So the idea is, we buy their methane and we convert it to CO2, the more important greenhouse gas.

I don't see how this contributes to the environment particularly, but it does give the world (or anyway us) more energy with only a marginal increase in greenhouse gases.

It is incorrect to call CO2 the more important greenhouse gas. Methane is about 20-30 times as effective at trapping heat. Check out:
http://members.aol.com/profchm/gina.html

or

this quote by Gregg Easterbrook:
Third, another article by Revkin details how atmospheric accumulation of methane, rising throughout the industrial era, is beginning to slow. This is excellent news because molecule-for-molecule, methane is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

You can read the rest here:
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?week=2003-11-25

You know, if we really have to argue over whether the Bush administration is the most anti-environmental administration in 40 years, then I guess we can't stipulate to anything.

Tell us the environment isn't really as bad off as we think it is so it doesn't matter, or tell us that by relieving corporations of the burden of environmental regulation they're likely to make larger donations to greenpeace. Tell us any dman thing, but don't just hold up one piece of arguably good environmental policy (which so far is just words on paper - a stage many of the better Bush policies never make it past) and pretend it makes Bush green.

p.s. PaulNoonan - in my experience Easterbrook is reliably biased on environmental topics - if you must cite him, I suggest a second source.

"p.s. PaulNoonan - in my experience Easterbrook is reliably biased on environmental topics - if you must cite him, I suggest a second source."

He does give two sources. See above.

Sebastien:
He did cite another source--Revkin--and still another--gina.

CO2 is indeed one of the least-effective, molecule-for-molecule, greenhouse gases. It just happens to be one of the most plentiful (aside from water vapor, which is the 800lb gorilla among greenhouse gases).

CO2, though, is far more stable than most other greenhouse gases. Methane is removed from the atmosphere in roughly 300 years or so (absent the Earth's biosphere, most methane would decompose and its fraction as a greenhouse gas would drop). The other major GHGs are also unstable, compared to CO2. The carbon cycle and carbonate rock formation on net remove CO2 from the atmosphere very slowly; thus CO2 is the long-run GHG of importance as far as climate temperature regulation goes.

Good job. Now if we could just reverse almost everything else they've done ...

Dammit. I should really avoid postscripts. By the time I get to them, I've (apparently) forgotten parts of the original post.

p.s. Apologies for the wasted bandwidth.

You mean the laws cleaning up diesel fuel, or the ones prohibiting high polluting two-stroke engines from national parks?

Or do you mean trying to reform the silly laws that penalize power plants for installing cleaner technology? (Old regulations grandfathered in old power plants so long as they replaced broken parts with the same part; replacing a broken part with a new, more enviromentally friendly part or replacing an entire power plant with a more environmentally friendly one triggered a massively expensinve New Source Review. The net effect was, of course, to favor older, more polluting power plants and technologies.)

Or are you talking about, say, the arsenic issue-- where the arsenic level remained the same for the entire Clinton Administration, until a sudden regulation issued AFTER the 2000 election was defeated, and the Bush Administration delayed implementation of the new regs (but of course never increased the level of arsenic at all above what was allowed every year that Clinton was in power).

Or refusing to ratify Kyoto-- which Clinton never sent for ratification?

The Bush Administration, just like every Administration ever, has had a slow but steady progress on environmental issues. Every year, under every President, our air has gotten steadily cleaner. Generally, Democrats push for faster changes and Republicans for slower, but improvement has always been there.

Please, try to point to a serious case against the Bush Administration, and one that successfully argues that it was seriously worse than the Clinton Administration. (Also, please try to avoid giving credit to Clinton for regulations proposed and imposes only after the 2000 election was decided, after leaving regulations largely alone for eight years.)

CO_2 is of course more stable. It also, unlike methane, but like water vapor, is a darn near inevitable by-product of most chemical reactions, and among the safest possible chemicals for most forms of life, including our own. Methane, SOX, NOX, formaldehyde, and others are easy to fight, and for obvious reasons. CO2 and H20 are quite different.

"p.s. PaulNoonan - in my experience Easterbrook is reliably biased on environmental topics - if you must cite him, I suggest a second source."

As pointed out by numerous others, I did. But might I point out that almost everyone is biased on this issue. Especially when speaking in political rhetoric.
You know where Easterbrook is coming from, but I'll take his analysis, which concludes that every environmental trend, EXCEPT greenhouse gases, has improved and continues to improve, and is, as far as I can tell, correct. You can have Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich, and I will gladly smirk as I watch a pigeon eat a discarded pizza crust off of my neighbors fire escape.

CO2 is bad, and I never said otherwise, but even though, as Brian Doss points out correctly, it is more stable, it is still a good idea to reduce methane, because its more extreme impact in the short term speeds up the accumulation of CO2 in the long term, so slowing methane accumulation also slows CO2 accumulation.

When you burn methane you convert it into CO2 and water mostly, but the idea is that it's already becoming a "greenhouse gas" so why not extract energy from it and therefore decrease demand for natural gas ... and hopefully decrease the CO2 produced by burning natural gas.

