Denmark introduces a carbon tax on agriculture

Source : Vegconomist

 From Vegconomist

Denmark looks set to introduce what is claimed to be the world’s first carbon tax on agriculture, following negotiations between the government, farmer organisations, trade unions, industry, and environmental NGOs.

The agreement is expected to be formally approved by the Danish parliament in August, and will see a tax of DKK 300 per tonne CO2e introduced on livestock emissions from 2030. This will rise to DKK 750 per tonne CO2e in 2035, but with a basic deduction of 60%; this means that the effective tax will be DKK 120 (€16) per tonne in 2030 and DKK 300 (€40) per tonne in 2035.

“We are investing in the future of our agricultural sector”

The proceeds raised by the tax in 2030-31 will be returned to the industry as a support fund to aid the green transition. The tax is expected to reduce emissions by 1.8 million tonnes of CO2e by 2030, enabling Denmark to achieve its legally binding target of cutting emissions by 70%.

Additionally, 250,000 new hectares of forest will be established in the coming years, and targets have been set to protect at least 20% of nature. Fees for slaughterhouses will be raised by DKK 45 million (€6 million) annually from 2029, and funding will be allocated to upskill labour.

The agreement has been reached despite Europe-wide backlash from farmers against proposed EU environmental policies, which led to some targets being dropped earlier this year. New Zealand has also recently scrapped plans for a tax aimed at tackling livestock emissions.

With the new tax, Denmark continues on its trajectory of progressive agricultural policies. In 2021, the country allocated 580 million DKK to farmers who produce plant-based foods; this was said to be the first time in history that plant foods had been given priority in an agricultural agreement.

In October 2023, Denmark became the first country worldwide to publish a national action plan for plant-based foods. The plan aims to strengthen and promote the country’s plant-based sector as part of the shift toward climate-friendly diets. Its publication came just a few months after a report found that Denmark’s financial sector currently lacks the objectives, knowledge, and ambition to invest in sustainable foods.

In March of last year, the Danish Climate Council recommended that two-thirds of the meat consumed by Danes should be replaced by plant-based foods, and suggested that high-emission foods such as beef should be taxed.

Beef and mutton produce the most methane in agriculture, and methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas over 10 years as CO2 (it takes 12 years for methane to decay into CO2).  Also, expanding beef production means more land clearing, though obviously not in Denmark.  Globally, these two factors make agriculture a major source of greenhouse gases.  In 2024, 88% of Denmark's electricity came from renewables.   And 56% of Denmark's car sales are EVs/PHEVs.   Agriculture is the logical next step to cut emissions.  Heat pumps are another.  Compared to the rest of Scandinavia and Europe, Denmark has fewer heat pumps installed per 100,000 people, partly because its heat pump subsidies are smaller.  Heat pumps are far more efficient for heating in terms of energy use than old-fashioned gas or oil boilers.

Is there any hope at all?

There are some extraordinary things happening in the renewables space.

1. Solar power is up a lot (it varies by country) almost everywhere.  The cost of solar continues to decline, and because the cost of storage is plunging, "firming" solar electricity is becoming easier and cheaper.

2. CATL has introduced improved sodium-ion batteries. Sodium is roughly 1/5th as costly as lithium, so sodium-ion batteries will be much cheaper than lithium-ion. They also have a much longer life, theoretically allowing cars to travel 3 million miles before the batteries wear out. These new batteries will have 10,000 cycles, which will mean that even if they are charged and discharged 100% every day, they will still last 27 years.  Fantastic for stationary (grid) storage.  

3. EVs continue to make up an ever larger proportion of total car sales. In China, 1/3rd of the world's car market, they are +-50%, heading straight towards 100%. EVs (from China) now have the same sticker price as petrol cars. For example, here in Oz, the cheapest BYD Dolphin costs the same as the cheapest petrol Toyota Corolla. As battery prices plunge, EVs are only going to become ever more attractive.


Emissions from land transport and electricity generation are just under 50% of total global emissions. It seems plausible that these will have nearly ended by 2040, putting us halfway down the road to zero emissions. We need to do more (stop eating red meat, replace gas/oil heating with heat pumps/electrical heating, fix cement, steel and air travel, stop land clearing) to bend that curve towards a better outcome, but for the first time in years, I feel optimistic that we at last have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.  

What can you do to help?  You can cut your personal emissions, by as much as 20-30%, by becoming vegetarian, or at least, stopping eating beef and mutton, and not using milk.   If mankind did that, we would cut emissions by +-70%, adding together the decline in emissions from agriculture and transport and electricity generation.  The more we cut emissions, the sooner temperatures will stop rising.

It has been possible to argue that anything we do is pointless, because China's emissions have just kept on rising.  But this year, or next, China's emissions, as the country installs more and more solar, and EV sales continue to explode, will peak and start falling, and that particular excuse for inaction will disappear.

Let's do this.  

Kicking fossil fuel out of industry

 From Just Have a Think

Gives an interesting perspective of just how fossil fuels are used in industry, and how we can replace almost all uses with green electricity.  As so often, up-front costs are key.  And as always, a decent carbon price would encourage a more rapid transition to carbon-free industry.

There are 4 main "sectors" where we need to de-carbonise, and they each require different solutions.  The emissions from each sector are not equal, but it helps to break down the problem like this.

1.  Electricity generation.  This is, globally, the sector with the biggest share of emissions, but that varies a bit depending on the country.  The solutions here are obvious, and happening, though not as fast as is needed.
2. Transport.  A mixed bag.  Land transport is moving rapidly towards zero carbon; air and sea transport still has a long way to go.
3. Industry.  This includes steel and cement production, and chemicals and paper.  This video discusses various solutions.
4. Food.  A combination of methane emissions by grazing animals, and deforestation to produce beef.  As big as electricity generation by many analyses, but the hardest to reduce, because people have an emotional relationship with their food.  Politicians interfere at their peril, so shy away.  Yet it is abundantly clear that something will have to be done.

