I expect the industry and its enablers like AER don’t give a shit about the IEA or life on earth and will not work to reduce methane or carbon emissions. Instead, they and their corrupt politicians like Dildo Danielle and Pierre Picklehead will escalate the lies, claiming to be reducing methane pollution while increasing it with exporting LNG (to drive up prices to feed the greed) and scams like carbon capture for politicians to steal money from the public to launder into pockets of the rich while companies increase production and methane and other pollution.
Pollution of the potent warming gas methane soars and people are mostly to blame by Seth Borenstein, September 10, 2024, AP News
The amount and proportion of the powerful heat-trapping gas methane that humans spew into the atmosphere is rising, helping to turbocharge climate change, a new study finds.
Tuesday’s study finds that in 2020, the last year complete data is available, the world put 670 million tons (608 million metric tons) of methane in the air, up nearly 12% from 2000. An even more significant finding in the study in Environmental Research Letters was the source of those emissions: those from humans jumped almost 18% in two decades, while natural emissions, mostly from wetlands, inched up just 2% in the same time.
Methane levels in the air are now 2.6 times higher than in pre-industrial times, the study said. Methane levels in the air had plateaued for a while in the early 2000s, but now are soaring. Humans cause methane emissions by burning fossil fuels, engaging in large-scale agriculture and filling up landfills.
“Methane is a climate menace that the world is ignoring,” study lead author Rob Jackson, head of the Global Carbon Project, which is a group of scientists who monitor greenhouse gas emissions yearly. “Methane has risen far more and much faster than carbon dioxide.”
Carbon dioxide is still the biggest threat, said Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist. Humans, mostly through the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, put 60 times more carbon dioxide in the air than methane and it lasts thousands of years.
Because methane leave the atmosphere in about a decade, it’s a powerful “lever” that humans can use to fight climate change, Jackson said. That’s because cutting it could yield relatively quick benefits.
In 2000, 60% of the methane spewed into the air came from direct human activity. Now it’s 65%, the study found.
“It’s a very worrying paper, but actually not a big surprise unfortunately,” said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, who wasn’t part of the research. He said for the world to keep warming to an agreed-upon limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, the world needs to cut carbon dioxide emissions nearly in half and methane by more than one-third.
But Jackson said the current trend with methane emissions has the world on target for warming of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), twice the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Jackson’s study mostly focused on where the methane is coming from, both by location and source.
Geographically, everywhere but Europe is increasing in human-caused methane emissions, with large jumps in Asia, especially China and India, Jackson said.
In the last 20 years, methane emissions from coal mining, oil and gas have jumped 33%, while landfill and waste increased 20% and agriculture emissions rose 14%, according to the study. The biggest single human-connected source of emissions are cows, Jackson said.
Cornell University climate scientist Robert Howarth faulted the study for not sufficiently emphasizing methane emissions from the boom in shale gas drilling, known as fracking. He said that boom began in 2005 and coincided with a sharp rise in methane emissions, including a spike of about 13 million tons (11.7 million metric tons) in the United States alone since then.
Above comments by Robert Howarth and Joel Gombiner from 2023
Jackson said the rise in natural methane from tropical wetlands was triggered by warmer temperatures that caused microbes to spew more gas. He called it disturbing because “we don’t have any way of reducing” those emissions.
In 2021, countries promised to do something about methane, but it’s not working yet, Jackson said.
Though Jackson’s data runs only through 2020, he said global monitoring of methane levels in the air show that “we know that concentrations in the last four or five years rose faster than at any time in the instrument record. So that alone tells us that the global methane pledge is not having a substantive effect on methane emissions and concentrations,” he said. …
Methane emissions are at new highs. It could put us on a dangerous climate path by Pep Canadell (Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Environment; Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO), Marielle Saunois (Enseignant-chercheur, Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l’environnement (LSCE), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) – Université Paris-Saclay) and Rob Jackson (Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University), Sept 10, 2024, The Conversation
Disclosure statement
Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program-Climate Systems Hub.
Marielle Saunois receives funding from the French agency for research (ANR, Agence National de Recherche.
Rob Jackson receives funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Stanford University.
The goal of the 2021 Global Methane Pledge is bold: cut methane emissions by 30% by the end of the decade. This is to buy us vital time to work on cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Over 150 nations have now signed up to the pledge – representing more than half of the world’s emissions of an extremely potent but short-lived greenhouse gas.
