Guardian Panicking About Methane
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
I can only conclude that Guardian reporters are all neurotic. Take this piece of hysteria from Damian Carrington:
Vast releases of gas, along with future ‘methane bombs’, represent huge threat – but curbing emissions would rapidly reduce global heating
More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points
Maybe the silly Carrington would not panic so much if he understood some of the basic facts about methane:
1) Methane is a short lived gas; its concentration in the atmosphere declines by about a half every ten years. Any methane emitted today will virtually have disappeared by 2050, which is when we are all supposed to be worried about.
Indeed all we have to is maintain the current rate of emissions for atmospheric concentrations to level off quickly.
2) Methane concentration in the atmosphere has been rising rapidly since the 1980s, and no doubt before. There is nothing “scary” about the surge since 2007:
3) If methane really has been responsible for 25% of global “heating”, and the IPCC actually reckon the figure is actually higher at around 30 to 50%, then clearly we don’t have to worry about carbon dioxide.
Given that at least a part of the warming since the Little Ice Age is natural, the amount of residual warming caused by CO2 is so small as to be inconsequential.
4) Although in theory methane is a powerful GHG, in the real atmosphere its effect is irrelevant because the absorption bands of methane are already dominated by water vapour:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-greenhouse-gas/
5) GHG effects are logarithmic, so any extra methane in the atmosphere has progressively less and less effect.
So why all the panic, Damian?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
These Guardian reporters aren’t neurotic. They are paid via Bill Gates to write such propaganda.
What’s in it all for Gates?
World domination by techno fascists
I think he (and others) want to reduce the global population by one means or another … the fake climate change scare, the fake pandemic scare or whatever comes to hand.
I believe he is the biggest private landholder in the USA so he is keen to promote the climate change meat-eating scare so that he can supply some kind of witches-brew alternative, insects even.
He turned $10 billion invested in pharma into $200 billion by pushing the pandemic/vaccine scam.
His mega-billions seem to have turned his head.
Brodie, if you actually believe the pandemic/vaccine was a scam, you really shouldn’t be in a group which I hope values facts above ludicrous conspiracy nonsense.
DG-J What is ‘frighten the pants off everyone’? The current (much delayed by Pfizer etc.) whistleblower case in USA raises questions too.
Bill is 67 and looks 87. Still, he “could” be around for another 30 years. That’s scarier than a degree of warming.
So, DG-J, what do you take “deploying’ new virus variant to ‘frighten the pants off everyone” to mean?
Does that sound scientific to you?
And are you aware that the average age of fatalities was in fact higher than average life expectation?
Also the UK survival rate was 99.76%?
Despite those figures, do you really believe the propaganda that Covid-19 was the existential threat it was purported to be and worth destroying the economy, disrupting the education of children and causing a massive increase in mental illness throughout all levels of society, most especially children in whom it has caused a huge increase in suicide?
And how about the claims that the “vaccines” prevented infection and transmission were known by the authorities to be flat out lies even before thev were introduced?
I think you need to review your understanding of the definition of the word “facts”, myself.
To DGJ – who are you to try and attack people for the comments made here ?
Me thinks it is you that is in the wrong group.
Go find one that does not like open discussion; instead preferring and attempting to put people down.
Like the Grauniad’s comments section? Allegedly.
FAO David Guy-Johnson: I have campaigned against the climate change scam for the last three decades, all to no avail. Three years ago the global establishment switched away from their slow burn climate change scam to their full on Coronavirus scam and my campaigning switched to expose what they were doing.
As it happens, only yesterday I signalled my “retirement” from all campaigning with a swan song post which might enlighten you, see https://metatron.substack.com/p/covid-climate-change-agenda-2030.
If you still can’t see it, I doubt your critical thinking abilities.
Paul; thanks for that succinct analysis. I plan to keep it for future reference as this meme keeps popping up.
At the end of the last ice age when the permafrost melted, huge amounts of methane were released as large volumes of gas were (and still are) trapped beneath (what is left of) the permafrost. There is no geological signature of this.
No climatic impact whatsoever.
David Coe’s analyses last year showed clearly that methane is insignificant in terms of warming potential. The entire fear-campaign generating forcing-fiction is based on feedback loops with moisture providing the real impetus for warming. This mechanism is purely mathematical fiddling along with the “Well mixed Greenhouse gas” fable.
The same people who are criticising CH4 leaks (at about 6% of usage apparently), are advocating hydrogen which will leak far more and affects the stratospheric ozone layer: a far more dangerous proposition.
Paul
Thanks for reading the Guardian so we don’t need to!
You can explain and promote anything if people will not bother to think.
Bloody hell, we will have no atmosphere soon!Then what would we do?
Save up for a seat on Elons rocket I suppose.
Stoking anxiety is part of the printed media’s strategy of maintaining readership. The Guardian swims in the deeper parts of that particular pond. How else can Monbiot retain a place in the forum? Decomposition in historic domestic waste land fill sites in Norfolk UK vent methane freely into the atmosphere.
And today, that BBC numpty McGrath is creaming his trousers over a cunning wheeze to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. So then Matt, what happens to plant life when you do that?
Oh no ! Not the cow farts argument again. We are surely doomed.
Except it’s not the rear end but the belches from the front end that emit the methane
Ah hah, burps as opposed to bottom burps
I believe that only CO2 of the GHG is logarithmic,I may be wrong, so if anyone knows for sure…
I think (although I am open to correction) the capture capability of all GHGs is logarithmic and that furthermore as there are only a fixed number of photons of the within the correct width of energy level the logarithmic effect encompasses all photon capture capable gases, hence the GHG curve is already asymptotic so addition of extra gas will have a diminishing effect.
And John Tyndall MEASURED methane as 4.5 times more absorbing of IR than dry** CO2. This figure has been inflated again & again by the Cult members. I don’t know what figure this scare was based on but would be astonished if it was less than 80.
And the Green Cult is mostly
responsiblethe cause of increasing levels in their obsession with renewables which have to be ‘backed up’ with ‘clean’ natural gas consumption. The next scare will be ammonia as they want to use it as a carrier for hydrogen transport by ships. Tyndall measured it as 13.3 times more absorbing than CO2.** All gases were carefully dried for the measurements, and he picked up residual error of 0.25% which cause he tracked and modified his experiment.
(And a note he measured CO – carbon monoxide – as the same as CO2).