by Kip Hansen, Feb 10, 2022 in WUWT

Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane

Our ever benevolent and protective scientist class has come to our rescue by raising the alarm – if they didn’t, we might not be adequately alarmed by this dangerous situation.

Seriously, the Nature punchline is, as you may have already guessed:  “some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise.” 

Yes, that’s right.  Global Warming (itself!) may be behind the rapid rise.

The author of the Nature article, Jeff Tollefson, calls this a “grim milestone” (however, no reason for this being either grim or a milestone is given).

Those interested in this trivial issue should read the Nature article.  There are some interesting points in it concerning suspected and hypothesized sources of the methane and the reason for the rather odd pattern of rise and fall seen in multi-year data.

However, here is:

The Bottom Line

1.  Always look at the units attached to any numerical data.

1900 ppb (parts per billion) is 1.9 ppm (parts per million)

Or, in percentage of the atmosphere:

0.000 19 Percent [%]

2.  What that means in the Real World™ is that the amount of methane in the atmosphere is so small — there is more neon and helium in the atmosphere than methane — that if you searched for a molecule of methane, and individually sorted through a BILLION molecules, you might find one or two.  You might find none in your first billion, but if you sorted enough billions, your find would average out at just under 2 per billion. (Good Luck!)

3. As the Earth continues to warm and green as it comes out of the Little Ice Age, we see more life which means more methane.  More life is a Good Thing.

4.  Atmospheric Methane has spiked! — to almost zero.

# # # # #h

Author’s Comment:

Almost Zero is an important issue.  Many of the most popular dangers and harms touted in the popular press are about the crisis of “things” being discovered at levels which are best described as “Almost Zero”.  This is the nutty misapplication of the precautionary principle, where the mere existence —  the mere detection —  of a thing is automatically equated with harm.

…