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

linotype
117 replies
19h28m

We’re not going to make it are we?

anonym29
59 replies
19h5m

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 temperatures.

The Canadians know how to winterize an electric grid.

Sure, we may not have the optimal strategy for addressing some threats, like wildfires, right now, but the point is, we are not alone, and we are not helpless.

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

OsrsNeedsf2P
47 replies
19h0m

Short of China and India voluntarily holding themselves to the same standards as Western Europe and the US

China and India emit significantly less CO2 per capita than Western Europe and the US [0] - and that's ignoring the fact they do all of our manufacturing.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

gjsman-1000
14 replies
18h55m

Per capita is misleading. China has over 1 billion people more than the US, the majority of them in abject poverty. Same for India; so their per capita number is artificially skewed downward.

mitthrowaway2
12 replies
18h52m

Why is that misleading? That doesn't sound like "artificial skew" to me.

486sx33
11 replies
18h47m

Irresponsibly growing your population doesn’t allow you more emissions, that’s crap!

mitthrowaway2
6 replies
18h39m

Not sure if your answer is intended to be serious or sarcastic. But there is a justifiable argument for it -- you have new humans to take care of, who have needs, and the same moral claim as anyone else in the world nto address those needs using fossil fuels.

On the other hand, there's no reason to think that an increase in the number of countries is a valid excuse to increase emissions.

card_zero
5 replies
18h23m

Leading to the conclusion: those few people (government) who have the greatest influence over the problem (over the countries with the largest emissions in real terms, not per person) somehow don't have the responsibility.

It's true that if a country splits into two countries, that doesn't give them a right to emit more collectively. However, it does mean that each country now has little control over what the other one does, and less ability to actually solve the collective problem we want solving, which was the objective here.

card_zero
2 replies
17h44m

It's great if China is genuinely going renewable. I read about this often. But I also read that they're the biggest producers of coal (confusingly both the biggest importers and exporters, and consumers). Still, maybe that's being phased out.

But why do you want to "slice up" emissions at all, if you're interested in reducing them? The problem is a big load of gas. So identify the biggest emitters (in total volume) with the most control over it. Don't say "oh San Marino, you're a really greedy country, with all your tax haven shenanigans and conspicuous consumption and more cars than people, you're the problem", because they really aren't. They may be really awful, but that wasn't the question and isn't something it's viable to fix, nor are they capable of helping more than minutely, unlike a giant authoritarian state with giant emissions, capable of helping a lot. And perhaps, as you point out, already doing so.

h0l0cube
1 replies
13h3m

But I also read that they're the biggest producers of coal (confusingly both the biggest importers and exporters, and consumers).

Yep. And their coal plants are less and less needed. They are essentially becoming peakers (in the same manner as many modern gas plants) for when the sun don't shine and the wind stops blowing. But in terms of the biggest producers of coal, Australia punches above its weight, but rarely does anyone single it out in these discussions. They also are the second biggest per-capita consumers in terms of CO2 emissions.

Qwertious
0 replies
12h2m

Australia punches above its weight, but rarely does anyone single it out in these discussions. They also are the second biggest per-capita consumers in terms of CO2 emissions.

Our (Australia's) fuckwit right-wing politicians love to blame climate change on China and the USA, because their absolute emissions are way higher than ours and "we emit less than 1% of the world's emissions" so us taking the first step is pointless (says THEM).

Also, because our coal is relatively clean they say that stopping coal mining would actually make emissions worse, because then everyone would just switch to much more polluting foreign coal.

Every American in this thread who says "<China/India> have the most emissions, they need to reduce their CO2 output" needs to understand that the same logic can be and is used against them to justify us doing fuck-all about the climate. Stop enabling our fuckwits!

mitthrowaway2
0 replies
15h23m

I'm not sure I come to that conclusion. At least, that's not how I think about responsibility.

I'd say that per capita emissions is a reasonable measure of scoring how much a country and its people are doing to make climate change worse (or better). And, while not perfectly so, it does a reasonable job as being an actionable metric for how sustainable a country's standard of living is. "America (14.4 t/cap/yr) should try to be more like Japan (8.6 t/cap/yr)" is a reasonable take on how the US can reduce its per-capita emissions, and what changes might take it there. "America (4.8 Gt/yr) should try to be more like the United Arab Emirates (220 Mt/yr)" ends up being rather bad advice.

And while the standard of living in Iceland is quite nice, I doubt that there's any practical way that either China or the United States could reduce their emissions to that level (3.5 Mt/yr) in the short term without millions of people starving to death in the process. It wouldn't be realistic or fair for Iceland to demand that the US cut its emissions to Icelandic levels on an absolute basis (but very fair and reasonable to demand that the US cut to Icelandic levels on a per-capita basis).

In terms of how much responsibility a government has, well... certainly governments that govern more people do have more leverage, and with larger total emissions, there are more opportunities to cut. But if there is any non-zero level that we may consider an acceptable emissions target, surely this level should be proportional to a country's population. And when it comes to international agreements, it's reasonable to ask China and India to make cuts, and it's very reasonable for China and India to say "OK we'll make cuts, but we expect small rich countries like Canada to pull their weight, and if they don't, we won't either".

And when that happens, per-capita emissions is the only sensible way to gauge if those countries are pulling their weight.

There are, after all, a lot of countries, and while the top four (China, US, India, Russia) emit 57% of the total, the rest emit the other 43% of that total, with no single country among them emitting over 2.9%. Even cutting China, the US, India, and Russia's emissions to zero would only cut global emissions in about half, and that's really still not enough to solve the problem, so the little countries will have to pitch in.

downrightmike
1 replies
14h8m

...because they killed millions of girls...

h0l0cube
0 replies
12h58m

Who is 'they' here? Certainly there was a one-child policy. I don't think it could be said that the consequence of female abortion and infanticide was the intention (or even an expected consequence) of the policy.

