One of the quickest, most cost-effective ways to slow global heating is to reduce methane emissions. That's because, although methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, it remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter time.

Methane is around 85 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period, but most is removed from the atmosphere through oxidation within about 12 years. CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, so its warming effects continue long after emissions are reduced or eliminated. When more methane is released into the atmosphere than the amount removed, it contributes to climate change.

Methane accounts for a third or more of global heating since pre-industrial times and is also a main source of ground-level ozone pollution, which causes at least a million premature deaths every year.

More than 60 per cent is produced by human activities, mainly agriculture and oil and gas production and distribution, along with biogas burning and landfills. Natural sources include wetlands, permafrost, wildfires and termites. Atmospheric methane levels have increased by more than 150 per cent since industrialization and intensive agriculture began - and they continue to increase.

Although a good percentage of anthropogenic methane emissions come from agriculture, this methane starts as atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is captured by plants through photosynthesis and often released as methane by animals that eat the plants. Methane emissions from fossil fuels, on the other hand, start out deep in the earth, where they've been stored away from the atmosphere for millions of years.

Regardless of the source, keeping excess methane from the atmosphere is crucial to resolving the climate crisis and to reducing pollution. There are many practical ways to do so and the effects would be quickly evident. Unfortunately, as with many climate solutions, they're meeting with resistance from industry.

According to the UN Environment Programme, "Human-caused methane emissions could be reduced by as much as 45 per cent within the decade. This would avert nearly 0.3°C of global warming by 2045, helping to limit global temperature rise to 1.5˚C and putting the planet on track to achieve the Paris Agreement targets" - and "would also prevent 260,000 premature deaths, 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits, 73 billion hours of lost labour from extreme heat and 25 million tonnes of crop losses."

Agricultural solutions range from improving livestock feed and cultivation practices to encouraging people to switch to more plant-based diets and alternative protein sources.

For fossil fuels, the ultimate solution is to shift quickly from coal, oil and gas to renewable energy, along with energy efficiency and conservation. Shorter-term solutions include reducing leakage from coal mines, oil and gas production and pipelines, and recovering and using methane from operations.

But we're going in the opposite direction. Methane emissions have been increasing rapidly over the past 15 years, and hit record highs in 2021. A recent study shows that, as more methane is emitted into to the atmosphere, less is being removed than previously, in part because increasing wildfires are affecting the ability of hydroxyl radicals to break it down.

As the world heats, sources like melting permafrost are also releasing methane. And rather than slowing fossil fuel production, industry and governments have been ramping up, especially with fossil gas, often misnamed "natural gas" and "liquefied natural gas" (LNG) - which is mostly methane. Industry has been reluctant to take responsibility for numerous leaking abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells, and to address other leaks.

Governments and industry have also consistently underreported methane leaks, even as they support and promote rapid LNG expansion.

In Alberta and elsewhere, industry executives have lobbied behind closed doors to relax regulations around monitoring and reporting leaks. And despite B.C.'s plan to increase royalty rates and reduce some credits for LNG projects, the government is fully supporting the industry. The European Union is even considering labelling some fossil gas as "green," despite opposition.

The push for continued and expanded reliance on fossil gas (mostly obtained through hydraulic fracturing or "fracking") is also causing global geopolitical instability.

It's time to bring methane emissions - and the entire fossil fuel industry - under control. Reducing methane in the atmosphere will ensure rapid benefits for the climate and human health.

Those clever Chinese climate hoaxsters have taken their act on the road, and now they're entertaining most of Europe and North Africa with their full repertoire.

From the BBC:

The Portuguese authorities say at least 238 people have died from the heat over the past week. Fires are ravaging areas of France's south-western Gironde region, where over 12,000 people have been evacuated. Heatwaves have become more frequent, more intense, and last longer because of human-induced climate change. The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to carbon emissions. The French weather service has forecast temperatures of up to 41 degrees in parts of the country's south on Sunday and new heat records are predicted for Monday. Late on Saturday the country placed 22 more regional departments mostly along its Atlantic coast on high orange alert. One resident in south-west France described the forest fires as feeling "post-apocalyptic" - "I've never seen this before," Karyn, who lives near Teste-de-Buch, told news agency AFP [...]

Other parts of the Mediterranean are affected too. In Italy, the government has declared a state of emergency in the desiccated Po Valley - the country's longest river is no more than a trickle in some places. In Greece, firefighters are tackling blazes in the Feriza area, about 50km (31 miles) south-east of Athens, and near Rethymno, on the north coast of Crete. Seven villages have been evacuated near Rethymno. In northern Morocco, several villages had to be evacuated as fires swept through the Larache, Ouezzane, Taza and Tetouan provinces. One village was totally destroyed in the Ksar El Kebir area and at least one person died in a blaze.

NASA's Earth Observatory is keeping track of the overall scorecard:

In Italy, the record heat contributed to the July 3 collapse of a portion of the Marmolada Glacier in the Dolomites. The avalanche of snow, ice, and rock killed 11 hikers.

