Here is an interesting question for you. How much Methane is there in the atmosphere? Now, come on, be honest. Do you know? Are you prepared to even have a guess?
You see, I have been asking people – family, friends, anyone who will engage for a few moments. What percentage of the air around us is Methane? They don’t know. The answers are all over the place. One brave soul thought it may be 10%. That would be called an “outlier”. Some said “not much”. Most thought less than 1% but were not prepared to go any further.
Does it matter? “Who cares”, was one reaction. “CO2 is important but Methane isn’t so much”.
Methane levels should concern you. The Coalition government, driven by the Greens and supported by all parties to a large degree, are in the process of imposing severe penalties on all of us because they claim Methane levels are too high. Farming, the mainstay of the economy is going to be hit very badly by taxes and restrictions because it is claimed there is too much Methane swirling around us, apparently. Farmers could lose a significant part of their income, stock numbers are going to be decimated, land values gutted, exports will be heavily reduced because, theoretically, Methane is playing havoc in the atmosphere.
It is described as a “dangerous Greenhouse Gas”, hugely more damaging than CO2. There are models and formulas that experts use to equate Methane to CO2 in terms of warming potential. These experts tell us privately that the formulas heavily overstate the relative danger of Methane but publicly they all stick with the “party line” because you get severely bullied if you step out of line. You could lose your job or lose a chunk of the generous research money sloshing around climate change science.
Alright, let’s get to the point. How much Methane is up there?
You probably learnt at school that 98% of the air around us is Nitrogen and Oxygen. Another 1% is Hydrogen, Argon, Neon, and Helium leaving 1% for all the Greenhouses Gases (GHG’s). What the advocates of dangerous climate change like to overlook is that of the 1% of GHG’s, 95% is water vapour. The biggest and most influential Greenhouse Gas is harmless, essential H2O. It is water in its various forms – gas, liquid, solid that totally dominates the GHG scene. It is in the NMPKT – “Not Many People Know That” category.
“Hang on,” I hear you say, “what about CO2?” Ok, the answer is 4.15% of the 1%. That means 415 parts per million or sweet fanny, muck all. Doesn’t leave much room for Methane and the others. Nitrous oxide is 0.0029% and Ozone is 0.00038% which leaves just 0.019% of all the GHG’s as Methane.
There you have it. According to NASA and NIWA and all the other big wigs, Methane is 0.019% of 1%. So that works out at 0.00019% of the whole atmosphere. Really tiny. In fact, miniscule.
What does 0.00019% look like in practical terms? Do you have a standard bath at your place? Fill it right up to the brim and you most likely have 180 litres of water. If that 180 litres represented the atmosphere, Methane would be 1/15th of a teaspoon. You would barely be able to see it.
Put it another way. Wellington to Auckland is 642 kms. If you decided to walk the whole 642 kms and the journey represented the atmosphere, Methane would be the first step only. For every molecule of Methane up there in the atmosphere there are more than half a million other molecules.
One more way to describe Methane. Have you ever done that 12 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles? If the whole 10,500 kms represented the atmosphere Methane would get you half way along the runway in Auckland. Are you getting the message? Methane is smaller than “miniscule”. It is infinitesimal.
It is so infinitesimal it is irrelevant.
Yet we are in the process of taking a very large axe to our economy because some scientists say it’s way too much. What???
But, wait. There’s more. Most of that infinitesimal amount of Methane around us is natural. It comes from swamps, termites, landfills and some from rice paddies. New Zealand farmers’ cows are actually only responsible for around 15% of the infinitesimal amount of Methane. It is part of a natural cycle that has been in place since cows first walked. We have more than enough sequestering going on with our trees to take care of all our Methane plus all of our CO2 and we are even absorbing, God bless us, some for the rest of the world.
Farm produced Methane in the atmosphere is therefore so preposterously microscopic it is meaningless. It is 15% of 0.00019%. The only analogy of the three above that really helps is the long haul flight. Farming’s Methane doesn’t even complete the pushback from the air-bridge. On the walk to Auckland it is the distance between your outstretched finger and thumb.
Get the picture? You need a Peter Jackson sized imagination on steroids to think Methane at 0.0000285% of the atmosphere is doing serious damage.
Just in case you think that a colourless, odourless, harmless gas in such minute, microscopic quantities may just be pernicious enough to create warming dig around into the science. Read Professor William van Wijngaarden, Professor of Physics of York University in Canada, Dr Tom Sheahen, B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr Will Happer, Ph.D in physics and our own Dr Jock Allison (among others) who have all published papers stating that the earth emits very little energy/heat in the energy band where Methane can absorb radiation and even in those narrow bands water vapour dominates to the extent that Methane simply cannot delay heat being lost and therefore contribute to warming. More on that in Part Two.
Right now the Climate Commission is beavering away to determine some final numbers for Methane in the New Zealand scene. Hey, guys, don’t bother. Find something useful to do. Hit “delete” where it says climate models because they are the only basis for the outrageous claims that Methane causes significant warming. Ask Ms Ardern about “models”. She used one to say 60,000 Kiwis would succumb to the virus. Climate and Covid19 models? More useless than a parasol in a Wellington gale.
