Fossil-Fuel Production May Be Responsible For Much More Atmospheric Methane Than Scientists Thought (bloomberg.com) 94
Fossil-fuel production may be responsible for much more atmospheric methane than scientists previously thought, according to new research published today in the journal Nature. The results, if they hold, suggest that methane needs to be managed even more tightly than was accounted for in multilateral initiatives such as the 2015 Paris Agreement -- not to mention many policies on the national and local level. Bloomberg reports: Scientists aren't challenging the top-line amount of fossil methane that enters the atmosphere every year -- that number stays at about 194 million metric tons, says Benjamin Hmiel, a post-doctoral fellow in Earth science at the University of Rochester and the study's lead author. Rather, they're challenging how much of the total comes from natural versus industrial sources, an important distinction for policy-makers. Conventional wisdom has held until now that fossil sources emit roughly 50 million tons of methane. The new paper's estimate is dramatically smaller: Just 5 million tons, at most, come from natural sources, or "seeps," the study says. "If it's not coming from seeps, then it's coming from fossil-fuel operations," says Rob Jackson, a Stanford professor of Earth system science who wasn't involved in the study. "There's really no other explanation for it. It's kind of a zero-sum game."
The Nature study takes advantage of a rare, radioactive form of the carbon atom that decays over several thousand years. Carbon-14 is present in trace amounts in the biosphere, embedded in naturally occurring molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide, but fossil fuels have no carbon-14 in them. Hmiel and his colleagues visited Greenland three times over two years to drill samples out of ice sheets dating back 300 years, then analyzed the gases trapped in it looking for carbon-14. This allowed scientists to establish a pre-industrial level for natural methane emissions.
The Nature study takes advantage of a rare, radioactive form of the carbon atom that decays over several thousand years. Carbon-14 is present in trace amounts in the biosphere, embedded in naturally occurring molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide, but fossil fuels have no carbon-14 in them. Hmiel and his colleagues visited Greenland three times over two years to drill samples out of ice sheets dating back 300 years, then analyzed the gases trapped in it looking for carbon-14. This allowed scientists to establish a pre-industrial level for natural methane emissions.
Re: Cows (Score:3, Funny)
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We are all cows. Moo.
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Moderators, this isn't a troll. Cattle are responsible for roughly 40% of human methane emissions.
If I understand the summary properly, we're talking about having misattributed some 45 million metric tons emitted of annual emissions. Cattle emit something like 10x that amount.
The big question isn't where the methane is coming from, though. It's where to get the greatest marginal reduction in methane emissions available to us now. This suggests that fossil fuel production represents a larger opportunity t
Re: Cows (Score:2)
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Do your own research, lazybones. I think that instead of getting bogged down in such a technical details, we should be trying to figure out how we are going to make these cows face their responsibility. They seem to be acting without any regard or remorse for the consequences of their actions!
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I am doing my part. Tonight is steak night!
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I was wondering how that would apply to the USA?
Why are people idiots? (Score:3, Informative)
Conventional wisdom has held until now that fossil sources emit roughly 50 million tons of methane. The new paper’s estimate is dramatically smaller: Just 5 million tons, at most, come from natural sources, or “seeps,” the study says.
Is it more or less now? Are you trying to confuse people? Are they trying to prove that Bloomberg is president material? The estimate isn't lower, it's higher, because they've determined that natural seeps emit less than expected, so man-made methane leaks must emit more.
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I guess they're trying to say
Always a sign of good writing, that - when people have to guess how to interpret what you wrote. The author should consider a future in politics and legislation.
Re:Why are people idiots? (Score:4, Informative)
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Every oilfield (and gas field) in the history of the world which was not drained artificially and which was eroded away, released a lot of methane to the atmosphere.
Following natural seeps of methane (and oil) is a recognised prospecting technique. It can guide you over where to put your seismic lines in for a basin-level study, from which you refine to specific prospects and eventually choose where to (or whether to) dr
Re:Why are people idiots? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why are people idiots? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is classic bad science reporting. I consider this a very good news story. Let me explain.
The issue isn't whether theres more or less methane in the air. We know *exactly* how much is there. Its simple spectography to work it out. CO2 and Methane (etc) trap energy (Infrared, visible light, and so on up and down the spectrum) at certain spectral absorbsion lines, by measuring those lines you can get a pretty detailed picture of whats in the air.
The issue was where it came from. We try and work out how much humans are putting out, generally thats a task for the economists with some guidance from sattelite imaging and so on, and whatever the balance is, thats whats nature has been contributing.
So theres been a spike in methane of late, and parallel to this there has been ground evidene of arctic calthrates melting and generally being ominous. This is considered a very very bad thing.
But this research seems to indicate that actually much of that spike is human activity. And seemingly a result of refining. Thats *excellent* news, because it means we can fix that.. Its not a tipping point thing, its a humans being stupid thing.
