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The "Social Cost of Carbon" -- an Absurdity

mbig said:
Clearly YOU are making stuff up with NO (or DISHONESTLY withheld) Links.

Here, in just ONE link you probably saw and MISrepresented, is the answer to the "discrepancy." How much time is used to calculate it's pervasive effects.

How Bad of a Greenhouse Gas Is Methane?
The global warming potential of the gaseous fossil fuel may be consistently Underestimated
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire December 22, 2015
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/

.,.At issue is the global warming potential (GWP), a number that allows experts to compare methane with its better-known cousin, carbon dioxide. While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.

In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But policymakers typically ignore methane's warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation's emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane's warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC.".."​
Click to expand...

Yes, yes, yes.

We have all seen that before.

But can you explain what that number actually represents?
 
Lord of Planar said:
Yes, yes, yes.
We have all seen that before.
But can you explain what that number actually represents?
Click to expand...
My link just did.
But can YOU tell us how many marbles are in that Jar?
Can you try the demand-detail Fallacy AGAIN?

IOW, Does it matter the Precise number or, for the purpose it was posted here, that Methane is Much, Much, stronger than CO2 as a Greenhouse gas?
Your post was just another Fallacious Last-wording POS/distraction because you had NO contradictory info.


EDIT: below is another Troll by Lord of Planar.
He could NOT dispute anything I posted.
He just tried to the demand-extensive/unnecessary-detail.. Fallacy..
and Failed.
We see this alot in the section.
 
Last edited:
mbig said:
My link just did.
But can YOU tell us how many marbles are in that Jar?
Can you try the demand-detail Fallacy AGAIN?

IOW, Does it matter the Precise number or, for the purpose it was posted here, that Methane is Much, Much, stronger than CO2 as a Greenhouse gas?
Your post was just another Fallacious Last-wording POS/distraction because you had NO contradictory info.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't.

It is clear you don't understand the sciences behind greenhouse gasses, else you would understand under what conditions RE and GWP are determined.

That's OK.

It's fun to watch ignorance.
 
Lord of Planar said:
The difference is the atmospheric pressure...
Click to expand...

Further from the sun, no sulfuric acid clouds, no water vapor, and as you point out
a very thin atmosphere. But it's fun to point out to the usual crowd that CO2
doesn't have much to do with the temperature of either planet.
 
mbig said:
Clearly YOU are making stuff up with NO (or DISHONESTLY withheld) Links.

Here, in just ONE link you probably saw and MISrepresented, is the answer to the "discrepancy." How much time is used to calculate it's pervasive effects.

How Bad of a Greenhouse Gas Is Methane?
The global warming potential of the gaseous fossil fuel may be consistently Underestimated
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, ClimateWire December 22, 2015
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/

.,.At issue is the global warming potential (GWP), a number that allows experts to compare methane with its better-known cousin, carbon dioxide. While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.

In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But policymakers typically ignore methane's warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation's emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane's warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC.".."​
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Nowhere in your links do they say WHY CH4
is such a powerful greenhouse gas. They provide no numbers and
merely assert fact free that "methane warms the planet by 86
times as much as CO2." It's just a matter of arithmetic why
that is claimed to be so. Most of what you need to figure it
out is in that WhatsUpWithThat link in my earlier post. All
you need to do is string together about three positive factors
to get to at least 20 or 30 times more powerful. But if and
when you do, you will see how ridiculous the claim is.

But 86 times as powerful?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
 
Lord of Planar said:
OK, if methane is worse, then how?

What is it's sensitivity to doubling vs. the doubling of CO2?

Please do tell.
Click to expand...

That's a difficult value to come by.

Dr. James Hansen in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment report said that without
feed backs the sensitivity of CO2 is about 1.2 degrees C for every doubling
in concentration. But CH4? - crickets.
 
Lord of Planar said:
So please tell us your own words, what the numbers actually represent.

Can you do that please?

Under what conditions are those numbers valid?
Click to expand...

Hmmmm, I'm not following your question. Do a Google search on
- methane times more powerful - and you will come up with page
after page of websites that claim that methane in anywhere from
20 something to over 100 times more powerful as a green house
gas than CO2.

Are you after the arithmetic I talked about? That's a brain teaser,
and it's fun to figure it out for yourself. You have to guess at the
climate sensitivity of CH4 to figure it out.
 
mbig said:
My link just did.
...
Click to expand...

