Guest Post: Asking Pertinent Questions about Methane Part Two.

A further guest post from Owen Jennings:

The first pertinent question we asked was, “what part of the atmosphere is Methane?” The answer is, “not much”.

All of the Greenhouse Gases (GHG’s) (CO2, Methane, Water Vapour, Nitrous Oxide and Ozone) struggle to make up 1% of the air around us in New Zealand (white coats will state it varies from the polar regions to the tropics but 1% is accurate for us in Godzone).  What you rarely hear from the warmists is that water vapour totally dominates the GHG’s.  In that 1% water vapour crushes it at 95 – 96%.  CO2 is 0.04%. Ozone and Nitrous Oxide add a smidgeon. Methane limps in at 0.019%.  That’s 0.00019% of the whole atmosphere.  Two parts per million.

Infinitesimal.

The second question is how much of that piddling, minute percentage is anthropogenic. (nice scientific word, eh?). Dr Jock Allison sent me this graph on the sources of all Methane emissions.  The numbers come from NASA – the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with a budget of $US 28 billion.

It shows 33% natural and 67% anthropogenic.  Only 15% comes from ruminants – cows, sheep, elephants, gazelles, giraffes and unicorns. 

As an economy that is dependent on agriculture we want to know if we are a significant player.  We are not.  We can’t even muster up 1% of the world’s ruminants.  So at very best, with a tail wind, we are 1% of 15%.  We also emit minor amounts from other human activities.

So, totally meaningless, if you are trying to assess NZ’s agriculture’s emissions from livestock relative to the whole atmosphere.  The world may be a big place but 1% of the 15% of the 0.00019% just won’t fit in the calculator window.  It takes a deluded romanticist (or a well paid scientist??) to think that somehow our cows belching is heating the planet. We are spending hundreds of millions to reduce belching by 20% as if 20% of 1% of 15% of something that is 0.00019% of the atmosphere has some validity. Does your head in, doesn’t it?

What are these miniscule numbers of Methane molecules supposed to be doing that has the world “alarmed”?  Why are we even discussing cutting back our livestock numbers and penalising farmers and our exports for such a trivial percentage?

Now it gets all tricky and technical.  But hang in there with me and we will try and get it down to hayseed lingo.

When the sun shines it heats stuff up.  Some of the heat/energy bounces back up into the atmosphere.  It is called re-radiation.  The GHG’s welcome specific bands of this radiation energy with open arms.  They all jostle around and some energy gets absorbed by the GHG’s slowing down its journey out into space.  And that, ladies and gentlemen is the Greenhouse Gas Effect.

But hang on a mo.  Not quite so fast.  Nothing in climate is that simple. If only!!

The whole theory is based on models. Climate Change is a theory based on models.  Models need full and accurate inputs to be of any value.  With climate there are so many variables and so little is known of them with certainty that the models are of limited use.   All of the science on warming including the claims against Methane originate with these models.  Despite valiant and even cringing efforts by warmists trying to explain the gap between what the models predicted and actual temperature recorded the gap keeps opening.  This yawning gap, three times warmer than actuals will soon swallow the remaining vestiges of the warmist’s credibility.

Facts, that only the most biased and those milking the money tree dispute:

1.            Over the planet temperatures have been creeping up slowly long before GHG’s increased.

2.            Historically, through countless ages, global temperatures have risen and CO2 has followed

3.            Temperatures have stayed pretty much flat for the last 20 years when CO2 kept rising

4.            But here is the biggie.  Water vapour at up to 96% of the Greenhouse Gases dominates the re-radiation process.  Water vapour is 25 times more abundant than CO2 and 5,000 times more abundant than methane.  A few CO2 molecules get to absorb some heat/energy because there is a very tiny window on the spectrum where water vapour isn’t running the show.  According to world recognised physicists like Tom Sheahen, Will Happer, William van Wijngaarden and increasing Methane can’t do any more worth writing about.  Water vapour has it totally corralled. 

The big guns in science say stuff like this….  “Very low concentration greenhouse gases from agricultural sources are shown to make only a minute contribution to the absorption of solar radiant energy and long-wave re-radiation back from earth. Methane only has a few narrow absorption bands with none absorbing 100% at their active wavelength location within the spectrum.  – Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland.  Yes, a minute contribution swamped by water vapour.

So, Methane is a dead duck.  Water vapour is fully prevalent.  There is simply no room on the electromagnetic spectrum where water vapour lets Methane get a look in.

Seeing is believing.  Below is a diagrammatic look at the spectrum.  It shows that Methane is operating on two places of the spectrum where there is no absorption or influence and one band where it is 50% efficient (the turquoise peak on the right).  

Now look what happens when water vapour is added to the spectrum.   It completely blocks out Methane. 

Methane and Nitrous Oxide have very small absorption bands on that electromagnetic spectrum, at positions where there is significant disruption from water vapour, which has concentrations thousands of times that of the minor gases.

Here is what you hear from the warmist scientists.  They rarely talk about water vapour as a GHG.  Not even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment lets the words cross his lips.  They rarely quantify.  All fancy buzz terms but no hard equations. Why do they avoid the electromagnetic spectrum discussion? Is it an ‘inconvenient truth’?  They do warble on about “feedbacks”.  But like the infamous Yeti one has yet to be spied.  Feedbacks remain unproven and disputed.

Conclusion:  Methane is too insignificant and physically unable to have any influence of consequence on temperature.   Farmers are facing payments running into hundreds of thousands of dollars should current regulations and green interests get their way. Why are we willing to take an axe to our best performing industry when the case is so water(vapour)tight?

Help from:

Dr Jock Allison Ph. D. (Sydney University) ONZM, FNZIPIM

Dr Michael Kelly Ph. D. FRS, FREng Professor at Cambridge University.

Dr Will Happer Ph. D., Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

Dr Geoff Duffy FRSNZ, DEng, Ph.D., BSc, ASTC Dip., FRSNZ, FIChemE, CEng is Professor Emeritus – Chemical Engineering, University of Auckland

Dr William van Wijngaarden Ph.D. (Physics)

Dr Tom Sheahen Ph.D., 1966: Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology