And now what ? Anyone knows what actions will be taken based on this data ?
A lot of methane comes from animals. See here: https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2020 If you care about this, you should stop eating meat, or reduce your meat consumption.
NASA finds super-emitters of methane
231–240 of 387 posts
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#232And now what ? Anyone knows what actions will be taken based on this data ?
Everyone has always had the option to vote with their dollars. If we allow ourself to be eco-capital-realists for a moment, we have to conclude that living on a habitable planet is simply not that important for most people.
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Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> That's adorable. Meanwhile, the entire article circle is melting and fermenting. yeah this guy is right. if we can’t fix it in a single swift stroke, it can’t be fixed. (i just gave myself a headache from rolling my eyes so hard.) think of it differently, at least for a few seconds. what is significant change if not lots of small changes measured cumulatively? lots of individual people wanting gas for their cars co…
Also, doing a small thing personally can increase your commitment to the issue.
If you find yourself doing something you think people collectively shouldn't do, you work to excuse yourself. This is classic cognitive dissonance. It is unpleasant and makes you angry and cynical. If you find yourself doing the right thing in your own eyes, you improve your opinion of yourself and you may want more.
And the people who are still doing nothing and dealing with cognitive dissonance accuse you of virtue signaling, as though this, whether or not it is true, is a greater sin than whatever they remain defensive about.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#234YouTube is full of trash burning tutorials. Some of them are exceptionally stupid and talk about "clean burners", which is essentially a burn barrel connected to a leaf blower, such that the smoke is dispersed, creating the illusion of "clean" air. Such dumb tutorials have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of views. Each video has dumb comments on them like "Oh yeah this burner is awesome, I made the same thing at ho…
This is why trash pickup should be free. That way it will be disposed of properly instead of dumped on the side of the road or burned in backyard barrels. Yet most cities charge for trash pickup and are looking to charge even more or move to quantity-based fees. You get what you incentivize. If you want people to dispose of trash in the least damaging way, you have to make that the easiest and cheapest option.
True, but then you have a different problem: you incentive people to generate more trash.
There must be a balance.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I sympathize with the sentiment, that creating some kind of censorship dystopia will magically solve the problem, the idea has no traction when most of the people doing so make less than $1 a day somewhere in a remote corner of the world. This is the problem I have with climate activism. The best way to reduce pollution is to raise the standard of living for people around the world. People who are wealthy can a…
We are not talking about energy, we are talking about waste disposal. And not having money is not a excuse for burning trash. In part, because burning some types of trash (pretty much anything other than yard trimmings, including food) will make you and your community incredibly sick, causing you to spend more money in the end. It's already illegal to burn trash in almost every jurisdiction on earth. I am just callin…
It's normally much easier to buy e.g. a computer, a mattress, various household chemicals than to get rid of them properly. We need to tackle one or both sides of this equation, or people will just dump stuff in their local river if you censor the burning video.
It's the old piracy argument again, loads of money was spent trying to take down pirate mp3 sites without results, then Spotify comes along. But maybe recycling some of this stuff is really difficult, in which case the cost of dealing with it should be factored into the price.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as a non-American who doesn't fully understand the factors at play: why can't you guys just get your military-industrial complex to build you some nationalized nuclear plants on federal land in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any NIMBYs to get in the way? (You could even just reuse the 'federal land in the middle of nowhere' that all your since-decommissioned nuclear-weapons testing facilities are…
World Uranium production: 45,000T Natural Uranium required to start a 1GW nuclear reactor: 7500t New Net Renewable generation in US: 5GW (this is hilariously low. Compare 75GW in china) Cost per GW of nuclear: $10bn -- maybe half that without NIMBYS if we assume how much the military industrial complex charges for stuff is the sameas tye juclear industry. Us military budget: $750bn Proportion of US military budget to…
I think your key assumption here is wrong: uranium isn't fundamentally expensive. It's expensive because there isn't enough current demand for it to bring more uranium mines and enrichment facilities online. Uranium used to be cheaper (adjusted for inflation) per gram than it is now, because there used to be more of those facilities online than there are now. With increased demand, it would be cheaper again.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as a non-American who doesn't fully understand the factors at play: why can't you guys just get your military-industrial complex to build you some nationalized nuclear plants on federal land in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any NIMBYs to get in the way? (You could even just reuse the 'federal land in the middle of nowhere' that all your since-decommissioned nuclear-weapons testing facilities are…
> build you some nationalized nuclear plants on federal land in the middle of nowhere, where there aren't any NIMBYs to get in the way? I'm not in the US, but I guess for the same reason why Sahara desert is not yet became world largest solar power plant. You can't just build power plants in the middle of nowhere since energy transportation infrastructure isn't free and there some laws of physics involved. Also I pre…
Who said anything about (geographic) centralization / "one huge facility"? Federal land is everywhere in the US (see the diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands). There's lots and lots of "middle of nowheres" owned by the federal government, in pretty much every state, dispersed enough that each one is not too far from easy grid connection.