It seems that many people in the comments are set on demonizing the country. For this I think better points to raise are the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur 'reeducation' program, or the usurping of peaceful autonomous neighbors like Tibet and Hong Kong (maybe Taiwan later). But none of this has anything to do with obligations around CO2 emissions, which they are addressing more than any country on the planet, as I've commented elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41012774

defrost
0 replies
16h49m

Which county, China or the USofA, had an enforced one child per couple policy for many decades?

ianburrell
0 replies
18h33m

Are you a time traveler from 1990? China effectively doesn't have anyone in extreme poverty ($1.50/day). They have about the same or lower rate than the US. They do have people in poverty, 24% below $5.50/day ($2000/yr) line.

India has also decreased extreme poverty, down to 2% in 2023. At $3.20/day, they declined to 21%. At $5.50, they are at 81%. Most people are poor, but less poor than they were.

anonym29
10 replies
18h40m

They collectively still emit substantially more than the US and Western Europe, and much more importantly, GHG emissions have been declining in the US and Western Europe for over two decades. In that same time period, they have done nothing but grow rapidly in China and India. All the information we have so far suggests that India will continue to grow rapidly in this regard even after China plateaus on carbon emissions.

We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone.

They are both countries home to a rapidly rising broad middle class, and that middle class is going to want to enjoy the spoils of materialistic consumerism (the true root cause of human-induced climate change) just as much as our grandparents did, our parents did, and we do.

netsharc
4 replies
8h2m

I wrote about why saying it's their fault and not ours is not admitting our own fault is... bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41015413

that middle class is going to want to enjoy the spoils of materialistic consumerism (the true root cause of human-induced climate change) just as much as our grandparents did, our parents did, and we do.

The last 3 words is key there. WE also don't want to give up those spoils. And we want to enjoy them by outsourcing their production to the cheapest places and cheapest methods, like unsafe mining of minerals done by underpaid children. But hey, it's not happening in our country, so we're fine?

If a phone is made with minerals mined using safe Western mining standards, and made by factory workers earning decent wages, and it's CO2 neutral, and so on, it'll be more expensive, and will not sell well, because as long as there's another country producing the same phone but without all those "external" costs, the consumer will say "Look, this phone has the exact same specs but is way cheaper!".

throwaway290
1 replies
6h36m

You manage to make it look like no one can make a sane choice for themselves. Other countries can only do what we want (because WE want cheap products WE make them do bad stuff), and we can only do what they want (if they offer something that is cheaper then we automatically must buy it and not care about any damage or side-effects). It's a paradox isn't it?

In reality it is government's choice, to go for short term riches and maintaining power or act more ethically and think long term. And consumers pay more all the time for things like "no slave labour" (idk how well it's enforced, I just say it's a value), "ethically sourced materials", "recycled", "no spying malware", blahblahblah, just look at Android vs iPhone.

netsharc
0 replies
1h11m

You manage to make it look like no one can make a sane choice for themselves.

On average, the "sane" choice is to go for the cheapest option, or turn a blind eye to the child labor, etc.

Sure, some people want to live ethically and minimize their emissions, but there's not enough of them.

In reality it is government's choice, to go for short term riches and maintaining power or act more ethically and think long term.

Yeah, Macron tried to tax fuel more and there were widespread protests by "average French citizen", and he got metaphorically beaten up in the last election. The EU incumbents watered down green projects because of fear of losing to the rightwing populists. It's the sane choice for them to make, because I'd rather be governed by the somewhat sane center-right than lying manipulative populist hard-right, but the sane choice meant stepping away from the path of an ecological future. The summary is, if you try to be ethical, you get voted out of office, god bless democracy! /s

anonym29
1 replies
6h30m

But hey, it's not happening in our country, so we're fine?

No, but even if the US and Western Europe went net zero, that's still not enough to offset global GHG emissions coming out of China to prevent catastrophic climate change.

If you, a wealthy westerner, want to tell billions of people in China to stop enjoying middle class luxuries for the first time because it's bad for the environment, be my guest. I have no such desire.

netsharc
0 replies
3h25m

No, but even if the US and Western Europe went net zero, that's still not enough to offset global GHG emissions coming out of China to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Show me the math/source, if you want to claim this, please. US and W. Europe outsource their emissions because they buy their electronics and clothes from e.g. China and Bangladesh. What is a US/WE net zero? They stop buying Chinese product, and China stops producing them for US/WE?

h0l0cube
4 replies
18h31m

We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone.

Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions.

Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. [..] In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. Globally, solar PV alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide.

https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar...

The western world is shifting away from China to India and the rest of Asia for manufacturing, so I think the desire for cheaper products and ‘national security’ are going to increase emissions somewhat. But even still, with the glut of renewables, and soon the glut of batteries, emissions free energy is going to be the cheapest option for manufacturing anyway

throwaway290
2 replies
6h52m

Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions.

False. They have good green PR to justify other governments funneling taxpayer money via subsidies but meanwhile they are building the most coal plants than any country and this has been only ramping up in recent years with more new fossil fuel power plants being approved year on year.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-...

h0l0cube
1 replies
4h35m

False.

As I've explained in another comment, adding power stations and capacity doesn't mean running 100% all year. China is using coal as peakers much like other countries use gas for this purpose. Given that China is also installing the most energy storage, it's not long (at current growth, less than 10 years) before these plants are only used in emergency situations.

throwaway290
0 replies
4h12m

You explained wrong. literally no one uses coal as peaker ever, and they are building more coal plants than the rest of the world combined (the country is not even the most populous)

glenstein
0 replies
3h17m

Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions.

China "doing the most" to curb emissions is perfectly compatible with them "doing the most" of the actual emissions. At high enough scales, no matter what you're doing, you'll be doing "the most" of it, in both directions.

