Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
To address the climate crisis effectively, immediate action on methane emissions is essential. Methane has contributed about half the global warming we’ve experienced so far, and emissions are climbing rapidly. An international team of climate researchers writing today (July 30) in Frontiers in Science set out three imperatives to cut methane emissions and share a new tool to help us find the most cost-effective ways of doing so.
“The world has been rightly focused on carbon dioxide, which is the largest driver of climate change to date,” said Professor Drew Shindell of Duke University, lead author. “Methane seemed like something we could leave for later, but the world has warmed very rapidly over the past couple of decades, while we’ve failed to reduce our CO2 emissions. So that leaves us more desperate for ways to reduce the rate of warming rapidly, which methane can do.”
Methane is the second most potent greenhouse gas, but only about 2% of global climate finance goes towards cutting methane emissions. These emissions are also rising fast, due to a combination of emissions from fossil fuel production and increased emissions from wetlands, driven by the climate crisis. To slow the damage from climate change and make it possible to keep global warming below 2°C, we need to act immediately, following the Global Methane Pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% from their 2020 level by 2030.
[...] Methane doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere in the long term, so emissions reductions take effect more quickly. If we could cut all methane emissions tomorrow, in 30 years more than 90% of accumulated methane—but only around 25% of carbon dioxide—would have left the atmosphere.
Reference: “The methane imperative” 30 July 2024, Frontiers in Science.
DOI: 10.3389/fsci.2024.1349770
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2024, @02:06AM
See https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-final-rule-cut-methane-emissions-strengthen-and [epa.gov]
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Tuesday August 06 2024, @03:27AM (2 children)
i always thought it was cow farts that were the biggest source of methane in the US.
Apparently the OP was right. Who would have thought?
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2022/overview [iea.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by crm114 on Tuesday August 06 2024, @03:33AM
And yes, here is the 2024 version:
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2024 [iea.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2024, @03:50AM
Agriculture (including cows) are a major emitter:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cow-burps-are-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change-can-scientists-change-that [pbs.org]
Methane emissions from the energy sector are about 30%. But hey just burn more of that methane for energy and that reduces the problem since CO2 is less warming than methane and it means you burn less of the other hydrocarbons... 😉
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday August 06 2024, @08:25AM (15 children)
Like people who realize dieting is hard and decide to just cut on bread and rationalize it by saying that will get them most of the results faster.
Humans need to go on a true, difficult CO2 diet and I suspect that's the only hard truth to admit.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2024, @11:38AM (14 children)
Won't happen until most humans aren't poor any more. That's the truth that's difficult to admit. And I think it's telling that you want us to go the whole hog sacrifice route rather than try for low-lying fruit like dealing with the more egregious methane emission sources. If it's really that urgent and vital, then where's the triage?
My take, of course, is that climate change mitigation isn't that urgent - while ending human poverty is that urgent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday August 06 2024, @01:15PM (5 children)
Where did I say that's what I want?
I was just stating a fact: nature doesn't care if humans are rich or poor: if humans don't drastically cut their CO2 emissions, nature will forcibly take care of its human problem, whether you or I rich westerners feel good about it.
All I said was that taking care of the methane problem, while certainly important, will not solve anything and is just a way for decision-makers to feel better about not doing the one thing that really needs to happen but that hurts.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2024, @11:19PM (4 children)
Nature doesn't care about anything. If humans do or don't whole hog sacrifice by drastically cutting their CO2 emissions, nature won't care either way. It won't care if we turn Earth into a utopia or a hellish wasteland. And it certainly won't act to oppose anything we do. The only way you can get nature to care is to build intelligence and manipulators into it, and presently, the only game in town for that is humans and their funky technology.
Moving on, while I made a small leap in my earlier post, I see that your narrative of huge sacrifice continues: "drastically cut their CO2 emissions" and "the one thing that really needs to happen but that hurts". So no, not taking that back when your arguments continue to be chock full of sacrifice rhetoric of the whole hog variety.
As I've noted before, the big thing missing here is evidence. There's evidence that this many people has negative impact on global ecosystems and that more people (which we will get unless we get die-offs first) at higher standards of living will have somewhat more impact. But the developed world has already shown that we know how to master all that with improving environment, peace, and prosperity. It's the poor parts of the world responsible for actual pollution like mercury [soylentnews.org] or ocean plastics pollution [soylentnews.org], for example.
