At the COPS27 meeting, President Biden announced new EPA rules regulating methane emissions. From the Associated Press:
At the climate conference, Biden discussed a new supplemental rule that will crack down on methane emissions, expanding on a similar regulation his administration released last year. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming.
IMO there’s considerably more bang for the buck in reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions than from reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If you believe in human-created climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions at all, those should be the focus.
As this EPA page makes clear although methane constitutes about 11% of U. S. greenhouse gas emissions, it’s a much more important contributor to climate change than carbon dioxide.
Most methane emissions are from losses during the production of oil, natural gas (and coal), especially pipeline leaks, and agriculture and that in turn is mostly from “enteric fermentation”, the digestive process of ruminants, particularly cows. There are ways of reducing both of those.
In the case of “enteric fermentation”, methane emissions can be reduced by what you feed cows and how you deal with manure. You don’t need to eliminate the raising of cattle entirely; even fairly minor reductions in methane emissions should be adequate.
I believe that one regular commenter here is something of an expert on this subject and I hope he chimes in.
I’m less enthusiastic about what’s referred to as “loss and damage” (payoffs to poorer countries) for two reasons. First, because it’s a license to steal and second, because it only considers one side of the ledger. I don’t believe that the United States is a net liability to the world. Indeed, quite the opposite but the notion of “loss and damage” payments certainly suggests that’s the case.
At any rate I look forward to the actual policy that emerges from this. I hope there are carrots as well as sticks.
In the name of global warming the corn lobby strikes again.
I believe that one regular commenter here is something of an expert on this subject and I hope he chimes in.
Wait, are you saying that one of your regular commenters is an expert in bullshit? 😂
If you mean me, my expertise is in human excrement.
I was under the impression that the major natural source of methane gas was termite colonies, especially the tropical ones. As to cattle, I have to imagine that 8 billion humans excrete more methane than they do. But all animals excrete some methane.
I’m not sure if feeding cattle easily digestible corn increases methane or not. Cattle, and all ruminants (all hoofed grazers and browsers) ferment cellulose to acetic acid in their first stomach. They then absorb the acetic acid, which is their actual food source. The unabsorbed acid and other products get passed down the stomach system where further fermentations produce other products for the ruminant and methane as a waste gas.
The tundra is supposed to contain a huge amount of methane, and if global warming melts it, there is supposed to be a runaway global warming driven by the released methane.
Count me dubious. We are recovering from the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1300 or 1400 AD to about 1850 AD. It was actually as warm in the 1930’s as it is today. (NOAA keeps “adjusting” the records.) It was warmer in the Middle Ages (the Medieval Climatic Optimum), warmer yet during the expansion of the Roman Empire, still warmer during the Minoan age, and warmest yet during the neolithic revolution. The long term trend is, therefore, down, and the arguments over AGW are whether the current warming trend will reverse the natural trend.
The people who believe in AGW are willing to shut down our modern economies, both industrial and agricultural, and the only possible consequence is depopulation and a return to medieval politics and economics.
Again I refer you to the archives at Manhattan Contrarian for his excellent series on the economics of renewables. To go completely electric for the whole economy means at least tripling our total electrical generating and distribution capacities all the why to your wall sockets.
If we go totally renewables (average 10% capacity factor) we will need several times that tripling, and the batteries alone will have an annualized (i.e., every year) cost of some 50% of current GDP.
If we go totally nuclear, we need about 1,600* 1000 MW power plants. At $10 billion per plant that’s about $16 trillion up front, or about 70% of total GDP.
*(To generate current electrical power, you need 500 plants total and you need to replace the existing 100 elderly plants, so 600 minimum. To triple electrical power you need 1,500 plus the 100 replacements.)