What matters at the end of the day is emissions in absolute terms.

throwaway290
2 replies
12h39m

Why do you discount export emissions? Is it forced on them against their will or they don't profit from it? Shall we also adjust for things like how much of their emissions could have been green, etc?

netsharc
1 replies
8h11m

I'm not the same commenter as above, but, why not? In the extreme hypothetical scenario, a country could be net-zero and have the newest iPhone every year, throw away their good PCs because Windows 11 needs a modern one with TPM 2.0, fast fashion, and steak for dinner every night, because everything's produced in the neighboring country. And then when the world says "We need to be better about our carbon output", your argument is like the country of Netzeroland saying "Well don't blame me, I'm net zero on CO2, blame Neighboristan over there! I don't need to change, they need to change!", when in fact its people also need to change their consumption habits.

Whether it's forced, it seems like a philosophical question about economics. Do you go to work willingly, or because you're forced to, because you want to be able to afford food, housing, and iPhone 17?

Or it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. If there's demand, and Neighboristan is able to but doesn't supply it, their citizens are forced by government to give up sources of income; meanwhile the citizens of We-Also-Build-iPhones-And-Make-Cheap-Shirts-ia are raking the money in and travelling around the world and taking selfies of their steak meals with their iPhones, and citizens of Neighboristan will get jealous and think "Why can't we do that?". And they'll either vote in a government that will allow this, or revolt.

And consumers in the West enable this behavior by wanting the cheapest bang for the buck. If China charges for CO2, your cheap Walmart toy gets more expensive, and you don't buy it, Walmart will say "we'll find a supplier in Vietnam/India/etc where there's no such CO2 fees."...

throwaway290
0 replies
7h14m

How you describe is not how demand & supply works. To think that every product China puts on Amazon and whatnot is there because there's demand for it doesn't make sense. A lot of the time existence of supply creates demand. I see it first hand all the time. Some new thing is put out (accessory, electronics, etc), everyone gets on the bandwagon and buys it. It also helps if there's fashionable aura and gov subsidies (EVs). If it was not made & sold, people would instead buy something else made locally even if it cost more or simply not buy.

Yes, part of it is consumer choice (and yes some consumers do choose to not buy if they think it supports environmental damage or such) but it's wrong to pretend one side is the one who makes all the choices and the other side is powerless to resist because it's convenient for your argument.

because everything's produced in the neighboring country

Unless the first country dictates neighbouring country's policies, not sure it's that relevant.

it seems like a philosophical question about economics. Do you go to work willingly, or because you're forced to, because you want to be able to afford food, housing, and iPhone 17?

Either there's freedom of choice or not. This logic can go to "I should deceive people or dump waste into rivers or use slave labour, because market & I want to afford a new fancy yacht or invade a country". Yes, I can choose not to work or do different work that is more or less friendly to environment and I use an old iPhone.

their citizens are forced by government to give up sources of income There's unlimited hypotheticals. Should we say we are forced to give up sources of income if they involve crime or morally wrong things that are discouraged?

And consumers in the West enable this behavior by wanting the cheapest bang for the buck.

"Enabling" can be used to justify anything or assign any guilt. It's a bit narcissistic. It reminds me of "America started the war in Ukraine" a little.

Or it's a tragedy of the commons scenario.

I agree there is some tragedy of the commons here.

navane
1 replies
10h8m

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

Loic
0 replies
6h12m

Yes.

maverwa
1 replies
7h34m

One of them is GHG (CO2 equivalent) and the other one is just CO2 itself, right? Does seem to change the numbers much, but it’s an additional difference between these metrics, right?

h0l0cube
0 replies
4h27m

That is a point of difference, but I'd also wager CO2 and GHG overall emissions correlate.

magicalhippo
3 replies
18h41m

and that's ignoring the fact they do all of our manufacturing.

Any estimate of how much that constitutes? Like if US and EU had to produce themselves all the stuff they now get from China, how would their CO2 emissions change?

h0l0cube
0 replies
12h59m

Not sure who you're replying to, but when you factor in trade, China is still a touch behind the EU and seems to be trending away. I see 2022 on the chart (you might have to make sure you have JS enabled)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

glenstein
3 replies
15h35m

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 that even small reductions in their per capita emissions cash out as massive reductions in absolute terms.

So in terms of bang for the buck per-capita wise, they are the top candidates for emissions savings.

geysersam
2 replies
11h32m

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 measure.

glenstein
0 replies
3h23m

If the Earth's population was 1 billion, 10 billion, or 100 billion, but the emissions were the same, in each of those cases we would be cooked to death by our own atmosphere. Even though they have wildly different per capita emissions.

Or to put it a different way, if all I knew were the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, and all you knew were per capita consumption figures, I would know when the atmosphere was truly cooked and you wouldn't.

HPsquared
0 replies
7h5m

It costs more bucks to change a rich person's mind, than a poor person's mind.

downrightmike
2 replies
14h12m

Per capita doesn't mean shit when their actual gross is way higher.

datavirtue
0 replies
7h13m

Agreed. Per capita arguments sound like toddlers arguing over who is closer to the other.

Qwertious
0 replies
12h14m

Per capita is a proxy for discussing how much emissions they need. If you're not considering anyone's need, then you're basically telling them to go kill themselves and they'll likewise completely ignore anything you have to say. If we ignore China's/India's needs and what they actually can do while talking about what they should do, then the whole discussion is a waste of time.

wmanley
0 replies
18h46m

Yes to India and the USA. China and Europe are roughly on par.

jncfhnb
2 replies
18h53m

Who knows how to handle a billion refugees?

MaxHoppersGhost
1 replies
12h51m

There will never be a billion refugees. Climate change is slow enough that humans and nature will adapt.

jncfhnb
0 replies
4h3m

Well we’re at over 100M currently and that number doubled in the past decade

energy123
2 replies
10h14m

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.

anonym29
1 replies
6h22m

Billions can't afford air conditioning. An air conditioning unit is equal to their entire annual income.

