Greenhouse gases in all its glory...and a few juvenile chuckles
As I write this on Sunday, the temperature here at my home in north Georgia is 60° F. We just went through (yet another) crazy set of storms this last weekend, and there are more storms forecast for the middle of the week. (It might even be storming as you read this on Wednesday or Thursday.) Climate Change is here in the Tennessee Valley and it’s getting worse.
In fact if things continue as they are now, some of us can look forward to dying in possibly the stupidest, most hilariously human way possible: fart gas.
You heard me: fart gas.
You see, one of the gases in human flatulence is methane. It’s a by-product of digestion and something that your body wants to get rid of, so, it expels it when you poot. It’s also highly flammable and makes up a large part of what we call “Natural Gas”.
Methane is also very, very good at trapping the heat from the sun. In fact, it’s twenty-three times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. So for example, one pound of methane can trap as much heat as 23 pounds of carbon dioxide!
Methane is also an asphyxiant. It’s not poisonous which is why farts don’t kill you but it displaces oxygen. (This is one of the many reasons that it’s so difficult to breathe in a “Dutch Oven”.) So, if you happen to find yourself in a closed area full of methane, there’s just not any oxygen to breathe. Stay there long enough and you will die.
Fortunately, most of the methane in the world is locked up in the tummies of animals, in Natural Gas and frozen in permafrost around the world.
Unfortunately, all that methane might not be locked up that much longer.
You’ve probably already heard about “crazy” scientists trying to reduce the methane output of cattle. It turns out that cattle and other livestock account for about 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gases that humanity releases each year. (Yes, that’s on us because we farm those animals.) Getting that under control would make a big dent in greenhouse gasses but not enough to turn things around at this point.
As for Natural Gas, well, that’s a good thing isn’t it? Ummm, yes and no. While burning Natural Gas produces about 50 percent less greenhouse gasses than burning coal, a 2018 study found that spills and leaks of Natural Gas cancel out all those savings. (The methane only goes away if you actually burn it. If you spill it or it leaks, the methane goes right into the atmosphere and starts to work it’s magic.)
Which brings us to the methane locked in the cold places of the world. This is the scary one. For pretty much all of human civilization, there have been really cold areas on the planet. Many of those places contain permafrost which are areas where the ground is so cold, that it’s “permanently” frozen solid.
Trapped under the permafrost are dead things. Things that have been dead and rotting for thousands of years, silently creating vast pools of noxious gases, including methane. Those pools are just waiting to be released into the atmosphere when the ground thaws out. (There are also vast pools of methane trapped under the Pacific Ocean and other bodies of water around the world. Google “Hot Tub of Despair” for info on a really neat one.)
And, guess what…that’s happening now. Last year was the second hottest of the 2010’s and the 2010’s were the hottest decade on record. So as the world warms and permafrost melts, more and more of that methane will be released into the atmosphere, in silent (but deadly) events that will speed up warming even further and could possibly kill nearby people and animals.
In fact, something similar has already happened at least once. On August 21st, 1986, a carbon dioxide cloud erupted out of Lake Nyos in Cameroon, and killed over 1,700 people as well as countless more livestock and wild animals. There was no warning and everyone died very quickly.
So, what can we do? At this point, not much. The problem has become so big and immediate that only governmental action (you know, regulations) has any hope of turning things around. So, call and write your representatives. Better yet, run for office yourself!
And, if there are any climate skeptic politicians out there that would like to meet with me to discuss the issue, I’ll bring you something special from my Dutch Oven.
Steven W. Disbrow is a programmer who specializes in e-commerce and mobile systems development, an entrepreneur, comic-book nerd, writer, improviser, actor, sometime television personality and parent of two human children.