However even if the level of US improvements were implemented worldwide, the total impact would 0.8% of the total global greenhouse gas production. (0.16x0.05). And that's being quite optimistic. The increase in methan production resulting from increased animal domestication alone should outstrip that.

It's a nice idea but even if uniformly and optimally applied universally, it's an inconsequential effect. Nice PR window dressing for the Bush Admin though so that they can point to the fact that they're doing "something" while skating around the big issues.

I don't expect you Prof. Drezner to be technically proficient in every field you enter, but a little numerical literacy in basic numbers you yourself present and understanding their impact would be nice. Then again at various points I've passed many students in my classes, pre-med and pre-vet and the like who've been in the same boat, so maybe educators like myself are at blame for allowing into the world "experts" who don't have a sense of basic fractions and quantitative reasoning.

Here's a serious case against the Bush administration.

The utilities cut a deal re: New Source Review. They never held up their end of the bargain, got caught cheating, and then manage to effect a change in the law and have it apply retroactively. I think that's wrong. Then they managed to get the Clean Air Act slowed down. As someone who leaves near a fair number of the dirtiest plants in the country (Hatfield's Ferry, Keystone, Bruce Mansfield), I don't like that either. Then the EPA basically dismantled its enforcement division. Morale there is abysmal, as anyone who knows people who work there can attest.

Then there's mercury. It's toxic, and should be regulated as such. I'm in favor of tradable permits, but not for mercury. Sorry.

Then there's drilling and logging. I don't like drilling next door to special places like Dinosaur National Monument. I don't want drilling in ANWR, or logging in Tongass. Sorry.

I like it that wetlands are protected under the law. Sorry.

Don't like mountain top removal mining, and think the buffers should be as wide as possible. I think coal companies should be required to post larger bonds, and punished when the break the law. Sorry.

I want SUVs to be regulated as cars, not as light trucks.

Etc.

There's more.

- You probably didn't like Kyoto much, but a president who gave a damn about the environment might have tried to fix it, instead of abandoning it.

- Anyone remember the EPA's annual "State of the Environment" report which had it's nearly completely uncontroversial comments on global warming removed by order of the white house?

- Bush appointed oil/coal lobbyist J. Steven Griles as Interior Deputy Secretary, and timber industry trade group rep Mark Rey as Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary. Why do this if you don't feel like a rollback of environmental protections is necessary?

- Have you ever seen the Bush administration's energy plan?

I think if it quacks at 10,000 decibels like a duck, it pretty obviously wants to be perceived as a duck.

read this and you might think america helping they thridworld with their methane is a good idea.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/14/BAGJG6LG3R15.DTL

we could help them reduce their eletric cost along with impove the enviorment on two fronts (the methane side and the power genearatin side).

Sebastien wrote:

You probably didn't like Kyoto much, but a president who gave a damn about the environment might have tried to fix it, instead of abandoning it.

That presumes that the President in question believes it is better to waste time on a thoroughly worthless treaty like Kyoto that (a) takes the wrong approach and (b) even its most ardent supporters admit would not solve the “problem.” Bush seems to be taking a wiser approach not merely because he walked away from the Kyoto fraud but because he’s focused on trying to grow the economy (the wealthier and more technologically advanced we become, the more likely we are to be able to develop a more cost-effective approach) and dealing with pollution/greenhouse gases where you can get a bigger bang for the buck. It may not please some environmentalist ideologues who are more interested in feeding the fear industry than developing working solutions, but those of us who are rational pragmatists generally prefer this sort of approach.

Anyone remember the EPA's annual "State of the Environment" report which had it's nearly completely uncontroversial comments on global warming removed by order of the white house?

More like they replaced one set of “nearly completely uncontroversial comments on global warming” ("Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment") with another set of “nearly completely uncontroversial comments on global warming”
that were more accurate ("The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future").

Bush appointed oil/coal lobbyist J. Steven Griles as Interior Deputy Secretary, and timber industry trade group rep Mark Rey as Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary. Why do this if you don't feel like a rollback of environmental protections is necessary?

Probably because it makes sense to appoint people who have a working knowledge of some of the practical issues in those fields rather than someone for whom “getting tough on business” isn’t a means to an end but an end unto itself regardless of whether it results in the best policies. Generally, I’m pretty pleased with the Bush administration’s approach to much regulatory issues which seems to be more results-oriented and willing to work with business (to an extent) rather than trying to make a high profile bust in order to “look tough” as his predecessor favored.

The ability of a landfill to produce significant quantities of methane is dependent upon how "tight" the landfill is designed. American landfills have begun recapturing methane for electricity at relatively new landfills with synthetic liners. Since methane is produced anaerobically, older, looser designed landfills do not produce methane, they produce CO2. I seriously question whether third-world landfills would produce enough energy to power the machinery needed to capture methane. Sounds like corporate welfare to me.