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NASA finds super-emitters of methane

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#291

Post by riffraff »

mint2 wrote: post #219
mturmon wrote: post #24

Several 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…

We have compostable bin pickup twice a week in my hometown in Italy, a ton of things are compostable with industrial composters these days which you could not easily compost at home, also thanks to regulations (e.g. shopping bags, tea bags, some food packaging etc), so the other bins stay pretty empty.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#292

Post by tkk23 »

Retric wrote: post #61
possiblelion wrote: post #45

So - 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?

It’s a little over 1/1,000th of human released methane, so on it’s own not that critical or that far above expectations for a country with a little over 1/2000th the global population. The issue is mostly that it’s presumably cheap to fix unlike a billion cows all farting.

>The issue is mostly that it’s presumably cheap to fix unlike a billion cows all farting.

It's even cheaper to fix the farting cows: Just stop raising cows.

Of course, if you want to supplement beef and dairy products, it's not that easy. But if we would believe that global warming and methane were a problem, we could make a difference within weeks.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#293

Post by l3uwin »

bloudermilk wrote: post #288
Robotbeat wrote: post #253

To put this in perspective, the 18300kg per hour from the Permian site is equivalent (over a 100 time horizon global warming potential) to a 500 Megawatt coal power plant's CO2 emissions (~1kg of CO2 per kWh of electricity) burning 24/7. Or, to put it another way, it accounts for the same emissions as about 0.3% of the entire US electricity grid.

It's hard to take this comment seriously when you haven't provided any of the relevant facts or sources to back this claim.

Same for your baseless snark, maybe provide some facts yourself

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#294

Post by neRok »

Robotbeat wrote: post #253

To put this in perspective, the 18300kg per hour from the Permian site is equivalent (over a 100 time horizon global warming potential) to a 500 Megawatt coal power plant's CO2 emissions (~1kg of CO2 per kWh of electricity) burning 24/7. Or, to put it another way, it accounts for the same emissions as about 0.3% of the entire US electricity grid.

Just to confirm the numbers myself;

18,300kg methane per hour * 24 hours * 365 days = 160,308,000kg (~0.160 million metric tonnes). At 25x CO2 equivalent, that is 4,007,700,000kg (4 million metric tonnes).

This link about US electricity generation: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 shows 767 "million metric tons" from coal, or 1.55 "billion metric tons" from all sources.

4 / 767 ~= 0.5%, so in the ballpark of the parent comment. Also possibly the second link is ton (~1016kg) vs tonne (1000kg), further tweaking the numbers.

And just about the Permian basin, Wikipedia says it "accounts for 20% of US crude oil production and 7% of US dry natural gas production" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(North_America)#... So if all sites like this were measured, it might be more like 2.5% coal-use-equivalent?

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#295

Post by jeffrallen »

mint2 wrote: post #219
mturmon wrote: post #24

Several 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 live in the country and I throw whatever the hell I want in my compost and my garden loves it. Next time you get a hyper specific instructions page about what to compost and not, do what I do: chuck it in the compost with everything else organic! :)

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#296

Post by roflyear »

diob wrote: post #231
roflyear wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/036/647/Scr...

Hmm?

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#297

Post by varajelle »

jeffrallen wrote: post #295
mint2 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 live in the country and I throw whatever the hell I want in my compost and my garden loves it. Next time you get a hyper specific instructions page about what to compost and not, do what I do: chuck it in the compost with everything else organic! :)

Industrial compost is not the same as a garden compost though.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#298

Post by robocat »

lob_it wrote: post #210
motokamaks wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Primary polluters are still China and USA. India is a far 3rd and emits 50% less CO2 than the USA. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271748/the-largest-emitt...

https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/06/22/ranked-the-top-10-... India can be #1 in most plastic dumped into the oceans. We're all #1 in our own special ways :p

I’m not sure what those figures are for. They list India with 126.5 million kg of plastic “dumped”, yet the Phillipines is #1 with nearly 3x that amount of plastic waste going down its rivers into to oceans: 360 million kg (3.6 × 10^5 Metric tonnes) of plastic waste according to https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#300

Post by mort96 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #253

To put this in perspective, the 18300kg per hour from the Permian site is equivalent (over a 100 time horizon global warming potential) to a 500 Megawatt coal power plant's CO2 emissions (~1kg of CO2 per kWh of electricity) burning 24/7. Or, to put it another way, it accounts for the same emissions as about 0.3% of the entire US electricity grid.

It's even worse than that, since that's the effect over 100 years and we don't have 100 years. Over 20 years, 1 ton of methane is equivalent to about 80 tons of CO2 (compared to ~25 tons over 100 years), so about 3x worse than your numbers.
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