And this might even be a relatively easy fix. If its waste emmissions it might be as simple as getting a catalog of all the sites (Perhaps using satelite imaging to pinpoint the sites with the worst emission) and putting in some technical fix.
I mean ultimately, were still gonna have to get off this carbon crackpipe , and do it sooner rather than later. But if this research pans out the fear many scientists had that the calthrates where breaking down 50-70 years too early might turn out to be misplaced, and that means theres time to avoid some of the more savage predictions.
At least some global warming is locked in. After 150 years of warnings, we're pretty much where they said we'd be. Fires, hurricanes, droughts gnarly summers and terrible winters. And its still going to get worse simply due to the lag (A physicist I work with reckons we still havent hit 1970s CO2 yet). But we might still keep this under 3c, and this discovery means we have time.
Re:Why are people idiots? (Score:5, Interesting)
So what made the existing industrial processes in place for the last 200 years or so suddenly produce a spike in methane? Natural gas is methane, so if we are 'losing' a ton of it, where does it come from?
Losing fuel is never a good business plan and it makes sense from the capitalist viewpoint to recapture those losses. It's the only effective way of making change happen, is making a business proposition. If we are losing most of our produced methane gas to the atmosphere which the author of the study implies, I'm sure someone will want to fix that.
Natural gas is cheap (Score:5, Informative)
So what made the existing industrial processes in place for the last 200 years or so suddenly produce a spike in methane?
Presumably the added methane in the atmosphere comes from leaks in the production pipeline, plus gas emitted from wells (typically oil wells). Production of natural gas is way up, and some fraction of that leaks.
Natural gas is methane, so if we are 'losing' a ton of it, where does it come from?
Leaks.
Losing fuel is never a good business plan and it makes sense from the capitalist viewpoint to recapture those losses.
No it doesn't. Natural gas is cheap. It's sells for about two dollars per thousand cubic feet at the wellhead. Fixing leaks is expensive. It's vastly more economical to just let it leak, rather than spend the money to find and fix all the leaks.
Many oil wells do not even bother capturing the natural gas (which comes up from the same deposit as the oil), because the selling price of the gas isn't worth the cost of capturing it. The oil companies just flare it off. [energy.gov]
https://www.generon.com/what-is-gas-flaring-why-is-it-done-alternatives/
It's the only effective way of making change happen, is making a business proposition. If we are losing most of our produced methane gas to the atmosphere which the author of the study implies, I'm sure someone will want to fix that.
To fix the problem that way, you would need to increase the price of natural gas.
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To fix the problem that way, you would need to increase the price of natural gas.
That's one way of doing it - but it hits the consumer with a higher price for little benefit. Fining natural gas pipeline leaks at $3 per thousand cubic feet would suddenly make leaks more expensive than capture. It has a side benefit of slowing our usage of fossil fuels very slightly, so they might last a bit longer.
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We don't have a problem with how long fossil fuels will last. But who will fine the companies? The borderline non-extent EPA? A quick phone call to the clown in chief will sort them out.
You are right though. The EPA regulations were heavily trending towards fines for fugitive as well as large emissions. But they have been neutered.
You're as ignorant as WindBourne... (Score:2, Interesting)
People did want to fix methane leaks. Trump decided to lower the standards and let even more leak out.
Fracking is also a source [Re:You're as ignora...] (Score:2)
Good point; fracking is also a methane source
Reference: https://phys.org/news/2019-08-... [phys.org]
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That's from fracking. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-fracking-prompts-global-spike-atmospheric.html
This paper is a better estimate of the methane from fossil fuel extraction.
> Natural gas is methane, so if we are 'losing' a ton of it, where does it come from?"
Fossil fuel drilling, of course. And fracking made it suddenly even worse.
So, no it's not natural, and replacing coal gene
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So what made the existing industrial processes in place for the last 200 years or so suddenly produce a spike in methane? Natural gas is methane, so if we are 'losing' a ton of it, where does it come from?
Proper industrial scale refining has only been in place for half that time, however that's neither here nor there. One key thing is that the state of energy extraction from fossil fuels and the state of refining fuels has varied greatly over those years. From early days where we were just distilling light sweet crude, that's assuming we had crude since some countries instead liquefied coal, to the current days of heavy sour oil processing the industry has changed a lot, even recently.
Methane is less a refin
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Can BeauHD be banned?
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This is the text in the source article as well. My best guess is they meant "natural" where they first said "fossil". Ie they used to think natural sources produced 50 million tons, now they think they produce 5 million tons.
It would be nice if the people writing these articles did a little more proofreading.
So much for "settled". (Score:1, Insightful)
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"Settled" doesn't mean put to bed forever. It means burden of proof has shifted.
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If vegans eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
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That is your personal decision of course.
