'Terrifying': Scientists dig deep for missing piece of climate puzzle: SMH

"... The implications, though, of proof of a reduced ability to destroy methane - which now has a life in the atmosphere of about a decade - would be profound, depending on the scale of any decline.

Apart from raising the warming potential of methane - whether released from coal mines or natural gas fields - the potential for hydrogen to serve as a "clean fuel" could also be placed in doubt. (Labor this week floated a $1 billion plan to create hydrogen export zones in Queensland to be powered by a massive increase in renewable energy.)

"Hydrogen is a very leaky molecule and we’d have to expect that there’d be some leakage in its production," Etheridge says, adding that hydrogen itself has a greenhouse gas effect.

“It may not be of any significance, but we don’t know.”"

Read the SMH article 

#methane  #hydrogen  #coal mines  #greenhouse gases  #climate catastrophe  #natural gas