"What's colorless, odorless, is the main component of natural gas, and traps massive amounts of heat in the atmosphere? The answer is methane, or CH4. Over a 20-year timescale, methane traps around 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released by burning fossil fuel. The key difference between them is how long they stick around. On average, methane fades away after about 12 years while CO2 continues to warm the planet over centuries."
"Where does methane come from? Methane does sometimes come from non-human sources like wetlands. These habitats contain things like permafrost, which is frozen ground that's also filled with carbon from animals and plants that have been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. As temperatures rise with global warming, wetland permafrost thaws. That unleashes carbon, previously locked in the ice, in the form of CO2 and methane."
"But 60% of the methane that makes it into the atmosphere comes from human activities. That can be from agriculture think cows' burps and farts and manure fertilizer but also from decomposing waste in landfills and the energy sector. How does the energy sector release methane? Most energy consumed by humans comes from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas."
Methane (CH4) is a colorless, odorless gas and the main component of natural gas. Over a 20-year timescale methane traps about 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide, but it typically remains in the atmosphere only about 12 years while CO2 persists for centuries. Methane has contributed roughly 20–30% of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. Natural sources include wetlands and thawing permafrost, which release carbon as CO2 and methane. Human activities account for about 60% of atmospheric methane, mainly from agriculture, landfills, oil and gas production, transport, storage, equipment leaks, and gas flaring.
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