Anthony: Colorado chases CO2 while methane gets a pass

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

It’s never a bad idea to watch what our richest Coloradan Phil Anschutz is doing, which is hard to miss up in Wyoming. He’s building the nation’s biggest wind farm and the TransWest Utility line which will bring power to Las Vegas and on to California. At the same time, he’s sitting on a billion barrels of oil. He’s not that concerned about global warming but since California mandated clean energy he’s building it for them and bringing it to their doorstep with his own private extension cord.

What will happen to it all if Californians change their mind and go back to gas? That’s why sitting on a billion barrels of oil isn’t a bad “hedge.”

According to science our average global temperature has increased by 1.19 degrees Celsius since 1880, with the last ten years being the warmest on record.

Global warming is a new science under the heading “Climate Change” and as Colorado emerges from a 16-month drought nobody in the state can be too ignorant of it (or El Niño, or is it La Niña, whichever one is now dumping on us?) Elements of this science affect us all and as we no longer have Weatherman Bowman to guide us, we have to look at the stars ourselves and find the known constellations, check our chronometers, and take readings on our sextants. This is because politics is now heavily involved, especially in Colorado where Boulder is suing Suncor and Exxon Mobil and the State of Colorado has mandated climate goals forced by restrictions on energy, aiming at “net zero” by 2050.

Denver is plaguing private buildings whose owners can’t meet its new energy guidelines, while its roll of delinquent commercial taxes goes to the lien auction.

The net zero by 2050 cost will be dumped onto the ratepayers if the taxpayers keep fighting it out over TABOR. Nice to be a utility with a built-in profit guarantee. Like I learned as a contractor, “cost plus a percentage” is the way to go, as the higher the cost the bigger the percentage number gets. Much better than bidding against other dice rollers.

As recently as 1999, when a warming trend over 20 years showed 1/10th of a degree Celsius over that time, attributed to El Niño, a real trend was not observed.

CO2 has recently been measured at 427 ppm, which, to put it into perspective, is roughly 55% higher than in 1750, giving us about 0.0427% of our atmosphere, a critical little bit upon which all growing plants depend. Plants, then, hold the key to our troubles. MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT.

To date most all “climate” efforts have been directed at CO2. This is because all humans exhale it all the time and the politicians have to go after us each, personally, especially for reproducing offspring, which begin exhaling CO2 virtually upon emerging from the birth canal. You’ll never convince me that isn’t part of why Colorado has fought so hard for full term abortion.

CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming phenomena however, which shows a significant drop in ROI of “climate interventions” after, and if, 800 ppm is reached.

This logic needs to account for increased water vapor as an independent driver of trapped heat, the upside here being that increased water vapor argues for increased rain, which in turn argues for increased photosynthetic activity, which then argues for Nature providing more robust short-term carbon sequestration, with the side benefit being increased temperate climate growing seasons.

Then we have the whole undiscussed issue of methane.

Methane is significantly more potent than CO2 over short timeframes. It is about 100x more potent upon emission, approximately 80 times more powerful at trapping heat over a 20-year period, and about 28–30 times more powerful over a 100-year period. Methane is responsible for roughly 30% of current global warming and about 20% of direct radiative forcing since 1750. Despite its lower concentration (measured in parts per billion vs. CO2’s parts per million), its high heat-trapping ability makes it a critical target for near-term climate mitigation.

According to the UN and the EPA, livestock contribute the most to the increase in atmospheric methane, and yet livestock are completely ignored by the Netzero’ers.

While methane is up to 100x worse for the greenhouse effect than CO2, most of it can be immediately converted to CO2 and byproducts by burning it. Obviously burning it for necessary heating (such as a wood stove) and electricity generation (such as a methane capture project at a coal power plant) is a double win. This can be more readily done in the field of fossil fuel extraction than, say, cattle production where chasing cows around the meadow with a catheter balloon becomes a bit tedious, especially when most of their emissions are through burping, but Native Americans used burning of dead grass and undergrowth as a matter of course for thousands of years to clear land, keep forest pathways open, and revegetate prairie, thus avoiding excess methane production from natural composting while replenishing soils with potash and other byproducts of combustion. The smoke from burning also helped block early morning and late afternoon solar rays.

Unfortunately, with Society now averse to the idea of wood or yard waste burning, nearly all the organic waste from cities now goes to landfills or municipal composting facilities where methane does indeed get released, where then of course they have a government program paid for by taxes to try and “capture” it which, of course, always drives up costs which are placed onto the taxpayers. Let’s just mention right here that the more cost and more taxes, the more required societal “earnings” and of course those earnings mean people driving to work or operating fuel-consuming machines at higher rates, which of course causes more CO2 (and other stuff) being released SO THEY CAN PAY THEIR HIGHER TAXES.

Meanwhile the restrictions on wood-burning stoves across the seven-county metro area have made burning beetle-killed pine a wintertime problem, while a task force has been deployed to figure out how to dun the taxpayers for more money while restricting their activities, and Proposition 137 would take $175 million a year out of the TABOR limits to cut down trees and do other wildfire mitigation, with about half of it earmarked for Great Outdoors Colorado.

But screw you and your American-made P.D. Beckwith Round Oak potbellied stove from Dowagiac, MI.

In other words, the gummint is gumming up the works with its normal MO, “I’ll vote for your terrible idea if you vote for mine, and let’s both avoid logic.” After all this is America and if you have a good idea you go into business, not government.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.