Methane is supercharging the climate crisis

From Our World in Data

From The Hill

In the fight against climate change, the focus is usually on carbon dioxide, or CO2 — and for good reason. It’s a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for [thousands of] years, trapping in heat for generations to come. Yet there is an even more potent planet-warming gas whose destructive powers have long gone hidden — until now.

Methane traps heat in the atmosphere with 80 times the power of CO2 over 20 years. While it breaks down in the atmosphere faster than carbon dioxide, the damage it does is more immediate.

The good news is that, thanks to recent developments in leak monitoring, we can halt much of the methane emitted from various human activities before it reaches the atmosphere, a tactic that, because of methane’s potency and short shelf life, could have an almost immediate impact.

Scientists around the world now have tools at their disposal to trace otherwise invisible methane leaks. With spectrometers, satellite surveillance, drones and handheld devices, they can now create sophisticated, multilayered maps that reveal how and where methane plumes are entering the atmosphere. The aggregation of this data is so precise, in fact, that scientists can pinpoint methane leaks down to the exact location.

What they’ve discovered is telling.

The fossil fuel industry has been drilling and refining oil and its byproducts for over 150 years, and it has left behind a legacy of pollution and dodged accountability. So-called “orphaned” wells, or wells that have been abandoned by the oil companies that originally drilled them, litter the United States, including my home state of Louisiana. When these wells aren’t abandoned outright, ownership is transferred to a shell company without the funding to clean them up. They can remain uncapped for generations, leaking carcinogens and other toxic chemicals into the surrounding area and unleashing plumes of methane into the atmosphere.

Last month, I testified in Baton Rouge on behalf of important legislation to hold oil companies accountable for the wells they previously drilled. Under current law, the expense of eventually capping wells is left to taxpayers. Passing abandoned well accountability legislation in state after state is a workable solution to halting this contributor to climate change.

Beyond avoiding accountability for its methane emissions, the industry also engages in “greenwashing,” or making their products seem cleaner than they are. Nowhere is this more apparent than the case of “LNG” or “liquified natural gas,” as the industry calls it.

Here’s the truth: “natural” gas is methane. It’s not a pure product and contains elements of other toxins, but methane is the active ingredient. That’s because when methane is not leaked or wasted, it can be a powerful fuel due to its high combustibility.

The industry’s process for extracting gas through fracking, moving it through pipelines, liquefying it and shipping it overseas is an energy intensive and wasteful process. From the well head through the pipeline to the export terminal and beyond, methane is leaked into the atmosphere. To regulate pressure along the pipeline and in the liquefaction plant, companies flare, or burn off the excess, just above ground level, releasing methane along with any other particulate matter.

Here too, the fossil fuel industry needs to be held to account. Sending a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere while marketing it as a “green” alternative to oil is dishonest.

The Department of Energy’s report on the federal “pause” on LNG permitting has just been released. In her statement, Secretary Jennifer Granholm confirmed what so many of us have long known: LNG exports are a ticking greenhouse gas time bomb. “An LNG project exporting 4 billion cubic feet per day – considering its direct life cycle emissions – would yield more annual greenhouse gas emissions by itself than 141 of the world’s countries each did in 2023,” she noted.

It’s time to end federal permitting of new LNG gas export terminals. Absent federal action, state and local officials must refuse zoning, land use, public interest and other permits to stop the industry’s reckless expansion.

Methane in the atmosphere has shot up in the past two decades, and it continues to be emitted in quantities that make a stable climate impossible. Manmade emissions have warmed the planet so much that melting permafrost and wetlands are now also releasing methane, causing a “doom spiral” that will soon become uncontrollable.

There is hope. By exposing the industry’s emissions, mandating the capping of wells and downscaling the use of fossil fuels, we can draw down this potent greenhouse gas — and we must. Our future depends on it.

Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré (Ret.) is a former commanding officer of the U.S. First Army. He led Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans following the devastating Category 5 hurricane. He is currently head of The Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.

About 1/3rd of the rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times (by convention, taken to mean 1850-1900 for the purposes of calculating the rise in temperature, currently already at 1.5 degrees C) is due to higher levels of methane in the atmosphere. If we slashed emissions from agriculture and "fugitive emissions" (gas leaks), the level of methane in the atmosphere would start falling immediately (it decays within 12 years to CO2), and we would stop temperatures rising for two decades, giving us more time to cut CO2 emissions. 

Oil and gas companies lying about their methane emissions

Hat tip to Justin Mikulka

We have always relied on the oil and gas industry to self-report methane emissions. Now we have independent ways to of measuring those emissions and it turns out they were lying about the emissions. By a lot. The blue lines are actual measurements. The pink are industry numbers. 

(Source: MethaneSat)

How amazing!  Oil and gas companies lying about their emissions!  I simply can't believe it!

It certainly explains why methane levels in the atmosphere have been rising so rapidly.  And possibly why global temperatures are now rising by 0.33 degrees C per decade instead of 0.17 degrees, since over 10 years, methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.

See also:

1,000 super-emitting methane sources

Methane emissions vastly underestimated

Giant Exxon methane leak

Focus far more on methane

Greenhouse gas levels reach new records

 From The Guardian

The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said.

It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades.

“Another year, another record,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO. “This should set alarm bells ringing among decision makers.”

The increase was driven by humanity’s “stubbornly high” burning of fossil fuels, the WMO found, and made worse by big wildfires and a possible drop in the ability of trees to absorb carbon.

The concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, the scientists observed. The level of pollution is 51% greater than before the Industrial Revolution, when people [first] began to burn large amounts of coal, oil and fossil gas.

Concentrations of strong but short-lived pollutants also surged. Methane concentrations hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 165% from preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide hit 336.9 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 25%, it said.

