Very battered and bruised from the loss of a very strong and pounding post I made over a month ago regarding a one of the BBC’s environmental newz articles, I dare to venture back into the arena.
This time regarding http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14476389
The article is about the apparent reduction in ‘growth rate’ of atmospheric methane. The sloppy article fails to say whether the rate is positive or negative (i.e. the actual level is increasing or decreasing – I don’t have time to read the source, I’m only commenting on the BBC part of it).
If the article was about the increase in growth rate, the article would surely not have hesitated to say how elevated levels of methane contribute strongly to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). One could be forgiven therefore to imagine an article about lower levels would mention something along the lines of “decreased growth rates of methane in the atmosphere may indicate a trend towards global cooling”.
But no.
Having FOUND the growth rate levels are down, we get the baseless supposition:
” there are suggestions that methane levels are now on the rise again.”
followed immediately by the new paragrpah
“Methane is regarded as one of the most potent greenhouse gases, trapping over 20 times more atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide. “
OK OK OK, this is the BBC – you gotta expect some crap, and the expectation sure don’t go by unmet.
By the way, in the medical profession, when certain increases are found e.g. Autism this is solely attributed to greater accuracy in diagnosis. But methane rates, either up or down, (how did they measure atmospheric methane in the industrial revolution? and who did that measuring? Ice core samples perhaps??).
There is also babble that the reason for the three decade decline in methane is because Asian farmers have switched to synthetic fertilisers instead of traditional manure fertilisers…Oh, so that over 30 years we much greater head of cattle producing much more cattle dung irrespective of whether it’s used in a paddy or not isn’t relevant. Marvellous.
More…
“”We think the trend we see in methane is best explained by dramatic changes in emissions linked to fossil fuel production and use which seem to have declined in the 1980s and 1990s. “
Errrm…
Source: http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/world-fossil-fuel-production-bp.png
Yeah, pretty conclusive decline there.
Yet more…
“Climate sceptics who think that natural factors and not human activities play a more important role in temperature rise…”
Frist of all, one again look how it’s temperature “RISE” inclined, and in no way suggestive that the reduction in growth rate may signal a turning point towards a period of global cooling, hene deserving the script: “spectics believe natural factors could cause more cooling than anthropogenic factors”.
And what of the term “Climate sceptics”? What does this really mean? Is it supposed to mean people who deny there is a climate??? Is deployment of this term meant to ridicule? Shouldn’t the description be something along the lines of “sceptics of well publicides claims regarding levels of AGW” by the likes of the Al Gore and East Anglia Universities ‘Climatic Research Unit’ each of whom have been embroiled in questionable behaviour” etc?
And is the quoted sentence above saying ALL so called “climate sceptics” are like this? It could refer to just a particular subset but then it the sentence doesn’t really make much sense to single them out. It seems the claim is indeed aimed at ALL sceptics.
and to top it off…
“I think both studies are actually suggesting that human activities are playing a very important role in determining the methane levels in the atmosphere,” he explained.
As we use more and more fossil fuels, you can be sure it will start creeping up again slowly, I think it demonstrates pretty clearly that human activities have direct and pretty profound impacts on the levels of these gases in the atmosphere.”
This Dr Murat Aydin seems like an idiot to me. How does the result lead one to exclue natural factors? I guess by this very idiocy that Aydin is a pro-AGWer. He totally inverts what is FOUND… There is no creeping up at all. If anything there is a creeping down, no wait, the article says earlier on that the reduction was “substantial”
How crap.
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P.S., today I heard Captain Planet (who does nothing against banks, governments and corporations what are raping the environment for a fist full of dollars) say:
“If the population keeps growing the way it is, tere will be too many people everywhere” – Captain Planet
Why do I have a feeling I know just which people dear Captain Planet would like to see a reduction in?
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Living with the Conspiracy 24-7 
Its been a busy couple months for climate deniers bent on spinning a handful of minor science errors into a web of distortion misinformation and lies..The Earth unfortunately isnt playing along..In January we learned that the 2000s was the hotter than the 1990s which was hotter than the 1980s..Last week we learned that in significant amounts loading up the atmosphere with a heat-trapping gas 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide..We dont know whether this is a new development driven by Arctic warming or an ongoing natural process though the extent of it has surprised the scientific community..We do know though theres an enormous amount of methane frozen beneath the shallow waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf an area of nearly 800 000 square miles. And we know the release of even a small portion of this reservoir would be catastrophic.. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide the NSF states in its March 4 . Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate change. .This section of the Arctic sea floor is releasing 7 million metric tons of methane a yearas much as is being emitted by the rest of the oceanaccording to work done by an international research team led by scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov of the University of Alaska Fairbanks see .
.SINGAPORE Reuters – Atmospheric levels of methane 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide CO2 at trapping heat stayed steady for two decades to 2006 on wider fertilizer use to grow rice or a surge in natural gas demand according to two separate studies in the journal Nature..Climate researcher Fuu Ming Kai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Singapore research center said in one study that methane output from rice fields in the Northern Hemisphere dropped during the period as fertilizers replaced manure and because of reduced water use.In the second study Murat Aydin at the University of California Irvine concluded that a drop in methane emissions from more efficient burning of fossil fuels and a surge in natural gas demand.The studies aim to solve a puzzle that has confounded climate scientists for years why did methane levels in the atmosphere after rising steadily for many years taper off in the mid-1980s in a dip lasting two decades?Solving the puzzle is crucial because methane levels have risen more than 150 percent since the start of the industrial revolution compared with CO2s 40 percent increase and are on the rise again.While the studies reach different conclusions both studies point to human activities as the reason for the slowdown. In general most of the methane sources come from the Northern Hemisphere Fuu told Reuters.The main methane sources come from burning fossil fuels rice paddies coal mines livestock and clearing and burning of tropical forests. We looked at the isotope data to see how its changed over the past 20 to 30 years. And what we saw is a trend in the isotope signature and especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Fuu said long-term data and comparing methane levels between the both hemispheres helped researchers conclude that about half the decrease in Northern Hemisphere methane emissions could be explained by reduced emissions from rice agriculture in Asia over the past three decades. It is important to know what the mechanism is behind the slow down. If you know this you can adopt a suitable policy to reduce methane emissions Fuu said.Aydin concluded the drop coincided with rapid natural gas production as the fuel became increasingly price competitive with oil and other fossil fuel instead of flaring it off.
Two people have posted detailed replies to this post which got caught in the ‘spam’ filter.
When i unblocked them, they simply vanished. I didn’t delete them, I clicked “Not Spam” but they didn’t appear here. Apologies to both of you.Found them :)http://www. youtube .com/watch?v=seU4xsz9vsY
Christopher Monckton from 6m:36s makes a good case for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) scepticism.
(p.s. well done Jim Corr, for the earlier expression of 9-11 scepticism, but his post isn’t about 9-11)