Former White House climate adviser calls methane ‘irrelevant’ to climate | Hacker News Reader

Former White House climate adviser calls methane ‘irrelevant’ to climate

sciencemag.org

42 pointspseudolus65 comments

>Methane, by contrast, is mostly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12 years. Thus although methane is a potent greenhouse gas, its effect is relatively short-lived.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou...

And then it breaks down to CO2. That is a basic and well understood part of climate science, that’s how the calculations are made which show an 80 fold higher impact for Methane per unit mass than for CO2 over a 20 year period, and 20 fold higher impact over a 100 year period.

As the climate scientist says in the article, this doesn’t disprove mainstream climate science, and the calculations are correct but banal, and just presented in a way to give a misleading impression of a smaller impact. The author is quite open about preparing the paper specifically to give ammunition to efforts to roll back Oil and Gas regulations.

Methane is 16.04 g/mol and CO2 is 44.01 g/mol. PPM of CO2 is 415 and PPM of Methane is something like 1.8 PPM.

Increase in CO2 is something like 15PPM/decade. Increase in Methane is 0.1PPM/decade (or less).

So in absolute terms, the relative effect of Methane compared to CO2, using the 80x figure is (1.8 * 16 * 80) / (415*44.01) = 12.6%.

And in growth terms, the relative effect of Methane is 19%.

However, since methane is limited by total land under cultivation, and it has actual hit a stable PPM in the last decade (unlike CO2 which grows exponentially), CO2 is by far the larger component in any climate models projecting into the future.

In conclusion, Former White House adviser can actually math while your 80x figure needed to be put into context. I do not know where you get your information from, but I expect that it is from someone trying to make a tendentious environmental case against cows more than it's about someone trying to present unbiased facts.

You don't disagree with me on the science. Methane has a limited half life, this is well understood and built into the models. You are repeating the science as if it were different, and then drawing different conclusions from it.

I don't see what the absolute numbers have to do with whether or not oil or gas installations should be able to vent a particular quantity of methane.

Or why it matters that another unrelated source of Methane is limited. If cattle produced a similar but different molecule that would reduce the Methane absolute numbers dramatically, but in reality would have no impact on the question at hand. This is all like saying that driving a car in North Dakota matters less than in California, because North Dakota has lower total absolute emissions. It is sophistry.

To summarize your comment, you're calculating that methane contributes around 12% to atmospheric heat trapping (when only considering methane and CO2), and conclude that it is therefore irrelevant.

I don't think your own calculation supports that conclusion.

CO2 is growing exponentially. CH4 is not. If CO2 were stuck at the current level forever, nobody would care about global warming. It's future expected doublings that are driving the danger scenarios.

Let me make it extremely simple: there are future expected doublings of CO2 ppm, but there are none for CH4. The share of warming for CH4 compared to CO2 is low and will only get lower.

The NOAA Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network [1, 2] is a great resource for this. Their data on methane goes back to 1984, so I compared methane and CO2 concentrations in the 1984-2019 time frame. In this time frame, the atmospheric CO2 concentration grew by 19.7% (from 344 to 412 ppm), the concentration of methane grew by 14.7% (from 1630 to 1870 ppb).

So, you're right that CO2 is growing a bit faster, but the difference really is rather small.

In addition to this, there are highly nonlinear effects that may occur in the future that others have alluded to, such as the clathrate gun hypothesis [3]. Even in the absence of such dramatic effects, you would expect methane levels to further increase with increasing meat consumption in countries that are getting wealthier (e.g. in India, China).

Edit: I should also point out that the claim that only future doublings in CO2 concentration matter is totally wrong. Even in the IPCC report's worst case scenario, CO2 concentrations will grow to ca. 1000 ppm by 2100, just over a single further doubling [4]. In the best case scenario, they stabilize a bit under 500 ppm, which is just another 20% increase from today. In that best case scenario (B1), global temperatures are still expected to rise by slightly more than 1.5°C by 2100 [5]!

[1] https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/

[2] https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Projected_changes_over_th...

[5] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chap... (Fig. 10.4)

  CO2 is growing exponentially.

No, it isn't. 68 parts per million in 35 years isn't remotely "exponential" growth. It's roughly half a percentage point a year.

Meaningful, yes. Exponential, not hardly.

Saying it is a few percent per year is proof that it is an exponential growth, per its definition.

since methane is limited by total land under cultivation

This isn't true. There have been numerous stories of methane stores (e.g. Siberia) that have begun leaking in recent years.