No, it merely asserted fact-free that methane is 86 times more powerful than CO2.
Didn't say how they come up with 86. Not 85 and not 87 but 86 times. That's two
place accuracy. How did they arrive at that number.
 
Steve Case said:
Hmmmm, I'm not following your question. Do a Google search on
- methane times more powerful - and you will come up with page
after page of websites that claim that methane in anywhere from
20 something to over 100 times more powerful as a green house
gas than CO2.

Are you after the arithmetic I talked about? That's a brain teaser,
and it's fun to figure it out for yourself. You have to guess at the
climate sensitivity of CH4 to figure it out.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry.

I meant that for mbig.

I do find it funny that these people think they speak from authority when they don't comprehend what they are repeating.

I know where those numbers come from, but you don't find warmers who do.
 
Lord of Planar said:
OK, if methane is worse, then how?

What is it's sensitivity to doubling vs. the doubling of CO2?

Please do tell.
Click to expand...

After a short search on WhatsUpWithThat I found my old post where I asked
exactly that question:

Ken Gregory April 11, 2014 at 4:28 pm
Steve Case says:
“The climate sensitivity of CO2 is about 1.2C° per doubling in the atmosphere
The climate sensitivity of CH4 is about (___)C° per doubling in the atmosphere
Can anyone fill in the blank?”

The climate sensitivity of CH4 is about (_0.11)C° per doubling in the atmosphere ...​

Dunno who Ken Gregory is, but I searched my crib notes and a few years back
I came up with 0.12K per CH4 doubling. Well that's pretty close. The Willis
Eschenbach opus from October 2015 came up with less than a quarter of the
climate sensitivity of CO2 so 1.2k (without feedbacks) per James Hansen,
yields less than 0.3K per doubling. You know, that really doesn't bode well for
getting to really high values in the Methane is eleventy times more powerful
than CO2 pissing contest.
 
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mbig said:
So you've got some/EXCLUSIVELLY Crackpot Conspiracysts at the same Wacko websites.

In this case, when title links are 'Broken' to show Sources...
It's ALL WUWT!
ALL SEVEN!
WTF!
like "Backing up" 'Infowars, with "Infowars".

ALL Your Link Dumps are from a Few Wacky Blogs.
You Never 'touch down' with credible sources.
Due to the internet, one can indeed live in La La Land, but this is NOT reality.
Last-word away.. usually no more than 10 or 12, because you are NONconversant on this and all topics.
Click to expand...

I only use as much ammunition as I need. In your case it's never much. You seem not very adept at exploring links within posts. This is a crippling deficiency when dealing with a site like WUWT which often acts as a data aggregator. Please note the link within this WUWT paragraph.

". . . NOAA has updated its extensive U.S. coastal tide gauge data measurement records (Sea Level Trends - US Stations List) to include data through year 2015. These measurements include tide gauge data coastal locations for 25 West Coast, Gulf Coast and East Coast states along the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. In addition 7 Pacific island groups and 6 Atlantic island groups also have coastal location tide gauge data measurements updated as well.
In all more than 200 coastal locations are included in these measurements with more than 100 of these coastal locations with recorded data periods in excess of 50 years in duration. None of these updated NOAA tide gauge measurement data records show coastal location sea level rise acceleration occurring anywhere on the U.S. coasts or Pacific or Atlantic island groups. . . ."
 
Steve Case said:
Thanks for the reply. Nowhere in your links do they say WHY CH4
is such a powerful greenhouse gas.
Click to expand...
non sequitur
We're not debating "why," but if at all, and buy how much.


SteveCase said:
They provide no numbers and
merely assert fact free that "methane warms the planet by 86
times as much as CO2." It's just a matter of arithmetic why
that is claimed to be so. Most of what you need to figure it
out is in that WhatsUpWithThat link in my earlier post.
Click to expand...
Sciam explained that the Multiple depends on the Time period used.
Whether 20 years, 100, years etc.

SteveCase said:
you need to do is string together about three positive factors
to get to at least 20 or 30 times more powerful. But if and
when you do, you will see how ridiculous the claim is.
But 86 times as powerful?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Click to expand...
In my post #18, I Only claimed "20x"

"CO2/Methane/N20
And again, Methane is more than 20x Worse as a Greenhouse Gas."​

Fully realizing there are higher numbers, and using the most conservative to avoid exaggeration and easy rebuttal.
Nonetheless, you Ran with what YOU Found... NONE of which was lower than my Conservative claim/estimate.
If you'd like to debate all the sites YOU found, go right ahead, but again, they differ because of the time, and NONE are lower than mine.
100% Answered Again.
 
