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126 comments on Rhode Island's Smart Choice

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GliderGuider on June 7, 2006 - 1:57pm

My understanding is that methane is around 23 times more potent a GHG than CO2, but is less persistent. CH4 has a 10 or 12 year mean residence time in the atmosphere. While I can't find a similarly simple persistence figure for CO2 right now, I understand that it's much longer - I remember reading a figure of 100 years somewhere (perhaps in Flannery's book "The Weather Makers").

I don't know the current opinions on how those two factors balance out, but I expect it won't be a simple answer given the radically different paths these two chemicals take through the world, and the complexity of the reactions they are involved in (especially CO2).

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robbmcleod on June 7, 2006 - 9:22pm

CO2 has a lifetime of about 330 years versus 7-8 for methane. The 22x greenhouse potential of methane accounts for the difference in lifetime. While it is in the atmosphere methane absorbs approximately 900x the energy as CO2.

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