Don't get your news from the places peddling that stuff. Here is what CH4 has been doing since 1985 (notice ppb, not ppm):

https://imgur.com/gaKEU3g

Historical data can't refute an argument about future melting permafrost...

An argument without any data can't refute an argument with historical data, either.

"per unit mass" is the operative term since there is far far less methane being emitted.

Methane was only relevant because it was such a strong greenhouse gas. As CO2, it becomes just a drop in the bucket.

It becomes in combination 80 fold higher over 20 years and 20 fold higher over 100 years, per unit mass.

Incidentally the reaction from Methane to CO2 produces 2.5 times more mass of CO2 than the Methane it starts with, which is one reason why the impact remains quite high. And of course everyone knows Methane emissions are relatively low, otherwise given their potency their effect on GHG warming would be a lot more than the 15% of thereabouts which it is at the moment.

This is all like attacking an IPCC claim that the sea level is going to rise by 1m over 100 years by saying it won’t rise by 5m, but by on average 1cm a year for 100 years. We know that already.

What exactly are you trying to say with this? The tone of your comment sounds as if you're trying to disagree with your parent comment or somehow put it in perspective, when in fact you're just stating a related fact that is totally compatible with it.

That why we look at the "global warming potential" [1]. But even with a time horizon of 100 years, methane is still 30 times potent than CO2. How can it be irrelevant?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

30 times more potent for a similar mass. But we emit far far more CO2 than methane. To know if it's important you'd need to know by how much.

Well, methane is one the reasons why livestock and paddy fields emit so much greenhouse gases. These two examples are not insignificant.

Significance is almost beside the point. Any methane "emitted" by livestock is already present in the carbon cycle: cows eat grass which is made of atmospheric carbon. It isn't sensible to compare that to carbon from fossil fuels. This "methane is worse" proposition was used to argue that livestock production is as bad as burning fossil fuels, but of course that completely falls apart if the main problem with methane is the carbon dioxide into which it degrades. That carbon dioxide may have been methane for the last 12 years, but immediately before that it was grass and immediately before that it was the same existing carbon dioxide that it is again now. There isn't something magical about a cow's gut that somehow multiplies carbon levels.

> Any methane "emitted" by livestock is already present in the carbon cycle: cows eat grass which is made of atmospheric carbon. It isn't sensible to compare that to carbon from fossil fuels.

Considering that:

a. most cows in today’s world don’t eat grass, or rather, they eat a lot more soy, corn and other foods grown for them

b. the feed for the cows is grown using conventional methods to keep costs under control, which also implies using fertilizers that are produced from fossil fuels (also add the fossil fuels used in the transport of feed as well as the animals)

I don’t understand how your entire argument holds true. Seems like there are gaps in your model of the world.

With a traditional grazing system he's right. You don't need any fertilizers, cows will just eat grass. Of course you can't feed billions of people with it nor you will be able to eat meat every day.

But even if you are carbon neutral over time, the methane released will still have a negative effect as it trap more energy than CO2.

https://www.nzagrc.org.nz/faq-1,listing,464,how-do-livestock...

Most European cattle are grass fed, it's nothing to do with the amount of people you can feed with it. US and Canadian cattle are grain fed because the US grows huge amounts of subsidised grain and it's cheap. It really is that simple.

Some studies claim you get a sixth of the methane from grass fed cows.

Even USA herds mostly feed on grass or hay. Animals only go to the feedlots for a few months before slaughter. They do add a lot of mass in that period. Anyway, beef consumers can certainly vote on this topic. If you prefer the taste or morality of grass-fed beef, it's available for purchase.

You are right saying that the carbon cycle is a closed cycle, there is no net change over time in carbon dioxide concentrations (as you are not using fossile fuels or burying grass). But during the 12 years lifespan of methane you will have considerably more radiative forcing.

This has always been my thought as well, and I have never gotten a good explanation as to why it's wrong. If anyone has one I would love to hear it.

It was explained to me as: "even if an activity is carbon neutral, if it increases the net free atmospheric carbon it can have a negative effect."

The areas we devote to cattle raising are increasing (often at the cost of carbon fixing native flora). So the amount of free methane and carbon are on the rise just by nature of human expansion.

I'm not sure that is the whole story, but I always found that explanation helpful for questions like, "Why can't we switch to using charcoal based local power if its carbon neutral?"

The numerator integral must decline rapidly as a function of TH unless the radiative efficiency is a strong function of time, which seems unlikely. Most of the actual warming effect of a methane release would occur in the first three decades, after which there would be a long tail of slight warming. Methane is not irrelevant, but "global warming potential" seems to obscure the actual time varying nature of the relative impacts. Methane is actually a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short run and less strong in the long run that global warming potential would indicate.

