Methane Emissions

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This happy development wasn’t entirely unanticipated, given that the rate of increase has been slowing for at least a quarter-century. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicated many of its conclusions on scenarios in which methane concentrations would continue growing for decades to come. Thus the recent stabilization of methane levels is something that some scientists are trying very hard to explain.

Looks like that “Stop Bovine Flatulence and Save the Planet” campaign (“instead of recycling your Independent as usual today, roll it into a tube and stick it up a cow’s arse”) is finally paying dividends.

Comments

  1. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    People do get excited by “level of such-and-such doubles”, but absorption of light at the relevant wavelength shows diminishing returns: once you’re absorbing 95% of the light, a doubling of the relevant concentration can’t have much more effect. Unless, of course, you’ve cunningly inserted some positive feedback loops into your mathematical model: then you can predict wonderfully alarming effects.

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