Obama Looks To Crackdown On Methane

I’m incensed by yet another Obama dictate regarding the fake issue of anthropogenic “climate change”….hey, wait, I actually kinda agree with this

(Mother Jones) This morning the White House announced a new plan to crack down on the oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The move is the last major piece of President Obama’s domestic climate agenda, following in the footsteps of tougher standards for vehicle emissions and a sweeping plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Like the power plant plan, the methane standards will rely on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate pollution under the Clean Air Act. The new rules will regulate the amount of methane that oil and gas producers are allow vent or leak from their wells, pipelines, and other equipment. Ultimately, according to the White House, the rules will slash methane emissions 40 to 45 percent by 2025. The proposal announced today is intended to be finalized before Obama leaves office, but it’s certain to take a battering along the way from congressional Republicans and fossil fuel interest groups.

Methane makes up a much smaller slice of America’s greenhouse gas footprint than carbon dioxide—the volume of methane released in a year is roughly 10 times smaller than the volume of CO2—so the proposal might seem like small potatoes. But it’s actually a pretty huge deal, for a few reasons.

One of those reasons is that methane is a considerably more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Mother Jones notes it is roughly 20 times more potent. Other measures have it as high as 65 times more potent a greenhouse gas over 100 years. In the short term, it can trap 100 times the “heat” over CO2 over 5 years. Even though it has a shorter time span where it stays in the atmosphere, it still has a much greater power to influence the greenhouse effect. Nor does it seem to have the limitations of the doubling effect, as in the case of CO2.

Methane is one of the reasons I have never said that Mankind has no effect on the greenhouse effect (along with a few other issues), and put Mankind’s effect to around 15-20%. Methane is the reason early IPCC reports and others mentioned agriculture and landfills as two of the worst violators, without mentioning methane, of course.

Of course, this push to regulate methane will primarily effect fossil fuels, including the explosion of the use of natural gas. Surprise! Fossil fuels hatred by people who refuse to give up using them themselves.

That said, it would be worth it to consider reducing methane output where we can.

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12 Responses to “Obama Looks To Crackdown On Methane”

  1. john says:

    Teach the other 80-85% to what do you attribute that ?
    Also Teach the methane in the atmosphere will eventually oxidize and form CO2
    CO2 of course has been known for over 100 years to absorb infrared heat radiation the kind given off by our planet after absorbing UV radiation from thye sun

  2. Teach the other 80-85% to what do you attribute that ?

    Natural variation. As usual.

    Also Teach the methane in the atmosphere will eventually oxidize and form CO2

    For that little that makes it into the stratosphere it will form small parts of CO2 (a trace gas necessary for life) and water vapor, which is the primary GHG.

  3. Jeffery says:

    Do you have any evidence that most of the recent rapid increase in global warming is “natural”?

    That’s right, being “natural” means you don’t need no stinking evidence.

    The Earth doesn’t warm (or cool for that matter) this much by magic. What is the “natural” mechanism causing the current rapid warming?

    When you refer to CO2 as a trace gas, do you mean to imply that CO2 is not an important greenhouse gas? All the evidence supports the opposite conclusion.

    When you refer to CO2 being necessary for life (it is), do you mean to imply that more is better, or do you mean to imply that someone, somewhere is advocating removing all CO2 from the atmosphere? All of human civilization developed when atmospheric CO2 was around 280 ppm. Now it’s around 400 ppm and increasing steadily.

  4. gitarcarver says:

    The Earth doesn’t warm (or cool for that matter) this much by magic.

    What is your evidence that the earth is a stable, closed system?

  5. Jeffery says:

    What is your evidence that the earth is a stable, closed system?

    No evidence that I’m aware of. Why on Earth would you ask? (Or just direct to the Denier blog where you read that it was relevant. Thanks)

  6. gitarcarver says:

    No evidence that I’m aware of. Why on Earth would you ask?

    Because while no one except for you ever brings up the claim of “magic,” as the system is not stable, there are going to be variances. You and your warmist cult think the temp of the earth should never change.

    It does.

    Deal with it.

  7. Deserttrek says:

    little barryboy wants to stop methane … his fat assed wife could eat less fiber and he could shut up …. also stop flying around like a housefly if he and any politician or hollywood types really believe it …. its only a crisis to steal and push a despotic anti freedom agenda on the masses …….DEFEAT the climate nazis!

  8. Jeffery says:

    You and your warmist cult think the temp of the earth should never change.

    No. No. No. Just another lie from you to support your narrative.

    The temperature doesn’t change by magic, there needs to be a physical cause. The current rapid warming does not result natural variation.

    The sawtooth nature of the temperature record reflects natural variability, dependent on the several inputs that make up the mean surface temperature record, inputs such as solar variability, volcanic eruptions, ENSO, PDO. Some of these vary from year to year, some have longer cycles. Long term they balance out, but are currently superimposed on the rapid warming from a non-natural source – CO2 added to the atmosphere.

    Scientists understand this. Even some of the most obstinate Deniers are coming around to accepting the obvious fact that the Earth is rapidly warming (only 26% of those queried in the CNN poll Denied it was warming), now claiming that it is warming rapidly by undiscovered physical processes (known processes have been evaluated thoroughly and rejected).

  9. Jeffery says:

    dessertwreck,

    We can always count on conservatives to keep it classy.

  10. gitarcarver says:

    No. No. No. Just another lie from you to support your narrative.

    Bull. Because the question is always “is the earth warming?” and not “is the earth warming at a greater rate because of CO2?”

    Warmists cannot stand to be open and transparent.

    Even some of the most obstinate Deniers are coming around to accepting the obvious fact that the Earth is rapidly warming (only 26% of those queried in the CNN poll Denied it was warming),

    See? You just did it here – equating “warming” to “rapid warming.”

    now claiming that it is warming rapidly by undiscovered physical processes

    Of course, if the processes and all the interactions were totally understood, the computer models would be dead on or close to being dead on. They are not so as I and others here have said, something else must be going on. You and the cult members, on the other hand, say “we understand everything but can’t get the models to work.”

    The difference is that warmists look at what is happening and say “we are right because even though our own work proves us wrong, we are still right.” Science based people say “we obviously don’t know all the interactions and processes because we are getting projected results that don’t work.”

  11. Jeffery says:

    Of course all is not understood. That’s why actual scientists are always looking. But not knowing everything doesn’t mean we know nothing.

    The Deniers have put all their eggs in a basket of discovering some new physical process, but are not even looking for one. It appears to be enough for Deniers just to claim that an all-natural, but undiscovered process is causing the Earth to warm rapidly, and to ignore the obvious.

    And you call global warming a cult or religion.

    With Deniers, it’s always projection.

    You’ll ignore this request, but what evidence would you find persuasive that man-made global warming is occurring? What would you and your ilk consider “proof”?

  12. Deserttrek says:

    little boy gets his feeling hurt because I insult his prophets barry and mochelle

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