Lakes don’t grow and grow and consume the world.
Lakes don’t grow and grow and consume the world.
No, they don't usually grow forever, that's true. But floods happen, and that's bad. Last time methane was this high it was millions of years ago, and Earth had no ice caps. We have already flooded the atmosphere with methane, and the consequences of this will take decades, if not centuries, to play out. Contrary to our current instant-gratification dopamine loops of today, the lag between cause and effect isn't two damn seconds or even one frickin year. So stay tuned.
Was it all from agriculture? We don't know. There's plenty of methane coming from fossil fuel production. Just go read the Wikipedia article I linked. We do know that we are getting close to setting off some very bad feedback loops, as arctic permafrost is starting to thaw, and it's going to produce gobs of methane.
We are in the knifes edge of too cold. A little extra green house gas to buffer out the ice age is a good thing.
The alarmism is more likely propaganda than legitimate scientific inquiry.
Its happening and accelerating: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
If you need something visual look at the Miami type floods.
Also consider this is an issue that needs to be planned across hundreds of years. It might be slow but we dont move a city like NY in a decade.
Look at this: https://sealevelrise.org/states/new-york/#:~:text=The%20sea%....
Genuinely, do you feel these links are alarmism and propaganda?
That's much more akin to digging carbon out of the ground to run processes than steady state cow methane production/degradation
Methane leaks from fossil fuel systems: 30%
Methane from landfills: 20%
Animal agriculture, including also manure management: 30%
Plant agriculture: 15%
Other: 5%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissionsPlant agriculture is especially rice paddies, I guess.
The first two categories are almost entirely new. Especially given human population is way bigger than it was in past ages, so past landfills likely weren’t so large.
This is surprising to me as I has figured ruminants caused more of an increase. If we could cut their emissions by 80% with seaweed this analysis suggests their overall contribution would be lower than it historically was.