Description: "The future ain’t what it used to be."
We know from the work of Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth and other scientists that two properties of methane make it a critical greenhouse gas: on the one hand, it has roughly 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and on the other, it begins to dissipate in the atmosphere after a decade, as opposed to many centuries for carbon dioxide. Together these characteristics mean that rapidly cutting methane can have a major impact in the near future on heading off runaway
For this reason Howarth, a member of the NY Climate Action Council (CAC), sought to secure a new approach to methane emissions as part of the 2019 Climate Protection and Community Leadership Act (CLCPA), measuring them over a 20-year time frame rather than the 100-year time frame previously used in the state. Doing so, in his words , provided NY policymakers with a tool that “more heavily weighs the role of methane as an agent of warming over the next few decades.”
Dropping a Bomb