cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17436050
As the atmosphere continues to fill with greenhouse gases from human activities, many proposals have surfaced to “geoengineer” climate-saving solutions, that is, alter the atmosphere at a global scale to either reduce the concentrations of carbon or mute its warming effect.
“Our work showed that the efficiency of the proposed technology was quite low, meaning widespread adoption of the technology would be required to make any meaningful impact on atmospheric CH4,” said Mayhew, a postdoctoral researcher with the U’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. “Then, our results indicate that if this technology is adopted at scale, then we start to see some negative air-quality side effects, particularly for wintertime particulate matter air pollution.”
The study
About methane: dealing with it at the source (oil and gas drilling and mining, waste disposal, etc) is going to far less than dealing with it later in the atmosphere.
Knowledge of how to increase methane oxidation rates in air is good to have, however - in case some geochemical methane source (permafrost, hydrates) gets pushed over the edge and starts outputting more than tolerable.