Europe declares worst drought in 500 years, compounding coming recession due to Russian gas cuts; Drought in China’s south-west forces widespread hydro power cuts, shutting shops and factories
Interesting Bernard especially about the methane. What dies Groundswell think, if they do think? Tipping points are now “baked in” in a manner of speaking. The most ecologically destructive sector is pasture fed Beef and Lamb. See George Monbiot “Regenesis” recently published. His advice to dairy farmers is “sell” , the farm I mean. The idea that we can continue our grossly profligate emissions to “feed the world “is Magical Thinking. Farming is the most destructive enterprise.
“Our level of primary knowledge is still very, very low,” he says. “Methane keeps kicking up these surprises"
Thank you for link Bernard, it was an assuring article that the feedback loops will keep looping until either the radio breaks or someone manages to change the 8 track.
Another interesting read from May 2022 about greenhouse gas pollution on CO2 and methane gas, warming feeding the warming.
Will Aotearoa-NZ be able to pivot fast enough in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, are we doing enough as a developed nation to protect our wetlands from emitting more gases, and reducing our methane emissions from agriculture? One remains hopeful..
I just joined The Kākā recently. Top quality research and thinking on the most important issues we are all facing - communicated clearly in a way I can understand and engage with! Really appreciate your work Bernard, thank you! 🙏
There was that cartoon in The Kaka back on the fifteenth where a water company worker was moaning "It's a disaster - there's no river to pump sewerage into!". I wonder how rivers with greatly reduced flow are going what with the usual amount of pollutants being discharged into them but nowhere near as much water to dilute it. And the effect on any aquatic life that may have been there.
Political suicide if you're a politician I know but if the government can give farmers a 95% discount on their GHG emissions, can the government give itself a 95% reduction on the amount of aid it gives to farmers to clean up after the recent flooding?
Sigh... I see so many versions of this comment: "If we let the earth warm enough to start warming itself, we are going to lose this battle". But I'm reading a book about the *current* effects of warming on the forests of the high northern latitudes, where warming is maybe 4x more visible than in the temperate zone. The TL:DR is, the tipping point for an irreversible methane feedback loop is well behind us.
We need to stop using the rhetoric of "we have to stave off the tipping point". Because as soon as people realise it's too late for that, they'll reply "okay then, we'll just give up now, it's over". And it isn't ever going to be over. Every single thing we can do to reduce emissions and speed adaptations, we need to do. The fact that we needed to do it last century is beside the point; we really, really need to do all of it now.
"France has had to cut back on nuclear power production, which it relies on and in theory should be renewable" - Nuclear is not renewable (but it is also not a fossil fuel).
and
"methane, which is the most potent climate warming emission" - methane is not the MOST potent climate warming emission, it is just a lot more potent than carbon dioxide.
I was unable to read the article without becoming a subscriber, albeit for little for 4 weeks. But the title of the article is relevant to NZ. Here, almost 90% of methane is from livestock, but there is no surge. The level in the MfE's annual GHG inventory report of 21 October21 shows that over 30 years from 1990 to 2019 it's up 9%, and since 2001, not at all. Since 8% or so of methane 'leaves' the 'cloud' of it every year, it's quite straightforward to say that methane emissions from NZ livestock have ceased to increase warming. Since 1990 there are 50% less sheep, 17% less cattle and 15% less deer, which helps explain this.
But it does mean that for methane, NZ agriculture is at 'net zero' emissions, almost 30 years before the rest of the economy's target of net zero at 2050. Before I cover N2O, I want to suggest one reason why many have a totally wrong view of urgency with regard to methane from NZ agriculture (which must reduce and will provide a cooling impetus in doing so). The MfE is stuck producing stats on annual emissions using the GWP100 formula for all gases, which scientists did not want and which produces 'methane misinformation'. MfE is using the formula from the IPCC's 4th assessment report, requiring methane to be reported as 25 times the warming value of carbon over that 100 year time frame. So the annual report shows methane at around 38% of gross GHG emissions on a GWP100 basis, and with N2O at about 10% making agriculture in total 48%, compares it to the 52% from everywhere else, almost entirely from CO2.
This produces the impression methane is warming as much as the 52% from CO2. But it's not, because the 'ins' and 'outs' from NZ livestock methane are in balance - no more warming is coming from there. By contrast, CO2 and N2O from livestock via soils are adding to warming potential every year.
