
Researchers are racing to find out why methane levels are increasing so fast - SolaceQuantum
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-arctic-methane/
======
rohan1024
There's already a news on front page at the moment which says bird population
is declining in North America. The comments section mention that it's not just
North America but also Britain, France and also that it could be due to
declining insect population.

We rarely get this kind of data from developing countries, which means these
studies are rarely or not at all performed simply because they don't have
resources to focus on these causes. We have no idea how much worse the
situation is.

Here we have methane levels increasing fast. There was another news that the
third pole of earth i.e. Himalaya is melting rapidly. I am sure there are
plenty more that I have missed.

Do we need more evidence to act? What are we waiting for?

~~~
drharby
Act how?

I'm being pragmatica here. How and to what end is this statement and the
aggregation of headlines on hacker news hoping to persuade the hn reader?
Donate all money to causes? Starve ourselves to death? Go retreat from our
lives to invest in reforestation efforts, managing beehives, and growing
pesticide free sustenance farms while microcurating our own little corner of
the Earth?

Or is it simply to strike undirected alarmism and fear in hopes it contributes
to some vagie movement to improve the earth?

Can you be more constructive in your feedback, please?

~~~
asokoloski
To anyone reading who wants to know what they can personally do--in rough
order of decreasing impact:

[https://citizensclimatelobby.org/](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/) is
doing really good work. They focus on a very non-adversarial approach, and are
changing the minds of a lot of congresspeople about vital climate legislation.
It's a very effective approach. Joining up with your local chapter and
volunteering is a great way to spend your time and energy, if you have it.

A small thing anyone can do is sign up for
[https://projectgrandcanyon.com/](https://projectgrandcanyon.com/) and call
their congressperson once a month.

If you are willing to make a personal change, learn about veganism. You don't
have to go completely vegan. It's great if you can, but if it's too scary,
start with Meatless Monday and go from there. Rather than thinking about how
to reduce meat, think about how to fill your diet with more meat-free options.
Learn to make some tasty, filling vegetarian or vegan pastas, curries, and
other recipes. Eat more starchy foods, whole grains, and beans.

If you can, and it suits you, move to a dense, walkable area of the city. This
isn't possible or desirable for everyone, obviously.

~~~
MauranKilom
The whole vegan thing was put into perspective for me when I learned that one
intercontinental flight (roundtrip) a year has roughly the same CO2 footprint
as going from vegan to "normal" meat consumption.

I'm still trying to be conscious about meat consumption (and will gladly adopt
lab-grown meat) but that impact pales in comparison to avoiding plane trips.

------
acd
By Henry’s gas law. The amount of gas dissolved or released depends on the
temperature of the fluid. This is why for example you need to chill sodas to
carbonate it during manufacturing.

Thus could it be that dissolved methane is being released from ocean and lakes
as earth is heating? The gas law would imply that. As the liquid that contains
methane heats the dissolved methane will be released to the atmosphere.

Same gas law Henry’s law is also active during scuba diving nitrogen
absorption. Henrys gas law.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law)

Methane example of Henry’s law for dissolved methane in a well
[https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/using-henrys-law-
for-d...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/using-henrys-law-for-
dissolved-methane-in-a-well.720096/)

------
watertom
The only way forward, the only chance we have is to invent technology to trap
and sequester green houses gases from the upper atmosphere.

Reducing human greenhouse gas output won’t happen fast enough to fix things,
and I’m not sure that it’s possible to capture and trap existing green house
gases, but it’s the only chance we have, because it’s the only way to stop the
positive feedback loops that are currently running, warming oceans, melting
glaciers, and thawing permafrost. We need to reverse warming, not slow it
down.

The current approach of “adding less” is absurd. If you need 2,500 calories to
maintain your weight, and you are eating 25,000 calories you will get fat
fast. Reducing calorie intake to 15,000 won’t let you lose weight, you’ll just
get fatter slower.

Our current approach to climate change is to get fatter slower, we need to
lose weight.

We need the capacity to capture and sequester per year, 10% more green house
gases than we produce per year. Because we need to reduce the total amount of
green house gases in the upper atmosphere.

~~~
smakk
Do you know if there are any current technologies to trap and sequester green
house gases ?

~~~
orbifold
One technology is called “TREES”, actually scratch that a more advanced
version is called “RAINFOREST” (that one sequesters far more CO2 per square
meter than TREES alone). Unfortunately people have cut down a significant
portion of both TREES and RAINFOREST because they are economically
incentivized to do so.

