Live data from Hacker News

NASA finds super-emitters of methane

smithsonianmag.com

361–370 of 387 posts

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the companies they sell them to is DEC, which I invest in. These old wells are still profitable but only for organizations with lower cost structures that specialize in handling these sorts of end-of-life regulations and maintenances. State governments subsidize them to maintain the wells long into the future. https://www.div.energy/

You made me think of this DEC [0], which of course is another thing. Which one is the DEC you are referring to, and how do you invest in it? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation

The link I posted is DEC's website. The name is Diversified Energy Corporation, DEC is their ticker.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#362

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.

"Or, to put it another way, it accounts for the same emissions as about 0.3% of the entire US electricity grid." And what % of US energy needs does that site supply to the grid?

None comes from the leaks themselves. That’s just wasted energy.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#363

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.

Easily googleable numbers for total us electricity, about 475GW averaged over the year, about 1000 grams of CO2 per kWh for coal also pretty easily googleable (and can be derived with just basic facts like the heating value of coal of 35MJ/kg for nice anthracite, the fact that anthracite coal is nearly all carbon, the relative atomic mass of carbon and oxygen and therefore 12 parts coal will release around 44 parts CO2, the fact that a coal power plant thermodynamic efficiency is around 35%, etc). (44/12)/(35MJ/kg * 0.35) in grams/kWh = 1078.grams/kWh.

https://www.google.com/search?q=(44%2F12)%2F(35MJ%2Fkg+*+0.3...

Global warming potential of CO2 over 100 year timeframe also googleable. These figures are all basic and pretty objective. (You May quibble about me choosing 100year timeframe vs 20 year, but that’s fine… it is still about the same order of magnitude.) More complicated to measure methane’s atmospheric lifetime and infrared absorption proportions, but nothing really controversial.

The EIA website also shows this stuff.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#364

Modern corporate raid how-to: 1. Define target 2. Draw plumes of methane over the target on satellite imagery 3. Set Greta at the target and take it over, pleading climate change 4. Remove the plumes from imagery 5. Continue target's operation as usual 6. Profit

Please relax, my dear downvoters, things like this never happen in your ideal world.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what people think. They don't care because it won't effect them.

That's clearly incorrect. 43% of Americans think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime[1]. If they could just "vote with their dollars" then the US would have seen immense changes in renewable energy and EVs in the past 20 years. There are 3 factors: Market forces make it extremely difficult to create large change at the personal level. You can't crowdfund grid-scale renewables. Even if you have…

[deleted]

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#366

YouTube 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…

[deleted]

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#367
post #316
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Even just killing all a billion would be quite expensive by comparison. You can’t exactly do it for 0.01$/ cow and fixing this would likely cost significantly less than 10 million.

You have forgotten that all of those cows will already be killed, with a profit.

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#368
In Turkmenistan a pit has been burning for over 40 years.

In 1971, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it [...] Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which, though not toxic, does displace oxygen [...] So the scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks' time.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-...

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#369

In Turkmenistan a pit has been burning for over 40 years. In 1971, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipm…

[deleted]

Re: NASA finds super-emitters of methane

#370

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.

Wow, that's an important point. Nevertheless, it all adds up and keeps getting more.
Post reply on HN