For GWP100 purposes, N2O, nitrous oxide, in NZ is at least 50% from mostly cow urine, and can be compared directly with CO2. So to contrast livestock impact on warming potential via each year's emissions, we need to remove the methane and rebase the the calculations for percentages, without methane. Using the MfE tables, for 2019 this gives 15% for livestock (N2O) and 85% for CO2. It gives a more sensible picture of what sector's gases are actually contributing to warming each additional year.
I've outlined this to suggest farmers are getting a statistically bad rap, and also to imply that one reason for the current HWEN approach from officials (and Shaw) is because of course they know this too. But both livestock-induced gases need action, and N2O perhaps more - where farmers have dragged their feet for decades. There is a strong mitigating solution for leaching, which may also seriously cut N2O emissions, and that is cow barns. Check them out on the web - progressive dairy farmers are experimenting with them and the Govt needs to get in behind this.
By the way, I am not a farmer and don't even know one, but I am interested in policy solutions to the IPCC science. I know from experience you don't get them easily if you misuse data.
There you go John. And its short life is very important, or we would be completely done I think.
There has been no increase each year in methane emissions since 2001 - it's been flat. Since it declines naturally at about 8% a year, it's clear that if we put no more in each year for 20 years and it declines naturally each year (there's a half life that's longer than 12 years I think, so I assume that's why the scientists are being just practical with saying 8% a year), then NZ's livestock methane gas cloud is not growing - it may well be shrinking. So that means it is not ADDING to warming - it still warms, but no more each year than the last. Whereas the CO2 we pump out each year does not dissipate even in 100 or several hundred years, so it continues to add to warming. That's what net zero 2050 means - by then we are targetting the same result for CO2 as we already have for methane.
This difference is major, and it is never referred to for NZ agriculture, which of course it should be. If 'farmers' are already at net zero with 80% of their emissions (the methane, the rest is N2O) then why is the 'city' yelling at them to cut methane when the city has not cut CO2, which continues to do more damage? We need the farmers onside - to slowly reduce methane with technology and what will be slow destocking as genetics deliver better milk from fewer cows and more importantly, to focus on cow barns and other expensive ways to stop urine leaching.
Reductions in the size of the methane cloud by reducing annual emissions into it will actually be cooling. When we stop net CO2 we won't be cooling, we will just have stopped warming any more.
Loved the dog slide, not so much the lack of water for French nuclear reactor.
More links please Bernard? Also can we do a group buy on Xanax?
More links pls Bernard
Interesting Bernard especially about the methane. What dies Groundswell think, if they do think? Tipping points are now “baked in” in a manner of speaking. The most ecologically destructive sector is pasture fed Beef and Lamb. See George Monbiot “Regenesis” recently published. His advice to dairy farmers is “sell” , the farm I mean. The idea that we can continue our grossly profligate emissions to “feed the world “is Magical Thinking. Farming is the most destructive enterprise.
Keep up good work.
Patrick Medlicott
“Our level of primary knowledge is still very, very low,” he says. “Methane keeps kicking up these surprises"
Thank you for link Bernard, it was an assuring article that the feedback loops will keep looping until either the radio breaks or someone manages to change the 8 track.
Another interesting read from May 2022 about greenhouse gas pollution on CO2 and methane gas, warming feeding the warming.
https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2877/Greenhouse-gas-pollution-trapped-49-more-heat-in-2021-than-in-1990-NOAA-finds
Will Aotearoa-NZ be able to pivot fast enough in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, are we doing enough as a developed nation to protect our wetlands from emitting more gases, and reducing our methane emissions from agriculture? One remains hopeful..
I just joined The Kākā recently. Top quality research and thinking on the most important issues we are all facing - communicated clearly in a way I can understand and engage with! Really appreciate your work Bernard, thank you! 🙏
There was that cartoon in The Kaka back on the fifteenth where a water company worker was moaning "It's a disaster - there's no river to pump sewerage into!". I wonder how rivers with greatly reduced flow are going what with the usual amount of pollutants being discharged into them but nowhere near as much water to dilute it. And the effect on any aquatic life that may have been there.
Political suicide if you're a politician I know but if the government can give farmers a 95% discount on their GHG emissions, can the government give itself a 95% reduction on the amount of aid it gives to farmers to clean up after the recent flooding?
Would love to get another link to that horrid methane story, Bernard!
Sigh... I see so many versions of this comment: "If we let the earth warm enough to start warming itself, we are going to lose this battle". But I'm reading a book about the *current* effects of warming on the forests of the high northern latitudes, where warming is maybe 4x more visible than in the temperate zone. The TL:DR is, the tipping point for an irreversible methane feedback loop is well behind us.
