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

bloomberg.com

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

#61

Post by bravo22 »

ip26 wrote: post #51
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.

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…

I agree that it can be reduced, my point was that it is directly tied to consumer demand and human activity. It will still be a none-zero number after reduction. No business is out there emitting methane for shits and giggles.

As I said elsewhere in this post, you can cut emission but population growth offsets all the benefits. You cannot address climate change without drastic long term reduction in human activity/population.

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

#62

Post by TaylorAlexander »

dwaltrip wrote: post #56
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.

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

Regulation is one way of doing it. It has also been suggested that worker owned and managed businesses would more naturally self regulate to meet the needs of the community. Having a few highly privileged people at the top of the company to make decisions means that they have different interests from most of us (very high profit opportunity and a much wealthier way of life that would insulate them from pollution). So it has been suggested that if you stop making companies with a privileged minority at the top, you’d eliminate a lot of anti social behavior.

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

#63

Post by ohples »

gniv wrote: post #13

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

Not sure how effective it is, but it's possible to collect methane from landfill and use it to generate heat and electricity. From my understanding the emission from burning it are way better then just letting it leak into the air.

My university had a big methane line run from a landfill 2 towns over and used it in the cogen plant to generate power and steam for heat.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

jobseeker990 wrote: post #34
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.

Compost IS natural decomposition, my dude.

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by avar »

ip26 wrote: post #51
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.

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…

> even if everybody went zero waste today, those landfills would still be emitting large amounts of methane.

If everyone went zero waste then nothing would be added to the landfill, and its methane production would taper out to nothing as a result.

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

#66

Post by archgoon »

bravo22 wrote: post #61
ip26 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that it can be reduced, my point was that it is directly tied to consumer demand and human activity. It will still be a none-zero number after reduction. No business is out there emitting methane for shits and giggles. As I said elsewhere in this post, you can cut emission but population growth offsets all the benefits. You cannot address climate change without drastic long term reduction in human activity/po…

To be fair; in cattle at least, "shits and giggles" is not an entirely inaccurate description of methane production.

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

#67

Post by tyrust »

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?

>Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

I don't see why these two can't be done in parallel.

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

#69

Post by billsmithaustin »

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.

I think it would be more precise to say they are influenced by consumer demand. Consumers consume from landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities, but they do not control them.

It is true that as a consumer, I can try to regulate my demand to reflect how I feel about those facilities' emissions.

At the time time, saying that consumers control those facilities seems to imply that the owners and operators bear no responsiblity for their emissions and are not empowered to change them.

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

#70

Post by aphextim »

nan0 wrote: post #53
aphextim wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Thank you for this link! I always assumed it would be ridiculous, and the fact someone broke it down is awesome!
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