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Because in your fascist government utopia, the government wouldn't let the paperwork go for 'undesirables'. You know, Jews, Republicans, engineers ...
Also, the problem is not with the Western world, most of the native population of the US and EU now have less than 2 children which is unsustainable long term and has caused a sharp decline in the number of people.
You'd have to sterilize most of Africa and Asia, which I'm sure wouldn't be a problem, we never had dictatorships over there.
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So when is the mandatory sterilization going to begin? Reducing population size would do a heck of a lot more to correct the problem
I think that this is intended as a reducto ad absurdum argument, but it reads like a straw man. [logicallyfallacious.com] Nobody is proposing mandatory sterilization.
(alternately, it might just be trolling. Hard to tell.)
than a "carbon tax" which is basically a tax on human existence.
In general, the people who are worried about greenhouse gas emissions want to replace fossil-fuel energy by energy production that does not produce net greenhouse gas emissions. You may argue (elsewhere, I hope) that this would be technically difficult. But calling this "basically a tax on human existence" is als
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I've been paying a carbon tax for most of the 21st century. It was brought in by a right wing government back when the right wing believed in market forces rather then big government borrowing against the future and at the same time they lowered the income tax to make the carbon tax revenue neutral.
Since, we've been the best performing Province in Canada economically wise, lowest unemployment, largest GDP growth most years.
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Couldn't we just take Trump, the NRA and all vegans and volunteer them to settle mars?
Vegans don't bother me personally.
Me neither unless they get angry over something, but the rest of them can move to that new colony on the habitable dark of the sun.
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less greenhouse gas is emitted during production of plant food.
I hope you eat the entire vegetable though because rotting leftover vegetable matter, husks, and rinds sure as hell produce a LOT of methane. But somehow this always gets excluded from "studies".
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Which study? If you refer to the one posted in the title above that we are discussing here, then it does not differentiate vegetable matter from cow matter.
That said there's probably no comparing the amount produced by cows and that from "leftover vegetable matter", since you need to feed a cow for ~3 years with vegetable matter that turns into farts before said cow turns into meat.
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Oddly, the primary mode of decomp in my composter is aerobic and very little methane is produced. Perhaps you have no idea what you are talking about?
Re: Atmospheric Methane (Score:2)
Consequences for C-14 dating? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Consequences for C-14 dating? (Score:5, Informative)
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do you ever get bored of trump derangement?
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No one ever gets bored of watching Trump's derangement. It's a recurring comedy.
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ok. what does that have to do with the article and crobarcro's comment?
that's nice you find trump funny, i do too, but y'all seem to have an unhealthy obsession with the guy. like an emotionally damaged girlfriend that stalks the ex and brings him up in every conversation with anyone in earshot because he didn't put the toilet seat down. The type of emotionally immature bitter girlfriend that unironically thinks "if you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best" is a good axiom.
Maybe it's
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It's okay Boo Boo. Show me on the doll where he touched you.
Don't you watch any news? Trump always grabs them by the pussy.
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For sure, the dating scene is a nightmare for Carbon these days! . All those Oxygens wanting threesomes...
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C-14 isn't the most accurate way of measuring due to natural variations in its production, Solar activity and Galactic activity (Super Novas etc) varies which causes different rates of C-14 formation.
What they do is calibrate against things like tree rings, of which we have pretty good records going back perhaps 10,000 years. Still the older the sample, the bigger the error bars unless they also use other types of dating, which also helps with calibration.
Future archaeologists are going to have a hell of a
I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:1, Interesting)
Fossil fuel production smells like farts.
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No, no, no... it's the cows. It must be the cows. Can't be anyyyyythiiing else.
Must be the cows.
Despite cows eating umm... grass... and umm... grain... which capture the CO2 from the methane cycle...
I mean... It's not like there are trillions of dollars and various power interests of various nations pushing the idea that pumpin more oil and gas and diggin more coal is just fine as it ever was.
And if that's just fine - it has to be them cows fartin that you're smellin.
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Well actually, all this article is saying is that of the methane in the atmosphere which is from ancient sources without any C-14, probably most comes from fossil fuel production rather than natural sources. Cows still produce methane, but shows we could cut down a lot of methane by stopping fossil fuel extraction instead of having less cows, and probably easier too.
Which makes the conservative argument about liberals wanting to ban cows kind of laughable. Liberals want to eliminate expensive fossil fuels by replacing fossil fuel powered machinery with electric alternatives (which are cheaper to operate) and move the electricity generation completely to fossil fuel free alternatives (which is also cheaper). If that becomes a reality it frees up so much capacity for carbon emission that every conservative on earth can buy his own personal herd of cows to keep in his bac
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Also, most Democrats aren't represented by the vegetarians and vegans. They just don't feel the need to circle their wagons around every stupid little cause like the Republicans do.
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Maybe my steaks and burgers are now safe.
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