Meanwhile we have centuries of evidence that capitalist democracies worked just fine to deliver over a billion people from poverty. It just needs to be scaled up to around 10 billion (estimated peak is currently around 11 billion, but it could be reached faster with more aggressive economic development). So huge sacrifice of a proven source of human well-being for some nebulous concern about the environment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 07 2024, @12:07AM (3 children)
And why is it those regions, Hallow? Could it have anything to do with exporting the polluting and dangerous manufacturing from here to there, hmm? Hiring a hitman doesn't make you less of a murderer you know...!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 07 2024, @12:17AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 08 2024, @05:36PM (1 child)
The pollution does come from the developed world because that's who pays for it to happen, as you know. Inhabitants of the developed world consume more of the products per capita and when they pay for the products, that pays for their manufacture abroad.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 08 2024, @09:44PM
Otherwise it would be someone local paying less for it to happen. That's the thing about economics. Most of it is about marginal differences rather than absolute. When you make a choice between two options A and B, you won't choose A because it's a great choice or B is a terrible choice, but because A is under the current circumstances relatively better (or at least perceived as such) than B. A can suck, just not as much as B, or B could be a great choice too, just not quite as great as A. Here, our choices are between a polluting, developed world sourced activity and a polluting, even worse locally sourced activity (notice how local versus global turned upside down - this is a common effect when economics and rationality are applied to persistent human problems).
My view is that everyone is passing through the same phases of economic and environmental development as the developed world. There was an early high human fertility era where societies are starting to develop this infrastructure, followed by a highly polluting industrial era, followed by a transition to an environmentally aware developed world society with negative population growth. For example, my take is that China is starting to transition from industrial era society to developed world society with significant declines in pollution already occurring (such as here [statista.com]). That transition would slower and more drawn out by taking away the foreign investment and trade that has greatly accelerated this progress.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Whoever on Tuesday August 06 2024, @03:44PM (3 children)
That's not the truth. CO2 emissions per capita are much higher in wealthy countries than in poor countries. Poor people don't use as much energy as wealthy people, both directly and indirectly. Do you think those poor people in Africa have A/C in their huts?
(Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2024, @11:45PM
And the obvious rebuttal: poor people don't want to be poor. Lauding their alleged virtue, ignores a bit of reality in the process.
I think it's remarkable just how trite the concerns are here: CO2 emissions and energy consumption. Nothing truly significant compared to the enormous benefits of developed world civilization. Those poor people don't have A/C in their huts now, but they will have A/C in their homes in a few decades. Unless, of course, we hit one of the failure modes, like successfully prioritizing minor (or even negative gain) mitigation efforts over global prosperity (perhaps a Fallen Angels [wikipedia.org] scenario).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2024, @07:06AM (1 child)
FWIW China has allegedly made some progress in reducing CO2 emissions: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-carbon-emissions-set-peak-before-2030-expert-poll-2023-11-21/ [reuters.com]
I wouldn't be surprise if it's true - they've been building wind and solar in a huge way.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-wind-solar-capacity-overtake-coal-2024-industry-body-2024-01-30/ [reuters.com]
Their skies are bluer than a decade ago. So definitely burning less coal than before.
They're also building nuclear power plants: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61927 [eia.gov]
Meanwhile the US etc are mainly going la-la-la a) climate change is a hoax, b) if it's not a hoax it isn't a big problem, c) if it's a big problem it can't be fixed anyway
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 08 2024, @12:56PM
Or in other words [eia.gov] 20% of the US's power comes from renewable and 22% comes from coal power. In 2005 (from same link) coal power was almost 50% of the US's share combined with renewables under 10% (almost all hydro). The US may be la la land, but it's still making credible moves towards reducing greenhouse gases emissions. China on the other hand is not - especially considering that it's rapidly expanding its energy consumption.
I personally am unconcerned by China's energy consumption rate or its greenhouse gases emissions. I just find it interesting how once again the narratives of climate change care more about Orwellian thoughtcrime to climate change than what's actually been done in the real world - here that the US has actually reduced its emissions significantly while China has grown its emissions a lot. My take on this is that we're getting hustled by the climate change industry and China is doing the bare minimum of lip service to help that process along for the rest of us.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday August 06 2024, @03:48PM (3 children)
There goes khallow inventing backstories for people again. I do hope someone finally says what he wants them to say so he can try out his new material.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday August 06 2024, @11:47PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Thursday August 08 2024, @02:26AM (1 child)
Your claim "if humans don't drastically cut their CO2 emissions, nature will forcibly take care of its human problem" is patently absurd. There's no good reason to believe that our piddly increases in CO2 are harmful. Even making the false assumption that high CO2 will kill off most of humanity, that reduction in humanity would forcibly reduce human-caused CO2 generation: it would be self-limiting.
In the unlikely event that we do see genuine damage from CO2, it will come about slowly and we can ameliorate it. Promoting panic as the summary does hurts humanity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 08 2024, @12:14PM
Sorry, I should have used quote marks to indicate those comments came from Rosco P. Coltrane.