Cities and States should immediately take steps to restrict use of natural gas for heating on new construction. At least create a form of carbon tax. In many regions the utility provides both gas and electricity so they aren't losing the revenue, just moving it on the balance sheet from the gas side to electric. Climate change is an existential threat to utilities. Their virtual monopoly, high capital cost advantage are at risk and for many if not most their central power, transmission and distribution assets are likely to become useless and classified as stranded assets in the near future. Without pressure from customers and communities they will not make needed changes though they will mask their delay with marketing suggesting they are being responsible relative to the climate crisis.
22
Electricity (and perhaps heat) are the most addicting "substances" ever created. We must have them. Why not charge the true costs, so that everyone wins?
13
It astounds me that no one seems to be bothered by the fact that the previous estimates are -- according to this story -- off by a huge amt. Not some itsy bitsy teenie weenie amt, but a huge amt. So, how do we know that the current estimates (and I mean estimates) are correct re methane? Or that the old estimates are correct? These look like swags (that means just a crazy guess) -- soon we'll have another study that finds a different value. The main lessen here? The historic data isn't good and will continue to be revised.
4
@Ralphie Note that the corrections all lead to a greater problem arriving sooner. Scientific discovery always evolves and corrects. The concern we should have is that the time frame we've relied on did not adequately reflect the urgency of the problem. There is no time to waste.
27
@1mansvu interesting how the corrections always favor the alarmist position. Why do you think that is?
3
It will take time, but Mother Earth will win out and get her way, and we may or may not get to stay.
16
May be? Nothing is a bigger threat to the future prospects of the Western World than this mad rush to criminalize the use of fossil fuels. Sky is Falling never ends well because in the history of humanity it so far hasn't. Bad things can and will happen and we need to work to mitigate but this fear mongering is a bigger threat than anything else talked about in this article.
5
Actually the biggest threat is to totally ignore facts and data, and to proceed ahead without even acknowledging the problem with releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This is the current Republican ideology: Use denial to delay action, spread fear and maintain political power. Time will destroy this approach, but hopefully before mankind pays too huge a price. As the largest per capita producer of greenhouse gas, the USA will be held to account.
42
@GregP Not true. The sky has fallen several time over geologic history, we simply weren't around to witness it. If we had been our evolution would have stopped and like the dinosaurs we'd be extinct. This time we've rushed the time frame and fortunately if we awaken to the problem soon enough and take sufficient action we can delay the next time the sky falls. Mother Earth doesn't care if we are here or not, she won't protect us we must protect ourselves.
25
the fact that there may be underreported methane contributing to global warming is entirely consistent with the fact that the visible and measurable effects of climate change seem to be occurring ahead of the schedule that the climate models were forecasting.
it's the way that new facts fit into a single consistent picture -- the past decade was the hottest on record, the past january was the hottest january on record, sea level rise in boston harbor, and so on -- that makes the climate change denier looks so intellectually and morally pathetic.
so it's fair to ask, what are climate change deniers doing in positions of responsibility and administration, and who put them there?
and all of that aside -- isn't it just, you know, fair play capitalism that would require a pollution emitting industry to at least measure its own pollution -- and do that lawfully and truthfully?
so methane is the leaky proof that behind climate denier stupidity there is only corporate greed, and the people who think they are being clever with their climate denialism are only parroting what the oil corporations have told them to say.
27
"They used a melting chamber with a set of high-power burners to melt more than 2,000 pounds of ice cores to extract and examine air samples from the past."
Ironic that they did not find a non-fossil fuel manner in which to melt the ice.
Worse they even seem to revel in the raw power of the method they did choose: "Think of a rocket engine, but except the flames pointing at the device.”
Forgive me for thinking this says something troubling about our overall prospects for changing our fossil fuel habits any time soon.
5
Here's some clear thinking: Fossil fuels need to be phased out on a 10-year plan starting today. We can do this. We went to the moon. We won WW2. And, we can convert to solar.
I've seen the future and how wonderful it is. Here in Nice, I am whisked from place to place with a battery/overhead electric tram. No foul-smelling diesel fumes! If I want to go inter-city, I hop on one of the electric SNCF or TGV trains. And citizens are whizzing around the city on electric scooters and bikes. There IS such a difference between this and any foul-smelling gasping for air city experience in the States.
