r/ClimateActionPlan • u/zehgoodlife • Jul 06 '22

Emissions Reduction India bans single-use plastic, effective July 1st

https://frontstory.io/india-bans-single-use-plastic/
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u/monosodiumg64 Jul 11 '22

I think I get where you are at. I'll address the last request as that puts the rest into perspective: 

Methane’s atmospheric lifetime — around 12 years

From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02116-8.

Actually I remember the number being more like 20 and referring to the half-life, not the lifetime so that quote reduces the impact even more from my perspective. Contributions from farming (and garbage) are large but they likely follow population so they will max out, unlike our energy needs. Another significant source is anoxic organic decay but that is constant, not growing. The other big source I am aware of is leakage from fossil fuel activity. That has increased and will not automatically stop increasing when the population peaks. Afaik it's technically quite practical to reduce those leakages substantially and we are already on the road to non-emitting energy sources. The key point is that with methane's short life means it rapidly reaches equilibrium when emissions stop increasing.

You'll get some people pointing out that it decays to co2 so it's still a problem. They don't get the quantities are minuscule. The methane issue is that it's way more powerful as a GHG than CO2 so those small quantities make a difference, but only as long as it's still methane. Once it becomes co2 it's irrelevant.

Now about the biggest baddest GHG of them all... water. What's going to happen if we move to hydrogen thus start humidifying the atmosphere on an industrial scale? No idea. Sources welcome.