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Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

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131–140 of 244 posts

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#131
post #19

How much is that in Social Carbon? Pun intended as why one would impose carbon taxes if the other countries so careless?

The EU is getting ready to impose a carbon border price which will be in proportion to estimates of carbon emissions. So, there will be a price on carelessness if it can be measured by satellites.

Don't worry. They are working on hiding the output of methane from satellites. So you can stay as careless as you want! Yay capitalism!

Not diminishing output. Just hiding. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/may/02/methane-...

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#132
post #119
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not well versed but my impression is it’s essentially a bunch of tin foil and the main impediment are geopolitical reasons and cost to orbit, which SpaceX has been and continues to improve.

Okay, so having gone down this path I can tell you it is impossible. To reduce the output of the sun by 2% at L1 would require 20 MM tons of metal. In order to launch that much tonnage we would have needed to start launching mass 500 years ago. And that assumes no loss of material over time, which would mean even more launches. It is not feasible.

Thank you for adding some numbers regarding the feasibility of launching the required materials into space. Do you have any thoughts/numbers about how "mining/construction" in-situ in space might affect those outcomes? E.g. Might we soon be able to "recycle" old in-orbit objects (trash/old_sats) into a slowly growing space mirror? Or several smaller ones over (richer/more_affected) areas?

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#133
post #4

We’re not going to make it are we?

Short of China and India voluntarily holding themselves to the same standards as Western Europe and the US for free, we are not going to avoid catastrophic global warming. The good news is, while we may not be able to prevent climate change, we are not powerless against it. The Dutch know how to win the fight against sea level rise. Middle Eastern architecture knows how to keep people cool even with >50°C air tempera…

> Countless human lives can be saved if we're willing to work together.

The major problem is equatorial heat. After a certain point of wet bulb temperature, you either die or migrate a billion people away from the equator into Europe.

Billions can't afford air conditioning. An air conditioning unit is equal to their entire annual income. You don't even have an airtight room within which you can install the AC unit. Let alone a stable electrical grid during heatwaves.

Their state capacity and wealth just isn't there to plan for the worst, either. Their civic society would sooner collapse than mobilise to solve this problem.

My intention isn't to sound chauvinist, this is just a reality of the political fragility of poorer countries, combined with the extreme difficulty of mobilising large amounts of resources to solve long-term challenges.

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China and India emit significantly less CO2 per capita Which would be great if CO2's heat trapping properties depended on the per capita emissions of their nation of origin. Unfortunately CO2 molecules don't know where they came from and can't adjust their heat trapping properties accordingly, and instead it's about absolute amounts as ppm of the atmosphere. But there's a silver lining for China and India - which is…

Just no. In terms of bang for buck it's easier to reduce emissions in rich countries with high emissions per capita. Unless by "buck" you mean the number of decisions that need to be made, but that's hardly the limiting factor. Country sizes are arbitrary. With your logic if China was to split into a bunch of smaller nations their emissions wouldn't matter any more? Per-capita emissions is the only reasonable way to…

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Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China emits more per capita than EU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?... .

Not when you adjust for trade: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

Does adjusted for trade mean that sneakers produced in China but worn in the west, count for the west?

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#136
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy who’s funding $45 million a month for the candidate that wants to end EVs and pump more oil? That Elon?

Hard to believe he is doing this. It's absolutely nonsensical, I think Elon really is having mental health issues. Either that, or everything he has said about being "pro human" was a lie. Which isn't hard to believe either.

I'm sure he has his motivations that he has internally justified and made sense of.

Saying he has mental health issues because he supports Donald Trump because somehow Trump is pro oil and that'll massively hurt the EV industry sounds like a huge stretch, be honest. Even a casual reading of Elon a lot of us squint and make the conclusion that he supports Trump because he thinks it's what your country needs, heck like a lot of us do, EV industry be damned.

The left is clearly destructive with open borders and a lack of crime policing, even if it's noble, that it's very likely that everyone including Elon is choosing Trump as a correction to the arguably insane and self-destructive policies of the left.

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This data is good for cognitive behavioral therapy and not much else. In that, the world is certainly not going to end, and maybe it's helpful to look at some data that trends positive in order to inspire hope. But we are committed now to living in a world that will be radically different and less pleasant for a lot of people. How fast these trends improve will determine the scope and magnitude of degraded pleasentne…

> But we are committed now to living in a world that will be radically different and less pleasant for a lot of people. Committed? We will have extra energy for carbon capture on the next decade. This is a problem we can solve. Not before it gets worse, but we can stop it from being permanent.

CO2 is a red herring, yes it matters but it's only one thing in a long list of things our lifestyle impacts https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/09/death-by-hockey-sticks/.

Regarding energy transitions and carbon capture:

> Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life.

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#138

Better satellites and other aerial survey data has determined that oil and gas related methane emissions are far, far higher than industry reports. Everywhere independent researchers look along the production, transmission, distribution and end use pipeline they find more leakage than has been assumed because industry has provided the numbers the assumptions are based on for years. Along some particularly leaky produ…

Wouldn't that mean that the impact of the methane per unit is less if the measured outcomes were assuming much lower levels.

Presumably that would be good news if you could reduce the emissions to the level they thought they were.

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#139
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Massachusetts, Lost and Unaccounted for Gas (LAUG) is estimated per mile of pipe, rather than evaluated by regulators or even industry. It is a simple multiplication problem with little bearing on reality. Consumers bear the cost of LAUG while the utilities are guaranteed a 10% profit on their infrastructure expenses. This, along with subsidies for leak prone pipe replacement, leads to needless investment in outmo…

>In Massachusetts, Lost and Unaccounted for Gas (LAUG) is estimated per mile of pipe, rather than evaluated by regulators or even industry. It is a simple multiplication problem with little bearing on reality Isn't both ends of a pipe metered? Even if not every pope is metered, at the very least there should be metering at the point of bulk purchase (eg. from a LNG ship) to the end user (gas meter at a home). How har…

Measurement error in gas networks can be 15% of volume, so not precise enough for this work.

Re: Multisatellite data depicts a record-breaking methane leak from a well blowout

#140
post #4

We’re not going to make it are we?

Short of China and India voluntarily holding themselves to the same standards as Western Europe and the US for free, we are not going to avoid catastrophic global warming. The good news is, while we may not be able to prevent climate change, we are not powerless against it. The Dutch know how to win the fight against sea level rise. Middle Eastern architecture knows how to keep people cool even with >50°C air tempera…

> Middle Eastern architecture knows how to keep people cool even with >50°C air temperatures.

In poor areas perhaps but the big Middle East countries burn more fossil fuels to power Air-Conditioning

Of all the places I’d look to for solutions Middle East isn’t one

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