He is also a Princeton Physics Professor. But that would make just a boring headline?

Why does this matter? This isn't his field. It'd be like if an honorary professor in another field said something ridiculous about biology; we'd go, "Cool story, bro."

I'm saying: if Ray Kurzweil gets negative press when he says something absurd outside of his lane, then certainly a guy who openly says he's a climate science denier is going to.

So what would be the 'proper' field for commenting on 'climate science' ?

Are there faculties of 'Climate Science' ?

If anything, I will listen to anybody's arguments if they have a grasp of math first, physics second, chemistry 3rd.

> Are there faculties of 'Climate Science' ?

Yes, actually. Most major universities in my country have an "atmospheric science" department and some of the major findings in the field have come from them. People who focus on climate are indeed called "climate scientists."

> If anything, I will listen to anybody's arguments if they have a grasp of math first, physics second, chemistry 3rd.

So you'd trust a particle physicists opinion about exoplanets over and astrophysicist who specializes in exoplanet hunting? I'm sorry, but that seems misguided. Why do you hate specialization? It's a pillar of modern physics.

Why do you dismiss outside scrutiny so easily? Sounds very much like 'Only members of the church may critize the church'.

Well, strictly speaking the actual Church where this paper is from backs the Trump Administration in its climate science denial.

But as others have pointed out: the claims in this paper aren't very strong. Further, they don't directly dispute anthropogenic global warming. All they do is suggest that methane shouldn't be regulated because it breaks down over 40 years.

However, it breaks down to component greenhouse gases, which the paper fails to mention. This seems to be a fatal stake in the heart of this argument.

Did you skim the article in question? Even quickly? If not, don't you feel a bit ashamed for participating in this discussion without making even the most basic effort?

I assume you therefore would also go to a mathematician or a physicist for a medical diagnosis, over a doctor or chemist too? If not, why not?

(And yes, there are Environmental Science departments - or at least that's what they're called in the UK)

Yes, environmental science is a real field.

And he only collaborated with the gov in the early 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Happer#Career

He also single-handedly set back US Gov’t climate change efforts by a few crucial years. He’s evil and deranged.

Source: several climate change people I know who work for Uncle Sam.

How is that relevant to climate? Atomic physics with no training in climate science doesn't seem especially helpful here.

> A summary of their paper, which has not been published in a mainstream science journal, was submitted to EPA during the public comment period on a plan to roll back regulations for methane leaked during the production, processing, transmission and storage of oil and natural gas

Sounds like old man, from an irrelevant field has become a useful industry shill. One way to top up the pension in your 80s I guess.

Methane seems a nice follow-up after being [from Wikipedia]: co-founder and board member of an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition. Happer described the group as aiming to "educate the public that increased atmospheric levels of CO2 will benefit the world"

Such a shallow dismissal ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )

The "shallow dismissal" rule is based on the assumption that everyone is acting in good faith. When some posts their latest weekend project with their Raspberry Pi, that's a fair assumption. When someone who's worked for the White House is publishing a climate change denial paper with the funding of the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers, good faith is no longer a rational assumption. They may of course still be genuine in the end, but the first task is to establish signs of good faith before immediately assuming the argument is intended to be serious. It does no benefit to discourse to seriously engage with people who aren't trying to play the game by the rules in the first place.

Every scientist is getting paid.

Agreed, but the original argument was also not meaningful. The credentials are not useful.

You should report it to the mods and ask if they agree.

If you want to do something on climate change as a techie, I would suggest helping out projects here: https://github.com/topics/climate-change

I would also suggest joining communities like https://climateaction.tech/

I'm still curious if climate change is really a serious threat to human kind, because it sounds like it is. It's a little weird that nobody can confirm it.

I never had a clear answer when asking if a temperature increase would be a threat to the food supply, but +4C seems like a lot. Even displacing crops to the north sounds a little crazy.

But it's true that climate change demonstrated how so many people are just uneducated. It's impossible to talk science when politics are concerned. Technocracy looks like it's compatible with democracy and there are times I wish science was part of the political process. Officials are generally poorly educated on science, and it's a problem (that adviser is educated on science).

So about as relevant as man-made CO2 contributions to "climate change" then?

What are you trying to say here? My first reading is that you disagree with anthropogenic global warming, but if you did that then you'd be disagreeing with the paper we're discussing and as far as I can tell, you don't.

Can you clarify? Am I just misreading?

