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> Methane has accounted for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times and is proliferating faster than at any other time since record keeping began in the 1980s. In fact, according to data from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even as carbon dioxide emissions decelerated during the pandemic-related lockdowns of 2020, atmospheric methane shot up.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/methane-emission...

Your position/speed/acceleration analogy is misleading from a physics perspective. The amount of GHG in the atmosphere determines an equilibrium point. More GHG corresponds to a hotter equilibrium. There's some delay in moving to the new equilibrium, so even if we stopped all emissions, the world would keep getting hotter for a little while before settling at the new equilibrium. But removing GHG from the atmosphere does lower the equilibrium temperature, even if we don't get it all the way back to pre-industrial levels.

> Even completely eliminating methane will not reduce warming, it will only reduce (slightly) the rate of acceleration of the rate of warming.

Can you share some references?

The article itself:

> Methane accounts for half of the average 1.0 degrees C of warming the world suffered over the past decade and reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming.

The other half of the warming will continue even without Methane.

Thanks!

You argument is technically solid, don't grief due to the downvotes. Maybe people are downvoting because they aren't aware of derivations.

You are wrong:

- Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

- Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for about 20 percent of global emissions.

https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

Methane has a pretty easy resolution as well. Capture and burn it. Even if you simply emit the resultant CO2 in the atmosphere you've drastically decreased the impact.

> Methane is generally a secondary byproduct in the industrial processes from which it is emitted. Coal mines, for example, seek to vent methane from the mine workings because it can cause explosions. Historically, mining companies have not viewed the associated methane as an energy resource in its own right.

It's mostly associated with fossil fuel extraction so the other solution to the methane problem is decreasing fossil fuel consumption in general.

You are both right. What you say is true, and yet removing all that would still not reduce warming, it would only reduce the acceleration of the rate of warming.

Because we're still increasing the rate at which we emit other greenhouses gases, and even if we emitted none anymore a lot of warming is already locked in.

I don't really see the distinction here (other than in an uber pedantic sense).

All efforts to combat global warming about reducing or eliminating the acceleration. If one of those methods is both cheap and has a fairly high impact (which, methane reduction appears to be) then why are we focusing on "but this doesn't eliminate global warming"?

Adding renewables and nuclear to the grid won't eliminate global warming, but they slow it down. Eliminating methane appears to be a route where we can more aggressively stomp on the breaks.

I think it's important to avoid saying doing X will reduce warming if it doesn't do that, so that people don't start believing that it will be sufficient to do only this.

I've never seen anyone insinuate that eliminating methane emissions would fix global warming.

The only time I've seen that argument raised is for the opposite "Because this won't fix global warming, we shouldn't do it?".

Global warming will require a multifaceted approach to be solve. No one solution will fix it, so literally any solution is going to have a detractor that says "This won't fix it, so why bother with it?"

The title of the submission insinuates it. The comment just corrected that. Of course we should do everything we can to reduce methane emissions.

> Reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming

Reducing and fixing or eliminating are not the same thing. How could they have worded the title better? "Limiting methane emissions will have an outsized impact given the cost"?

Reducing global average warming is not the same as reducing global average temperature, although that can be the result over time if the rate of warming is reduced below 0. 'X will reduce warming' is describing a reduction to the positive rate of change.

It's also true that increasing global average warming can result in reduced warming and temperatures in some geographic areas so it is important to be specific with terminology depending on which aspect of the climate change debate we're talking about. You are right that the title is unintentionally misleading in this regard.

The amount of warming depends on the amount of gas (CO2, CH4 or other) in the atmosphere. Stopping all emissions today would not change the huge amounts all ready up there. So we are locked in for a certain amount of warming.

The rate of emissions just controls how much more warming and how much sooner the existing warming will occur.

This is one of the core problems with Human responses to the problem: people think they can wait until it gets 'bad enough' then stop their emissions and things will improve. But they will keep getting worse because of the lag between emissions and effects.

