickly due to its very small atmospheric half-life. "Additional methane emission categories such as rice cultivation (RIC), ruminant animal (ANI), North American shale gas extraction (SHA), and tropical wetlands (TRO) have been investigated as potential causes of the resuming methane growth starting from 2007. In agreement with recent studies, we find that a methane increase of 15.4 Tg yr−1 in 2007 and subsequent years, of which __50 % are from RIC (7.68 Tg yr−1), 46 % from SHA (7.15 Tg yr−1), and 4 % from TRO (0.58 Tg yr−1)__, can optimally explain the trend up to 2013." - ["Model simulations of atmospheric methane (1997–2016) and their evaluation using NOAA and AGAGE surface and IAGOS-CARIBIC aircraft observations" (2020)](https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/20/5787/2020/ https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/20/5787/2020/) "On November 17, 2003 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the concentration of the potent greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere was leveling off and it appears to have remained at this 1999 level (Figure 1). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 acknowledged that methane concentrations have plateaued, with emissions being equivalent to removals. These changes in methane atmospheric dynamics have raised questions about the relative importance of ruminant livestock in global methane accounting and the value of pursuing means of further suppressing methane production from ruminants. At this time there is no relationship between increasing ruminant numbers and changes in atmospheric methane concentrations changes, a break from previously assumed role of ruminants in greenhouse gases (Figure 1)." - ["Belching Ruminants, a minor player in atmospheric methane" (2008)](http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/2008-atmospheric-methane.html http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/news/2008-atmospheric-methane...) «If there was an increase in atmospheric CH4 mixing ratio and the increase was caused by agricultural sources, specifically livestock emissions, the trends in atmospheric CH4 should correspond to dynamics in global livestock populations. *During 1999 to 2006, however, when atmospheric CH4 mixing ratio plateaued, global cattle and buffalo populations* (these species make up 84% of all livestock enteric CH4 emissions; FAOSTAT, 2017) *continued to increase* from 1.46 (1999) to 1.59 (2006) billion head (FAOSTAT, 2017), at a rate of approximately 18.8 million head/yr, *which apparently did not affect atmospheric CH4* over the same period. Since 2006, the rate of increase for the populations of these ruminant species declined to 7.3 million head/yr (FAOSTAT, 2017); we note that FAOSTAT does not specify uncertainty for their estimates, which is likely large for cattle inventories (and emission factors) in developing countries. Thus, it appears that *the global dynamics in large ruminant inventories do not support the suggested farmed livestock origin of the increase in atmospheric CH4* from 2006 to 2015. Potential increases in CH4 emission from non-livestock agricultural sources to the global CH4 budget cannot be excluded. Globally, *the area harvested for paddy rice* (emissions from which are typically 22 to 24% of the emissions from livestock), for example, *had increased 42% from the 1960s to 2015* (FAOSTAT, 2017), although new rice varieties (i.e., water-saving and drought-resistance rice, or WDR; Luo, 2010) require less water and thus emit less CH4 (Sun et al., 2016).» «As pointed out by Turner et al. (2017), fossil fuel CH4 is not entirely thermogenic in origin (based on its isotopic signature), with *over 20% of the world's natural gas reserves generated by microbial activities (i.e., carrying biogenic isotopic signature)*. Thus, collectively, we can conclude that quantitative attribution of changes in atmospheric CH4 concentrations to CH4 sources based on δ13CH4 data is at least questionable.» - ["Symposium review: Uncertainties in enteric methane inventories, measurement techniques, and prediction models" (2018)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030218303709 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203021...) "we find that city-level emissions are 1.4 to 2.6 times larger than reported in commonly used emission inventories and that the landfills contribute 6 to 50% of those emissions" - ["Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills" (2022)](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9683 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9683)
- BurningFrog 3y agoSummary: The effect is 30% less than previously thought, and global warming is still really really really important.
- hinkley 3y agoSo the folks saying 20x may be right.
- hinkley 3y agoWe just had a conversation the other day about climate change and methane, and some people were saying 20x as strong as CO2, and others were saying and sometimes correcting them to 28. According to this article the correct answer is 20. That’s still over an order of magnitude difference. It still doesn’t change the priorities much, it means you can leak 40% more methane from a system before it’s worse that coal, but we aren’t usually measuring these sorts of problems in 2 decimal points to begin with.
- henearkr 3y agoYes. It doesn't change anything to the problem. But lots of people will say it does (the climate deniers).
- junofan 3y agoAnyone who changes relative priorities for emissions reduction based on new information is a climate denier?
