A newly released international study finds that farming, not fracking, is the likely culprit behind rising global methane levels, undermining the Obama administration’s crackdown on methane from oil-and-gas production in the name of climate change.
The research published Friday in the journal Science came a day after President Obama unveiled a pact aimed at cutting methane emissions from oil-and-gas producers by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025.
“That was a real surprise, because at that time the US started fracking and we also know that the economy in Asia picked up again, and coal mining increased.
However, that is not reflected in the atmosphere,” Mr. Schaefer told the website Phys.org.
He said agricultural practices are the likely reason for the spike of methane, or CH4, in the atmosphere since 2007, not fossil fuels, as many have assumed.
“Our data indicate that the source of the increase was methane produced by bacteria, of which the most likely sources are natural, such as wetlands or agricultural, for example from rice paddies or livestock,” Mr. Schaefer said.
The study was conducted by a team of scientists from New Zealand and Germany as well as U.S. researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado.
“The finding of a primarily biogenic post-2006 increase [in methane] is robust.
Further, it seems like that fossil-fuel emissions stagnated or diminished in the 1990s.
Importantly, they are a minor contributor to the renewed [CH4]-rise,” said the article.
The “most probably causes” of the methane spike are “either food production or climate-sensitive natural emissions,” the study concluded..."
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