Air conditioning can get radically cheaper to meet market demand, and they can start making radically more money.

Other products have gone from expensive to cheap (think TVs over the last 40 years), other people have gone from poor to prosperous (think China).

Do you have a good reason why these outcomes are possible TVs and for Chinese people, but not for ACs and equatorial people?

energy123
0 replies
5h30m

What about countries with political strife like Myanmar? We can't hope that 100% of countries all experience significant growth, fast enough to outstrip the impact of rising temperatures. There will be laggards stuck on low GDP. Also, a lot of these economies rely on outdoor work, widespread AC can't help with that.

If we get to the 3-4C warming scenarios, these countries will be terrible to live in, regardless of AC, and I won't blame them when they all try to escape to colder Europe.

bamboozled
1 replies
16h31m

India is a peculiar case because they're, so so so affected by climate change that it's suicide NOT to stop emitting on such a large scale.

Yes we're all susceptible to climate change effects but India, that place gets next level hot.

dartharva
0 replies
12h46m

This is very true. Unfortunately India also houses 1.4 Billion people, most of whom are poor, and any attempt at policy change to limit industry quickly results in poverty-related mortalities by hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

datavirtue
0 replies
7h15m

Populations are too big. We can't incorporate effective bodies fast enough or with enough authority to to implement sensible societal changes. Just when you need an adult, MTG shows up.

colordrops
0 replies
18h41m

Rising sea levels, temperature change, and extreme weather are not the only problems. There is also crop failure, ocean acidification, and ecosystem collapse, the latter which is the most worrying to me, as it implies both our food and our oxygen will be impacted. Furthermore, high CO2 levels in the atmosphere have measurable impact on cognitive abilities, so we will all be dumber with the changes, making it even harder to solve the problem. A negative feedback loop it seems.

Havoc
0 replies
8h57m

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

redserk
34 replies
18h50m

The article was written in 2019 before a number of extraordinarily significant events with major climate policy impacts:

- a noticeable and rapid dip in emissions has proven to be viable due to COVID lockdowns

- Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Europe and the US to accelerate plans to diversify energy generation away from natural gas

- China’s insanely rapid growth in green energy production domestically

It seems like 2022 CO2 levels are near 2019 CO2 levels[1], which is impressive.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

potsandpans
18 replies
17h58m

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 pleasentness.

Regardless of any change, more extreme weather events more frequently will become more normal. The socioeconomic impacts that are likely to be the most jarring in the global north will probably surface from migration pressure as people from the global south are displaced due to heat and sea level rise.

It is optimistic to think that we'll be on track for 2 degrees of warming, let alone 1.5. At this point, the quiet part just starting to be said out loud is that we'll never hit 1.5. We'll probably never achieve any semblance of the paris agreement goals.

And even as we approach 2 degrees, 2050 looks hotter and more extreme than anything humans have ever experienced in the past.

Probably one of the only short term options between now and 2100 will be solar radiation management -- a largely untested tech that is surely a terrible outcome.

I'm just summarizing the latest IPCC synthesis report [1]. Adding a bit of editorialization in perceived outcomes. One of the most conservative organizations on earth, their assessment is bleak: systems are already permanently damaged, and they're likely to become more so in the near-to-distant future.

My goal is not to make anyone reading despondent. I just think these kind of short snipes of perceived positive trends bury the reality of the situation that we are living through.

If the goal is to assure us that the world's not going to end, it's quite a low bar to set. And there's quite a gradient of suffering between.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

marcosdumay
11 replies
15h7m

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.

geysersam
5 replies
11h42m

Stop living in a fantasy. Direct air carbon capture can never be more efficient than just not burning fossile fuels in the first place.

FeepingCreature
3 replies
8h4m

Sure it can. Why wouldn't it? Say you find a source of energy with zero cost. Now direct air carbon capture is free. "But you don't have a source with zero cost." Great, now we're talking numbers, how cheap does it have to be? So long as energy transport has inevitable losses, carbon capture stands a chance. In other words, IMO we should consider fossil fuel offsetting with carbon capture as a highly lossy energy transport technology that can reach any fossil fuel consumer on earth.

geysersam
1 replies
7h4m

Energy is not the only cost. There are also massive material costs building the carbon capture infrastructure. A reasonable estimate for the scale required is the existing fossile fuel infrastructure.

That is, direct air carbon capture means investing an amount on the order of the value of the existing fossile fuel infrastructure to spend energy to achieve nothing of value (except offsetting the damage we caused by not switching to renewables earlier).

It's a complete nonstarter. Only a vehicle used by the fossile industry to delay the transition.

marcosdumay
0 replies
4h15m

I wonder if people may be able to organize some entity that collects money for everybody to use in projects that benefit the society...

But I guess, no, that's impossible!

HPsquared
0 replies
7h12m

Even with free energy, you'd need to invest a lot of capital and then dispose of the CO2 somewhere.

Brigand
0 replies
8h6m

Having excess energy from solar could make it possible to capture the excess co2 over time.

Voultapher
2 replies
10h2m

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.
RandomThoughts3
1 replies
7h53m

That’s significantly moving the goal post. Yes, it’s a given that biodiversity will take a hit for a pretty long time due to human activity but frankly, so what?

I personally care more about avoiding millions dying of starvation but you do you. I understand that said millions being mostly in Nigeria and India make some in the west care less about them that cute animals, but still.

DangitBobby
0 replies
3h38m

This attitude towards other life sucks ass.

lossolo
0 replies
5h42m

What extra energy? Energy consumption around the world is rising every year and will rise even higher because of climate change. And carbon capture is not a viable solution to climate change.

"According to the IPCC’s Working Group III report, carbon capture is one of the least-effective, most-expensive climate change mitigation options on Earth."

"Even today, some projects already operating around the world have not been as successful as planned. In Australia, the CCS project run by Chevron has not yet made its Gorgon project meet its target of 80% carbon dioxide capture.