If you've ever seen what is done to wire up a hydroelectric dam in a "middle of nowhere" river valley to the grid, this wouldn't be all too different: clearcut a narrow straight-line path through a few hundred miles of wilderness, up and over and mountains/rivers/etc, and run some ultra-high-voltage transmission lines over them. Here's what that looks like in the abstract (https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...), and in practice (https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/powerlines-across-mountains-...)
(It especially wouldn't be all too different, because most Federal land is in the Rockies, so these nuclear plants would likely be mostly built in almost exactly the same terrain as hydroelectric dams are built in, and so dealing with basically the same grid-routing challenges.)
And while all those middle-of-nowheres would provide room enough for hundreds/thousands of those https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm..., if you like, you really don't need to go against efficiencies of scale; 20% of power in the US is already covered by just 54 plants, and those only in 28 states. Presuming some real "this land has no land value" places where you could build as big as you like, you wouldn't need to more than double that number to cover 80% (because you could do quite a few reactors per site.)
Why would this be okay? Well, remember, nuclear is base load generation; meaning that it doesn't compete with (most) renewables, only with other base-load generation — mainly oil/coal and hydro-power. All that distributed solar/wind/etc infrastructure that's good for grid fault-tolerance would still be there if China lobbed some missiles at the big plants.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's adorable. Meanwhile, the entire article circle is melting and fermenting. yeah this guy is right. if we can’t fix it in a single swift stroke, it can’t be fixed. (i just gave myself a headache from rolling my eyes so hard.) think of it differently, at least for a few seconds. what is significant change if not lots of small changes measured cumulatively? lots of individual people wanting gas for their cars co…
It's part of a narrative to blame consumers for causing climate change, meanwhile industry pollutes far more. The pollution reduction per unit effort is much higher if you focus on heavy industry.
> It's part of a narrative to blame consumers for causing climate change, meanwhile industry pollutes far more.
True, but "ignore personal action and rail at industry" is part of another narrative that is probably still less effective at changing industry.
If you find a polity where consumers are not taking individual action to address climate change, you will find it is not applying more pressure on industry or politicians than a polity where consumers are taking individual action. If you attack the individuals who are taking action, you are attacking the political base that would support addressing climate change. Convincing them that their efforts are pointless, silly, and perhaps just vanity or arrogance, does not empower them. Industry is not quaking in its boots at the prospect that people will accuse all the composters and recyclers of virtue signaling and hypocrisy.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#239So - looking at this it seems Turkmenistan [a repressive, North Korea style dictatorship] is destroying our climate system at an order of magnitude faster than anyone else. I'm well aware of the legacy that Iraq/Afghanistan have left in terms of international interventions into other countries; but if it is our common future on the balance, shouldn't we do something? Something more than just politely asking to stop?
Like offering to pay to fix the leaks in their gas pipeline? Prob way cheaper than invading the country
> Like offering to pay to fix the leaks in their gas pipeline?
It's a nice offer in theory but I could imagine that would lead others to intentionally break their pipelines in order to get "fix-it" money.
I'm reminded of the story of British Raj paying Indians for catching cobras.
Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane
#240Several questions ask to contextualize this measurement. Here's a highly-cited paper in Nature (including some of the researchers quoted in the OP) that describes how an earlier survey of California methane emissions went: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3 If I remember right, the state of CA asked for this survey. It was carried out by an instrument similar to that of the OP, but airborne, not on ISS…
> In LA, for example, the LADWP is test-driving a program where food scraps - vegetables, but also meats and fats - are diverted into green bins Moved to SF from LA area. Sf does the green bins and it’s actually surprisingly nice to separate the compostable scraps out of the other trash. It keeps the trash bin much cleaner and much less stinky. If I moved back to an area that didn’t require it, I’d still keep them se…
I keep my food scraps in a bag in my refrigerator until it's time for curbside pickup. It definitely helps keep the smells and gnats away!