Saulo said: “We are clearly off track to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C and aiming for 1.5C above preindustrial levels. These are more than just statistics. Every part per million and every fraction of a degree temperature increase has a real impact on our lives and our planet.”

Burning fossil fuels – such as the petrol to power a car or the coal to feed a thermal power plant – releases gases that trap sunlight and heat the planet.

The WMO warned that this heating can lead to climate feedbacks that are “critical concerns” to society, such as stronger wildfires that pump out more carbon and hotter oceans that suck up less CO2.

There has been a slight slowdown in the growth of global emissions over the last decade but continued strong growth in atmospheric concentrations, said Glen Peters, a climate scientist at the Cicero in Norway, who was not involved in the study. “[That] should give us cause for thought on how strong carbon sinks will remain in a changing climate.”

The Earth last experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 a few million years ago, when the planet was 2-3C hotter and the sea level 10-20 metres higher.

 

LNG produces more emissions than coal

From The Guardian

Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia.

Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels when combusted for energy, with oil and gas producers for years promoting cleaner-burning gas as a “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution” amid a glut of new liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US.


But the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.

“The idea that coal is worse for the climate is mistaken – LNG has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel,” said Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell University and author of the new paper.

“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong. It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”

Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process, the research finds.

The large resulting emissions mean there is “no need for LNG as an interim energy source”, the paper says, adding that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority”.

The peer-reviewed research, published on Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal, challenges the rationale for a huge surge in LNG facilities along the US Gulf coast, in order to send gas in huge tankers to overseas markets. The US is the world’s leading LNG exporter, followed by Australia and Qatar.

Previous government and industry estimates have assumed that LNG is considerably lower emitting than coal, offering the promise that it could replace it in countries such as China, as well as aiding European allies menaced by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major gas producer.

“US LNG exports can help accelerate environmental progress across the globe, enabling nations to transition to cleaner natural gas to reduce emissions and address the global risks of climate change,” Dustin Meyer, director of market development at the American Petroleum Institute, has said.

But scientists have determined that LNG expansion is not compatible with the world avoiding dangerous global heating, with researchers finding in recent years the leakage of methane, a primary component of gas and a potent planet-heating agent, from drilling operations is far higher than official estimates.

Howarth’s paper finds that as much as 3.5% of the gas delivered to customers leaks to the atmosphere unburned, much more than previously assumed. Methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though it persists for less time in the atmosphere, and scientists have warned that rising global methane emissions risk blowing apart agreed-upon climate goals.

Howarth’s research found that during LNG production, around half of the total emissions occur during the long journey taken by gas as it is pushed through pipelines to coastal terminals after it is initially drilled, usually via hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from areas such as the US’s vast shale deposits.

The energy used to do this, along with the leaks, causes pollution that is exacerbated once the gas gets to the export facilities. There, it is supercooled to -162C (-260F) to become a liquid, which is loaded into huge storage containers on tankers. The tankers then travel long distances to deliver the product to client countries, where it is turned back into a gas and then burned.

“This whole process is much more energy intensive than coal,” said Howarth. “The science is pretty clear here: it’s wishful thinking that the gas miraculously moves overseas without any emissions..”

Howarth’s paper has caused something of a firestorm before its publication, with a draft of the study highlighted by climate campaigners such as Bill McKibben to the extent it was reportedly a factor in a decision earlier this year by the Biden administration to pause all new export permits for LNG projects.

This pause has enraged the oil and gas industry – prompting lawsuits – and its political allies. Last month, four congressional Republicans wrote to the US energy department demanding correspondence between it and Howarth over what they called his “flawed” and “erroneous” study.

Gas-friendly groups have also argued that the paper overstates emissions from LNG, an stance echoed by some energy experts. “It’s hard to swallow,” said David Dismukes, a leading Louisiana energy consultant and researcher. “Does gas have a climate impact? Absolutely. But is it worse than coal? Come on.”

Howarth said the result of this unusual scrutiny was “more peer review than I’ve ever had before”, with five rounds of review being conducted by eight other scientists. Howarth said: “I don’t consider the criticism valid at all – it feels like a political job.”

Howarth said the US has a “huge choice” to make in the presidential election, with Donald Trump vowing to undo Biden’s pause on his first day back in the White House to allow a raft of new LNG projects. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has backed away from a previous plan to ban fracking but has promised action on the climate crisis.

More than 125 climate, environmental and health scientists wrote to the Biden administration last month to defend Howarth’s research and urge a continuation of the pause on LNG exports.

The Howarth paper’s findings are “plausible”, said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University, who was not involved in the research.

“Bob’s study adds to a lot of literature now that shows the industry’s argument for gas is undermined by the option to go to renewables,” Shindell said. “The debate isn’t really about whether gas is slightly better or worse than coal, though. It should be about how both are terrible and that we need to get rid of both of them.”

So from two causes:

1.  Leaks.  Methane is +-80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as coal.  So even quite small leaks (as a percentage) will undo the benefits of switching to gas.
2. Refrigeration, pumping and transport.   

Together, these are likely to substantially reduce or (as this analysis says) completely undo the benefits of gas over coal.  However, gas still has the advantage that it is much easier to ramp up and down than coal, which means that it is a good complement to renewables.

The problem of methane

 It looks as if emissions of CO2 will peak this year or next, and start falling.  Too slowly, but in the right direction.  As more renewables are installed, and more EVs are sold instead of petrol cars, the decline in emissions will speed up. 

The problem is methane:  it's rising fast.  It's ~82 times as potent as CO2 over 10 years.  It's responsible for 1/3rd of the rise in temps since 1850-1900, the agreed and most practical benchmark for pre-industrial temperatures.   Since temperatures now exceed that 1850-1900 level by 1.5 degrees C, methane is responsible for 0.5 degrees of the rise, and is likely key to the acceleration of the decadal increase from 0.2 degrees per decade to 0.3 degrees.