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Jack Hays said:
I only use as much ammunition as I need. In your case it's never much. You seem not very adept at exploring links within posts. This is a crippling deficiency when dealing with a site like WUWT which often acts as a data aggregator. Please note the link within this WUWT paragraph.

". . . NOAA has updated its extensive U.S. coastal tide gauge data measurement records (Sea Level Trends - US Stations List) to include data through year 2015. These measurements include tide gauge data coastal locations for 25 West Coast, Gulf Coast and East Coast states along the Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. In addition 7 Pacific island groups and 6 Atlantic island groups also have coastal location tide gauge data measurements updated as well.
In all more than 200 coastal locations are included in these measurements with more than 100 of these coastal locations with recorded data periods in excess of 50 years in duration. None of these updated NOAA tide gauge measurement data records show coastal location sea level rise acceleration occurring anywhere on the U.S. coasts or Pacific or Atlantic island groups. . . ."
Click to expand...
Jack,
one of the better links, (the same site, just a better presentation, is the table page.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/mslUSTrendsTable.htm
You just have to select the All button on the lower right.
The MLS trends Feet/Century tell the story, the only ones over 2 feet a century are know subsidence areas.
 
mbig said:
non sequitur
We're not debating "why," but if at all, and buy how much.
Click to expand...
You are absolutely right. And when Scientific American says how much i.e., 86 times
as powerful as CO2 or you say 20 times when it doesn’t appear that there's any support
for those claims it would be nice if you or Scientific American back the claim up with facts.

mbig said:
Sciam explained that the Multiple depends on the Time period used.
Whether 20 years, 100, years etc.
Click to expand...
I've tried to understand what they're talking about, and it's so much mumbo jumbo.
Either CH4 has a basic climate sensitivity of so much or it doesn't.


mbig said:
In my post #18, I Only claimed "20x"
Click to expand...
And that's low enough that ordinary arithmetic can almost explain the claim. But it still bullsh!t.


mbig said:
"CO2/Methane/N20
And again, Methane is more than 20x Worse as a Greenhouse Gas."
Click to expand...
And again, Why?


mbig said:
Fully realizing there are higher numbers, and using the most conservative to avoid exaggeration and easy rebuttal.
Nonetheless, you Ran with what YOU Found... NONE of which was lower than my Conservative claim/estimate.
Click to expand...
You put up a link that said 86 times. With no explanation why.


mbig said:
If you'd like to debate all the sites YOU found, go right ahead, but again, they differ because of the time
Click to expand...
Here's what your previous post quoted from Scientific American:

.,.At issue is the global warming potential (GWP), a number that allows experts to compare methane with its better-known cousin, carbon dioxide. While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.

In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But policymakers typically ignore methane's warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation's emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane's warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC.".."
Click to expand...
Key statement from that would be:

methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.
In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2
​
Twenty times or 86 times as much as CO2, it's a pissing contest to see who can
make the more ridiculous claim and get away without having to explain why. You
said you wanted to avoid the easy rebuttal from exaggeration and then you went
right ahead and posted a link with the 86 times non-sense. If I ignore a few
things and use some dubious logic, I can arithmetically come up with your 20
times maybe even 28 like Wikipedia said the last time I looked at it - hang on,
I'll see what it currently says - Today's number at Wikipedia is 72 times. Well
it really doesn't matter, it's bullsh!t until someone explains why.

mbig said:
, and NONE are lower than mine.
Click to expand...
So what, you put the "86 times" link.

mbig said:
100% Answered Again.
Click to expand...
The only thing we agree on is that the issue is how much. And when the how
much claim is patently ridiculous, there should be an explanation to support
the claim and so far over the years, I haven't seen it.
 
