...Capitalism will provide Nature the rope she uses to hang it with.

Last edited Fri Aug 15, 2025, 12:00 PM - Edit history (1)

The catch is most of this trapped heat in going into the ocean and melting ice. Ice holds huge heat trapping capacity. Once that exhausts our worldwide average temperatures will go up drastically. The ice is also loosing its reflectiveness, meaning more heat is hitting during both summers. There is also a risk of runaway warming as Earth has a massive store of methane hydrates sits under the Arctic Ocean. The last time that released most of Earth's life ended. We might even have our oceans boil off. Jimmy Carter had a plan and laws in place to reduce oil imports to zero by 2000, using 1970's tech. Big oil, the GOP and the selfish wealthy have put us on a speedcar to doom.

Strange that methane isn’t being discussed more. It seems like methane is real killer

Methane's impact (and that of all GHGs) is measured in CO2E - that is, Carbon Dioxide Equivalent - and the implied question is how many pounds of CO2 does a pound of another GHG equal in terms of its warming potential, or GWP.

If you use the EPA's online calculator (as long as it's still online, of course) and feed in a ton of methane, you'll get 28 tons of CO2E.

https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator#results

There's some variability in how methane impact is estimated - as high as 34 tons of CO2 for animal methane (livestock) and 36 tons for fossil methane. An important point, though is that most of a ton of methane breaks down in about 10-12 years and in doing so, loses that big mutiplier effect. The problem is that it breaks down into CO2, and CO2 persists for thousands of years.

Just for shits and giggles, here are the other designated GHGs and their CO2E values per ton:

Nitrous Oxide (largely from wet paddy agriculture) - 256 metric tons CO2E
Hydroflourocarbons (HFCs) averaged across the class of chemicals - 1,810 metric tons CO2E
Perflourocarbons (PFCs) averaged across the class of chemicals - 6,630 metric tons CO2E
Isoflurane - anaesthetic gases - 7,121 metric tons CO2E
Sulfur Hexaflouride - Insulating gas in electric transformers, and in some brands of athletic shoes - 22,500 metric tons CO2E

It slowly turns into CO2 over 50 to 80 years. Yes the CO2E rating is higher than the baseline CO2 levels show, and worse our change is happening faster than anytime in geologic history. This is happening too fast for plants and everything associated with them to move.

The next 100 years are not going to be a good time to be alive for anything but algae, mold and cheatgrass.

March, April, May, June and July 2026 are all going to hit monthly averages at or above 430 ppm.

February 2026 might - might - also qualify.