If you suppose methane is "irrelevant" to climate change, like the adviser suggests, that surely implies made-made CO2 contributions are about as relevant.

In this case not very, or irrelevant.

Definitely doesn't sound as humorous when written like that, though I'll clarify as it seems you are asking earnestly

We have seen that doctors said & agreed that fats are bad and that cigarettes are good.

So to dismiss any reasearch which shows that our effect on the climante is lesser than we thing is equally stupid.

There is a difference between protecting the planet and blindly following anything that climate "scientists" say.

Even in natural sciences 50% of articles is wrong due to statistics being hard and humans being humans.

Climate activism has been politized: and once that happens all objectivity goes out of the window.

In germany a group of scientists who wanted to present that research that goes against the "climate destruction" agenda were threatened by local antifa-like thugs and the police did nothing to protect them.

Modern climate activism is the same as book burning where the book burning now means "destroy anything that shows us the opposite".

Thus it is not objective anymore and thus we cannot really trust anything that comes from it.

If your reasearch $$$ depends on you to keep showing that humans are destroying the climate then in one way or the other you will find the reason, no matter how far-fetched it might be: humans want money and a good life.

> If your reasearch $$$ depends on you to keep showing that humans are destroying the climate

Except if you cared about money, it is far easier to sell out and take the money from the industry groups who want to fund research to throw the science into doubt.

Do you have figures on the size of government funding for climate research relative to the size of private funding for climate research?

Federal spending is just shy of twelve billion as of 2014 plus an additional twenty-six billion [0] ,and has likely increased since then. Private funding is harder to measure. I also think there's a case to be made that many people are "integrating backwards", looking for a specific answer and finding the research to justify that. This always happens when an issue is politicized, and this issue is undoubtedly politicized.

[0] https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_manage...

Meanwhile in the oil & gas drilling and exploration sector:

> According to market research by IBISWorld, a leading business intelligence firm, the total revenues for the oil and gas drilling sector came to $2 trillion in 2017.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030915/what-percent...

>total revenues for the oil and gas drilling sector came to $2 trillion in 2017.

And all that money was immediately given to dirty evil fake scientists, right?

Funding is irrelevant to this question, salary is the important part: if the scientist is selling out their principles for personal gain, it's their take home that will matter to them.

There is a LOT of documentation on scientists making a lot more money in private industry than in government sponsored research.

Any examples of high profile climate scientists who have moved on to make a lot of money doing research unrelated to global warming?

Not that I've ever seen. That's the weird part of the original accusation, climate deniers are, almost as a rule, people with degrees in unrelated fields (often education ironically). This "climate advisor" of the original article is a Physics Professor specializing in atomic physics, optics and spectroscopy.

Accusing climate researchers of skewing their results for funding makes no sense when they are ALL on the same side of the argument and that you could make hay in the current adminstration by being on the other side.

Occams razor would lead us to the conclusing that the evidence really is super overwhelming ...

Yes, literally from this article about this “research”

> "As far as from a global effect on climate, [methane] is immeasurably small," van Wijngaarden told E&E News. So "some of these people have said, you know, that could you please just write something up that we can use as ammunition," he said.

We have seen that scientists use to say that the Sun circled the Earth, therefore to dismiss any research that shows that stabbing yourself with a fork is painful is equally stupid.

In a world where everyone seems to think solutions to problems are always about manipulating the way people think and feel it's very hard to trust mainstream discourse.

> In a world where everyone seems to think solutions to problems are always about...

"everyone"? "always"? Your generalisations may be doing as much harm as anyone you're criticising.

> We have seen that doctors said & agreed that fats are bad and that cigarettes are good... So to dismiss any reasearch which shows that our effect on the climante is lesser than we thing is equally stupid.

Sure, science is an iterative process and it can make mistakes. But is that what happened here? Folks pointed out that the claim itself is odd since methane breaks down into CO2 which is yet another greenhouse gas, and the paper seems to ignore that. Furthermore, they pointed out he's not actually speaking to his specialty, so extra skepticism is reasonable.

> Climate activism has been politized: and once that happens all objectivity goes out of the window.

Aren't you guilty of doing exactly that in this post?

Governments (e.g. taxes on fuel) and oil companies have a financial incentive to promote fossil fuels so if they were funding research you would expect a bias against anthropogenic climate change. Can you resolve this contradiction?

The possible gain (both in money and in regulatory powers) from imposing the carbon footprint tax on corporations and individuals dwarfs any existing fuel taxes. It's not about climate, it's about further control of the populace's private affairs.

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