A knowledgeable friend believes that we have passed a threshold, beyond which our world will suffer irreversible changes in the climate system. He says Planet Earth now needs palliative care.

The thoughtful creator of JUST HAVE A THINK may not be quite as pessimistic. Dave Borlace says that if we deal with methane emissions, it would be a hugely important step in dealing with the CLIMATE EMERGENCY. Borlace says:

All the solutions are known, none of them are complicated, and they are all achievable. Only things standing in the way are human intransigence and our collective inability to apply critical thinking to a blindingly obvious, rapidly approaching catastrophe.

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Followers of Dave Borlace’s channel can be relied upon for informed commentary. A few examples:

Some of the denialist I chat with seem to NOT want to have things explained, they made their mind up & won’t be changed.

Regarding methane’s decay (the twelve years mentioned) – that is dependent on the quantity of the components available to cause that decay. The main one being hydroxyl radicals created in the upper atmosphere at a regular rate. When other things like CO from wildfires or even faster methane release overwhelms these radicals, less methane gets broken down over that time period. Guess what also gets affected if more methane hangs around? The half life, and thus the overall GHG power over time. So the numbers that the IPCC still refers to (28 times CO2 over 100 years, 84 times CO2 over 20 years) are probably too low now because of so many methane spikes. I.e., it’s worse than expected.

If the grotesque cost and thermodynamic inefficiencies of hydrogen as an energy carrier were not enough, it escapes very easily, being the smallest molecule, and once it the atmosphere, proceeds to gobble up and neutralize the OH radicals that are needed to cause the decay of methane! So besides wasting money, the supposedly “clean” hydrogen has a significant global warming potential due to it making methane last longer in the atmosphere.

Too late to stop the permafrost from melting and releasing gigatons of CO2, CH4, & NO. We are already in full-on feedback loop mode. In addition we’ve already baked in 2.5°C to 3.0°C with our current 525ppm CO2-eq. It will take every bit of human effort ingenuity & sacrifice to keep us below 4°C by the end of century.

Another science based YouTube site worth paying attention to is by German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder. She is not afraid to speak against common opinions. On this one, pay attention to her conclusions. Because of scientific uncertainty, things may actually be worse than typically projected. Watch these videos, then be more worried than you were.

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