Solving methane mysteries with satellite imagery

    CO₂ Radiative Forcing:

        1950: Approximately 0.58 W/m² @ 310 ppm 

        2020: Approximately 2.13 W/m² @ 414 ppm


    CH₄ Radiative Forcing:

        1950: Approximately 0.25 W/m² @ 1.15 ppm

        2020: Approximately 0.59 W/m² @ 1.86 ppm

20-year timescale: CH₄ is approximately 84-87 times more efficient than CO₂.

100-year timescale: CH₄ is approximately 28-34 times more efficient than CO₂.

The other thing to keep in mind is the removal rate:

> "Roughly 56% of annual fossil CO₂ emissions are absorbed by natural sinks—29% by the biosphere and 23% by the oceans—while 44% remains in the atmosphere, driving global climate change. For CH₄, 90% is removed by atmospheric oxidation within roughly a decade, with a small fraction absorbed by soils."

The bottom line? If human civilization really wants to stabilize the concentration of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere - which ideally will lead to a stabilization of global temperature and a new climate normal (certainly warmer and wetter, much like Pliocene conditions of 2-5 mya), then elimination of fossil fuel combustion as an energy source really is the only plausible option.

Enclosed combustors are _more_ efficient than flares, and can be tested to show that they achieve complete combustion of methane (unlike flares, which do not combust all methane.) Because of this efficiency delta, enclosed combustors were introduced to adhere to new air quality regulations.

I.e. regulators forced companies to install them to improve their emissions; they aren't being installed to hide emissions.

"Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare. It’s better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare or a vapor combustor is not an improvement in reducing emissions", based on vibes from a former regulator from the linked article, is incorrect. E.g. see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679082...

That's an interesting scaling. For a ~30% increase in ppm, it's ~400% in W/m^2

> "We want to calculate the total amount of energy required to extract 90,000 tons of natural gas from a gas field in North Dakota, move that gas by pipeline to a port on the Southeastern United States, liquify that natural gas to the LNG state, then ship that LNG by tanker ship with 90,000 ton capacity to its destination in a Polish port in Europe, then re-gasify that product so its end users can consume it. There are thus five stages in this process."

The estimate is that shipping & processing costs are about 17% of the total energy transported, which still gives LNG quite an advantage over coal in terms of CO2 emitted per kilowatt-hout generated, although wind/solar/storage is obviously much better on that metric, and LNG's upfront infrastructure costs are quite high.