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NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

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Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#71

Post by Cactus2018 »

avar wrote: post #65
ip26 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all landfills, it's a small collection of landfills. And if they aren't fixed, even if everybody went zero waste today, those landfills would still be emitting large amounts of methane. Proper landfill design & operation ensures the landfill is aerated, which keeps decomposition primarily aerobic which produces little methane. A poorly designed or operated landfill with little aeration will switch to aerobic…

> even if everybody went zero waste today, those landfills would still be emitting large amounts of methane. If everyone went zero waste then nothing would be added to the landfill, and its methane production would taper out to nothing as a result.

> Formation of methane and CO2 commences about six months after depositing the landfill material. The evolution of gas reaches a maximum at about 20 years, then declines over the course of decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas

From the top charts for image search "landfill gas chart", suggests methane(CH4) vents heavily for 3-5 years, then a long taper.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#72

Post by Aaronstotle »

aphextim wrote: post #48
azernik wrote: post #2

The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.

Still waiting on Elon Musk to make "WasteX" which will take vast amounts of garbage from landfills and fly it directly into the Sun.

That idea reminds me of Patrick Star's solution to escape the terror of the Alaskan Bull Worm (Take X and push it somewhere else).

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#73

Post by kube-system »

bravo22 wrote: post #58
schnable wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but perhaps the emissions can be mitigated in a targeted way beyond just reducing demand.

Not really possible. Ultimately it is human demand that is driving climate change. Even if you have a magical technology that cuts all emissions today by 25% -- which would be truly magic -- you only need a 25% growth* in population to offset that and put us back to square one. At the current rate of 1.2% that's only ~18 years.

The comment you replied to said 'mitigated', not 'solved'. Emissions controls already have, and still can, make enormous impacts on many consumer devices.

Given that emission controls are a whole lot easier to implement than eliminating a huge portion of the world's population, I'd say it's a more realistic goal to pursue.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#74

Post by 14 »

AWildC182 wrote: post #47
TrevorAustin wrote: post #7

Some very smart friends of mine do this with airplanes to find leaks in natural gas plants and pipelines: http://kairosaerospace.com/

Their wing strut mounting of that sensor pod causes me a lot of concern... I don't think Cessna ever expected crazy torque loads on strut meant for tension.

I have a cousin that works building fire fighting water bombers. The planes were never engineered for that application as well. They are literally taking these planes and gutting them, add giant pumps and plumbing and other devices some of it literally off the shelves of stores any one of us could use. These devices were never made "for air plane application". But they ultimately have an engineer who decides what is safe and signs off on the design. I have no doubt that this company either has the same or paid the price to have that pod engineered on to the existing limits of the plane.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#75

Post by azernik »

jobseeker990 wrote: post #34
azernik wrote: post #2

The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather: > Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%. i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane emissions from natural decomposition.

Compost IS natural decomposition, my dude.

Only in the same sense that farming is "natural" - we're using biological processes that would never happen without our careful construction and maintenance of the circumstances.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#76

Post by donarb »

AWildC182 wrote: post #47
TrevorAustin wrote: post #7

Some very smart friends of mine do this with airplanes to find leaks in natural gas plants and pipelines: http://kairosaerospace.com/

Their wing strut mounting of that sensor pod causes me a lot of concern... I don't think Cessna ever expected crazy torque loads on strut meant for tension.

In the PyCon video (link posted elsewhere), a questioner asked if they had thought of making the pod able to be controlled during banking to keep the data from being tainted with outlier values. The speaker described that FAA rules determine what can be attached to the airplane so it was better to make the pod dumb and fix the data in post processing. Presumably they built the pod as light as possible to fit under FAA regs.

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#77

Post by vkou »

bravo22 wrote: post #45
danielfoster wrote: post #42

As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear the brunt of reducing emissions. Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding something else to ban?

Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

As a consumer, I don't get to pick which landfill my crap goes to. And even if I did, it would be one of fifty million micro-decisions that I, quite frankly don't have the time to make, or have the knowledge to make well.

Instead, the industry should make these decisions for me. It already does, by deciding which products to build, and how. Set tariffs, taxes, penalties, and let producers figure out how to most optimally make money in that environment. That's their core expertise - it's not my core expertise.

We don't expect consumers to be medical experts. We have doctors for that. Why should we expect consumers to also be experts in the long tail of 'various ways that producers screw up our environment'?

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#79

Post by mepiethree »

scottlocklin wrote: post #18
azernik wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane is produced by anaerobic decomposition; composting is defined by the regular aeration (and sometimes watering) of the compost pile, which allows aerobic bacteria to break down the pile more cleanly. You do still get some GHGs, but much less. See: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/climate-change/composting-avoid-... https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/compost/compost.htm

Your own references point out that aerobic and anaerobic composting are different processes; the latter, which is most of backyard composting (if your heap ain't hot, it ain't aerobic), produces about as much methane as a landfill does, without the ability to collect and burn off the methane. It boggles me that people emotionally or tribally react to a fact about how chemistry works, google things which support their…

Is most composting done in the backyard? I never even considered composting until I moved to California where the government handles it for me

Re: NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’

#80

Post by BowBun »

bravo22 wrote: post #61
ip26 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all landfills, it's a small collection of landfills. And if they aren't fixed, even if everybody went zero waste today, those landfills would still be emitting large amounts of methane. Proper landfill design & operation ensures the landfill is aerated, which keeps decomposition primarily aerobic which produces little methane. A poorly designed or operated landfill with little aeration will switch to aerobic…

I agree that it can be reduced, my point was that it is directly tied to consumer demand and human activity. It will still be a none-zero number after reduction. No business is out there emitting methane for shits and giggles. As I said elsewhere in this post, you can cut emission but population growth offsets all the benefits. You cannot address climate change without drastic long term reduction in human activity/po…

> You cannot address climate change without drastic long term reduction in human activity/population.

Completely disagree. Reducing waste, recycling waste, and re-using waste are some of the ways to address climate change. Saying modifying human activity/population is the only way to solve a problem is as extreme as saying climate change isn't real.

> No business is out there emitting methane for shits and giggles.

No one says this, you're reducing the broader point to a poor cliff-note. The point is that the incentives for businesses to better address their waste are not there. If all one gets for managing waste responsibly is a higher bill every month and a good feeling in their stomach, why would a proper capitalist businessperson do that in the short term?

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