Are we saying that just because France can do it, we can't? Are you nuts!
17
But, but, I thought cows, pigs, and chickens produce methane?
2
TRUMP Is not only speeding the destruction of the US Democracy of We The People, he's speeding the destruction of the planet Earth with his removal of pollution controls and other IPA measures designed to counteract decades of uncontrolled pollution and contamination of our environment. Unchecked, releases of methane cause 20 times the amount of global warming by absorbing more heat from the Sun and other sources than CO2. On top of that, the wasted methane could provide energy for more than a million homes per year. A description I heard on NPR yesterday of Trump's attitude toward the law was complete and total disdain and disregard. At this point in time, Trump is PUBLIC ENEMY #1 of We The People. He is increasing his crimes against humanity at the border, as his policies result in the torture of innocent children, women and men. Trump is the most destructive, criminal person ever to hold high office in the US. He is constantly increasing his stranglehold on our democracy. So, Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander, you see now how Trump has learned his lesson. Your abandonment of simple decency, leave alone morality, will cause irreparable damage to the US and to the Earth. So Susan and Lamar, Have YOU learned YOUR lesson yet? I doubt it. Even if you have, it's too little and too late.
18
i am certain there are many who did, in fact, know. now i am going to read this article and see if that's what it says.
We have to be pro-actively prepared to deal with the looming climate catastrophe as more and more research shows we underestimating the quantity and diversity of the greenhouse gases as indicated in the case of methane emissions.
One way of being prepared is to allocate more r&d funds to develop a new monetary/financial system that is centered on battling global heating and the associated loss of biodiversity. Verhagen 2012"The Tierra Solution: Resolving the Climate Crisis through Monetary Transformation" (www.timun.net) seminally presents the commercial, intellectual, ecological and strategic dimensions of an international monetary system that is based on the monetary carbon standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person. Transforming the present unjust, unsustainable, and therefore, unstable international monetary system would lead not only to ample financial resources, but a global governance system that is socially, economically and political sustainable.
An outstanding economics author and global climate activist stated about this Tierra money system: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
2
Population growth is the biggest threat to the environment. People who have not been born do not pollute at all.
11
@Professor Ice -- gee thanks. Except the amount of pollution generated by each person depends to an extremely large extent on where they live.
Humans live for decades. Birthrates have been declining, and the -rate- of population increase peaked in 1960. And also there is no global government which can simply ban people from having children.
That's good for America, because if this global government was acting for maximum benefit, the people who are in nations that emit the most per-capita would be the ones banned from reproducing.
So, why not focus on what is realistically doable in our country? Bring our emissions down to European levels, and then continue lower. Bring our polluters under control. Rein in our own wasteful habits. Fix our leaky, messy infrastructure.
Not as fun and easy as blaming population, but it's what actually needs to be done and it's what's actually OUR responsibility.
8
We're the Fossil Fuel addicts, peeps. Ain't the fault of Exxon, China, GoodBrain, the (R)s, blah and blah.
We're the ones driving the gashogs, living in the leaky McMansions, flying to (name yer' resort) for a long-weekend, stuffing our chubby guts w/ cowburgers. Problem won't go away till we care enough to change our wasteful ways…
Tick, tick, tick…
8
@Miss Anne Thrope
Yup. But how dare you say it!? It has to be the fault of some big company or a billionaire.
1
@AT -- it's both. The bulk of our population wants CO2 regulated as a pollutant, yet something prevents that legislation from moving briskly along.
Are you surprised that attacks on mass transit programs is funded by groups that get most money from fossil interests?
Or the misinformation about electric vehicles or the reality of greenhouse impacts - pumping out a coordinated disinformation campaign to delay, delay, delay necessary policy response costs bucks.
A misled public finds it harder to change. A party led by the nose by insanely wealthy donors with profits at stake is effectively blocking much of what could have been underway for decades now.
Citizens United only made it worse.
12
There’s no way, absolutely no way we can stop what is going to happen to the planet, and therefore us, in time without what amounts to a worldwide revolution.
