[HN Gopher] I finally understand methane lifetimes
___________________________________________________________________
I finally understand methane lifetimes
Author : gk1
Score : 190 points
Date : 2022-04-29 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (climateer.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (climateer.substack.com)
| boringg wrote:
| It's this level of understanding that can't be pushed out to the
| general population. It is far too complicated for people to
| grasp. Add on to these complexities is that if we are trying to
| price carbon - the impacts change with the concentrations in the
| atmosphere.
|
| The market needs to be dumbed down to simplistic values (which
| thankfully they have) so that we have a sense on where to target
| and incentivize change for policy makers otherwise it is far to
| easy for mud-rakers to try and undo meaningful work/change in our
| policy/business arenas. Abstract away the complications.
|
| Great piece.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I don't think it's that complicated. Start with water vapor -
| moisture evaporates from the ocean, lakes, soil, vegetation. On
| average such a water molecule stays in the atmosphere for 4-10
| days - because water condenses as rain, unlike methane or
| carbon dioxide. Water vapor increase accounts for about 2/3 of
| the immediate global warming effect, but is controlled by
| temperature, which is in turn controlled by the CO2 and CH4 in
| the atmosphere. Hence we can think of water vapor in the
| atmosphere as a _feedback_ to the CO2 /CH4 _forcing_.
|
| This is not too difficult for people to understand. The fact
| that methane is a reactive gas, i.e. CH4 + O2 -> CO2 over time
| (OH just being an intermediate), means it gets converted to
| CO2, accounting for the relatively short 10-year lifetime. CO2
| + OH/O2 does nothing, so we can expect a longer lifetime. The
| notion that CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere is 100 years is
| perhaps a bit more complicated, as it involves ocean uptake and
| things like that, but it's all fairly straightforward.
|
| The gas/oil/coal sector might want people to believe that
| passing gas in a closed room won't eventually create a stink,
| but it's the same general concept.
| alar44 wrote:
| boringg wrote:
| I agree I don't think it's that complicated but when you have
| a regulatory industry surrounding complex science with
| politicians weighing in it can get very tricky. I refer to
| climate deniers/paid advocacy groups and mud rakers who
| constantly try and trip up progress by trying to bring sow
| doubt through poking holes in the argument or nitpicking
| small issues.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I don't think it's that complicated
|
| The complicated part that I have spent many hours trying to
| understand is how more CO2 increases the greenhouse effect if
| the the frequencies it absorbs are already 100% absorbed.
|
| If current CO2 PPM absorbs 100% of the IR it can interact
| with, why does X+1 PPM have positive forcing? The feedback
| loop is already maxed out?
|
| If I shine a flashlight at a concrete wall, it doesn't matter
| if I make the wall thicker.
| lstodd wrote:
| You forgot the albedo effect of the clouds. On both sides -
| top and bottom. This has not ever been modelled to my
| knowledge. And it is very complicated.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Albedo is included in every single atmospheric model.
| nverno wrote:
| I think it is the dumbing down that makes it easier for mud-
| rakers. People know it's complicated anyway, and the average
| person can grasp complicated things as well as you.
| [deleted]
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| As an environmental engineer that deals with the interface
| between the public and policy makers, I think I'm inclined to
| agree with you. The public IS dumb, but every time they try
| to dumb down the principles they regulate on, it always comes
| at the detriment of the environment and the 'little guy'.
| It's almost always better to delegate policy to smart
| qualified people with correctly aligned interests. Getting
| that latter part right is hard, but that is the job of a
| competent public official.
| boringg wrote:
| It's a difficult place to be - damned if you do and damned
| if you don't.
| boringg wrote:
| I disagree. There is an inherent risk that dumbing down or
| abstracting away the complexities of the science to have an
| appropriate discourse on appropriate policy action creates
| blowback but trying to create a system that accounts for the
| complexities of the science would just cause infinite
| headaches.
|
| The business mechanism to try and solve this needs to be
| simple and relatively clear and should align with the
| science. The general population doesn't have the time or
| capabilities to understand the complexities. I am not saying
| hide the complexity - I am just saying don't have it in the
| forefront of the policy decisions - and don't constantly
| change the regulatory mechanism unless it is grossly
| misaligned with the science.