In the U.K., the Met Office issued extreme heat or amber warnings as temperatures were expected to continue to climb, possibly breaking all-time highs. In North Africa, Tunisia has endured a heatwave and fires that have damaged the country's grain crop. On July 13 in the capital city of Tunis, the temperature reached 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking a 40-year record. In Iran, temperatures remained high in July after reaching a scorching 52 degrees Celsius (126 degrees Fahrenheit) in late June. In China, the summer has brought three heatwaves that have buckled roads, melted tar, and popped off roof tiles. The Shanghai Xujiahui Observatory, where records have been kept since 1873, recorded its highest temperature ever: 40.9 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 13, 2022. High humidity and dewpoints, along with warm overnight temperatures, created potentially deadly conditions.

Vendors in the city reported surging sales of ice cream, melons, and crayfish chilled in liquor -- a popular summertime dish. At a sprawling Shanghai wildlife park, eight metric tons of ice are used each day to keep lions, pandas and other animals cool [...] In the city of Chongqing -- which has issued a red alert -- the roof of a museum melted, with traditional Chinese tiles popping as the heat dissolved the underlying tar. The city has deployed trucks to spray water in an effort to cool its roads.

Elsewhere, residents are trying to cool off in various ways. On Sunday, huge crowds in the city of Qingdao, in eastern Shandong province, flocked to the beach for a dip in the sea. Children in Nanning, in the Guangxi region, played barefoot in public fountains. In Nanjing, Jiangsu province, residents instead headed for an air raid shelter to escape the heat, reading newspapers and watching TV to pass the time in the Wifi-equipped wartime bunkers.

From Politico:

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, has long been a top recipient of campaign contributions from the energy sector, and last quarter's campaign finance data shows that trend has continued. The senator received donations from executives at Georgia Power, including the utility's CFO Aaron Abramovitz, and from Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue.

- Energy services firm Concord Energy CEO Matthew Flavin gave Manchin the maximum allowable amount of $5,800, as did Southern Company Gas CEO Kim Greene and Harvest Midstream CEO Jason Rebrook. Southern Company's chair and CEO Chris Cummiskey gave Manchin $2,000, while three other company executives gave at least $1,000. An in-house lobbyist for the company donated $1,000 as well. Kara G. Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil & Gas Association, gave $1,000, too, along with two executives from the energy storage company Form Energy.

- Manchin also took in more than $19,000 from political action committees belonging to fossil fuel or energy companies and their trade groups, including the Coterra Energy, NextEra Energy, North American Coal Corp., the American Exploration & Production Council's PAC. The PACs for private equity giant the Carlyle Group and AT&T contributed $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.

(c) 2022 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Mark Howarth, writing in the stalwart weekly from Dundee, Scotland, The Sunday Post, has a blockbuster scoop.

The Global Oceanic Environmental Survey, led by Edinburgh University marine biologist Howard Dryden at the university Roslin Innovation Centre had estimated that the plankton in the oceans had been halved in the past 40 years, and that all of it could be gone by 2040.

Dryden and GOES were off by twenty years.

Plankton is a blanket term for the billions of tiny sea organisms living close to the surface of the oceans, which are eaten by krill, small crustaceans, which are in turn eaten by fish and whales. No plankton, little or no marine life.

And while trees hog all the credit, plankton generate 70% of our oxygen.

Howarth reports that the GOES team just sampled the ocean water surface along the French and Portuguese coasts before heading across the Atlantic to Colombia. They and volunteers gathered 500 data points.

They expected to find five patches of plankton in every ~2.5 gallons (10 liters) of ocean water.

They found an average of one.

So in 1982 there would have been 10 patches of plankton in every 2.5 gallons of surface ocean water, and now there is one. That isn't a 50% reduction.

If Dryden and his team's survey is borne out by the scientific community, that is a 90% reduction.

It is like going to the zoo and finding nine in every ten of the animals there - the giraffes, the tigers, the reptiles - dead on the ground.

You would wonder, what happened here? Were they exposed to poison gas? Were they given poison to drink?

What is killing the plankton?

First, you know those billions and billions of tons of carbon dioxide we put up into the atmosphere every year, and how we have been doing that for decades? That is a big part of the problem and will get bigger.

Carbon dioxide dissolves into sea water, becoming bicarbonate ions and hydrogen ions. The accumulation of bicarbonate ions makes the ocean acidic, lowering the PH factor.

Plankton don't do well with an acidic environment. Imagine if you dumped hydrochloric acid into your fish tank. Although many of the plankton organisms offset extra acid when their shells dissolve, providing extra calcium and raising the PH, they seem likely to be overwhelmed in this regard, and it is anyway not a function they can perform if they are all dead.

Other things are killing plankton, like petroleum spills and other industrial pollution, and the run-off from farms of fertilizer.

The goal of stopping carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 isn't good enough. We need to stop them now.

By the way, another function of phytoplankton is to absorb carbon dioxide into their little shells, which sink to the bottom of the ocean when they die, where subduction processes can bury them forever They are a major carbon sink.

If they are gone, the carbon dioxide will just go straight into the oceans, which will be even more acidic than would otherwise have been the case.

Some 870 million people, 10-12% of the global population, substantially depend on marine life for their nutrition