{"id":37414,"date":"2018-09-06T06:17:05","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T11:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37414"},"modified":"2018-09-06T06:17:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T11:17:05","slug":"methane-and-climate-10-things-you-should-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37414","title":{"rendered":"Methane and climate: 10 things you should know"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.darrinqualman.com\/methane\/\">Methane and climate: 10 things you should know<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The graph above shows methane concentrations in Earth\u2019s atmosphere over the past 10,000+ years: 8000 BCE to 2018 CE.\u00a0 The units are parts per billion (ppb).\u00a0 The year 1800 is marked with a circle.<\/p>\n<p>Note the ominous spike.\u00a0 As a result of increasing human-caused emissions, atmospheric methane levels today are two-and-a-half times higher than in 1800.\u00a0 After thousands of years of relatively stable concentrations, we have driven the trendline to near-vertical.<\/p>\n<p>Here are 10 things you should know about methane and the climate:<\/p>\n<p>1. Methane (CH<sub>4<\/sub>) is one of the three main greenhouse gases, along with carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2<\/sub>) and nitrous oxide\u00a0(N<sub>2<\/sub>O).<\/p>\n<p>2. Methane is responsible for roughly 20% of warming, while carbon dioxide is responsible for roughly 70%, and nitrous oxide the remaining 10%.<\/p>\n<p>3. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG).\u00a0 Pound for pound, it is 28 times more effective at trapping heat than is carbon dioxide.\u00a0 Though humans emit more carbon dioxide than methane, each tonne of the latter traps more heat.<\/p>\n<p>4. Fossil-fuel production is the largest single source.\u00a0 Natural gas is largely made up of methane (about 90%).\u00a0 When energy companies drill wells, \u201cfrac\u201d wells, and pump natural gas through vast distribution networks some of that methane escapes.\u00a0 (In the US alone, there are 500,000 natural gas wells, more than 3 million kilometers of pipes, and millions of valves, fittings, and compressors; see reports\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-us-natural-gas-industry-is-leaking-way-more-methane-than-previously-thought-heres-why-that-matters-98918\">here<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/early\/2018\/06\/20\/science.aar7204\">here<\/a>.)\u00a0 Oil and coal production also release methane\u2014often vented into the atmosphere from coal mines and oil wells.\u00a0 Fossil-fuel production is responsible for about 19% of <em>total<\/em> (human-caused and natural) methane emissions.\u00a0 (An excellent article by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cloudfront.escholarship.org\/dist\/prd\/content\/qt1w70820b\/qt1w70820b.pdf\">Saunois et al<\/a>. is the source for this percentage and many other facts in this blog post.)\u00a0\u00a0In Canada, policies to reduce energy-sector methane emissions by 40 percent will be phased in over the next seven years, but implementation of those policies has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/methane-emissions-regulations-changes-1.4078468\">repeatedly delayed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Methane and climate: 10 things you should know The graph above shows methane concentrations in Earth\u2019s atmosphere over the past 10,000+ years: 8000 BCE to 2018 CE.\u00a0 The units are parts per billion (ppb).\u00a0 The year 1800 is marked with a circle. Note the ominous spike.\u00a0 As a result of increasing human-caused emissions, atmospheric methane [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,141,19933,9914,328,331,386,5316,554],"class_list":["post-37414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-darrin-qualman","tag-emissions","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fracking","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-methane","tag-natural-gas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37415,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37414\/revisions\/37415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}