We need to stop using the rhetoric of "we have to stave off the tipping point". Because as soon as people realise it's too late for that, they'll reply "okay then, we'll just give up now, it's over". And it isn't ever going to be over. Every single thing we can do to reduce emissions and speed adaptations, we need to do. The fact that we needed to do it last century is beside the point; we really, really need to do all of it now.
I'm wondering if Aotearoa will also experience hydro-electric power shortages this summer, as it looks like it might be a hot, dry one.
A couple of minor things jumped out at me today:
"France has had to cut back on nuclear power production, which it relies on and in theory should be renewable" - Nuclear is not renewable (but it is also not a fossil fuel).
and
"methane, which is the most potent climate warming emission" - methane is not the MOST potent climate warming emission, it is just a lot more potent than carbon dioxide.
I was unable to read the article without becoming a subscriber, albeit for little for 4 weeks. But the title of the article is relevant to NZ. Here, almost 90% of methane is from livestock, but there is no surge. The level in the MfE's annual GHG inventory report of 21 October21 shows that over 30 years from 1990 to 2019 it's up 9%, and since 2001, not at all. Since 8% or so of methane 'leaves' the 'cloud' of it every year, it's quite straightforward to say that methane emissions from NZ livestock have ceased to increase warming. Since 1990 there are 50% less sheep, 17% less cattle and 15% less deer, which helps explain this.
But it does mean that for methane, NZ agriculture is at 'net zero' emissions, almost 30 years before the rest of the economy's target of net zero at 2050. Before I cover N2O, I want to suggest one reason why many have a totally wrong view of urgency with regard to methane from NZ agriculture (which must reduce and will provide a cooling impetus in doing so). The MfE is stuck producing stats on annual emissions using the GWP100 formula for all gases, which scientists did not want and which produces 'methane misinformation'. MfE is using the formula from the IPCC's 4th assessment report, requiring methane to be reported as 25 times the warming value of carbon over that 100 year time frame. So the annual report shows methane at around 38% of gross GHG emissions on a GWP100 basis, and with N2O at about 10% making agriculture in total 48%, compares it to the 52% from everywhere else, almost entirely from CO2.
This produces the impression methane is warming as much as the 52% from CO2. But it's not, because the 'ins' and 'outs' from NZ livestock methane are in balance - no more warming is coming from there. By contrast, CO2 and N2O from livestock via soils are adding to warming potential every year.
For GWP100 purposes, N2O, nitrous oxide, in NZ is at least 50% from mostly cow urine, and can be compared directly with CO2. So to contrast livestock impact on warming potential via each year's emissions, we need to remove the methane and rebase the the calculations for percentages, without methane. Using the MfE tables, for 2019 this gives 15% for livestock (N2O) and 85% for CO2. It gives a more sensible picture of what sector's gases are actually contributing to warming each additional year.
I've outlined this to suggest farmers are getting a statistically bad rap, and also to imply that one reason for the current HWEN approach from officials (and Shaw) is because of course they know this too. But both livestock-induced gases need action, and N2O perhaps more - where farmers have dragged their feet for decades. There is a strong mitigating solution for leaching, which may also seriously cut N2O emissions, and that is cow barns. Check them out on the web - progressive dairy farmers are experimenting with them and the Govt needs to get in behind this.
By the way, I am not a farmer and don't even know one, but I am interested in policy solutions to the IPCC science. I know from experience you don't get them easily if you misuse data.
There you go John. And its short life is very important, or we would be completely done I think.
There has been no increase each year in methane emissions since 2001 - it's been flat. Since it declines naturally at about 8% a year, it's clear that if we put no more in each year for 20 years and it declines naturally each year (there's a half life that's longer than 12 years I think, so I assume that's why the scientists are being just practical with saying 8% a year), then NZ's livestock methane gas cloud is not growing - it may well be shrinking. So that means it is not ADDING to warming - it still warms, but no more each year than the last. Whereas the CO2 we pump out each year does not dissipate even in 100 or several hundred years, so it continues to add to warming. That's what net zero 2050 means - by then we are targetting the same result for CO2 as we already have for methane.
This difference is major, and it is never referred to for NZ agriculture, which of course it should be. If 'farmers' are already at net zero with 80% of their emissions (the methane, the rest is N2O) then why is the 'city' yelling at them to cut methane when the city has not cut CO2, which continues to do more damage? We need the farmers onside - to slowly reduce methane with technology and what will be slow destocking as genetics deliver better milk from fewer cows and more importantly, to focus on cow barns and other expensive ways to stop urine leaching.
Reductions in the size of the methane cloud by reducing annual emissions into it will actually be cooling. When we stop net CO2 we won't be cooling, we will just have stopped warming any more.