|
| I am glad you think the average person has the same
| capability to understand the problems and has taken
| environmental science engineering programs - I feel much
| better about that.
| the8472 wrote:
| You can't push it out in a single news blurb. But if it were
| covered as some math/physics/chemistry sections building on
| each other in secondary education it should be manageable.
| Especially if you already covered exponential decays. Add the
| secondary effect of the exponential decay parameter varying
| based on concentration.
| cwkoss wrote:
| If I have a compost pile that's producing methane, is igniting
| that methane to convert it all into CO2 (regardless of getting
| any utility from that energy) effectively "net carbon negative"
| because CO2 has much less climate effect than methane?
|
| Kind of weird to think about how burning methane without
| capturing the energy could be better for the planet that letting
| it leak into the atmosphere naturally.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I believe the answer is yes, but I imagine it would be far too
| diffuse to actually achieve ignition. Same issue applies to
| various schemes for putting a pilot light at cow's butts to
| eliminate the "cow fart emissions" issues.
|
| (Quite apart from the fact that it's belches not farts that are
| the issue anyway, so the pilot light would be at the wrong
| end...)
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Wait, are you telling me that we need fire breathing cows for
| the good of the environment?
| gruez wrote:
| Yep. It's also the same idea why we have gas flares on oil
| wells. It might look like it's oil companies setting stuff on
| fire for no reason, but it's better than just letting it leak.
| asciimike wrote:
| Throwing that natural gas through a generator and an exhaust
| system is even better (more "net negative"). Compared to
| flaring, you can achieve a ~98% methane reduction and a ~60%
| CO2e reduction (source: https://www.crusoeenergy.com/digital-
| flare-mitigation).
|
| Disclosure: I work for Crusoe Energy, who's goal is to
| eliminate routine flaring and align the future of computing
| with the future of the climate. We colocate data centers
| serving crypto miners and a high performance GPU cloud
| (crusoecloud.com). Our GPUs are indeed "carbon reducing",
| offsetting the emissions of a car over the course of a year.
| [deleted]
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The same is true for a lot of chemistry. There are tons of
| compounds that are poisonous, but if you break down the
| molecule, it is perfectly safe to eat.
| bricemo wrote:
| Beyond methane and climate change, this is a lovely step through
| of simply grappling with a new concept to understand it, one
| site/paper at a time. I wish I could teach my parents how to do
| this, they never get beyond the first page
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Additional source describing the difference between CH4 and CO2
| in the atmosphere:
|
| > "Methane makes up just 0.00018 percent of the atmosphere,
| compared to 0.039 percent for carbon dioxide. (CO2 is roughly 200
| times more abundant.) Yet scientists attribute about one-sixth of
| recent global warming to methane emissions; what methane lacks in
| volume it makes up for in potency. Over a 20-year period, one ton
| of methane has a global warming potential that is 84 to 87 times
| greater than carbon dioxide. Over a century, that warming
| potential is 28 to 36 times greater. The difference occurs
| because methane is mostly scrubbed out of the air by chemical
| reactions within about ten years, while carbon dioxide persists
| in the atmosphere for much longer than a century."
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters
|
| A big uncertainty is the future of permafrost and shallow marine
| sediments, which store carbon in various forms. Some scenarios
| are, well, not good:
|
| https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/presentations/imp...
|
| > "Our simulations include a plausible release from clathrates in
| the Arctic that increases global methane emissions by 22%, as
| well as a scenario with 10 times those clathrate emissions. The
| CESM model includes a fully interactive physical ocean... The
| results indicate that such Arctic clathrate emissions (1)
| increase global methane concentrations by an average of 38%, non-
| uniformly; (2) increase surface ozone concentrations by around
| 10% globally, and even more in polluted regions; (3) increase
| methane lifetime by 13% ..."
|
| It's kind of like defrosting a freezer full of 25,000 year old
| fish guts...
| ncmncm wrote:
| This is very enlightening!
|
| Key fact is how much methane is already there when your gout
| entered matters a great deal, because its rate of clearance is
| limited by how much hydroxyl radicals it can muster.
| a_c wrote:
| > never trust a number
|
| One pet peeve of me is the water consumption of everything. Take
| milk production for example, it disregards so many things, local
| climate, soil conditions, ecology of having cow on land,
| biodiversity and so on. Somehow milk production boils down to a
| single number and is compared with e.g. almond milk. Almond milk
| uses less water hence good.
|
| At least we are way over the age of line of code..