Now for the good news.  Methane rapidly decays to CO2.  So if we stopped emitting it, we could (optimistically!) cut temps by up to 0.5 degrees C, because atmospheric methane would fall dramatically, and temperatures with it.  Even if we halve methane emissions, we could reduce global temperatures by, say, 0.2 degrees.

40% of methane emissions come from fossil fuels  --- "fugitive emissions", which everybody else calls "gas leaks".   This could be cut by tighter controls.   And as we use less coal and oil, these emissions will anyway decline.  20% comes from rubbish dumps.  This can be cut by covering rubbish dumps with soil.   

40% come from agriculture; mostly from the burps and farts of cows and sheep and other animals we grow for meat.   And this is where you can make a personal difference.  The biggest decline in methane emissions would come from going vegan, but if you can't face that, cutting out beef, mutton and milk would be a good start.  Even going from eating meat once a day to once a week would make a difference.  What's more, cutting back on meat will reduce land clearing and the potentially disastrous clearing and burning of the Amazon rain forest.

We are all consumers and voters.  We can make a difference.  Start today.

Source: Our World in Data
The chart shows methane emissions as CO2 equivalents, but uses a 100-year timescale for the calculation, which reduces the calculated impact of methane four-fold.

Massive methane leaks from rubbish dumps

From The Guardian

There have been more than 1,000 huge leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane from landfill waste dumps since 2019, the Guardian can reveal.

Analysis of global satellite data from around the world shows the populous nations of south Asia are a hotspot for these super-emitter events, as well as Argentina and Spain, developed countries where proper waste management should prevent leaks.

Landfills emit methane when organic waste such as food scraps, wood, card, paper and garden waste decompose in the absence of oxygen. Methane, also called natural gas, traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making it a critical target for climate action. Scientists have said emissions from unmanaged landfills could double by 2050 as urban populations grow, blowing the chance of avoiding climate catastrophe.

A total of 1,256 methane super-emitter events occurred between January 2019 and June 2023, according to the new data. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh lead the list of nations with the most large leaks, followed by Argentina, Uzbekistan and Spain.

Landfill emissions can be reduced by creating less organic waste in the first place, diverting it away from landfill, or at least capturing some of the methane that is being released from the landfills. Action to stem methane leaks slows global heating faster than almost any other measure and is often low-cost, with some measures even paying for themselves when the captured gas is sold as fuel.

Methane emissions have accelerated since 2007 and cause a third of the global heating driving the climate crisis today. The acceleration has alarmed scientists, who fear it is the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and could trigger catastrophic climate tipping points. The rapid rise appears to be due to global heating driving more methane production in wetlands – a potential vicious circle that makes cuts of human-caused methane emissions even more urgent.

Decomposing waste is responsible for about 20% of human-caused methane emissions. Fossil fuel operations cause 40% of emissions, and the Guardian revealed there were more than 1,000 super-emitter events from oil, gas and coal sites in 2022 alone, many of which could be easily fixed. Cattle and paddy fields cause the other 40% of emissions.

Prof Euan Nisbet, a methane expert at Royal Holloway University of London, said: “Big landfills make a great deal of methane but it doesn’t cost much to bulldoze soil over a stinking, burning landfill. It’s not rocket science.”

Microbes in the soil convert methane into CO2. “Then it’s lost 97% of its greenhouse impact,” Nisbet said.

Carlos Silva Filho, president of the International Solid Waste Association, said the global methane pledge made by 150 countries to cut 30% of methane emissions by 2030 could not be achieved without tackling emissions from the waste industry. “Cutting methane is the only solution to meet the global 1.5C temperature target,” he said. “If we really focus on reducing methane emissions from the waste sector, it is a gamechanger.” About 40% of the world’s waste still goes to unmanaged dumps.

Antoine Halff, a co-founder of the company Kayrros, which provided the satellite image analysis to the Guardian, said: “Waste is a big source [of methane] and in countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh it’s not only a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions but it’s also a lost opportunity to tap a fuel resource that could help meet the country’s energy needs.”

The satellite that Kayrros uses orbits the planet 14 times a day and provides global coverage, giving the location of a leak to within about six miles. Higher-resolution satellites that orbit less frequently can pinpoint the waste facilities responsible.

[Read more here]

 

It's so infuriating.  The techniques we have to reduce emissions are cheap and effective.  They just require competence and determination to make them happen.  Wind & solar are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity almost everywhere.   I know that the transition will take time --- after all, we are making the greatest energy transition in the fastest time, ever.  Yet it still seems too slow to me.   If we subsidised EVs more heavily, they would quickly reach 100% of new cars sales, and a few years after that, close to 100% of the total car fleet.   We can massively reduce methane emissions, relatively cheaply.  Yet we don't. 

It seems simple: the costs of the climate catastrophe are already exceeding the costs of going green. Yet still we dither and phaff.  It's all doable, it's all technically feasible, and it's all relatively cheap.  The obstacles are not technological or economic.  They're administrative and political.  And that is shocking and disgraceful.

Global warming accelerates to 0.3 degrees per decade

 From Open Mind (Tamino)

July 2023 was the hottest month in history, maybe even the hottest in the last 120,000 years. The months that followed broke monthly records by surprisingly large margins. It’s no wonder that 2023 has turned out to be the hottest year we’ve seen, and not just by a little.

Here are yearly average temperature anomalies for the whole planet, from 1950 through 2023, according to HadCRU, the Hadley Centre/Climate Research Unit in the U.K. (they haven’t yet reported their value for December 2023, so that year’s value is the January-through-November year-to-date average):

Each dot shows a year’s average, with the solid red line a smoothed version. The smooth shows is a good estimate of the background value, and reveals how climate has changed (temperature-wise), while the actual yearly values (black dots) fluctuate about that background value.

