Comments on: Thursday Night Quick Shots

By: louielouie

louielouie — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:53:29 +0000

kyoto had nothing to do with the environment.
it’s desired effect is being shown.
reduce the current industrialized nations economies to dust while allowing china/india to produce unchecked.
wal-mart is doing just as much damage to the US economy as kyoto could.
china has begun producing enmass their own automobile. the engine they are using is based on a pre-WWII army jeep. let’s talk emmissions control with this in the hands of 200 million chinese. if that many will be allowed to buy one. or could afford it.
the world-o-crats lost this one.

By: dmac

dmac — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:14:18 +0000

Perhaps the idea of trading emissions credits is the way to go in the future: the new ad – hoc arrangements currently being employed will include the developing world as well, and that seems to be one of the keys to solving the overall emissions problem.

Been reading Blair for over two years now, and he’s hilarious – as are his commenters. Lambert, on the other hand, has been hoisted on his own petard too many times for me to take him seriously anymore.

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:42:03 +0000

Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that this new work isn’t interesting (at least, to those working in the field). But the interest is completely different from what you might have gathered from the NPR report, or the sites you linked-to commenting on it.

See, we know how much CH4 there is in the atmosphere. That’s relatively easy to measure. We also know that it has a fairly short half-life in the atmosphere. So, to the extent that we find any at all, it must be continuously replenished.

So the question is: where is it coming from? This study suggests a new source that others had previously neglected. If it holds up, that’s pretty interesting (to people like my ex-roommate, who study these things) because we know how much CH4 there is and we know (or thought we knew) how much was being produced by other sources. If this new mechanism is actually an important source of CH4, then they must have mis-attributed the origin of a lot of the CH4, that we see, to other sources.

Still, in the “big picture,” (what we, outsiders, care about) it may not matter what fraction of the CH4 produced by an acre of rainforest is produced in the soil (by bacteria), and what fraction is produced by the trees.

It’s all methane to us …

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:42:18 +0000

Jacques, interestingly, the folks at your first link think there may be something new in the study...

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:23:57 +0000

Yeah, Blair has some really funny regulars…have a great one!…

By: Oyster

Oyster — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:59:02 +0000

Frankly, I found the comment section under Blair’s posting to be one of the most consistently witty I’ve come across in a while. Many chuckles there – thanx.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:56:17 +0000

Many thanks, sir! I look forward to some interesting reading…

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 05:41:47 +0000

realclimate.org is written by some serious climatologists, but accessible to the layman. And they try to steer clear of the politics. A slightly more "scholarly" climate blog is Climate Science. Both discuss the recent CH4 paper. Since I get 3 links before the spam filters kick in, I'll recommend the Wikipedia article and references therein.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 05:12:15 +0000

Well, Jacques, I would be a fool to argue science with a professional physicist (but please, tell me – can you recommend a website, book, article, etc, on global warming that is free from either right- or leftwing bromides? It’s sometimes difficult for us laymen to cut through the partisan crap), but as for Tim Blair, his style is, of course, intentional exaggeration for humorous effect – and he’s scored his share on Lambert, as well…personally, even if I didn’t mostly agree with him politically, I’d still love his stuff – he’s like Spy magazine when it was funny…

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 04:39:07 +0000

Now, it seems, even Mother Nature is conspiring against the treaty!

Yeesh! More bad science reporting from NPR.

1) Yes, methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
2) Yes, it’s produced by plants and by microorganisms in the soil.
(full disclosure: my college roomate was one of the pioneers measuring production of methane and other trace gases in tropical rainforests and in lands clearcut for agricultural production. This is something we’ve known about for decades.)
3) But it’s produced in much tinier quantities than CO2.
4) And, unlike CO2, it has a very short half-life in the atmosphere.

Generally, I don’t bother with Tim Blair, as as Tim Lambert enjoys debunking him much more than I ever could.