What are the chances of that happening before the tipping point is crossed?
The tipping point will come, we’re on it’s edge today. We humans have created profit and consumption as THE standard of success. There must be profit. There must be financial gain. In order to keep the comfortable lifestyles in the rich nations like ours, we cannot turn off the switch. Even poorer nations need to consume and eat, and EVERYTHING involves oil and gas.
We can’t engineer our way out of this world. We’re stuck here, consuming and exploiting every possible resource in order to make a profit for later consumption or to eat and survive now. Traveling to another planet? What a joke, and you’re not going anywhere.
We are conditioned to consumption. It’s only going to change when it becomes so obvious to not change, but it will be far too late by then.
We are facing extinction. Not today of course, but much sooner than anybody you talk to imagines. The most important economic engine in the world is going in the exact opposite direction to what is necessary to save us. Today. As hard and as fast and as quickly as it can.
There is no chance humans can turn it around. I truly believe this.
8
Trump doesn’t care—if he even is aware. He knows he’ll be long gone before the long term effects are truly felt.
4
Is this a gag article? The oil and gas industry and our entire civilization that it spawned (and it runs on) is the reason we have climate change. Oil is the most amazing substance on earth. Without it, none of what we call modern life would be possible including the ~8 billion of us. Unfortunately like so much of our technology and lifestyle it will be the end of us and much of the rest of life as well. We’ve made a deal with the devil and he’s now coming for our soul. Why so surprised?
6
Aspen City Council prefers fossil fuel despite one councilman’s pleas to plug into the local renewable electric grid.
https://www.aspendailynews.com/aspen-city-council-stays-course-with-natural-gas-in-police/article_23b96514-7679-5e20-aabe-a45de3270012.html
By Curtis Wackerle Mar 7, 2017
Mayor criticizes Myrin for ‘politicizing the process’
Aspen City Council elected to keep a natural gas boiler in the design of the new police facility, despite one councilman’s pleas to unplug from fossil fuels.
Staff from the city’s capital asset department and consultants working on their behalf told council members that it would cost potentially $4 million more to redesign and build a new energy system for the 18,000-square-foot structure. That plus additional operating costs for a system based around an electric boiler, and possibly geothermal wells, was enough to convince the majority of city council to stay the course.
Councilman Bert Myrin has made an issue out of the use of natural gas in the new police building, arguing that Aspen’s government, which regularly touts its commitment to renewable energy, should walk the talk by powering the building off the municipal electric grid, which is 100 percent powered by wind, hydro and other renewable sources.
City staff has said that natural gas is a more practical fuel source for the police building, which consumes energy 24 hours a day, and that electric boilers require more space and have a shorter lifespan.
1
Oil companies had to pay for the value of all resources extracted on federal land - even if natural gas was flared off. Now they do not have to pay for 'unused' resources. Natural gas that's flared off isn' t paid for.
And how insane is it that on a planet with limited resources we simply burn off natural gas that we can't - or won't collect?
God forbid we leave anything in the ground for future use.
19
@cynicalskeptic
I don’t know about you, but I’m the most important person who ever lived and I should be allowed to: have as many kids as I want (notice I didn’t say could afford), drive a gigantic vehicle, throw one use plastics and my star bucks cup etc away, own a gigantic house, expect cheap subsidized power, and in short live the American dream. And oh yeah, it’s trump and the oil companies that got us into this.
8
It is not about climate at all. It is about lending more money to the federal government. Traditionally governments borrowed for wars. Now wars are not is not in fashion. Big money guys figured it out that by exaggerating climate change, they can justify even deep federal debt. Now the national debt is $23 trillion. We pay more than one billion per day in interest. With the Green New Deal, it will soon be two or three billion per day. People who collect this interest are the main reason for the climate change emergency. More: https://www.datadriveninvestor.com/2020/01/30/science-and-money-in-the-climate-change-debate/
2
@Henryk A. Kowalczyk - "Big money guys" are pushing to find out how the planet's climate works?
Well, true, the big money guys got the GOP to give them huuuge tax breaks, leading to our Trillion A Year deficit - whereas normal people would pay down debt during good times. Ballooning debt courtesy of Trump and his zombie horde in the GOP.
