New ways to suck up methane can buy us vital time in the climate fight

Scientists say that the planet will not start to cool down until the middle of the century to release its mineral oil, but reducing methane emissions could make a huge difference in the short term, buying the planet an important time. . Methane emissions have a shorter shelf life - about 12 years, compared to hundreds of years of carbon dioxide before decay - so efforts to reduce methane levels will be faster than carbon dioxide emissions. Climate scientists say methane levels will drop faster than carbon dioxide emissions, which help achieve zero emissions by 2050.

Failure to cut off gas emissions in the past means more CO 2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere to reach zero emissions by 2050 and prevent climate change, scientists say. Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded that it is impossible to maintain global warming within the global goal of 1.5 ° C without reducing gas emissions and eliminating billions of tons of carbon dioxide every year by 2050. A conference in New York on Monday sought to support the Paris Agreement of 2015 on global warming, calling for a reduction in emissions to focus on the most common greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide, which is produced from fossil fuels.

Although the threat of carbon dioxide-related climate change is in the news, methane - the world's second-largest greenhouse gas - has not been able to attract the attention of the media. Methane, another carbon-based compound, becomes a wild card in climate change calculations.

In the energy sector, most methane emissions do not come from burning fossil fuels, which are a source of CO2, but from oil production, because natural gas, especially methane, can easily escape into space over time. oil production. both gas and coal mines. Only one of the 2,500 molecules is CO2, so removing CO2 is more expensive than taking carbon from petroleum plants. When we burn energy plants in power plants, capture and store carbon emissions, previously emitted CO2 from plants is removed from the atmosphere.

The carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) used and under development captures the carbon produced by industrial sources such as energy plants before they enter the atmosphere. Not all carbon emissions by photosynthesis are stored in the ecosystem, as most of them are released into the atmosphere by respiration, but research reports a direct link between global photosynthesis by 12% and global carbon expansion. stock. A 12% increase in photosynthesis causes plants to absorb 14 additional carbon leaves into the atmosphere each year, roughly equivalent to global carbon emissions from 2020 alone.

Pangaea and Gauci point out that the cooling effect of carbonated trees exceeds the heat of methane and nitrous oxide emanating from trees. Because human activities release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, scientists are debating whether plants respond by increasing photosynthesis and absorbing more carbon dioxide than they already do, and in that case, less or less.

As countries do not make much progress in regulating carbon emissions, many governments, and their supporters have proposed plans to plant more trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to delay climate change. For years researchers have been concerned that rising temperatures, droughts, and deforestation reduce the Amazon rain forest's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help reduce mineral emissions and fossil fuels. Because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for decades longer than other greenhouse gases, efforts to reduce carbon dioxide are essential to reduce climate change.

Their research suggests the possible construction of a large industrial network of coal miners capable of emitting greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere. On Thursday, a team of scientists from Harvard University and Carbon Engineering announced that they had found a way to emit carbon dioxide directly into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide for global warming will be absorbed into the atmosphere using wood, peat, stone fragments, and coal in a major new experiment in the UK and UK. Meanwhile, Climeworks uses three straight-line wind turbines - in Iceland, Switzerland, and Italy - absorbing 1,100 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Not everyone in the meteorological community is happy that the US government is investing public money in certain carbon capture projects. Now, with the support of the organization - and anticipating the big results that come with it - the technology of direct carbon capture can reach their real-time. Experts point out that the emission of carbon dioxide will not give humans a long way to go before the use of fossil fuels in climate change for the next century.

Excessive direct air capture can affect the environment from mining, processing, transporting, and disposal of carbon-carrying mineral waste. If we can clean the methane air, it can help stop the temperature rise, giving us time to reduce other carbon emissions. Because methane is a fast-acting and short-lived cooler, reducing methane loss will have an immediate impact on the climate system, says Alex Turner.

Jake Higdon, U.S. climate policy chief in the Environmental Defense Fund, notes that the world may need to find a way to release billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere over the next 30 years. Carbon emissions are also considered important because by 2050 it will be difficult to stop all the gas coming from sectors such as aviation, agriculture, and cement production. the surface of the earth is formed when the matter of plants is converted into coal.