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NASA finds super-emitters of methane

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#261

Post by 23skidoo »

parineum wrote: post #245
Invictus0 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guess who buys things from industry?

I agree with you but it shouldn't be overlooked that industry makes shortcuts which are disastrous for the environment to pad their margins very slightly so the executives can get a bonus.

The crux of the problem is the costs we allow to be externalized and the arduous legal process involved in getting a small fraction of the real damages paid. You shouldn't need a lawsuit to make a company pay for every penny of damage they did.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#262

Post by thinkcontext »

omgJustTest wrote: post #5

Stupid question: How much is this actually contributing to climate change? Any climate scientists who make active predictions about how much we don't know?

As of 2015 it was estimated that methane made up 16% of the human contributions to global warming [0] So, significant but by itself not necessarily worrying.

However, there are a number of other factors that do make methane particularly worrisome. First, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is going up much faster than CO2, this despite the fact that it decays into CO2 after about 10 years. Further, the higher the concentration of methane the slower its rate of decay, so it stays in the atmosphere trapping heat for longer.

Finally, and most worrisome, there appears to be a feedback loop with warming and methane release from permafrost.

[0] https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#263

Post by gausswho »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #2

How could a 2 mile long methane plume in New Mexico have been undetected for any significant amount of time? From what I understand basic environmental monitoring is done in 2022 around all major industrial facilities in the U.S.

It's been known for a while. Some resources I found on it: https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/new-mexico-methane-a... and https://earth.stanford.edu/news/methane-leaks-are-far-worse-...

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#264

Post by msrenee »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #2

How could a 2 mile long methane plume in New Mexico have been undetected for any significant amount of time? From what I understand basic environmental monitoring is done in 2022 around all major industrial facilities in the U.S.

Carlsbad, NM isn't a big town. Head Southeast from there and it's quite a large stretch of land that's not used for much besides oil exploration, some cattle grazing, and the WIPP site. The population density is so low in that area that it seemed like a good place to test ways of storing nuclear waste long-term. This is one of the places where they're working on figuring out a way to warn future civilizations not to try and dig up what is buried there.

I'm not the least bit surprised it took aerial surveys to notice the situation.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#269

Post by antod »

labster wrote: post #125
xen2xen1 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure, does burning it make it less harmful?

In general CO2 is a far less potent greenhouse gas than CH4, largely because there is already a permanent low level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In a few decades the methane will oxidize to CO2, but in the meantime it’s like 40 times more potent. Better to burn it. (Not sure if CH4 is inherently stronger than CO2 because of more possible quantum states, but I suspect atmospheric abundance is the main factor (…

My layperson understanding was that the more atoms/bonds a molecule has, the less transparent it was to IR. Diatomic molucules like oxygen and nitrogen were pretty much transparent, molecules like CO2 and H2O were in the middle, and bigger ones like CH4 were less so.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#270

Post by sattoshi »

29athrowaway wrote: post #234
SoftTalker wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never have I felt “incentivized” to produce trash. Most of my trash is because the government doesn’t curb overpackaging of products.
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