We know some of the things that contribute to those fluctuations. Volcanic eruptions, for instance, can fill the atmosphere with reflective aerosols which take years to settle out of the air, all the while cooling the planet. The el Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) tracks changes in how the ocean and atmosphere exchange heat; in its el Niño phase the surface gets noticeably warmer, but in its opposite la Niña phase the world tends to be cooler. The sun, of course, is the ultimate source of heat for our climate, and when it shines hotter, Earth heats up, but when the sun cools (relative to itself, of course) the Earth follows. These factors can be accounted for, at least approximately, and removed from the temperature data to define adjusted data, which will (we hope) give us a clearer picture of the changes which are due to other things — like greenhouse gas emissions.

Such has been done in peer-reviewed scientific research, and I’ve updated the procedure to include more recent data as well as alternative methods. In my latest version, the estimated contribution of each factor to the HadCRU temperature series looks like this:

The influence of volcanic eruptions, in brown, shows the cooling from the three large volcanic eruptions during this time, especially the massive explosion of Mt. Pinatubo in the 1990s. Solar variations, in red, have had only a small influence on Earth’s temperature because the solar variations themselves are small. The ENSO, in blue, has sometimes warmed (the el Niño phase) and sometimes cooled (the la Niña phase).

Add them all together, we have an estimate of the total influence of these factors on global temperature:

 

We can use this to estimate what global temperature would have been without these factors; just subtract this estimate from the observed data to yield adjusted data. When I do so, then compute yearly averages to yeild adjusted yearly average temperature anomalies for the whole planet from 1950 through 2023 according to HadCRU, I get this:

 

Each dot shows a year’s average, with the solid red line showing a smoothed version.

I’m mainly interested in the rate at which temperature is rising, so I took the original (un-adjusted) data and analyzed it with my modified lowess smooth, which is what I used to generate the solid red lines (smoothed values) in the above graphs. I’ve custom-designed it for this kind of analysis, so it reports, for each moment of time, not only the estimated value and its uncertainty, but the estimated rate of change (just what I’m looking for) and its uncertainty.

When I apply it to the HadCRU data, and choose the “time scale” (a free parameter in the analysis) so it will mimic rates of change on a 20-year time scale, it yields this:

The solid blue line shows the estimated rate of warming, the light blue shading shows its uncertainty range (±2σ). There is an obvious change in the rate around the year 1970; before that the rate was near zero (within the uncertainty range), but afterward is assuredly positive. This agrees with what we see in the first graph, that the smoothed value changes very little (zero rate from 1950 to 1970), then rises steadily until the present (rate about +0.02 °C/yr until now).

There is also a rise in the main estimate (solid blue line) starting around 2010, which suggests that the rate of warming may have increased lately (i.e. recent acceleration), but the uncertainty range is wide enough that it still includes the value +0.02°C/yr which had been observed already for decades.

Conclusion: since 1950, the data show at least two different warming rates: near zero from 1950 until about 1970, then about +0.02 °C/yr until now. There is evidence of a recent increase, but the evidence is inconclusive.

What about the trend in the adjusted data, i.e. apart from the factors that make those incessant fluctuations? I can apply the same analysis and get this:

 

Much is essentially the same as with the original, raw data: there is undoubtedly a change in rate around 1970, and there is evidence of another change around 2010. But this time the uncertainty range is narrower, the uncertainties are a lot smaller, and the evidence for recent change is now conclusive.

Conclusion: since 1950 the adjusted data show at least three different warming rates: near zero from 1950 until about 1970, then about +0.02 °C/yr until around 2010, and about +0.027 °C/yr since. Not just the above analysis, but other statistical tests confirm that although the uncertainty in the current rate is considerable, we conclude with confidence that it’s faster than it was during the preceding decades. Global warming picks up speed.

That’s using the data from HadCRU, and the story is the same when using data from NASA (the GISTemp data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies), from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), from the Berkeley Earth surface temperature project, or the ERA5 data from Europe’s Copernicus Climate Service.

James Hansen and others published a new paper recently, claiming that not only will global warming, in the very near future, proceed faster than expected, it is already doing so — that the pace of global warming had accelerated. Temperature increase after 2010, it suggests, will be at 0.027°C/yr, 50% faster than the lazy 0.018°C/yr it had been rising for decades before that. As a result, we have less than a decade until we cross the much-discussed threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial, so any idea of keeping global warming below that limit is “deader than a doornail.”

 

[Read more here; Tamino lists some of the caveats of his analysis.]

We are still not doing enough to slash emissions.  Remember, even if emissions peak this year, the rise in temperatures is proportional to the level of emissions.  For temperatures to stop rising, we need to cut emissions to zero.   On top of which, even if CO2 emissions have peaked,  methane emissions have accelerated.  Methane is 82 times as potent a greenhouse gas (over 10 years) as CO2.  

Mind-boggling methane emissions from Turkmenistan

From The Guardian [lightly edited]

Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed.

Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are “mind-boggling”, and an “infuriating” problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian.

The data produced by Kayrros for the Guardian found that the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions, which are the 17th-biggest in the world.

Methane emissions have surged alarmingly since 2007 and this acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists. It also seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

Flaring is used to burn unwanted gas, putting CO2 into the atmosphere, but is easy to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon in recent years. Venting simply releases the invisible methane into the air unburned, which, until recent developments in satellite technology, had been hard to detect. Methane traps 80 times more heat than CO2 over 20 years, making venting far worse for the climate.

Experts told the Guardian that the Cop28 UN climate summit being hosted in the United Arab Emirates in December was an opportunity to drive methane-cutting action in Turkmenistan. The two petrostates have close ties and there is pressure on the UAE to dispel doubts that a big oil and gas producer can deliver strong outcomes from the summit.

Tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions, and therefore global heating. Action to stem leaks often pays for itself, as the gas captured can be sold. But the maintenance of infrastructure in Turkmenistan is very poor, according to experts.

