Cheap Seats 2023 By Rich Trzupek

Concerning Moving Targets and Bovine Digestion - 05/17

By Rich Trzupek
  Methane is one of those compounds about which environmental groups can’t seem to make up their minds. Thirty or so years ago, methane was the cure for “climate change” according to the Sierra Club and many like-minded environmental groups. More recently, it’s become the focus of massive new environmental regulatory efforts because it’s a relatively more powerful greenhouse gas when compared to carbon dioxide. Accordingly the importance of global methane emissions have increased from “who cares?” to “Enviro freak-out Def-Con Level 2” in recent years. But now new evidence suggests that increased concentrations of methane in the atmosphere might actually be a good thing, because increased methane in the atmosphere may actually help cool planet Earth. This is important to people swearing allegiance to the global melt-down alarmists who have spent more than 40 years assuring us that climate catastrophe is only 12 years away.
  As most readers know, methane is the primary ingredient of natural gas. It’s also the compound that nature produces in great quantity when biological matter decays. When active human or animal life is involved the product of this decay is typically emitted as flatulence, which is rich in methane. This is a matter of endless amusement to those of us involved in the environmental industry, but also a matter of great concern to people worried about climate change. Particularly where cows are concerned. Should future historians wish to define the current environmental movement, we can only hope that they start here: The environmental movement in the early 21st century was not only obsessed with cow farts, they spent untold amounts of money researching schemes to reduce their supposed environmental impact.
  Thirty years ago many environmental groups were focused on carbon dioxide emissions generated from the combustion of coal. In that context carbon dioxide emissions generated from the combustion of natural gas were much preferable. When one burns natural gas energy is generated from the oxidation of carbon and from the oxidation of the four hydrogen atoms that accompany each carbon atom in methane. Even better, from the environmental NGO’s perspective back then, one can burn natural gas using a technology called combined cycle that is roughly twice as efficient as burning coal to generate electricity. The two effects combined would lead to a massive reduction in carbon dioxide emissions if natural gas fired power plants replaced coal-fired power plants. The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations recognized this and for a number of years were champions of the natural gas industry and combined cycle power.
  Then, entering the new millennium environmental groups like the Sierra Club were faced with a conundrum. They had been too successful. It became more and more difficult to get people upset about coal-fired power when one had been so successful at decimating the coal-fired power industry in America. Environmental groups, like all special interest organizations, require an evil antagonist if they are going to survive. With coal becoming more and more irrelevant and natural gas filling more and more of the gaps that neither wind nor solar is able to fill, natural gas transitioned from being the solution in the 1990s to becoming the problem as it is portrayed today.
  The environmental group playbook features two standard attacks on natural gas fired power. The first is the undeniable fact that burning natural gas, which is a fossil fuel, will generate carbon dioxide emissions. The fact that burning natural gas generates significantly less carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy created as compared to coal is a detail few in the general public are aware of, or if they are aware of it, care about.
  The other point of attack involves the fact that natural gas is typically around 95 or so percent methane and methane is a greenhouse gas. It’s actually a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. When the EPA first started to inventory greenhouse gases the agency assigned a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 21 to methane. This meant that, according to the agency, 1 cubic foot of methane gas in the atmosphere would retain the heat equivalent to 21 cubic feet of carbon dioxide.
  The EPA Would later upgrade methane’s GWP to 25. Then they would upgrade it again to 28. For many of us chemists these adjustments were baffling. A compound’s ability to retain heat, or more correctly to reflect certain wavelengths of energy, is a matter of that compound’s physical and thermodynamic properties. We generally treat those as in alterable once they have been established through sufficient research. That is not to say that any scientific data deemed “established” should not ever be questioned. Challenging conventional wisdom is a foundation of the scientific method.
  That said, modifying methane gas basic thermodynamic properties so quickly and so significantly raised more than a few eyebrows. In the environmental field there is a tendency for many in government and academia to accept research that supports their preferred causes and preconceived effects without much discussion. And there is, of course, the flip side. Research that challenges preconceived notions in the environmental field tend to be dismissed by many in government and academia as being supposedly either intellectually flawed and knowingly prejudicial.
  The Biden administration has allocated billions of dollars to reduce methane emissions in the United States. They claim this is necessary to combat climate change. The evidence cited includes the increase in methane emissions in America and worldwide and the increased GWP values assigned to methane emissions. There is big money to be had for anyone who can turn methane into carbon dioxide. Such folks are supposedly saving the planet by a factor of 28X!
  Now, new research suggests that methane in the atmosphere may also have a partial cooling effect as well. The extent to which this particular theory is accurate remains to be seen. The ultimate take-home should be this: Atmospheric interactions that regulate the climate and produce weather are enormously complex. Attempts to reduce our understanding of the phenomenon we call “climate change” to any one or two variables in that massive and complicated equation are worse than misguided and counter-productive.
  In closing, let us consider the following. If you happen to own land that includes abandoned gas or oil wells that are emitting methane the Biden administration will gladly pay you a bunch of money to burn that methane and turn it into carbon dioxide. Should not the same logic apply when you use a stove that uses methane-rich natural gas in your home? As I see it, cooking on a gas range isn’t merely about feeding your family, it saves the planet!
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com