A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) on two Norwegian projects that store carbon dioxide under the seabed called into question the long-term viability of CCS."

"There are currently 42 operational commercial CCS and CCUS projects across the world with the capacity to store 49 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the Global CCS Institute, which tracks the industry. That is about 0.13% of the world’s roughly 37 billion metric tons of annual energy and industry-related carbon dioxide emissions."

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/20/opinion/carbon-c...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/01/is-carbo...

https://archive.is/e0y4W

forgetfreeman
0 replies
12h2m

Great, now we need viable large scale carbon capture technology and enough loose funds to bribe an industry into existence globally. That 2nd part is the real trick.

FeepingCreature
3 replies
8h3m

Probably one of the only short term options between now and 2100 will be solar radiation management -- a largely untested tech that is surely a terrible outcome.

Maybe it's time to put a billion or two into testing all these untested techs then.

HPsquared
2 replies
7h16m

That's what I find so baffling. Why aren't we putting serious resources into geoengineering, adaptation and mitigation? It's so underfunded in comparison to what we're spending in a futile attempt at emission reduction.

unglaublich
0 replies
5h59m

Because there's no economic incentive. We can only create one with proper policies, but politics have been bootlegged by industry who only looks at short-term gains.

klyrs
0 replies
1h30m

Why aren't we putting serious resources into geoengineering, adaptation and mitigation?

Are you running for president of the US? What do you think would happen to either candidate if they made this central their platform in today's political environment?

Spoiler: rich old people will not suffer, if anything, they'll just stop moving to Florida and Arizona.

paulmd
0 replies
14h43m

In the vein of “this is what people considered ‘comically fat’ as the punchline of a joke when the Simpsons started running”, it’s funny to look back at the “Toby ruins everything” video and look at what Aaron Sorkin considered “comically devastating” for climate change in 2012 in The Newsroom.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U&t=228

DoctorOetker
0 replies
5h28m

I agree with your comment, not because I don't think there is any hope, but because I see a situation were valid and viable hope is buried in the noise of feel-good-show hope and subsidy-ogling hope.

I am not saying it will be easy to build it, or cheap, or without any drawbacks, but...

It is physically possible to generate energy by cooling the planet.

Its cold in space, its cold up there. To run a heat engine you need 2 temperature baths at different temperatures.

Lets take for the higher temperature our surface temperature, and for the lower temperature the temperature at or slightly above the tropopause (say 11 km above surface, somewhere between polar and equatorial regions).

At that height temperatures might be say -50 deg C.

Now consider the following engineering challenge: a buoyant vessel holds taut ~12 km "atmosphere elevator", made of SCG (single crystal graphene). Along such cables could be suspended chimneys made of light fabric, or perhaps pipes conveying coolant up and down, ...

As a thought exercise: suppose the hook floating in the tropopause/bottom of stratosphere is used to heave up and down buckets of water (the same number of buckes going up and down, so apart from friction this transport costs no energy (think of a pulley).

as the water travels up it freezes, giving off heat at a higher layer, closer to dark cold space where it would end up anyway eventually, as the ice is lowered it absorbs heat from the lower layers. If the water/ice buckets were insulated, and only brought in thermal contact at the top or bottom of the structure, then it would dump the heat at the top only, above the CO2 and water blanket where it can more easily escape to space, and it would absorb heat only at the bottom. This means we could run a heat engine at the surface generating energy, without proliferation concerns (because when we do it its for energy, but when others do it it must be for weapons, or for gaining experience requisite for weapons)...

graeme
4 replies
18h39m

2023 is 37.4, which is a fair increase on 2019. More importantly the chart that matters is total CO2 in atmosphere. You can't even see 2020 on here. That was a one off 5% decrease.

Imagine if you had $1,000,0000 in your bank account and were spending $100,000 per year, except one year you spent $95,000. That's 2020.

This methane news is on top of CO2 as it has its own added impact. Proper optimism that we can do it first requires taking stock of where we actually are. So far we haven't actually displaced any carbon energy and we are at the all time highest levels of both annually emissions and also CO2 in the atmosphere.

Chart of total CO2 concentration over time: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

czbond
1 replies
3h40m

Interesting - thanks for the CO2 concentration link. I am curious what prior to 2019 looked like (eg: if it was a comparable size, yet dipped in 2019-2021) and is back to normal.

graeme
0 replies
1h51m

Have a look at the right hand chart. That shows the increase from 1960 until now. You couldn't spot 2020 by eyeballing the chart.

2020 was a 5% dip in the pace of the increase. It's like someone gained ten pounds in 2019, 9.5 pounds in 2020, and 10 pounds in 2021. CO2 emissions are analogous to a total gain, so a 5% one off cut isn't very meaningful.

elbasti
0 replies
1h19m

Imagine if you had $1,000,0000 in your bank account and were spending $100,000 per year, except one year you spent $95,000. That's 2020.

It's even worse, because there's positive feedback loops we've probably unlocked (mainly artic and tropical methane).

So it's more like every year you put $100K on a credit card with high interest rate with continually compounding interest.*

Even if we stopped spending tomorrow, the debt will continue to grow exponentially.

*And the card is owned by a mob boss that will blow your brains out when your debt exceeds your bank balance.

datavirtue
0 replies
7h19m

Cleared that shit up.

bagels
2 replies
18h34m

Viable? Effective at reducing emissions, but is stopping all industrial output viable?

forgetfreeman
1 replies
12h1m

Depends on your appetite for making the money sad.

bagels
0 replies
2h12m

I have no idea about how to measure the happiness of money.

MrVandemar
2 replies
17h35m

And yet, do you know when the hottest month on record was? It's easy to answer: last month.

It's been "last month" for the last 12 months at least. Basically, we've hit the J curve.

The "extraordinarily significant events" you cite amount to little more than a guy who jumped off a bridge thinking: "you know, I think I've changed my mind".

