An international team of researchers found that global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, rose faster than ever in the three years ending in 2022. In a new report from the Global Carbon Project, dozens of scientists reviewed many different emitters of methane and found that two-thirds of methane emissions came from human activity in 2020, while the rest came from natural sources like wetlands.

The way we eat, and the way we dispose of food, play a huge role in humanity's growing methane problem. The report zooms in on roughly two decades of data: one from 2000 to 2009, and another from 2010 to 2019. (It also includes analysis of emissions in 2020 and beyond where data was available.) The authors found that agriculture and waste — including landfills and wastewater management — were responsible for releasing almost double the methane emissions into the atmosphere as fossil fuel production and use from 2010 to 2019.

The trend is hardly surprising to experts tracking global greenhouse gas emissions. This is the Global Carbon Project's fourth report tracking the sources and sinks of methane emissions, and in the last global methane budget, published in 2020, agriculture and waste also contributed roughly twice the methane emissions as the methane that leaked into the air during the extraction of oil, gas, and coal. But the findings come at a time when more than 155 countries have committed to slashing their methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, indicating the amount of work left to do to reach this climate goal has grown. That's both a problem and a potential opportunity, said one report author.

The figures detailed in the report, especially from the agricultural sector, are not "fixed numbers," said Peter Raymond, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of the Environment and one of the dozens of scientists who contributed to the methane budget report.

Agricultural production uses up just under half of the planet's habitable land, which represents plenty of room for intervention. Animal........

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