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yup.
|
| In Iowa we put porous pipes in the ground to drain rain into
| the rivers faster because otherwise about half the state would
| have standing water on the surface.
|
| Water consumption of Iowa cows does not matter at all, water
| consumption of a lot of cows doesn't matter at all. There is
| very little irrigation in Iowa.
|
| There are places where water is a limiting factor, and places
| where it isn't.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> This has to be a typo, but it's yet another reminder that -
| say it with me - you can never trust a number.
|
| No. Never trust an answer to an overly-simplified question.
| Asking for the lifetime of atmospheric methane is like asking
| what temperature water boils at. When faced with an overly-
| simplistic question an intelligent respondent will generally make
| all sorts of assumptions. I assume he means at sea level. I
| assume he means on planet earth. I assume he means normal not-
| heavy water. Answer: 100c. This isn't about trusting answers in
| the form of simple numbers. Ask an overly-simple question and
| expect an overly-simple answer. The fault is with the asker.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is clearly both. The correct answer to an overly simple
| question is that it depends. If someone is stating an answer,
| but leaving off the assumptions, they are doing a disservice
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| So, hydroxide radicals (OH) break down methane (CH4) into carbon
| dioxide (CO2). This is a good thing for the climate, as a
| molecule of methane has a much bigger warming effect than CO2.
| (Although it is odd that the CO2 produced by methane is not
| counted toward methane's overall climate impact).
|
| There is limited OH in the atmosphere. As a result, more methane
| "uses up" the OH. That means that increased methane in the
| atmosphere results in increased lifetimes of methane. The reason
| carbon monoxide (CO) has three times the warming potential of CO2
| is because CO uses OH, increasing methane!
|
| So, why not produce a bunch of OH? Because OH has a half life of
| less than a second. Hmm.
|
| However, aerosolized plant terpenes (such as produced by
| wetlands) are a natural source of OH in the atmosphere.
|
| Interesting. Perhaps this should change the calculation of the
| carbon credits due to terpene generating biomes (above and beyond
| the carbon sequestered by the plants). Or, maybe we could mass
| produce terpenes to clean out atmospheric methane (e.g., after a
| pipeline leak or something).
|
| Anyone know more?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The short lifespan of an OH radical isn't an issue if it's
| deployed at the site of emission (a la scrubbers). You then
| don't need them to last long enough to randomly bump into
| methane particles in the wild as you're inducing them in a
| high-methane concentration environment where you expect them to
| react before they react with something else and break down.
|
| That's the moral of the story for all climate control: don't
| produce bad stuff, if you have to try to get rid of it as close
| as possible (temporally and spatially) to the source because
| once it's diluted in the atmosphere it becomes insanely more
| difficult.
|
| Global CO2 levels are at 450 parts per _million_ meaning you
| need to actively filter 2,222 parts of air to get to one measly
| CO2 molecule _in the wild_. It's horrible inefficient
| (expensive and slow). But if you don't produce the CO2 or if
| you tackle it right then and there at the site of production
| where it is at much higher concentrations, you still have a
| chance.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I remember someone pointing out that (1) there is a very
| large amount of advocacy based around going to the Great
| Pacific Garbage Patch and harvesting microplastic particles
| there; and (2) this is a colossally stupid idea, because
| there is almost no plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage
| Patch. It's a a part of the ocean where the level of plastic
| is higher than usual. But it's still a part of the ocean.
|
| If you want to filter plastic out of the ocean, you want to
| filter it out of the input stream, where it's concentrated,
| not out of the end product of diluting the input stream with
| the entire ocean.
|
| Interestingly, the wikipedia article on the Patch is
| headlined by a disclaiming of a very similar mistake:
|
| > Despite the common public perception of the patch existing
| as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4
| particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by
| satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the
| area.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
| metacritic12 wrote:
| > There is limited OH in the atmosphere. As a result, more
| methane "uses up" the OH.
