Methane – The One Two Punch In Global Warming

Most of the articles and media attention has been on the affects of CO2 in its contribution to global warming.  Methane is a significant co-conspirator to global warming.  The past Copenhagen negotiations regulated methane to the bottom of their discussions. CO2 is the world’s primary focus on global warming, possibly due to our daily dependence on fossil fuels.  Methane is a gas that is derived from many sources. Not just from cows and other livestock, but also from rice paddies, wetlands, coalmines, garbage dumps, and even termites.  Methane actually experienced a leveling off in 1990’s and did not start rising again until just recently.  Methane increased in our atmosphere by some 150 percent since the advent of the industrial revolution.  CO2 in comparison increased by 30 percent during the same time period.  According to NASA scientist’s methane is a more effective than CO2 in trapping green house gases.   Methane in the atmosphere creates ground level ozone which impacts human health and crop yields.  The concern now is why has methane started to increase again?  According to researchers wetlands in far eastern Russia, Canada, and the Artic are producing more methane gas since 2007. Bacteria produce the methane from wetlands.  With the increases in warming, the bacteria are growing and producing more methane.   There is no way to control methane from natural wetlands other than to keep them from overheating.  But, we can do something about the methane produced by human activities.  Since methane is the main ingredient to natural gas, capturing our methane emissions and turning it into fuel is a good thing.  The ability to capture methane is there, but unfortunately the money has not been plowed into methane gas capturing efforts.  Scientists are concerned that we are focusing too much of our efforts on CO2, and not on methane reduction.  The good news about methane is that it dissipates from the atmosphere within 10 years.  If we invest in methane capture now, we can easily reduce methane to pre 1990 levels, and that would make a significant contribution to reducing global warming.

Photo: Rice Paddy Fields    Photo By: Miguel Cruz