But I don't see the climate angle fitting in there - don't you recall that the Koch family is one of the richest in the USA, and they're fighting tooth and nail AGAINST climate science?
Or do you think it's Texas oil billionaires funding the scheme to figure out how climate works? Pretty noble, since their products are one of the principle causes of the problem.
Oh my god, I clicked your bloggy link and the denier invoked Einstein and Copernicus as if they'd have disagreed with the clear physics of the greenhouse effect. At least is was a variation of deniers nobly comparing themselves (erroneously) to Galileo. He must be glad the shame is spreading around.
Get your head out of the oil sands and face reality.
17
@b fagan
I am afraid that, as you partially confirm, you are so surprised with the cold logic of my reasoning that you throw at me the old mantra of oil money. You ignore the fact that guys as Koch family, are a minor league compared to those nameless who are ready to lend us at least $10 trillion for fighting climate change. I read once that if a text contains more than 15% of arguments that a reader is not familiar with, it makes it hard to understand.
1
@Henryk A. Kowalczyk -- I'm sorry, do I smell a whiff of globalist conspiracy theory?
"that guys as Koch family, are a minor league compared to those nameless who are ready to lend us at least $10 trillion"
Yet the Koch family, and other guys as, are funding denial groups and misinformation campaigns. The ice is melting everywhere and you want to blame a "nameless" conspiracy. How do they manage to secretly melt ice and fool around with the Arctic?
6
The oil companies are continually looking to ensure they don’t leave stranded assets in the ground when the climate change reality hits—they are well aware of the problems. By fomenting doubt, they will delay needed action. Since changeover of the infrastructure will take 100 years, the oil companies will have achieved their goal.
6
Relaxed environmental policy by most Govt, including in the US, resulting from the nexus of big oil companies with politicians routinely engage in that practice. Trump admin is making the situation far worse.
//in recent years, some of these same companies have significantly increased their flaring, as well as the venting of natural gas and other potent greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere, according to data from the three largest shale-oil fields in the United States.
The practice has consequence for climate change because natural gas is a potent contributor to global warming. It also wastes vast amounts of energy: Last year in Texas, venting and flaring in the Permian Basin oil field alone consumed more natural gas than states like Arizona and South Carolina use in a year.
Exxon’s venting and flaring has surged since 2017 to record highs, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of gas produced, the numbers show. Exxon flared or vented 70 percent more gas in 2018 than it did the previous year, according to the data, bringing an end to several years of improvements.//
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/climate/natural-gas-flaring-exxon-bp.html
5
Back during the Cheney administration, the incentives for drilling new natural gas wells were lucrative. In Wyoming, drilling was rampant, but there were no pipelines for transport. The problem was, if you drilled a well and then capped it, you didn’t get the incentive. So wells were drilled to capture the incentive, but the naturals gas, which is more than 95% methane, was simply vented to atmosphere.
We really need a thorough overhaul of our regulations, and an end to incentives for oil and gas production. The oil depletion allowance needs to go.
8
Makes no sense that we don't increase the production of nuclear power.
It strikes me that the left consistently states that an existential crisis exists, but the only way out is green energy. If it is an existential crisis, doesn't that mean we would use all available tools necessary to combat extinction?
4
@They I'm as far left as they come and it's plainly clear that we just don't have the ability to power our way of life as it exists with renewables alone, and that nuclear aught be part of the equation right now. I think we need to invest in perfecting thorium reactor technology, which is far safer, cheaper and cleaner than uranium... we really can't be dragging our feet on this.
3
@Jon Q
I know that ITER project to create a nuclear fusion reactor is moving along, 2025 and 2030 being important dates as to viability.
In the meantime, there are other options available which are being ignored. It makes no sense that during yesterday's debate, candidates could talk about the existential crisis of climate change, but not one could utter the word "nuclear" (clearly out of deference to being in NV, home of Yuca Mountain Nuclear Repository). The lack of mention of nuclear conveys the idea that the existential threat is a talking point rather than a reality.
1
@They
It is likely too late in the US to do anything in the near term. We have lost the capability to build plants and there is no real push to start. The plants would be expensive--but would last 60 years. However, it would require around 250 plants to make a real dent in US electricity production. Had construction continued over the last 30 years, nuclear would be much more viable.