- freedomben 3y agoAs a person who believes man is effecting the climate, and is very worried about sustainability, but also thinks that there are some climate scientists who are off in their estimates (or can be too myopic at times like any other human) and that there is still much for us to learn and discover, yes I can confirm that if you question anything or approach things with skepticism (even though that's the way science is supposed to be done), you are a "climate denier" or often called "a science denier." It's quite depressing. I had hoped by now humanity would be moving deeply into rationality, but we're still just as emotion-driven as ever. We come by it honestly since our neurology is tuned to handle most (or maybe all) decisions subconciously and then have our conscious/rational mind justify the decision after the fact, but I do believe that by understanding our biology and implementing systems/approaches to combat it, we could become a highly logical species. There is still some hope on the horizon. Live long and prosper my friend.
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- henearkr 3y agoTo be honest, it would be awesome if the title could be change from "Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought" to "Methane is 20x worse than CO2 instead of 28x worse".
- xwdv 3y agoThe heading should just be “Methane 20x worse than CO2”. There is no need to mention previous thought, most people had no previous thoughts.
- freedomben 3y agoI agree with you that would be a better title, for a number of reasons. However I would advocate against changing it. The title here on HN is the same as the title in the original/linked article. Something I personally live about HN is we don't editorialize by rewriting headlines to reframe things to fit our preferred perception (even when we really believe that perception is correct). This is important for cognitive diversity.
- Aachen 3y agoI don't know if it's the "HN is deteriorating" effect finally setting in after a decade, but I do feel like titles either made more sense at the source or were changed to make sense in the past (say, before 2020±1). Now the homepage very often has 10-30% titles that either make no sense or mislead, and you have to click to know what it's about. Might as well just have a list of hashes then and see where you end up. Opening it now: titles like Boustrophedon and XINF (those two words are two submissions' entire titles) aren't useful and should be added to, for example. Similar for this article: it's not editorialising ("expressing one's opinion rather than the facts") to make it reflect what the source is trying to say.
- shrubble 3y agoThis is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate. This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn't been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models? That shockingly simplistic models and the barest of data don't actually have predictive power wouldn't surprise people in any other scientific discipline, but it will certainly be cause enough for this subject, to have this comment voted into oblivion....
- ChrisClark 3y agoOh no, from 28x to 20x. It must mean there is no problem at all!
- mstipetic 3y ago[flagged]
- shrubble 3y agoThanks for your rebuttal based on logic and rationality. Did you have anything to add in terms of, I don't know, something based on scientific or mathematical grounds?
- mlyle 3y agoYou've been thoroughly rebutted in this thread, but you choose to engage with the one person who called a name instead of everyone else. Meh.
- kennywinker 3y agoExcept climate change is happening, and there's no doubt about that because knowing it's happening isn't relying on models, it's relying on thermometers (and to a lesser extent ice cores to confirm that it's human-driven rather than a natural change). How bad climate change will be, yeah I suppose there is a little fuzzyness there. But given how bad it COULD be (think: complete extinction of humanity, or an end of civilization) we can't really wait around not doing anything while we try to develop a perfect model.
- pier25 3y ago> Scientists fear that as warming triggers thaw of permafrost in the Arctic regions, this could also lead to increased methane emissions Could? This is already happening. Scientists such as Natalia Shakhova have been studying this for years. This is a video of her from 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ
- petermcneeley 3y agoThis diagram helps clear things up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#/media/File:Atm... Methane has multiple peaks of absorption
- jmyeet 3y agoThis stuff is complicated. Specifically you can't do a straight comparison between the greenhouse effects of methane and carbon dioxide. Why? Methane is naturally destroyed in the atmosphere [1]: > Methane is naturally destroyed by both chemical and biological processes, including reaction with atmospheric hydroxyl [OH] and chlorine, and by methane-consuming bacteria (methanotrophs) in soil and water. This results in a lifetime in the air of 9.1 ± 0.9 years [12]. Thus, we face an important question—given methane is being removed from the air anyway, why trouble to do this artificially? It may be preferable to dedicate the cost and energy involved in methane removal to the task of stopping methane emissions, which would accomplish the same end result of lessening, halting, or reversing the growth of methane-driven climate warming, or, alternatively, simply to ignore methane and dedicate all efforts to CO2 removal. To answer this question, the specific methods of removing methane must be examined.
- jmartrican 3y agoI wonder if global cloud coverage is being tracked and how it is trending. We can then see if methane is having a noticeable effect on cloud coverage over the years. I also imagine, there are other processes that effect cloud coverage.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoOn what time scale? Also, what about production? It has a GWP of nearly 100 the first year but falls off rapidly. If the hypothetical Methane Gun happened, there is immense warming potential that could rapidly melt regional ice sheets.
