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This all strikes me as a nice opening to an apocalypse movie. Pulling CO2 and upgrading to methane - wouldn't that amplify GHG effects?
by jvanderbot 3y ago
This all strikes me as a nice opening to an apocalypse movie. Pulling CO2 and upgrading to methane - wouldn't that amplify GHG effects?
- strken 3y agoMethane has a short half-life in the atmosphere, so its cumulative effect after a few decades is close to CO2 unless you're constantly outputting more, and that's assuming you're not burning it. In the case where you're making methane from atmospheric CO2 and then burning it, it's just returning the same CO2 back, which per the article is carbon neutral.
- CorrectHorseBat 3y agoMore like a few centuries, methane's global warming potential after 500 years (GWP-500) is still 7.95. The issue with burning is that methane can leak during transport.
- strken 3y agoI stand corrected: did the maths wrong. Centuries it is.
- kortex 3y agoThere's a big difference in scale between "burning hydrocarbons to heat and power much of the world" (which includes leakage from fossil fuel drilling) and "we make some methane to be almost completely consumed and there are some leaks".