~~~
xyzzyz
Mature forests are at best net carbon neutral, and at worst net carbon
emitters. Comparing our current emissions with amount sequestered per hectare
of forest immediately gives that we don’t have _nearly_ enough suitable unused
land to plant new forests to make up for our current emissions. The only
viable way to use forests to sequester carbon is to cut down immense numbers
of trees and bury them underground. I don’t see anyone going to seriously
propose this.

~~~
jonnycomputer
Actually, I wonder if that is true.

[https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2008/sep/old-
growth-f...](https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2008/sep/old-growth-
forests-are-valuable-carbon-sinks)

I'm sure tree-farmers would sale their trees to governments interested in
sequestering carbon. Probably could just dump them in the oceanic trenches...

~~~
xyzzyz
Clearly, if government is going to buy the lumber at market prices, the owners
of the forests won’t complain or ask the purpose. However, the rest of us who
would pay for the scheme would see the idea of burying the trees in order to
offset the carbon we keep digging up as quite ridiculous.

~~~
jonnycomputer
If there were no alternatives to fossil fuels it wouldn't be ridiculous. Its
just an offset (though, honestly, I suspect not an optimal one--carbon is not
the only environmental concern we have, and mono-cultured tree farms are
probably not a solution to those.. But we do have alternatives. In fact, I
think that fossil fuels are preciously energy dense, that they should be kept
in reserve for when truly needed. Let renewables be the solution for every-day
needs.

------
carapace
Geopolitics in a Hotter World – UBC Talk Transcribed (Sept. 2010)
[https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-
geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-
in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

Video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY)

Long, good, hard to summarize but I'll try: Things are worse than publicly
talked about; there are a few options (geo-engineering). "People always raid
before they starve."

\- - - -

We have the solutions already.

Cut-n-paste from a comment yesterday, apologies if you've seen it already, I
think it's worth it:

For practical advice on what to do I recommend Toby Hemenway's videos in re:
Permaculture

[http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/](http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/)

Especially "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not
Civilization" and the sequel "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture".

Permaculture is a school of applied ecology (the word itself is a portmanteau
of PERMAnent agriCULTURE) that has adherents and practitioners world-wide.
It's not the only form of regenerative agriculture either.

See also [https://www.greenwave.org/our-work](https://www.greenwave.org/our-
work) Oceanic 3D farms! And now they are building reefs?

~~~
dougmwne
Damn, in the first 5 minutes of Dyer's talk there's the best argument for
Brexit that I've ever seen.

------
cr0sh
A somewhat flippant comment, but I'm involved tangentially with the
"cyberpunk" aesthetic; often, people involved ask "where is our cyberpunk?"

All I can tell them is "Yes, we got our cyberpunk - unfortunately, we didn't
get the Diamond Age, or even Neuromancer - we instead got David Brin's
Earth..."

As far as why methane levels are rising so fast - I suspect it has to do with
the thawing of arctic permafrost (ever seen videos of "bogs" in Russia and
Siberia that move like a waterbed?), and possibly also methane hydrates at
shallower depths releasing their gases because of ocean warming (and maybe
other factors).

Of course - this is all speculation and I am far from being the person to
answer this in any true manner. But if I had to make my guess - that's the
most likely reason.

As far as if we can stop it? Well - I think we're far too late to do anything.
We probably should've started back in the 1970s or earlier (that would be my
best guess) - and people back then were talking about this kind of thing.

But nobody ever listens to the geeks and eggheads; I mean, what the hell do
those dorks know? They only dedicate their lives and brains to such things,
and we all know they can't party, right?

So - enjoy what we have left, because we're only seeing the start of massive
die-offs that will eventually get to us. Don't worry about the Earth though -
it will be fine.

~~~
kaybe
Y'know, it's not binary, the divide is not climate change/no climate change.
So maybe it is too late to stop everything completely, but it is really really
not too late to stop it from becoming far _far_ worse.

Look at this plot:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/figu...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/01/figure-2.3-1024x768.jpg)

You can see where we are and what else is possible if we keep going. (Let's
hope we don't trigger feedback effects which are not included in the plot
though.)

Here are possible paths forward to stay below 1.5°C:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png)

And yes, they are hella optimistic, but they are (physically) possible. Let's
at least give our best and fight!

(Details and plot captions in the full IPCC report:
[https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/](https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/))

------
meshenna
Relevant Wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

~~~
merlincorey
Frankly I am surprised this isn't in the article at all, as it was what I
immediately thought of on reading about methane release and permafrost.