- frank_bb 3y ago[dead]
- lorddoig 3y agoIt is kind of astonishing to me to witness the discussion in these comments proceeding civilly and with actual regard to the science. In my experience this is vanishingly rare. It's extremely refreshing. At risk of ruining that civility, I'd like to address some aspects of climate scepticism various other comments are touching on. It is not difficult to see that a reasonable person may ask that if the UN is correct in saying 30% of climate change is due to methane[1] and this paper is correct in saying methane is 30% less effective at warming than we thought, then isn't this whole climate change problem potentially ~9% smaller than we thought? And isn't that actually pretty big? Big enough to potentially have policy implications? I'm quite sure it's not that simple but nevertheless as a starting point for discovery it's a decent question. It's also a question that will be met with astonishing levels of derision on social media, mainstream media, and in society more generally. Merely asking it will have large international media outlets like the BBC openly describing the questioner as a 'climate sceptic/denier' which, while some may wear it as a badge of honour, actually serves the purpose of shaming them publicly for wrongthink. Social media will of course be far worse in this regard. We now live in a world where it is popularly considered valid to provide a political (to put it kindly) response to a scientific question. It is, of course, both invalid and indefensible. I have no ideological aversion to the idea that climate change is real and a serious threat, but the quality of societal discourse on the topic has become so poor and so overtly political that there is absolutely no basis upon which I can accept either of those assertions as _actually scientifically_ true (short of becoming a climate scientist and spending the next however many years personally reviewing all the literature). For me to accept these assertions as fact would be indistinguishable from a declaration of religious faith. It isn't going to happen. Moreover the conduct of the pro-climate change 'lobby' from the IPCC to the BBC to Just Stop Oil activists has, on the whole, fallen so far short of the standard demanded by the severity of the problem they espouse that I simply don't believe them very much anymore. In my view--and I claim no authority on this matter, this is just how I see it--climate change may well be real and an existential threat, but it may also be a bureaucratic fantasy mistakenly grown from kernels of misunderstood or mistaken truths that has gotten so completely out of control that it's now controlling us. It could also be somewhere in between, or something else entirely: I don't know and I cannot know so long as society keeps excluding valid voices with valid questions. I suppose I'm a climate sceptic then...but when it comes to deciding between being a sceptic or taking a leap of devotional faith, what choice do I have? Luckily it seems to me the way forward is the same in any case: the pro-climate change people, being the ones comprehensively 'winning' the 'argument' at the moment, need to show a little humility and engage in open debate with the well-meaning sceptics without the ad-hominem attacks, the gaslighting, the censorship, etc. It really is that simple, and the fact it’s so forcefully resisted should, in my view, give us all pause for thought. [1]: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/methane-emissions-are-driving-climate-change-heres-how-reduce-them https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/methane-emission...
- EGreg 3y agoI am a leftie environmentalist, yet I found this interview quite balanced and informative: https://www.prageru.com/video/why-are-energy-prices-so-frickin-high-with-chris-wright https://www.prageru.com/video/why-are-energy-prices-so-frick... Frankly, we as a global society have FAR more pressing issues than the greenhouse effect, such as: Collapse of insect and bird populations Overfishing and plummeting biodiversity as we turn the world into farms and monocultures Destruction of coral reefs and kelp forests and rainforests One third of arable land WORLDWIDE is now undergoing desertification Day zero for many cities as aquifers run dry Plastic by mass will outnumber fish in the oceans by 2050 Factory farms overuse of antibiotics and superbacteria… And so on… somehow this “climate change” thing has hijacked the conversation and sucked all the political capital for things like sustainability, switching to non biodegradeable plastics, ending factory farms, etc.
- Etrnl_President 3y agoCheck the IR absorption spectra of water vapor, and be blown away! Far more heating than all other greenhouse gases combined.
- drKarl 3y agoAnd the cows taking all the blame for their flatulence
- xenonite 3y agoAll the while cows' methane emissions can be greatly reduced, e.g., by oxidizing methane or by using food supplements that reduce enteric fermentation. One should not forget soil erosion of typical farming, with a big environmental impact. This can be alleviated by letting cows graze on land to stock carbon in the soil (sequestration of soil organic carbon).
- IYasha 3y ago[flagged]
- hatsune 3y ago"30% off" ain't a claim to be "harmless". The stuff is still quite insane. Ditching cow and milk is still quite relevant. (Also, corn price for feeding cattles vs famine is still a topic with tension).
- pnt12 3y agoI wish the headline said that: "methane not as bad as thought, still very harmful".
- harold_b 3y agoClimate change is an obvious scam - used by nocoiners to justify the prevention of a freedom-protecting monetary system