To put the pledge into action, many leaders announced policies to cut methane. However, the latest research shows global methane emissions are still rising rapidly. Atmospheric concentrations are now growing faster than at any other time since global record-keeping began about 40 years ago.
These findings are published today in our fourth global methane budget, in a paper and pre-print research undertaken through the Global Carbon Project, with contributions from 66 research institutions around the world.
Natural sources of methane include decaying organic matter in wetlands. But humans have supercharged methane emissions. We tracked changes in all major sources and sinks of this potent greenhouse gas and found humans are now responsible for two-thirds or more of all global emissions.
This is a problem, but we can improve upon it. Cutting methane emissions is one of the best and only short-term levers we can pull to slow the rate of climate change.
Why is methane so important?
After carbon dioxide, methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to human-driven global warming.
Although human activities emit much less methane than carbon dioxide in real terms, methane has a hidden punch – it’s 80 times as effective as CO2 in trapping heat in the first two decades after it reaches the atmosphere.
Since the pre-industrial era, the world has heated up by 1.2°C (taken as an average of the past 10 years). Methane is responsible for about 0.5°C of warming, according to the latest reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In the atmosphere, methane rapidly mixes with oxygen and converts into carbon dioxide and water. By contrast, carbon dioxide is a much more stable molecule and will stay in the atmosphere, trapping heat, for thousands of years until absorbed by ocean and plants.
The combination of short lifespan and extreme potency make methane an excellent candidate for efforts to rapidly tackle climate change.
Methane is not slowing
In the early-to-mid-2000s, methane emissions growth rates actually fell. Analyses suggest it was driven by a combination of reduced fossil fuels emissions and chemical changes in the atmosphere’s capacity to destroy methane.
Since then, however, methane has surged. Methane emissions from human activities increased by 50-60 million tonnes per year over the two decades to 2018-2020 – a 15-20% increase.
This doesn’t mean atmospheric methane goes up by the same amount, as methane is constantly being broken down.
During the 2000s, an extra 6.1 million tonnes of methane entered the atmosphere each year. By the 2010s, the rate of growth was 20.9 million tonnes. In 2020, growth hit 42 million tonnes. Since then, methane has been added even more rapidly. Growth rates are now higher than any previously observed year.
Where does the methane come from?
Human activities such as farming livestock, coal mining, extracting and handling natural gas, growing rice in paddies, and putting organic waste in landfills contribute about 65% of all methane emissions. Of this, agriculture (livestock and rice paddies) contributes 40%, fossil fuels 36%, and landfills and wastewater 17%.
Methane emissions from fossil fuels are now comparable to livestock emissions. The fastest growing contributors are from landfill and fossil fuels (think natural gas escaping during extraction and processing).
Our impact is even higher when we account for indirect emissions such as the leaching of organic matter into waterways and wetlands, the construction of reservoirs, and the impacts of human-driven climate change on wetlands.
In 2020, human activities led to emissions of between 370 and 384 million tonnes of methane.
The remaining emissions come from natural sources, primarily the decomposition of plant matter in wetlands, rivers, lakes, and water-saturated soils. Tropical wetlands are particularly large emitters. The world’s large areas of permafrost (permanently frozen ground) also produce methane, but at relatively low rates. As permafrost melts due to higher temperatures, this is changing.
Regional contributions and trends
Who emits most? By volume, the top five nations in 2020 were China (16%), India (9%), the United States (7%), Brazil (6%) and Russia (5%). The fastest-growing areas are China, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
European nations have begun to lower their emissions over the last two decades, due to efforts to cut emissions from landfill and waste, followed by smaller cuts in fossil fuels and farming. Australia may also be lowering emissions mainly from farming and waste.
What does this mean for net zero?
Unchecked methane emissions are bad news. Recent observed atmospheric concentrations of methane are consistent with climate scenarios with up to 3°C of warming by 2100.
To keep global temperatures well-below 2°C – the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement – means cutting methane emissions as rapidly as possible. Methane has to be cut almost in half (45%) by 2050 to achieve that goal.
It’s not an impossible problem. We now have have methods of rapidly cutting methane for every sector.