(And yet, we just bought $700 of seedlings and I spent my birthday, and many other days planting them. It's not a pointless exercise, it will improve things in my little corner, but it won't materially affect anything either).

redserk
0 replies
5h20m

And yet, this is baked into climate change models if you’ve been paying attention.

Unfortunately, yes, even after we hit a plateau of emissions, we’re going to see effects.

The important bit is that, yes, we are seeing changes, and yes, we are seeing dreadful environment effects, we’re making progress to slow this down.

We’re fortunate that the last few years gave us excuses to shift policy that otherwise would’ve had us keep going down this path for another decade+.

I would certainly hope those pushing the “doomerism” takes in this thread do not work for any AI companies, cloud computing, NVIDIA, or other organization responsible for insane datacenter power growth this past year.

HPsquared
0 replies
7h8m

On the bright side, at least the CO2 and warmer weather will help the seedlings grow. "Greenhouse" effect and all that.

itronitron
0 replies
8h55m

> a noticeable and rapid dip in emissions has proven to be viable due to COVID lockdowns

funny how that never gets brought up in articles about RTO mandates

geysersam
0 replies
11h45m

If anything the Russian invasion of Ukraine diverted attention away from climate change to defence. Look at how many countries in Europe took the opportunity to cut climate progressive policies to reduce fuel prices during the price crunch after the invasion. The prices were temporarily inflated, and affected groups could have been supported by other means, but instead green policies were targeted and you bet they will not be re-introduced any time soon.

colordrops
0 replies
18h44m

Ok, but weren't 2019 levels really bad? These are nice developments but really tiny in comparison to what needs to be done to stop progression.

blueflow
0 replies
8h34m

The emissions, not the level. The level is increasing at the level of emissions (minus absorptions). We are accelerating as fast as 2019 towards the wall.

simpaticoder
0 replies
18h57m

On the bright side for those that have always wanted to travel to other worlds and terraform them, we'll now have an opportunity to have that experience without the travel.

2OEH8eoCRo0
8 replies
19h17m

We will but not at our current numbers. Rich countries will suffer the most.

sadhorse
5 replies
19h13m

How so? Huge flooding in Brazil this year, they are not recovering any time soon. Poor countries lack the resources that rich countries literally burn for their luxury.

ars
4 replies
19h5m

Say Brazil floods this year, and next year, and the year after that.

What do you think will happen next? What will happen is Brazil will start planning for it, and then they'll be fine. There will be an adjustment period, and then, life goes on.

kjkjadksj
2 replies
17h17m

This is what people don’t get about places like Florida. The people in Florida are in fact aware that it storms and floods, thats why the house is built on stilts with metal storm shutters.

paulmd
1 replies
14h38m

Sure, but it’s expensive and it’s still devastated by storms etc. Like these building techniques works so well that insurers have left the Florida market because it’s unprofitable to rebuild everyone every couple years, so the state outlawed charging rates that account for the actual expense of it, and now people can’t get home insurance policies anymore.

Like literally it’s already too expensive to keep doing it without a massive funnel of taxpayer money into peoples beach houses. It’s literally only viable to keep doing that by leeching off the largesse of the taxpayer and other homeowners in less dangerous locales.

Florida also has the additional problem that it’s literally built on karst topology, it’s limestone riddled with tunnels and sinkholes so water comes right up under it, you can’t even pump the cities dry like the Netherlands.

bwestergard
0 replies
18h45m

Huh? Of course life goes on, but it will be a more resource constrained life, and that will make political negotiations more difficult. If those aren't implications worth worrying about, what would be?

dartharva
1 replies
12h40m

Absolutely wrong. India, China and the more polluting poorer countries are the ones who'll always suffer more.

With >300 AQIs in most highly-populated areas, dirty water from rivers almost all of which are hazardously polluted, combined with a tropical climate that's already hot enough to kill thousands of people from heatstroke alone in summers - pollution-related misery in US and Europe isn't anywhere close enough to that in India. It just doesn't get called out because Indians have bigger existential concerns (many of which go directly against climate-friendliness).

datavirtue
0 replies
7h9m

"Absolutely wrong. India, China and the more polluting poorer countries are the ones who'll always suffer more."

....until the migrations.

ars
6 replies
19h6m

We'll be fine. We'll have to make adjustments, but we'll be fine. So will the planet, and so will the vast majority of animals.

altdataseller
1 replies
19h0m

“Save the earth?! The planet will be absolutely fine… humans on the other hand..”

tialaramex
0 replies
1h26m

Yes, the damp rock will be fine.

Humans aren't likely to die out directly, although scenarios where it all seems a bit pointless and the remaining few million humans stop reproducing are plausible.

mitthrowaway2
0 replies
18h50m

Hmm, I'm really not sure about that. There are events in the geological record in which the vast majority of animals were not fine, and I'm not convinced that humans would be among those that make it, adjustments or not.

colordrops
0 replies
18h40m

If you are a meth addict, you don't say "I'll be fine" to deal with the problem. You've got to make changes, or else you are fucked.

MrVandemar
0 replies
17h29m

"Vast majority of the animals"

You know that the extinction rate of species (which includes animals) is running at approximately 200 per day.

Unless you mean the vast majority of animals in the sense of numbers of individual animals, instead of diversity of species, then maybe you're right: the vast majority will be fine as the biomass of domestic animals now outweight the biomass of every other species.

MSFT_Edging
0 replies
18h57m

The vast majority of animals are cattle/livestock for meat production.

If we want to be alright, we'll probably want to start reducing the cattle headcount.

carapace
2 replies
19h8m

Only time will tell.

But the things to do to try to avert looming disaster are the same things to do to be a better person in times of no crisis.

Be kind and loving, develop compassion. That's pretty much it.

The point is not to make it or not. Entropy is the enemy and it will win in the end. So what? No one here gets out alive. The point is to be a better person, to help others, to make things better.