------
Beltiras
I thought it was perfectly well understood. Hundreds to thousands of megatons
of methane is trapped in permafrost. When the warmest point of the year melts
the now ill-named permafrost, methane gets released.

~~~
makomk
There's more than one cause. A large chunk of the increased methane emissions
come from China industralising in a particularly dirty, coal-burning way and
releasing loads of methane in the process:
[https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-methane-
emissions.html](https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-methane-emissions.html)

------
blueadept111
It's a vicious cycle. Methane levels increase to dangerous levels, which
causes researchers to soil their pants, which releases more methane into the
atmosphere.

------
mrfusion
(Disclaimer I believe in climate change with all my heart)

If methane levels are higher than we thought wouldn’t that make our climate
models wrong? Ie less of a heating effect from co2?

~~~
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
It would mean that a lower fraction of the heating effect we're observing is
from CO2. However, if we've correctly estimated the impact of CO2, then that
just means that there will be more absolute heating than we had otherwise
predicted.

~~~
mrfusion
We’re both on the same side and I don’t want to seem like arguing within the
team. But those two sentences seem to be contradictory?

~~~
WhompingWindows
They aren't contradictory sentences. Methane is increasing faster than we
expected it to. So, going forward, a higher % of warming will be due to
methane than we expected before our recent methane measurements. This likely
means more warming, as methane (CH4) is a much more potent warmer than CO2.

------
decebalus1
The biggest problem I have is that we're not going to have a proper dystopian
collapse of civilization/raider/zombie/fight-for-resource type of thing. Most
likely just a cvasi-police-state-corporate-run boring dystopia (which we
already kind of have) managing and partitioning remaining resources/habitable
locations.

------
ComputerGuru
We’ve mainly been focused on carbon sequestration directly aimed at capturing
atmospheric CO2, but ton-for-ton, methane isn’t significantly worse for
climate change. I’m not aware of any ongoing (research, even) efforts for
sequestering methane, does anyone know?

(As opposed to research into reductions which is also An extremely worthy
cause (better to prevent 1 ton of methane than to sequester anywhere from 20
to 80 tons of CO2), although it seems no one is interested in any follow
through. We’ve pretty much definitively identified a fairly low cost path
forward to significantly reduce worldwide methane outputs related to food
production by simply tweaking bovine diets, but it seems no one cares to
actually implement it.)

~~~
jbattle
From what I can tell, methane has an atmospheric PPM of ~2 (compared to 400++
for CO2). The lower concentration, and the fact that methane generation is
very diffuse presumably makes sequestration Hard.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Yes, when measured at surface levels, but I believe that, unlike CO2, methane
is extremely concentrated within a region of the stratosphere (being
significantly lighter than CO2 and O2); it’s not hard to imagine strategically
placed sequestration “facilities” being able to get to it better. But I’m on
my phone and it’s hard to find out what the max ppm at the elevations it is
most concentrated at are.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/F...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/File%3AAtmosphericMethane.png)

------
cryptozeus
Article is more like a movie script then sharing facts and numbers. I believe
in climate change but this kind of article not helping with anything.

------
drak0n1c
Maybe we should support gas flaring, rather than opposing it. Flaring turns
methane into CO2 + water vapor, which are less potent greenhouse gases.

------
jmartrican
Three guesses, Russia, China, or US oild fields.

------
jacknews
great to see female scientists highlighted

------
ryanmercer
Uh, melting permafrost?

------
british_india
There is no mystery.

Arctic sea floor

Canadian permafrost

Siberian permafrost

The Arctic sea floor is releasing Methane Clathrates, i.e. the so-called
Methane Clathrates Gun is firing. As for the two instances of "permafrost",
both are melting en mass and that is leading to organic matter that has been
frozen and accumulating for millenia to now be decomposed by bacteria, leading
to massive methane releases.

Methane is 30-times for damaging than CO2.

------
alkibiades
what if i don’t care? many of these worries are alarmist. from the IPCC report
it seems like some coral will die and the temperature will raise a few
degrees. which is bad, sure, but not apocalyptic. i doubt my children’s life
will change unless i buy ocean front property and refuse to move for 100 years

~~~
fzeroracer
What if you live in an area with no AC because for hundreds of years the
weather has been consistent enough to not need it?

Or what if you start experiencing massive wildfires because the seasons get
dryer and dryer?

How about if you care about eating Salmon or any number of seafood dying off
as a result of a warming ocean and massive overfishing?

~~~
alkibiades
it’s not like this happens overnight. you can buy an AC sometimes in the next
100 years hopefully

and sure salmon thing is bad but doesn’t mean the world is ending in 12 years.
which is what the activists pretend. i just want a real conversation about
solutions but neither side is reasonable

~~~
mturmon
If you want a real conversation, you don't start off with your original
comment. The original comment was mocking the scale of the changes we face in
a completely un-informed way.

So, you might want to consider what kind of discussion you really want?

------
nickthemagicman
100 companies account for over 70% of emissions. As a single citizen there's
not a lot you can do other than ride the plane into the mountain.

