US joins in other nations in swearing off coal power to clean the climate::The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that’s a huge factor in global warming. U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.
Don’t worry, your pessimism isn’t totally misplaced. See that big “natural gas” line?
Natural gas is just a more palatable word for methane, and burning methane is still putting an enormous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But methane by itself is like 10x worse than CO2 and the EPA estimates as much as 10% of all methane for domestic use ends up in the atmosphere. Fun!
While methane is worse it’s worth noting that it doesn’t stay the atmosphere for as long; so if we stopped producing the fall off in warming would be a lot steeper; so theoretically if we assume that eventually renewables will take over there would be an optimal ratio between the longer term but less damaging CO2 and the more damaging but short term Methane. But all that is driven by economics not science so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
YES, methane stays in the atmosphere a shorter duration as methane, but most of it naturally breaks down into CO2 which then stays in the atmosphere just as long as all the other CO2. It is much worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
It falls off, but it’s not like it’s gonna fall off to zero. It’ll react with oxygen in the atmosphere to form water and CO2—mostly CO2 by mass, because methane is about 3/4 carbon by mass.