In 2018, scientists at Oxford University pointed out that our estimations of the effect of methane in the atmosphere were wrong. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The biggest source for which humans are responsible is the digestive systems of the cattle, sheep, and goats we keep. (Other major sources are oil and gas production, coal mines, waste dumps, paddy fields where rice is grown, and the thawing of permafrost.) While carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere across many hundreds of years, methane quickly breaks down. Its impact on global temperatures is sharp and short.
The scientists explained that methane had mistakenly been treated in climate calculations as if it were an accumulating gas. This means that its long-term impacts were overstated, and continued emissions at a constant level make little contribution to rising temperatures. Livestock farmers leaped on this finding, claiming it meant that the contribution of their animals to global heating had been overestimated.
But the recalibration also means that the short-term impacts of reducing methane were underestimated. Almost as soon as you stop releasing the gas, its contribution to global heating stops. As effective action against climate breakdown has to be quick, to prevent temperatures and Earth systems from crossing crucial thresholds, this makes cutting methane not less important, but more important.
Greenhouse gases emitted by...
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