|
| > So, why not produce a bunch of OH? Because OH has a half life
| of less than a second. Hmm.
|
| These two statements seem to contradict? If the chemokinetics
| of OH generation is less than a second, then how can it be used
| up in the atmosphere?
|
| Assuming the <1 second kinetic is correct, there must be a
| dynamic equilibrium producing it in the atmosphere to begin
| with. In such a case OH is not truly being used up in any real
| sense. It's whatever that generates OH is being used up, and
| that can be artificially boosted.
| conradev wrote:
| One limiting factor in generating OH is specific wavelengths
| of light, which is harder to artificially boost
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Laser beams. We can only hope that this whole solution is
| dependent on laser beams :)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| "consumed" is better than "used up".
|
| In that <1 second, the OH can react with methane or CO. The
| more CO in the atmosphere, the more likely it will find the
| OH before the methane.
|
| It is like throwing breadcrumbs to ducks and geese. The more
| ducks in the pond, the less crumbs the geese will get.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| It's because that statement is incredibly wrong. Methane
| concentrations in atmosphere are 8 orders of magnitude higher
| than OH. More methane in the atmosphere has exactly 0 effect
| on OH. And you can't inject OH into atmosphere either because
| it will react with pretty much anything it comes in contact
| with.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In this case, annual reaction mass of OH is more important
| than the concentration at any given time. The concentration
| of any highly reactive molecule will be very low, but that
| doesn't tell you how much was created or consumed.
|
| Methane levels don't impact OH levels (it is always
| consumed immediately). OH generation levels can impact
| methane levels. CO levels can compete with methane for OH
| as is it generated.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Look at it this way: there's a finite amount of OH radicals
| being produced each interval of time, which reacts with some
| CH4 and disappears in the reaction.
|
| You are correct that OH radicals regenerate, but more methane
| => "breakdown capacity" becomes overwhelmed.
|
| This is known as zeroth order kinetics, similar to alcohol
| metabolism. Drinking 2 beers = 3 hours until sobriety; 4
| beers = 6 hours. Your liver has a fixed capacity, so drinking
| twice as much doesn't double the metabolic rate.
|
| I'll add that you're also entirely correct: if there's some
| long lived chemical that catalyzes OH formation, sending that
| up instead might be a good remedy IMO. If there's no
| collateral toxicity...
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| There is no such thing as zero-order kinetics in
| atmospheric chemistry.
| zackees wrote:
| alexose wrote:
| There's a group that is advocating for spraying an Iron Salt
| Aerosol into the atmosphere, which apparently catalyzes the
| natural decomposition process. I haven't done a deep dive into
| the subject, but on the surface it seems pretty compelling.
|
| https://ironsaltaerosol.com/home/isa_summary
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Well they haven't tested any of their assumptions in the
| field and their atmospheric chemistry cycle diagram has some
| bullshit reaction mechanisms so it is pretty much shit.
|
| Also the following statement surprisingly lacks any mention
| of anything related to atmospheric or earth scientists:
|
| >We seek funding for a world-first trial in Australian waters
| under scientific supervision, in cooperation with the marine
| biology community and with industries including insurance,
| fishing, tourism, energy and shipping.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| How much money is worth "wasting" to investigate new
| possible solutions to global warming?
|
| If you look at the "official" plans, they all rely on the
| emergence of magical new technologies. So we'd better start
| testing even the less promising approaches. Shotgun
| strategies are needed.
|
| Of course, at the moment, many are seeking to _ban research
| science_ in this area because it is viewed as morally
| dangerous [1].
|
| [1] https://climateandcapitalism.com/2022/01/17/climate-
| scientis...