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” said Antoine Rostand, the president of Kayrros.

“We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Super-emissions from oil and gas installations were readily ended, Rostand said, by fixing valves or pipes or, at the very least, relighting flares: “It’s very simple to do, it has no cost for the citizen, and for the producers, the cost is completely marginal.”

Most of the facilities leaking the methane were owned by Turkmenoil, the national oil company, Kayrros said. Further undetected methane emissions will be coming from Turkmenistan’s offshore oil and gas installations in the Caspian Sea, but the ability of satellites to measure methane leaks over water is still being developed.

Turkmenistan is China’s biggest supplier of gas and is planning to double its exports to the country. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens had received free gas and electricity. However, the country is also very vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, with the likelihood of severe drought projected to increase “very significantly” over the 21st century and yields of major crops expected to fall.

Speaking freely about the repressive and authoritarian state is difficult but sources told the Guardian it was a “very depressing” situation, with Turkmenistan probably the worst country in the world in dealing with methane leaks.

They said preventing or fixing the leaks represented a “huge opportunity” but that the lack of action was “infuriating”. Turkmenistan could stop the leaks from ageing Soviet-era equipment and practices, they said, and the country could be the “world’s biggest methane reducer”. But the huge gas resources on tap meant “they never cared if it leaked”.

It was also not a priority for the president, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, they said, without whose approval little happens. This is despite Berdimuhamedov, then deputy chair of the cabinet of ministers, telling the UN climate summit Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 that Turkmenistan was reducing greenhouse gas emissions “by introducing modern technologies in all spheres of the state’s economy”, with “special attention” to the reduction of methane emissions.

Berdimuhamedov also welcomed the Global Methane Pledge (GMP) to cut emissions, but Turkmenistan has failed to join the 150 nations now signed. Neither are Turkmenoil and Turkengas, the state companies, members of a voluntary UN initiative to cut leaks, the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP2), which covers about 40% of global oil and gas production. “The president hasn’t followed up,” said a source.

Recent scientific research, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that the west coast of Turkmenistan was “one of the largest methane hotspots in the world”.

Detailed analysis of satellite data revealed 29 different super-emitter events between 2017 and 2020, although older satellite data showed that “this type of emission has been occurring for decades”.

The researchers said 24 of the 29 super-emitter events came from flare stacks that had been extinguished and were then venting methane directly into the air, and that all were managed by state companies. The other five were linked to pipeline leaks. The scientists said that “the more frequent emitters would conflict with Turkmen law, which bans continuous gas flaring and venting”.

“Flaring is very easy to identify from the flame itself,” said Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate, of the Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain, who led the study. “But venting was something that you could not identify easily until two years ago.” The switch to venting, a far worse environmental practice, was “mind-boggling”, according to another expert.

The scientists said the prevalence of venting “points to the risks of penalising flaring without effective measures to control venting”. The World Bank founded a global initiative to end flaring in 2015.

Talk about perverse incentives!   Go back to flaring, Turkmenistan!

1,000 super-emitting methane sources

From The Guardian

More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.

Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to preventing methane-driven disaster, as tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions. Some leaks are deliberate, venting the unwanted gas released from underground while drilling for oil into the air, and some are accidental, from badly maintained or poorly regulated equipment.

Fast action would dramatically slow global heating as methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. An emissions cut of 45% by 2030, which the UN says is possible, would prevent 0.3C of temperature rise. Methane emissions therefore present both a grave threat to humanity, but also a golden opportunity to decisively act on the climate crisis.

“The current rise in methane looks very scary indeed,” said Prof Euan Nisbet, at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK. “Methane acceleration is perhaps the largest factor challenging our Paris agreement goals. So removing the super-emitters is a no-brainer to slow the rise – you get a lot of bang for your buck.”

“Methane emissions are still far too high, especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming,” said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency. “There is just no excuse.”

The methane super-emitter sites were detected by analysis of satellite data, with the US, Russia and Turkmenistan responsible for the largest number from fossil fuel facilities. The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France.

Future methane emissions from fossil fuel sites – the methane bombs – are also forecast to be huge, threatening the entire global “carbon budget” limit required to keep heating below 1.5C. More than half of these fields are already in production, including the three biggest methane bombs, which are all in North America.

“Methane’s short lifetime means reduction of its emissions is one of the few options we still have to stay below 1.5C,” said Dr Lena Höglund-Isaksson, at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. “If you exceed that level, even temporarily, you might trigger irreversible effects [from climate tipping points].” The climate is already on the brink of multiple tipping points that could drive runaway climate change, scientists warned recently.

“Methane is the worst thing in the struggle to hold back the [climate] domino pieces, because it’s pushing them over very quickly,” said Kjell Kühne at the Leave it in the Ground Initiative. “Having so many methane bombs out there is really worrisome.”

As a greenhouse gas, methane is a double-edged sword: it traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, but it fades from the atmosphere in about a decade, far faster than the century or more taken by CO2.

In 2021, the last year for which full data is available, methane reached 1,908 parts per billion, 2.6 times higher than before human activity started transforming the atmosphere. Its role in global heating is often overlooked, but human-caused methane emissions are responsible for about a third of the rise in global temperatures seen over the last century. Today, the impact remains large, with the methane in the atmosphere responsible for about 25% of the heat trapped by all greenhouse gases.

Recent rises in annual methane emissions are accelerating. “The highest growth rates we’ve ever seen have been just in the last few years, since 2020,” said Nisbet.

About 40% of human-caused methane emissions come from leaks from fossil fuel exploration, production and transportation. These rose by almost 50% between 2000 and 2019. Another 40% comes from agriculture, dominated by burping cattle, and 20% from rotting waste sites. All are forecast to rise.