The fossil fuel companies--ever so good at propaganda--actively vilified nuclear during the 60s--80s as they didn't want to lose market.
3
And where would humans be without oil and gas? Unable to drive to work, cold and shivering in the winter and grounded from air travel.
1
@Peter The alternative is not to shiver in the winter, but rather to significantly reduce methane release. Finding out the truth rather than to simply demy the problem, as Republicans have done, is an important step in moving toward reasonable solutions.
11
@Peter - that's probably the same thing cave man said. Have you heard of progress?
2
@Peter and where will we be with oil and gas? Extinct! Read the UN climate reports. Clearly millions of humans will not survive to the next millennium unless we drastically cut our climate gas emissions. Fossil fuels have made us comfortable but don’t be fooled: they will be the cause of our demise as well if we don’t fix this. You no doubt are familiar with the story of the Trojan horse. Fossil fuels are just such a horse. Don’t be fooled.
4
Has not the current administration done away with regulations that would at least limit these emissions. And now the oil and natural gas drillers need not even worry about the flow of methane that resulted from any wells they dug. It’s like we are willfully destroying our planet and can’t accomplish it fast enough. It’s very important that we vote.
14
This is where government regulation comes in. Imagine cars being driven without rules, signs and traffic lights? It would be chaos and there would be calls to ban them. Any technology can be good or bad, depending on how it is used.
6
Amazing... blame it on the oil/gas companies while at the same time, thousands and thousands of jets cruise the planet 24/7; million and millions of vehicles cruise the highways and streets 24/7; millions of homes crank up the heat and A/C 24/7... Don't we all share in this situation? At the most basic level, if no one bought gasoline tomorrow, the oil/gas companies would stop selling it.
4
@Taoshum
This is about methane. These other sources, while increasing CO2 are not exhausting methane.
5
@Taoshum You are absolutely correct. Oil and gas are prices do not reflect the external damages they inflict on socieity, which is why an increasing number of economists support a carbon fee and dividend, levied as far upstream as possible (at the mine, well-head, port of entry) and returned to households to offset the price increases for the most vulnerable. When people receive their monthly dividend, they can choose to use it to continue to engage in behavior that will now be quite expensive to engage in, or they can opt to put it towards something else. Businesses and individuals will be forced to cut back on unnecessary air travel. No more keeping office buildings at 65 in the summer while people run heaters under their desks. Until renewable energy is able to scale up to a point where it provides the majority of our energy needs, we have no choice but to rely on fossil fuels to power our lives. However, we need to reduce our fossil fuel use drastically in order to avoid catastrophe, and the best way to do that is to price it appropriately. You can visit https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ to learn more about this idea and join an amazing group of dedicated people who are working tirelessly to make this reality.
1
@Taoshum
Whoa!? What kind of narrative is that? You act like we’re some how responsible for our actions!? I like it better when its big oil and big businesses fault.
We’ve passed peak oil; now we have peak leaks!
An often-overlooked fact about fracking is that every frack will become less productive over time, unlike conventionally drilled wells. The hyper productivity in domestically-produced hydrocarbons we perceive today will produce diminishing returns every year—much like investing in a Trump casino.
11
@BlueMountainMan conventionally drilled wells decline with time too. Oil and natural gas are finite resources. Conventionally drilled wells typically are in larger more permeable reservoirs of oil and gas so they tend to last longer. And conventionally drilled wells are often fracked to continue their production.
2
@BlueMountainMan non fracked Wells also degrade over time, I don't understand what you are getting at. Your comment is inaccurate.
Duh!!
Did anyone at the NYT read the article in the NYT about methane releases by oil and gas companies.
The largest corporations in the world will continue to purchase Senators, and Representatives, and Presidents, and Governors, yada, yada, yada to insure oil and gas operations see very limited regulations on emissions.
So, concerned journalists can write all they wish about the terrible methane emissions, but absolutely nothing will change for the betterment of humanity’s fight to stop Climate Change.
Money Talks Its Truth and Its Facts - the world listens and obeys.
All the rest becomes just opinionated commentary.
