"For two years, global temperatures have exceeded the 1.5C heating limit laid out in the Paris climate agreement. This overshooting will have devastating consequences, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has warned. The biggest worry for scientists is that further heating could trigger irreversible tipping points, such as the widespread drying out and dying off of the Amazon, or the melting of the Greenland ice sheet."
"Cutting methane is the single most important strategy to slow near-term warming, says Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, and a longtime advocate of action on methane. In fact, it's the only strategy that has a chance of working. Cutting carbon dioxide is a marathon, but methane is a sprint. Once in the atmosphere, it is about 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide, but has a shorter life, breaking down in about 20 years."
Global temperatures have exceeded the 1.5C Paris Agreement limit for two years, creating risk of irreversible climate tipping points such as Amazon dieback and Greenland ice-sheet melting. Rapid reduction and possible reversal of the overshoot is crucial, but shifting energy systems away from fossil fuels will take decades. Methane emissions offer the most effective near-term mitigation because methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a ~20-year atmospheric lifetime. Methane sources include leaky oil and gas infrastructure, livestock, and decomposing organic matter. New satellites reveal widespread underreporting and rising methane emissions, while cutting methane could buy essential breathing space.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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