The recent surge in methane is largely being driven by increased activity by microbes that decompose organic matter, such as those in wetlands and the stomachs of livestock. It looks like rising global temperatures enable microbes to produce more methane, which then causes more global heating, creating a vicious circle.

“It’s very much like a feedback effect and it’s scary in lots of ways,” said Nisbet. “We really have to get methane under control.”

For fossil fuel leaks at least, that goal is within reach. At 80% of oil and gas sites and 98% of coalmines, the measures to plug leaks and end deliberate venting would pay for themselves, by selling the extra gas captured, or could be implemented at low net cost, according to the UN.

Satellite data analysed by the company Kayrros has identified 1,005 super-emitter events in 2022, of which 559 were from oil and gas fields, 105 from coalmines, and 340 from waste sites, such as landfills. The events can last between a few hours and several months.

“Before the satellite technology, we didn’t have a clue where these big events were happening but now, the good thing is at least we have some monitoring,” said Höglund-Isaksson.

Turkmenistan had the highest number of super-emitting events – 184. “They vent like crazy,” said Christian Lelong at Kayrros.

Little is known about fossil fuel production under Turkmenistan’s repressive dictatorship. But the colossal leaks may be the result of ageing Soviet-era equipment, experts said, or attempts to avoid scrutiny over flaring, when vented gas is ignited to form less damaging CO2 but produces easily visible flames. Turkmenistan dominated the top 100 largest super-emitter events from fossil fuels, with 70 events.

The US had 154 super-emitter events from fossil fuel sites. The biggest was in March last year, near San Antonio in Texas, releasing 147 tonnes an hour, while the second biggest was in a fracking field in rural Pennsylvania, and lasted for 13 days.

Russia had 120 super-emitting events in 2022. Other nations in the top 15 include Algeria, China, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Iran and Iraq. The second largest fossil fuel leak of the year – 356 tonnes an hour – was in Iraq, apparently from an oil refinery near Basra. Most of Australia’s super-emitting leaks were from coalmines in the Bowen Basin in Queensland.

Overall, the Kayrros data shows no decline of super-emitter events between 2021 and 2022, nor any decline in the company’s wider datasets going back to 2019. “The annual rate of change is very close to zero,” said Lelong.

Super-emitter events from other human sources were also evident in the satellite data, including large waste dumps, illegal tapping of gas pipes, and rice paddies, in countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Argentina.

There will be even more super-emitter events not detected by current satellites. Water interferes with the infrared signals used to detect the methane, meaning leaks from offshore facilities, in very humid regions, or when there are clouds or snow, are much harder to spot. But forthcoming satellites are expected to have sharper eyes.

In May 2022, the Guardian revealed that the world’s biggest fossil fuel firms were quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the planet to climate catastrophe.

Now, new research from the same scientists has identified 55 “methane bombs”: gas fields where leakage alone from the full exploitation of the resources would result in emissions equivalent to at least a billion tonnes of CO2.

Gas fields also produce methane, which is sold to customers and burned, pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When these emissions are combined with the leaked methane, the list of bombs that would result in global heating equivalent to 1bn tonnes of CO2 swells to 112.

In the scientists’ central estimate, the total emissions from these 112 methane bombs would be equivalent to 463bn tonnes of CO2 – more than a decade of current global emissions from all fossil fuels. The methane bomb emissions are also significantly higher than the emissions limit of 380bn tonnes of CO2 from all sources needed to keep global heating below 1.5C, according to the Global Carbon Budget’s recent estimate.

“I’m amazed how long this list is, and how many of these giant projects are still being pushed forward,” said Kühne, who did the analysis. He warned: “The impacts of methane are front loaded – they happen very soon after its emission. Last year’s gas leaks are killing people this year,” via the climate impacts they cause.

“At the same time, methane is a huge opportunity to reduce global heating,” Kühne said. “That is the unrealised potential in defusing methane bombs, to stop runaway climate change. I think it might be the last opportunity, because we’re already seeing some of these tipping elements tip over. We’re in a climate emergency and [stopping fossil fuel methane leaks] is top of the list.”

The heavily fracked Marcellus Shale, centred on Pennsylvania and West Virginia, in the US is the biggest methane bomb. Its estimated future emissions from methane leakage alone are equivalent to 17bn tonnes of CO2, more than three times the total annual emissions of the US.

The Haynesville/Bossier Shale, in Texas and Louisiana, is the second biggest methane bomb, with estimated emissions from leakage equivalent to 9.7bn tonnes of CO2 emissions. The Montney Play in western Canada is another fracking field and the third-biggest methane bomb. In the rest of the top 10, three methane bombs are in Russia, two more in the US, and one each in Turkmenistan and Qatar.

The scientists also made a conservative estimate of the impact of the 112 methane bombs, but these emissions still represent more that 80% of the remaining global carbon budget for 1.5C of global heating. A worst-case estimate indicated emissions equivalent to 729 Gt CO2 from the methane bombs, almost double the planet’s remaining 1.5C carbon budget.

The looming methane-driven climate catastrophe is clear, but the growing role of the satellite detectives and rising political momentum for action on the potent gas give reason for cautious hope.

A global methane pledge, to cut human-caused emissions by 30% by 2030, was announced at the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. The number of nations backing the pledge has now reached 150, although some key countries have not signed up, including Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Iran and India.

The 30% cut would avoid 0.2C of global heating by around 2050, and the subsequent reduction in air pollution would also prevent about 6m premature deaths and 580m tonnes of crop losses.

“It’s a great step forward, seeing so many countries start moving in that direction,” said Kühne. “But it’s a pledge – we want to see it implemented.”

Lelong, from Kayrros, is optimistic: “Now that we have the technology and the [global methane pledge] in place, our expectation is that the map [of fossil fuel supermitters] should be completely dark in three years’ time.”

“That’s an achievable target,” he said. “We now know where these big sources are coming from, we know they’re avoidable, so there’s really no reason not to address them.”

