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The role of methane emissions from fossil fuels “have had far worse climate impact than thought” and has been vastly underestimated, by up to 40%, a new study has found.
This adds one more deadly effect to the list of the many health hazards associated with mining and oil refineries such as asbestos exposure that leads to mesothelioma stages.
The oil and gas industry may be contributing 40% more methane emissions than previously thought, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature this week.
By now, everyone has probably heard that the most significant contributor to global warming among greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide.
Methane is a very close second, and is even more effective when it comes to trapping heat – about 30 times more potent. Not only that, but over a 20 year period, methane is roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
However, the new study conducted by the UN environment program found that atmospheric methane is currently responsible for about 25 percent of the human-cause global warming Earth is experiencing today.
Add to that, methane emissions occurring from fossil fuels is between 25-40 percent larger than estimates that had been made from previous research.
In other words, gas and oil production is having a far greater impact and contribution toward global warming than previously understood.
It’s hard to ignore avoid the conclusion that mankind is responsible for the soaring level of methane in Earth’s atmosphere. Since the Industrial Revolution began roughly 2 centuries ago, methane concentrations in the atmosphere increased by 150 percent.
However, arriving at the concrete proof of how much of that increase is due to oil and gas production is not so simple.
It is notoriously difficult to track the sources of methane. The two main sources are biological and fossil. When plants and animals decay in environments like wetlands, biological methane is released.
This also occurs with other activities such as cattle farming, rice fields, and landfills.
When it comes to fossil methane, amounts of it can seep naturally from underground or it can be released through the extraction of oil and gas.
However, scientists found an ingenious way to do this by taking a sample of an ice sheet from Greenland, extracting a core holding air bubbles from over 300 years ago.
To determine historical levels of methane even prior to pre-industrial levels of roughly 300 years ago, scientists examined the presence of carbon-14, which is a rare radioactive isotope, in air samples from ancient air bubbles that were trapped in Greenland’s ice sheet.
They extracted a sample made up of roughly one ton of ice using a Blue Ice Drill, capable of producing the world’s largest ice cores.
Scientists discovered that naturally occurring fossil methane levels were actually about ten times lower than what had been estimated in past research.
However, they also found that past estimates of how much methane in our current atmosphere was coming from fossil fuel extraction, which turned out to be 25-40% higher than previous estimates.
Fracking in the US and elsewhere seems to have worsened the problem of contributing more methane into the environment. Atmospheric methane had actually begun to flatten off at the turn-of-the-century, but once the surge in fracking activity ramped up, atmospheric methane started rising again.
An earlier study also found that methane emissions from oil and gas production facilities in the US were 60 percent higher than reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), suggesting that companies are not being honest and fully accounting for how much methane they are venting into the atmosphere, as well as underreporting accidental discharges and leaks.
Given that methane is a colorless, odorless gas that many plants also vent into the atmosphere, many companies believe they can get away with it.
However, proof that companies are doing this on an immense scale was discovered by satellite data provided by the European Space Agency.
Despite the dire impact fossil fuel production is having on the atmosphere, the authors of the study say the new findings aren’t all bad news – there is some good news in these results that we can take advantage of.
Given that we know where the methane being released into the atmosphere is coming from – we can take action to reduce methane emissions, which will in turn reduce global warming.