Steve Case said:
You are absolutely right. And when Scientific American says how much i.e., 86 times
as powerful as CO2 or you say 20 times when it doesn’t appear that there's any support
for those claims it would be nice if you or Scientific American back the claim up with facts.
I've tried to understand what they're talking about, and it's so much mumbo jumbo.
Either CH4 has a basic climate sensitivity of so much or it doesn't.
And that's low enough that ordinary arithmetic can almost explain the claim. But it still bullsh!t.
And again, Why?
You put up a link that said 86 times. With no explanation why.
Here's what your previous post quoted from Scientific American:
Key statement from that would be:
[ INDENT]methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.
In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2
[/INDENT]
Twenty times or 86 times as much as CO2, it's a pissing contest to see who can
make the more ridiculous claim and get away without having to explain why. You
said you wanted to avoid the easy rebuttal from exaggeration and then you went
right ahead and posted a link with the 86 times non-sense. If I ignore a few
things and use some dubious logic, I can arithmetically come up with your 20
times maybe even 28 like Wikipedia said the last time I looked at it - hang on,
I'll see what it currently says - Today's number at Wikipedia is 72 times. Well
it really doesn't matter, it's bullsh!t until someone explains why.
So what, you put the "86 times" link.
The only thing we agree on is that the issue is how much. And when the how
much claim is patently ridiculous, there should be an explanation to support
the claim and so far over the years, I haven't seen it.
Click to expand...
I already explained it to you:
mbig:
"If you'd like to debate all the sites YOU found, go right ahead, but again, they differ because of the time."

So here it is on A SILVER PLATTER.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials

"....The United States primarily uses the 100-year GWP as a measure of the relative impact of different GHGs. However, the scientific community has developed a number of other metrics that could be used for comparing one GHG to another. These metrics may differ based on timeframe, the climate endpoint measured, or the method of calculation.

For example, the 20-year GWP is sometimes used as an alternative to the 100-year GWP. Just like the 100-year GWP is based on the energy absorbed by a gas over 100 years, the 20-year GWP is based on the energy absorbed over 20 years.

This 20-year GWP prioritizes gases with shorter lifetimes, because it does not consider impacts that happen more than 20 years after the emissions occur. Because all GWPs are calculated relative to CO2, GWPs based on a shorter timeframe will be larger for gases with lifetimes shorter than that of CO2, and smaller for gases with lifetimes longer than CO2.

For example, for CH4, which has a short lifetime, the 100-year GWP of 28–36 is much less than the 20-year GWP of 84–87.
For CF4, with a lifetime of 50,000 years, the 100-year GWP of 6630–7350 is larger than the 20-year GWP of 4880–4950."..."​


So THERE is your range and why the differ. I had already told you it was the time periods they used, and that was already apparent in the Sciam article to a Reasonably smart reader.
Previously posted Excerpt from my Sciam Link:

""But policymakers typically ignore methane's warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation's emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane's warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC."..""​

Can you/Did you read? Nope.

How long did that take me to Google this last only slightly fuller explanation?
Under 1 minute.
How come you found the Range but couldn't (read 'WOULDN'T') find that time span is the reason for the difference?
Why, is because you have a political view/Blindness and don't want to know.
So you just threw up your partisan hands and said "BS".
THAT is why people have the views they do.
They root for their Hockey Team No matter what. They think science/politics is a Sporting event!
In this section it's particularly/Stupendously bad, with one poster basically SPAMMING up one or two sources/Blogs, as both OPs and 'answers' to everything.
 
Last edited:
mbig said:
I already explained it to you:
...So here it is on A SILVER PLATTER.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials

...
Click to expand...

The key phrase in your link
"But CH4 also absorbs much more energy than CO2."
is an assertion without an explanation and no link.

Well there is a link with silly singers trying to
sound like vibrating molecules but no numbers.

So the epa.gov site says CH4 absorbs much more
energy than CO2. I haven't spent a long time
searching, but when I run across a site that looks
like it has numbers and might shed light on the
EPA's claim it turns out to be on my side of
the coin and pooh poohs the idea.

It's certainly true that the methane's skinny
little absorption band is in the shorter wave
length region of the atmospheric window so it
should absorb more energetic photons but so far
I'm not finding that it actually absorbs more
energy than CO2 let alone 20-80 times as much.

Well this exchange is at a dead end. If I
find something definitive I'll post it here.
 
mbig said:
In my post #18, I Only claimed "20x"

"CO2/Methane/N20
And again, Methane is more than 20x Worse as a Greenhouse Gas."​
Click to expand...

So please explain under what circumstances CH4 is 20 times worse than CO2.

If you don't understand what that number actually represents, then you are speaking from ignorance.

I find it rolling on the floor funny!

You keep repeating a perception that you haven't a clue of it's actual merit.
 
mbig said:
I already explained it to you:
<snip>
Click to expand...

You didn't explain squat.

One of these numbers is RE, and the other is GWP.

To comprehend what they actually mean, the experimental process that derives these numbers must be understood, which you are obviously clueless of.

The article doesn't explain what the mean, and you are just repeating what is nothing more than scientific propaganda.

May as well be comparing KPH and MPH, without a reference of their definitions.
 
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