As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane.

The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions...

1: https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane

> As for CO2 vs Methane, Methane is responsible for about 20% of all man made warming (1). So eliminating it completely would still leave 80% of warming... This is because we emit a lot, lot more CO2 than Methane.

> The division is really a false one IMHO, because a lot of methane comes from coal mining and oil/gas extraction. So unless you stop using fossil fuels (the number 1 CO2 source) you cannot stop methane emissions...

But if you can eliminate that 20% with minimal effort or expenditure, why wouldn't you?

Most of that is coming from emissions related to fossil fuel extraction. Which is a perfect opportunity for capture.

CO2 emissions, on the other hand, is coming from a million different sources and doesn't have a single clean solution. There's not a one step process for eliminating 20% of CO2 emissions.

I think you need to consider that methane has a half-life of about 10 years in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide on the other hand is one order of magnitude higher than that. I understand now that what you are trying to say is that CO2 will still be a problem, that's a fact that nobody is denying here, but the way you stated your original post makes it sound like reducing CH4 emissions would be meaningless in regards to global warming.

This is not correct.

You have to account for reversing all of the profligate methane producing swampland, turning it back into swampland, to fully account for this as part of the calculation.

We've done planetscale engineering already by how much methane we've reduced by converting swamp to farm/urban land.

That statement directly contradicts the claim made in that article:

Methane accounts for half of the average 1.0 degrees C of warming the world suffered over the past decade and reducing methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming.

Why do you think this claim is wrong?

I edited my comment above but basically...

That 1 degree isn't due to current CH4 emissions, it's due to CH4 already up there. So we will get it whether we emit more CH4 or not.

Plus there is another 1-1.5 degrees from CO2 and other sources. And that will also still be there.

So the planet WILL keep warming and that includes the amounts being listed...

It's a bit like if you stop turning the tap on a bath tub: it's still quite full AND it's still filling, it's just no longer filling FASTER than it was before (from that tap, the other tap is still being opened further...)

So CH4 breaks down rather quickly in the atmosphere. If we were to eliminate CH4 emissions completely, then within a decade there would be virtually no CH4 left in the atmosphere.

Also when you say "reduce warming" do you mean "reduce global temperatures" or "reduce the rate of increase in global temperatures?" I think the article means the latter..

Its not a contradiction - "accounts for half [...] of warming" means half of the warming will continue without Methane.

Yes but nobody is claiming that warming will be eliminated without methane -- just reduced. GP claims that warming will not even be reduced, but the article claims that it will.

It feels a bit like celebrating reducing pressure on the gas pedal in a car, one that is currently approaching a wall. You need to 1) stop accelerating 2) deccelerate and 3) have enough distance to come to a stop. Regarding climate change, i neither see 2 or 3, so the collision is as inevitable as it was before. And what this article describes isn't even doing half of 1.

The only sensible thing is to keep the carbon (and methane) in the ground, which is the only thing we _won't_ do. The only reasonable conclusion I can draw from the fact that we intend to keep polluting is that the problem will get worse. I'm happy to be wrong, but there's nothing I'm seeing in mainstream media to suggest we're doing anything to actually reduce pollution (like implementing a global carbon tax, which is the easiest and most effective thing that should have been done 20+ years ago).

The hard truth is that capitalism (and infinite growth) is at odds with a stable climate. We've enjoyed a goldilocks period in the Earth's history of unusually stable climate, and now humans have decided to upset the balance.

We might be able to adapt, but we might not. This is the 6th mass extinction event in Earth's history, and I'm not convinced we're so special that we can somehow engineer our way to survival, especially since our ability to engineer depends on doing the things that have all but guaranteed our demise (i.e., most economic growth is powered by fossil fuels).

EDIT: Fix the words.

I agree.

I'm hopeful we will engineer our way out of it.

It worries me that people don't "get" this. They think it's a matter of doing a few small things and celebrating. And it's not.