8
@David - Ah, but the ten billion dollars that Bezos will donate is silent. Scientific community took no notice.
1
Oh for goodness sakes! This has been a known fact for a long time...the fact that nothing has been done about it is shameful...it’s positively criminal.
18
This article is old news and there is certainly no mystery here. Scientists have known for a long time that the fossil fuel industry leaks methane at every step of production. Calling these methane leaks a mystery is irresponsible and uninformed journalism which will further detract from immediately needed cessation of fossil fuels extraction.
8
Bernie or Bust voters need to look at a story like this and tell me it’s not better to have someone as flawed as Bloomberg in the White House as opposed to Trump. I support Bernie in the primary and will vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.
Trump’s rolling back of the regulation of fugitive emissions should produce an automatic vote of opposition, at least by those of us who acknowledge the science of and emergency that is climate change.
9
The same physics we are messing with makes the surface of Venus hot enough to melt lead and Mars cold enough to freeze out CO2.
And those are our sister planets. What could go wrong?
13
@Erik Frederiksen, Well we could move 33,000,000 miles closer to the sun.
Reliance on fracking for cheap natural gas, which is displacing coal production, is also a #methane producer https://cnbc.com/2019/10/01/methane-is-achilles-heel-of-fracking-and-the-booming-us-gas-industry.html
5
@Mark Underwood knowlengr
Can’t talk about fracking. That boomed along with oil and gas exploration during st Obama’s term. Off limits.
This is news? Cows have been “blamed” for methane for years.
2
The powerful don't listen. Why?
Perhaps the super-rich see global cooking as an easy way to kill off Billions of "unprofitable" poor people?
Unfortunately, their plans have backfired, and they're now in a panic to rip off all the wealth in the world to protect them.
It won't.
10
@William
Agreed, the changes coming will be dramatic and no place will be safe.
The armed guards of the wealthy will turn on them and take what they want.
6
This has been common knowledge for years, but now that the energy industry has figured out a way to capture the methane, inject back in the ground to - you guessed it, extract more oil - the corporate media can now openly discuss methane from oil extraction.
We need politicians who understand the urgency of climate change to rein in the idiocy of the oil and gas industry.
10
Yawn. I'm very concerned. I'm going to go run both my car's engines, turn up my furnace, and start my stove to see global warming take effect.
3
@Meat Your individual effort to warm the planet is inconsequential. What is not inconsequential is the anti-science strain running through the US which you represent.
10
@Meat There is an odd subculture in the US which celebrates ignorance.
14
@Meat
Fossil fuels are still finite...so your desire to burn baby burn is just wasteful....but then who cares about future people.
Duh. This has been known for a very long time.
2
Duh. Really?
2
Great. Another headline that will spur #45 on toward further moves to deregulate safeguards and denigrate the planet.
He seems unable to restrain himself from piling critical injury on top of deep wound when he spots any evidence that points to critical environmental damage.
8
Acid rain is returning to the Great Lakes. My friend, a process chemist maintains and services industrial sump systems around Lake Ontario. The corrosion rate of the impellers is much higher than it should normally be. His guess is the emissions blowing up though the Ohio Valley. I understand there are counties in Missouri attempting to sue the emitters there for the same effects on their local waterways. Climate does not honor political boundaries.
12
This study is confirming something already known, and refining the estimates of the probable effects. However, we persist in not holding people and countries accountable, tolerating attacks on science, and putting the future and survival of humans in peril. Our stewardship of this planet is poor, in the name of "civilization" and "progress". What bigger issue is there to address today, globally, for all of humankind ?
14
Turns out capitalism isn't such a great idea after all. Didn't your Jesus warn you against pursuing wealth?
29
My Senator Steve Daines is all in favor for eliminating all restrictions on methane saying this will help create jobs. What right does he have to worsen planet warming and affect the millions and millions of families who live along the coasts when he only represents a little over 1 million? The U.S. Senate and the electoral college are anachronisms which should be abolished.
18
@Jackson The Electoral College and the composition of the U.S. Senate has everything to do with the thwarting of intelligent environmntal policy. As long as antedeluvians like Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and their ilk are directing affairs, things will get ever more rapidly worse.
18
I did too.