The oil and gas sector could cut their emissions 40% at no net cost, according to the International Energy Agency.
Key word is “could.” The sector’s greed and control of politicians and regulators globally will ensure methane emissions keep rising.
In agriculture, we can achieve rapid reductions by feed additives to reduce methane belched from cows, sheep, goats and buffalo, and by mid-season drainage in rice paddies.
Capturing landfill methane and using it for energy production or heat is now well established.
Three years ago, the world committed to slash methane emissions. Our findings show that we need to rapidly accelerate solutions across the globe to address and reduce methane emissions.
Refer also to:
Note carefully the dotted red line showing “acute threshold” for the oil and gas industry’s leaking methane in AER’s secret graph above.
A record-breaking hailstorm that hit the Calgary area in early August resulted in nearly $2.8 billion in insured losses, according to initial estimates from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ). This hailstorm is the second-costliest event in Canada’s history, following the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. With yet another record-setting summer for insured losses due to severe weather, these losses will create claims cost pressures.Never fear, Dildo Dani and Pickle Pepper Head will blame Trudeau
On August 5, 2024, severe thunderstorms developed over southern Alberta and moved east, producing significant and damaging hail, strong winds, heavy rain and localized flooding in parts of Calgary. Environment and Climate Change Canada said it received multiple reports of hailstones the size of chicken eggs damaging homes and vehicles. Hail and wind damage are covered by standard home and business insurance and by comprehensive auto insurance policies.
By the end of the storm, almost one in five homes in Calgary was impacted.
“Catastrophic weather has hit our province hard this year and the impact on Calgary residents from this summer’s hailstorm is unprecedented,” said Aaron Sutherland, Vice-President, Western and Pacific, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). “Alberta’s insurers have been on the ground assisting customers with needed repairs and financial support, and working to process over 130,000 claims from the hailstorm. Rebuilding will take time and our industry will continue to be there to support impacted communities every step of the way.”
Alberta has experienced five of the top 10 costliest disasters in Canadian history, all of which have occurred since 2016But, Trudeau, … we know …, placing significant strains on home, business, and auto insurance premiums. The Calgary area in particular has seen several catastrophic hailstorms in recent years, including the 2020 and 2021 hailstorms that caused over $1.2 billion and $700 million in insured damage, respectively. Given these trends, it’s critical that governments reinvest in programs such as the municipal Resilient Roofing Rebate Program that help increase the resilience of homes and businesses to future hail events.
Across Canada, families and businesses have been grappling with the most damaging summer on record due to severe weather, with approximately 228,000 insurance claims related to four major catastrophic weather events—a 406% increase compared to the previous 20-year average. With the Jasper wildfire causing over $880 million in insured damage, severe weather has cost insurers over $3.6 billion in Alberta this summer alone. Canada’s insurers have also been simultaneously supporting customers impacted by the July Toronto floods and flooding across Quebec.
“Insurers paid out more in claims for this one hail event than the federal government has invested on climate adaptation over the past decade,” said Craig Stewart, Vice-President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, IBC.
“The surging frequency and severity of floods, wildfires, hail and windstorms, represent an escalating threat to lives and property across Canada, yet governments have been vexingly slow to respond and have yet to enact the kinds of meaningful measures that would help Canadians prepare. Improved hail alerting that urges people to park their cars safely and stay indoors, improved building codes that incorporate hail resistant siding and roofing in high-risk areas, provincial and federal retrofit programs must be enacted to help families and businesses build resilience moving forward.”As long as the most greedy and most selfish petroleum industry polluted province of Alberta keeps blaming the Trudeaus, nothing will change but climate chaos harms will escalate dramatically.
As reported by IBC earlier this year, severe weather in 2023 caused over $3.1 billion in insured damage across Canada and following four significant events this summer, 2024 is shaping up to be another costly year. IBC is continuing to engage with the federal and provincial governments on ways to improve the climate resilience of communities across the country. Insured losses related to severe weather in Canada now routinely exceed $2 billion annually. By comparison, between 2001 and 2010, Canadian insurers averaged $701 million a year in losses related to severe weather.
The amount of insured damage is an estimate provided by CatIQ (www.CatIQ.com) under licence to IBC.
Such storms and related damages will keep getting progressively worse if humans don’t quit letting industry drive up pollution and religions/misogyny drive up human population
