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NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

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Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#51

Post by ip26 »

bravo22 wrote: post #45
danielfoster wrote: post #42

As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear the brunt of reducing emissions. Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

It's not all landfills, it's a small collection of landfills. And if they aren't fixed, even if everybody went zero waste today, those landfills would still be emitting large amounts of methane.

Proper landfill design & operation ensures the landfill is aerated, which keeps decomposition primarily aerobic which produces little methane. A poorly designed or operated landfill with little aeration will switch to aerobic metabolism, which is what produces large quantities of methane.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#52

Post by kleer001 »

bravo22 wrote: post #45
danielfoster wrote: post #42

As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear the brunt of reducing emissions. Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

influenced by consumer demand and legislation, controlled explicitly by their owners

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#53

Post by nan0 »

aphextim wrote: post #48
azernik wrote: post #2

The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.

Still waiting on Elon Musk to make "WasteX" which will take vast amounts of garbage from landfills and fly it directly into the Sun.

My friend and I were seriously thinking this was a good idea until we read an article [0] destroying it completely. Lol

0:"Here's Why We Can't Just Throw Our Garbage Into the Sun" https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19666/we-cant-just-t...

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#54

Post by lukifer »

danielfoster wrote: post #42

As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear the brunt of reducing emissions. Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

I only recently learned the history of "anti-littering" marketing campaigns [0], conceived to push responsibility for waste onto consumers rather than producers, who were switching from metals and glass to much cheaper (but no longer reusable) plastics.

Whatever individuals can do to reduce inefficiency and carbon footprint is surely a good thing; but it's no replacement for systems thinking, and applying incentives on the production side (IMO, best accomplished by setting a price on externalities, through Pigovian taxes and dividends [1]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful#History

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#55

Post by ascotan »

briffle wrote: post #38
gniv wrote: post #13

So what can be done about landfills? Burying stuff seems expensive/energy intensive.

Many landfills [0] now recover the methane, and treat it, or burn it in generators to create power. They can sell the power, and change the methane to carbon dioxide (which is less of a greenhouse gas) In Madison, WI, [1] they create enough power to offset all the energy the county operations use, plus create CNG for their heavy equipment at the landfill to run on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utili…

Wow this is a great idea. Combined with methane fixing microbacteria like M. capsulatus you could generate animal feed from trash! :0

https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/article/making-a-meal-out-...

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#56

Post by dwaltrip »

bravo22 wrote: post #45
danielfoster wrote: post #42

As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear the brunt of reducing emissions. Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

They can also be directly affected by regulations. Unless you know a way of robustly managing severe negative externalities without regulation?

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#57

Post by athenot »

wongarsu wrote: post #49
gniv wrote: post #13

So what can be done about landfills? Burying stuff seems expensive/energy intensive.

Many European countries (Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc) don't allow landfills for common household trash. The solution obviously has many facets. Mostly it breaks down to waste separation (e.g. different bins for plastics, compost and paper that are emptied for free, with high fees for the rest to encourage people to separate), recycling what you can and burning the rest. Burning trash produces energy and you can deal…

The result of what's incinerated is often used for construction, like for road bases. So it's turned into a valuable material instead of being wasted.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#58

Post by bravo22 »

schnable wrote: post #50
bravo22 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

That's true, but perhaps the emissions can be mitigated in a targeted way beyond just reducing demand.

Not really possible. Ultimately it is human demand that is driving climate change. Even if you have a magical technology that cuts all emissions today by 25% -- which would be truly magic -- you only need a 25% growth* in population to offset that and put us back to square one.

At the current rate of 1.2% that's only ~18 years.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#59

Post by thombat »

dilyevsky wrote: post #46
lotyrin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A composting operation could potentially capture its gasses though, compared to landfills.

There are landfills that capture methane too. Some even turn it into onsite power source (in which case it’s re-emitted as co2 but oh well)

It's still good news, since methane is a more potent greenhouse gas - depending upon the timeframe and calculation method it's generally reckoned to have between 30 and 100 times the warming potential of C02 [1]. Moreover a power station then has a CO2-rich exhaust stream, which is probably the best place for industrial carbon capture.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#60

Post by dwaltrip »

aphextim wrote: post #48
azernik wrote: post #2

The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.

Still waiting on Elon Musk to make "WasteX" which will take vast amounts of garbage from landfills and fly it directly into the Sun.

Turns out, it is very hard to get to the sun.
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