If we are going to make it we will make it though love and compassion.

If we don't make it, then at least we didn't waste the time we had.

tomrod
1 replies
17h38m

The point is not to make it or not.

I fundamentally and vociferously disagree. The point is to ensure sapience and intelligence survive the heat death of the universe.

carapace
0 replies
3h39m

I'm sympathetic to your view, but I feel you're talking science-fiction or perhaps religion. By definition the Heat Death means there's nothing left to be the substrate for sapience and intelligence, eh? (If you like to discuss metaphysics I'm game.)

Anyway, intelligence without love is less than pointless.

sdkman
0 replies
19h22m

I don't think so :(

thinkcontext
28 replies
18h51m

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 production paths methane emissions are so great that the impact is greater than coal over 100 year timescale. For example, some parts of NM Permian have a 9% (!) leakage rate. When combusted methane releases about half the amount of CO2 that coal does. The eGHG potential of methane is 20x CO2 over 100 year timescale, so you have to add 180% to the total GHG potential, making it 40% worse than coal w/o even considering other leakage along the pipeline.

https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/methane-leaks-are-f...

james_david
17 replies
18h2m

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 outmoded fossil fuel infrastructure (i.e., pipe replacement) being prioritized over leak repair.

skybrian
9 replies
16h32m

Meanwhile in California, PG&E underfunded maintenance, perhaps because regulators squeezed too hard? Eventually we had things like the San Bruno gas explosion and wildfires so bad that PG&E went bankrupt.

Finding the optimal amount of regulation seems difficult. It seems like too blunt an instrument. Incentives are no substitute for technical people who want to do what's right.

downWidOutaFite
3 replies
16h8m

Government owning the utility would be the answer. But politicians like to have a 3rd party to blame for price hikes and poor service .

skybrian
1 replies
15h45m

I’m unconvinced that a change to new management, government-run or not, would automatically get technically competent people hired and give them the decision-making power to do things right. Sure, it might, but it’s hardly guaranteed.

ericd
0 replies
3h22m

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that you can make large multiples of the amount you'd make working on this kind of thing by working on something relatively non-productive like finance, consulting, adtech, etc. A large percentage of my engineering class went into one of those. One of the smartest guys I knew there, who studied nuclear engineering, now does healthcare private equity.

The incentives are all messed up. We should do some combination of making these jobs more attractive and making those relatively extractive jobs less attractive.

tiahura
0 replies
4h20m

If only our energy infrastructure could be run like the DMV.

skybrian
0 replies
4h26m

I don’t think that chart has enough detail to understand what happened.

lazide
0 replies
44m

lol. PG&E has had a culture of malfeasance since at least the 60’s - which is why all the records on those buried pipelines and power lines were missing or never recorded at all. Despite it being a regulatory requirement.

It just got worse as they passed more and more of it into investor pockets.

katbyte
0 replies
3h16m

Thank you for pointing out why it should be a public utility that does the right thing rather then a private company who was willing to burn the state down for profit.

dylan604
0 replies
14h35m

How many fires were started by PG&E gas explosions vs power lines?

gruez
6 replies
15h39m

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 hard is it to compare how much is put into the pipe vs how much comes out?

closewith
4 replies
9h44m

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

idiotsecant
1 replies
3h54m

When accurate metering is called for we have the tech to do it just fine to far less than <1% error. This is a classic case where regulation is required. Rational capitalist enterprise is not going to fix this on their own. They don't currently have the right incentives.

closewith
0 replies
2h17m

To 1% volume, like rotary meters, but not 1% mass. At least not at reasonable cost.

But you are right that regulation is the answer, although personally I think direct leak detection is more realistic than measuring gas flows accurately in a system that's already built around low accuracy metering.

whall6
0 replies
2h3m

Source?

szundi
0 replies
5h55m

omg this is real?

sdenton4
0 replies
2h48m

For far too long we have put up with unmetered popes. Lemme give you 95 reasons why all popes should be metered...

Retric
5 replies
18h5m

Those 100 year timescale numbers are misleading as the impact is so front loaded. They only make sense when talking about an emissions that are constant through long timescales.

thinkcontext
4 replies
16h24m

I've heard people argue that its both too aggressive and too conservative. I'm in the too conservative camp, we need to figure things out sooner than 100 years and the risk of a feedback loop is high with methane.

Its fine to assert that a single number doesn't capture the nuances of the situation. But we have to keep in mind that

1) the heat trapped by the methane stays trapped even after it has decayed

2) methane concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing significantly faster than co2

3) the more methane in the atmosphere the slower its rate of decay

thfuran
1 replies
14h12m

1) the heat trapped by the methane stays trapped even after it has decayed

Not really. It would be present, but not trapped. Absent other factors, that would mean earth is above its equilibrium temperature and would cool once methane loss permits it to radiate heat more effectively. Either that or it shoots us in the face with a clathrate gun. There's really only one way to find out.

matthewdgreen
0 replies
12h39m

Let’s not find out if there’s a clathrate gun coming for us? Please?

Retric
1 replies
7h34m

1) Over days sure, but not on the relevant timescales.

2) In terms of impact on climate the difference from 1990 to 2024 is mostly from CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/Fil...

3) It’s nonlinear, increasing methane concentrations also benefit methane scavenging bacteria which should increase the rate of breakdown as concentrations increase. OH only lasts around 1 second in the atmosphere so in theory it should be depleted by increasing atmospheric methane, but methane is only one of several things it reacts with so the difference is minimal without orders of magnitude change in Methane.

ljf
0 replies
23m

Don't forget that Methane decays into water vapour and CO2

Lerc
1 replies
9h46m

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.

thinkcontext
0 replies
2h50m

No. The current inventory of methane sources even with these upwards estimates for industry are unable to account for what is observed in the atmosphere. This is a big topic of current research.

xyst
0 replies
15h43m

This is why the O&G backed SCOTUS has defanged the regulatory agencies.

downWidOutaFite
0 replies
16h16m

We're cooked

schappim
10 replies
19h33m

Ouch! They’re estimating 131 kt of methane! That’s equivalent to approx 3.93 Megatons of CO2 (in terms of its global warming impact over a century) or roughly equivalent to that of a small country like Iceland or Malta annually.

cjr
5 replies
19h28m

3.93 megatons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to:

  • About 149,714 short-haul flights, or
  • About 37,429 long-haul flights.