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| In this case, I think people want to ban large-scale
| deployments of untested, unvalidated technologies with no
| definitive positive effect and a non-negligible
| probability of disastrous consequences.
|
| I myself am an atmospheric chemist and no one has banned
| me from doing scientic research.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Read their letter and paper. They don't want to ban large
| scale deployments. They want to ban _any_ deployments,
| even for small-scale research purposes. This will ensure
| that all unvalidated technologies remain untested. That's
| unfortunate because we all know we can't decarbonize in
| time. We need other braking mechanisms and we should be
| pretty open to experimentation.
|
| If no one is upset with your particular atmospheric
| research, maybe you aren't ambitious enough. Just
| kidding-- I'd love to know what you are working on.
| beders wrote:
| what could possibly go wrong? Let's put iron chloride where
| it doesn't belong, outside of our control.
|
| Haven't we done enough harm yet?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| you could say the same about anything. Installing solar or
| wind power isn't natural part of the environment, and
| "something" could go wrong, better not do that either.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Seems like we've come far enough to understand that doing
| nothing and conserving our way out of this problem isn't
| viable. The time for engineering is upon us.
| jxramos wrote:
| it's interesting folks have interpreted this as a blocking
| call to effectively do nothing in the face of such
| uncertainty. To me it was an invitation to begin to engage
| in second order thinking.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > the CO2 produced by methane is not counted toward methane's
| overall climate impact
|
| It definitely is in some contexts. It's often cited in CO2
| equivalent over time. Methane start off to be something like 80
| times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Then as it
| decays to CO2 its impact is that of CO2 but time has to be
| accounted for. So for every ton of methane, you can estimate an
| equivalent CO2 tonnage over then next, say, 50 years.
|
| A quick search for methane co2 equivalent reveals a site
| claiming methane has 25 times more global warming potential
| than CO2 over 100 years.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Here is a source explaining why the CO2 produced by methane
| isn't counted in estimates of global warming potential. It
| seems to come down to the different calculations required for
| anthropogenic sources.
|
| https://ghginstitute.org/2010/07/13/what-is-different-
| about-...
| paultgriffiths wrote:
| Very interesting, and a great description of methane self-
| feedback.
|
| The perturbation lifetime analysis - the idea that the time
| constant of the atmospheric response to methane is longer than
| the time constant of the reaction that removes methane - comes
| from a beautiful paper by Michael Prather that may be of interest
| to anyone with some linear algebra. See
| https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/workshops/other_meetings/a....
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Another question I had: what does methane become once it breaks
| down? It becomes CO2 (a relatively minor greenhouse gas per unit
| weight, but long-lived) and H2O, right? H2O is no big problem in
| the lower troposphere. It just rains out. But in the
| stratosphere... it can stick around for much longer and impact
| the climate.
|
| How much does this matter for methane? I would imagine methane
| floats up pretty high into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
| Does it keep going? What stops it from getting to the
| thermosphere and (ultimately) exosphere?
| masklinn wrote:
| > It becomes CO2 (a relatively minor greenhouse gas per unit
| weight, but long-lived)
|
| Although it should be noted that 1 tonne methane decays into
| around 2.5 tonnes of CO2 (I don't remember the exact number but
| it's around that) and GWP is measured by weight.
|
| So even after it's decayed, methane has a higher GWP than CO2.
| Which is why its GWP remains much higher than CO2 even over
| extremely long periods: methane has a GWP of ~80 over 20 years,
| ~30 over 100 years, but is still around 7 over _500 years_ ,
| despite a lifetime of only 12 years.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| What about the H2O?
| snewman wrote:
| [OP here] _thank you!_ I see those ratios for 20 vs. 100
| years everywhere, but I 've never been able to put together a
| mental model that explains them. You've supplied the missing
| piece.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Half lives are a poor term for this; you are really looking for
| reaction rates, which are dynamic systems. Methane doesn't just
| disappear, it reacts with something else. A radioactive isotope's
| decay is relatively self contained, so the half life terminology
| holds.
|
| A microgram or a kilogram of U-235 will decay at about the same
| rate, making half life a useful number. Methane reacts with OH,
| which is sourced from different places. Upper levels of the
| atmosphere get more UV light, which produces all sorts of
| radicals to react with. But there are also biological and
| geological sources for radicals which also contribute to
| reactions. Sum these reactions together and you get something
| that can be approximated with a half life, but this assumes
| constant input of reactants. As we increase our output of Methane
| this changes the reaction rates in the atmosphere and that half
| life number changes.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| AP Chemistry: the year I took it was the first (only?) year a
| free response question didn't feature reaction rates. I learned
| my lesson on the risks of studying to the historic exam
| contents!
