Is Methane Really Better For The Climate Than Coal? - Ep167: Grant Swartzwelder

[@CleaningUpPod]

Thank you to Grant Swartzwelder for joining us on Cleaning Up and sharing his thoughts on how to improve methane leakage. What were your biggest takeaways? Let us know in the comments below.

[@mikemellor759]

That was one of my favourite episodes, packed with information, much of it new to me. I really value your ability to talk to industry experts, deciphering acronyms and giving running summaries of the issues. Thank you.

[@ajwright5512]

We are talking about Carbon Capture, i.e. spending money and energy to capture something cheap and largely useless, especially in the volumes we're talking about. When hydrocarbon extractors literally can't be bothered to sell a valuable hydro carbon that they've already extracted and isolated. Let's just think about that.

[@JonnyCobra]

Information I've been praying for. Much appreciated you set this up, thank you! Here in Namibia where we've just recently discovered a huge oil and gas deposit estimated at as large as 10 billion barrels, there is no debate on this topic whatsoever.

[@okkomp]

Maybe use the billion tax per year on plugging the uneconomic wells. Sorry but if the smaller operators are worse than coal, then they need to be closed.

[@greghall3150]

Methane gas is water soluble and broken down by bacteria in tree bark in combination with nitrogen to form sulfates providing fertilizer for plants.

[@johnseberg6989]

Hmm, so if you haphazardly emit GHGs without regard for the environment, a regulator from Washington who doesn't know the business might intervene? I'll be careful not to do that, then. Also, I hear tales of a very small company working on destroying methane emissions from abandoned well as an interim fix at a cost that is relatively low, compared to permanent plugging.

[@jonevansauthor]

And if and when anyone invents that and commercialises it at a useful cost, it would be adopted very quickly if it helped.

[@contra_plano]

My country does not burn coal...

[@wilfriedschuler3796]

Vatican?

[@contra_plano]

@@wilfriedschuler3796 Nop, Portugal and Spain. And UK is Also there

[@wilfriedschuler3796]

@@contra_plano Poor brits this winter have the choice. Charles has bioethanol, I know. Not for drinking, for heating. Will we eat ore will we heat. As Maggy said, there is no alternative. TINA And even the mountains in Morocco 1000 km to the south are fucking cold for 4 months of the year. I used to work and dwell there. Many would like to have a bucket full of coal in Winter.

[@johnbrown6611]

I have unalloyed good news for viewers to this video. Methane (CH4, natural gas), whether natural or anthropogenic has a tiny greenhouse gas warming effect. This is not simply because its atmospheric concentration is just 2 ppm (water vapour : 4000 - 40,000 ppm, CO2 : 430 ppm) but because of a phenomenon known as IR saturation. The sun warms the planet which then emits IR radiation as defined by its Planck IR distribution curve. This curve, looking like a squashed semicircle so it is asymmetric covers the wavenumbers in 1/cm from 0 to 2500 with a peak at around 600. The greenhouse warming effect is caused by the greenhouse gas molecules absorbing this emitted IR radiation and then re-emitting it. This process is continuous and almost instantaneous with finally the IR radiation, when it reaches the upper atmosphere, radiating out to space. In this way the greenhouse gases (GHGs) slow down the Earth’s loss of heat. Without GHGs the Earth’s average temperature would be around minus 20 degrees C instead of plus 15 degrees C. Now not all the Earth’s IR radiation is absorbed by the GHGs as some wavenumbers escape directly to space. Furthermore, the GHGs do not absorb the Earth’s IR radiation equally or evenly but in one or more specific IR absorption bands across the Earth’s IR Planck curve. Methane (CH4)’s absorption band is around 1250 wavenumber (1/cm) where the IR energy loss is about a quarter of the peak and furthermore is outcompeted by the far bigger and more important GHG, water vapour, for the Earth’s IR radiation at around the 1250 wavenumber. Consequently it is found that the GHG effect of methane is tiny and doubling the methane concentration in the atmosphere is negligible. This is because there is already sufficient methane in the atmosphere to absorb all the Earth’s IR radiation available to it and hence adding more methane makes no difference and does not cause additional GHG warming. This is the phenomenon known as IR saturation. The two physics professors Happer (Princeton/USA) and Wijngaarden (York/Canada) (H&W) have made the very difficult and large calculations on all the GHGs and have discovered that not only does IR saturation apply to methane but also to CO2 with the Royal Society subsequently recognising itself that IR saturation for CO2 exists. H&W’s calculations are so good that they match the observed data, measured by satellite and high altitude balloons, for Earth’s Planck curves over the Equator, the Mediterranean and Antarctica, the final test for any model. H&W calculate that doubling CO2 gives an additional warming effect of 0.7 degrees C, the IPCC themselves calculate 1.2 degrees C (IPCC AR6 WG1 P95 footnote).