GenerocUsername
2 replies
19h5m

so what I am hearing is that short-haul flights are ~24% as far as long-haul flights.

Weird use of segmented flight lengths as a comparator

sebmellen
0 replies
18h39m

Short haul flights use proportionally more fuel per mile flown because taking off is very fuel intensive. That said, no idea what average value the GP comment is basing their numbers off of.

ductsurprise
0 replies
18h34m

Take off, climb and circles before landng time use considerably more fuel than that of cruising time, so that needs to be considered. Also, as short haul fights generally don't climb as high, they lose the benefits of high altitude cruising.

flosstop
0 replies
7h54m

Are those figures the wrong way around?

SoftTalker
0 replies
18h39m

So a couple of days' worth?

dartharva
3 replies
12h56m

How much ∘C of change in global temperature does this translate to?

HL33tibCe7
2 replies
5h40m

On the order of 0.

From what I read, we can expect a 1 degree increase if we release somewhere in the ballpark of 100 billion tons of CO2. Using those figures, 3.93 megatons is 0.0000393 degrees.

As a point of comparison, humans release roughly 40 gigatons of CO2 per year; 3.93 megatons is 0.0098% of that.

As another point of comparison, around 550 gigatons of CO2 is released (and absorbed) by the planet "naturally". 3.93 megatons is 0.0007% of that.

amelius
1 replies
5h19m

As another point of comparison, around 550 gigatons of CO2 is released (and absorbed) by the planet "naturally".

So we are currently within 20% of what the planet does naturally, which seems not that bad actually.

HL33tibCe7
0 replies
4h7m

Unfortunately it's not that simple, because the planet absorbs that CO2 too.

So in reality, the important thing is we're going from a delta of 0 gigatons of CO2 per year, to a delta of +40 gigatons of CO2 per year.

czbond
3 replies
3h57m

Let's say I have free time on my hands. How could I maximally remove methane from the atmosphere?

whall6
0 replies
2h0m

Walk down your street lighting matches every five feet

consp
0 replies
1h56m

Eat a cow, do not replace it, and wait for it to escape the atmosphere or decompose naturally. And lighting a methane leak on fire can also help.

(sarcasm tag)

SoftTalker
0 replies
39m

Methane breaks down pretty quickly in the atmosphere, half-life is under 10 years. We don't need to remove it so much as stop leaking it.

arthurz
3 replies
19h2m

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

thinkcontext
1 replies
16h16m

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.

downrightmike
0 replies
14h6m

Social Carbon is just marketing from fossil fuel companies to confuse people into thinking that its people's fault and for companies to shirk responsibility.

chidli1234
2 replies
16h43m

I wonder if these types of events were taken into account in those models for climate change.

thinkcontext
0 replies
16h18m

Single events just aren't that big against the background of global oil and gas production emissions, let alone overall global methane emissions. Its true that O & G emissions are higher than most governments report but most models take this into account in some fashion.

Its also a big topic of research to account for methane emissions because the measured amount is larger than models are predicting from known inventories. But its not thought to be from events like this.

bamboozled
0 replies
16h34m

I really hope so.

So glad I'm installing solar this year, I'm thinking about building a car port and adding even more panels too.

swayvil
1 replies
19h10m

why don't they have a little methane-detector-activated igniter? Burn it up before it gets away.

jofer
0 replies
18h56m

It's a blowout. That means what it sounds like. An explosion and a fire. To fix it, you have to put out the fire. Once you put out the fire, you're still releasing methane.

Methane is flared instead of released under normal conditions if it's not being captured. A blowout is very much not normal conditions.

kjkjadksj
1 replies
17h27m

There is going to be a point in the climate change phenomenon where we have to start taking aggressive measures and actually go after the biggest polluters no matter what nation they hide behind. Especially considering there will probably be forces working to undermine all of these climate goals. Maybe the US could throw some of that military budget around and use Seal team sappers to disable these polluting industrial plants? Now before people get guarded at that idea, just consider the US already does the same to kill actual people with such operations. Merely disabling infrastructure not only has some precedent, but also seems far more benign to me.

thinkcontext
0 replies
16h13m

Trade wars are more likely than shooting wars, but I suppose its not impossible for the former to provoke the latter.

dvh
1 replies
12h4m

Is carbon the Great filter?

euroderf
0 replies
3h43m

Maybe on Venus. I've read a convincing case that Venus can never be terraformed, simply because there is too damned much carbon.

rzzzt
0 replies
19h24m

The description says this happened in 2023 June-to-November-ish in Kazakhstan. It sounds like this was a smaller version of Turkmenistan's crater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater

openrisk
0 replies
10h38m

It is deeply ironic that the modern technological era provided both the means for destroying the planet and monitoring that destruction to minute detail.

idontknowtech
0 replies
18h35m

If you want to get really scared about methane leaks, sinkholes are forming across the tundra as global warming melts the permafrost, creating gigantic methane bubbles as the previously frozen organic material now rots. Those bubbles explode once big enough, creating massive pockmarks which fill in with water.

The amount of methane they leak is estimated to be gigantic, but without full coverage we'll never know.

dpkirchner
0 replies
30m

The fact that we haven't solved the methane leak problem, despite methane being valuable, makes me think that carbon capture that involves pumping CO2 into caves or whatever will have zero chance of success. Anyone promoting such tech is, IMO, a fraud.