| Melatonic wrote:
| Don't forget about those deep ocean Methane Clathrates !
| rob_c wrote:
| As a self professed what? Ive read pop-sci books with more graphs
| and equations over breakfast.
|
| Why is there this celebration of mediocrity in dealing with
| equations and instead citing percentages.
| philipov wrote:
| I finally understand methane _lifeforms_...
| wrycoder wrote:
| tl;dr
|
| > _I finally have some confidence that I understand how methane
| lifetimes work, and that for my purposes it can be summarized as:
|
| Methane emissions decay gradually, with an average lifetime of
| about 12 years ("perturbation lifetime", which is what matters
| for climate purposes).
|
| This will increase by roughly 35% if methane concentrations
| double, or decrease roughly 25% if concentrations return to pre-
| industrial levels._
| amateurICEguy wrote:
| (Physicist/Engineer of sorts here. Zero atmosphere knowledge)
|
| That half life depends on concentration is not surprising to
| me; ethanol's half life in the blood also depends on it's
| concentration and the reason is rather straight forward: the
| liver has limited amounts of enzymes needed to process booze.
|
| What is surprising to me, though, is that there is a mechanism
| that has such a massive effect at the extremely low
| concentrations of methane that are present in the atmosphere.
| Sure, OH is rare, but I'd guess is generated in large amounts
| in the upper atmosphere (UV + H2O -> OH- + O+ + momentum to
| keep them away from each other).
|
| Does anyone here have any hard math on this?
| twic wrote:
| FWIW, and this is a rather minor and pedantic point, these
| are hydroxyl radicals, not hydroxide ions, so it's:
|
| H2O + g -> OH* + H*
|
| Rather than:
|
| H2O + g -> OH- + H+
|
| Oh, and whichever way, H2O splits into OH and H, not OH and
| O, but i assume that was a typo!
| robocat wrote:
| > OH*
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical "Notation:
| The unpaired electron of the hydroxyl radical is officially
| represented by a middle dot, *, beside the O."
|
| Note that article uses a superscripted dot <sup>*</sup>OH,
| and the dot is usually prefixed in the article (presumably
| so as to put the dot next to the O that doesn't have a full
| shell?).
|
| However the article sometimes suffixes the dot, to put it
| beside the R organic radical. Weird.
| thatcherc wrote:
| > This will increase by roughly 35% ...
|
| I was a bit confused by this sentence (which is a direct
| excerpt from the piece). Reading the whole article, the `this`
| refers to the methane lifetime. Oddly (to me), the lifetime
| methane in the atmosphere increases with the amount of methane
| in the atmosphere. That's what the author has been working to
| understand. Very interesting!
| rocqua wrote:
| It makes sense, if you take into account that, apparently,
| absorbing methane from the atmosphere depletes the
| atmosphere's capacity for absorbing methane. Hence the more
| methane that exists, the more methane is getting absorbed,
| the less capable the atmosphere is at absorbing methane.
| scratcheee wrote:
| Yeah, and to simplify further, the atmosphere's got a fixed
| amount of methane-removing capability, and as we exceed
| this capability it can't absorb methane any faster, so the
| ratio of methane that gets absorbed starts dropping even
| though the amount being absorbed doesn't drop.
|
| The reality is more complicated because the cut off is very
| blurry - absorbsion does still increase as methane
| increases, just not fast enough to keep up, and it falls
| further behind the more methane we put out.
| mudita wrote:
| Which to me raises the question: Are there any
| possibilities to increase the absorption of methane
| somehow?
|
| And it seems like there are methods for capturing methane:
| https://news.mit.edu/2022/dirt-cheap-solution-common-clay-
| ma...
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| If I'm thinking clearly, using "absorbing" here implies
| that atmospheric concentrations of methane have an effect
| on the amount of methane that can be released. A lower
| absorption would then be "good" because it would slow the
| rate of accumulation of methane in the atmosphere.
|
| The opposite is true, that the higher the methane
| concentration, the lower the rate of effect would be to
| degrade all atmospheric methane. The rates of methane
| accumulation and its degradation are inversely proportional
| beyond the limit of the atmosphere to degrade it.
| agluszak wrote:
| The next step would be understanding Rust lifetimes ;)
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