Kayrros has signed a deal to provide leak data to the UN Environment Programme’s new methane alert and response project. Unep is expected to use the near-real-time satellite data to identify super-emitting polluters and press them to stem the leaks. Then, after about three months, the information would be published, with the first public data expected in the second half of 2023.

The scrutiny is necessary: the International Energy Agency said last year that methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector were about 70% greater than those actually declared by governments. The IEA estimates that, to have an even chance of keeping below 1.5C of global heating, these methane leaks must fall by 75% by 2030.

A 50% methane cut from fossil fuel sites could be achieved essentially for free, according to a study. The sale of the captured gas would offset the cost of plugging the leaks, which often simply involves replacing defective parts. Billions of dollars of gas is either leaked or deliberately wasted each year, and high gas prices due to Russia’s war in Ukraine has made the economic case even stronger.

In contrast, cutting methane from other human sources is significantly harder. Options that incur no net cost represent just 16% of emissions from waste sites and 30% of those from cattle. Draining wetlands is unthinkable for most scientists, as that could produce large CO2 emissions and destroy precious habitat for wildlife.

“Oil and gas is really the easiest and cheapest way,” said Höglund-Isaksson. However, she said: “The profit margins in that sector are so high from simply increasing gas production, but the profit margins from reducing methane emissions are relatively small. You need regulations that force them to do it.”

Regulations are coming. In the US, for example, companies will be charged $900 a tonne for leaks of methane from 2024, rising to $1,500 a tonne in 2026. The big leak in Pennsylvania would have incurred a cost of $220,000 an hour at the higher rate. The European Union has proposed regulations requiring companies to plug leaks and to ban routine venting and flaring, and Nigeria recently announced new methane regulations.


A spokesperson for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers said: “Since 2015, average oil production has increased by about 0.5% a year through to 2021 to meet global energy demand. Despite this increase, methane emissions [from the fossil fuel sector] have remained stable, while quantification and estimation techniques have advanced rapidly. The global oil and gas industry is focused on building on that improved measurement to deliver significant reductions in the coming years.”

Jonathan Banks, global director for methane pollution prevention at the NGO Clean Air Task Force, said: “There’s no solution to climate change without addressing methane emissions. Fast action will have an immediate impact on warming, helping to finally bend the curve on climate change.”

“I’m very happy that, finally, methane is actually on the policy agenda, because this has not been the case – it’s been drowned out by the CO2 issue,” said Höglund-Isaksson. “But we are also clearly running out of time and I would really like to see much, much more happening, because there’s so much that could be done, particularly on oil and gas.”

Methane plumes streaming westward for more than 20 miles east of Hazar, Turkmenistan. Photograph: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/AFP/Getty Images

[Read more here.  And support The Guardian here]

Australia to cut methane by 30% by 2030

 From The Guardian

The Albanese government has confirmed it will join Joe Biden’s global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, as the prime minister warned climate change is increasing the frequency of Australia’s extreme weather events.

Guardian Australia revealed in June that Labor was considering signing the pledge, and the climate change minister Chris Bowen confirmed on Sunday Australia would be joining more than 100 other countries by making the commitment in the run-up to United Nations-led climate talks in Egypt next month.

Signatories to the global pledge agree to undertake voluntary actions in their countries to reduce emissions of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. Reducing methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels is a global goal, not a national target.

Labor has earmarked $3bn from the government’s $15bn national reconstruction fund to support agricultural methane reduction and other clean tech initiatives. A further $8m has been allocated to the seaweed industry to support the commercialisation of the feed supplement asparagopsis, and Labor will direct another $5m in Tuesday’s budget towards identifying and commercialising alternatives.

Australia considered signing the methane pledge in the run-up to last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, because the Morrison government was lobbied by the Biden administration to make the commitment. But Australia refused at that time because the National party would not support methane cuts.

With multiple flooding events continuing to cause havoc in the eastern states, Albanese warned on Sunday the current disaster would continue to play out for weeks. The prime minister said Tuesday night’s budget would establish disaster-ready funding “to get ahead of these issues” with better mitigation planning.

He said the link between climate change and extreme weather was clear. “We need to recognise that climate change is having an impact,” Albanese said.

“We’re seeing more frequent events and they’re more intense when they occur.”

The UN’s climate assessment says methane has caused about 0.5C of global heating, second only to the 0.8C caused by carbon dioxide. According to Australian government data, agriculture is responsible for 70m tonnes of CO2-e from methane, coalmining is responsible for 28m tonnes, followed by 18.7m tonnes from the gas industry and 9.5m tonnes from waste.

The National Farmers Federation has opposed signing the pledge in the past, but has now backed the decision after funding commitments and assurances from the government that the voluntary pledge will not escalate to a tax on livestock methane, or mandated reductions of livestock.

Earlier this month, New Zealand flagged a levy on methane emissions, with the money raised to go into research to help the industry lower emissions.

The NFF’s chief executive Tony Mahar said on Sunday “the strong assurances and partnership provided by government mean the pledge will not negatively impact on farmers or the agriculture sector”.

Australia’s gas sector also welcomed the decision. The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Samantha McCulloch said the industry was focused on attempting to reduce fugitive emissions from production.

McCulloch noted a number of gas companies were already direct signatories to the methane pledge or had “emissions reduction targets consistent with, or going beyond, the pledge”.

Methane decays to CO2 in the atmosphere over 12 years.  So if we cut methane emissions by 30%, that will over the next 12 years cut the level of methane in the atmosphere by 30% too.  Of course, there are still natural source of methane (rotting vegetation in ponds, for example), so there would never be zero methane in the atmosphere.  But the 0.5 degree rise in temperatures because of methane is not because of pre-existing natural methane emissions, but man-made new sources of emissions.   Eliminating all of them would cut global temperatures by 0.5 degrees.   And that would be a great achievement.