@Jackson The US Senate and the electoral college are features of our founding which are undemocratic, but were installed to encourage smaller states to join the US and ratify the constitution. A necessity at the time, they now permit the minority to overrule the interests of the majority. That undemocratic process, with a minority voted president, and large states having the same representation in the senate as those rural states with a small fraction of the population, results in our current anti-environment policies.
3
As if anything is really going to be done to mitigate or stop this?
Let's be realistic here. Right-wing populist control of the so-called Western democracies ensures that no matter how much science reveals about environmental degradation -- nothing will be done.
The MAGA crowd of people don't believe in science and couldn't give a darn about the future consequences of their actions today. They are celebrated and encouraged by venal political demagogues.
No matter how much evidence is amassed. No matter how dire the eventual consequences. Nothing is going to change.
23
@George S. I think that climate censorship is a bigger threat than climate skepticism. It's unbelievable to me that the Times would pump up one side and silence the other.
This is pure propaganda, which we know is effective even with the educated.
Science wrong? "Bleeding" as treatment for infectious diseases. Based on the "humours" of ancient Greece, mainstream medicine supported this until the early 19th Century.
In the 70s medicine told us that eating too much saturated fat caused our coronary arteries to clog. A whole generation was denied the pleasure of butter and steaks. We learn they were wrong.
In 1968 Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb struck. It taught that before the end of the 70s millions would starve, even in America. The world believed this, causing human rights violations in poor countries.
The best parallel is The Hole in the Ozone Layer. Found to be a grave danger to humans, science budgets and grants rose. Human causation was found, corrective measures taken, and the hole receded, decades before predicted.
But once the money stopped, the skeptics turned out, attacking the premise of the ozone layer from many directions.
This is how it will be with global warming. When the calamities never come, science will declare victory.
It is so obvious that scientists cannot be objective about climate change. Bezos just gave them another ten billion reasons to support it.
Scientists could give better examples, but they are afraid to stick out their necks.
3
@Bill Keating
Bill - I truly want to thank you for once again reminding me that it was when I left Long Island and got away from Long Islanders it was one of the happiest days of my life!
7
@Bill Keating
I would respectfully disagree with you and don't feel that what is being reported can be called propaganda!
From 1958 to present, there has been a 31.27% increase in multiple types of atmospheric Greenhouse gasses. It's not just CO2 or Methane that we have to worry about. There are other gasses that are contributing to this problem!
The other problem has to do with the fact that there are just to many people. So as one commentator correctly pointed out, even if we were to reduce fossil fuel usage to 1960 levels, it would only slow the rise of CO2 and other Greenhouse gasses. It would not stop the problem, it would only delay the problem.
Unfortunately, delaying the problem is now a mute issue. Glaciers are melting. Ice caps are getting smaller. Rain Forests are being destroyed. Oceans are becoming acidic. Ocean currents are slowing. Ocean reefs are dying.
Part of the problem is that for years, we have been told that the Amazon is the worlds lungs and that really isn't true.
If we destroy our oceans, then our survival is in question. Our oceans are already in trouble!
10
It's sad that educated, cognizant citizens of the world appear helpless, as they watch the planet crumble.
As I see in the news, Jeff Bezos has taken a small step with devoting money toward the cause.
That money will obviously move toward worthy causes, but how slow will that impact be felt?
It's time for people to take to the streets.
Human contribution to global warming is not a "Maybe"
Money thrown at the issue will not have near the impact as citizen revolt.
16
Thank you for this major story.
Oil is killing us.
Do oilmen and Republicans not care about their grandchildren?
They do not.
No one cares about climate change, but it is the only issue. Really. Forget everything else.
All of the mental and creative forces of the world should be focused on this one problem, because if it is not solved, we will have no problems. Dead people have no problems.
17
People don't really seem to care. Middle-aged and older friends are still flying all over the place, driving SUV's, heating vacation homes...pretty discouraging.
8
@Kim
Actually, in my experience, it's the Millennials who seem to think air travel is the equivalent of long-distance Uber rides. And who can blame them, when tickets are so super cheap ?
7
@Kim ...How many solar panels do you have on your roof?
@W.A. Spitzer
You live in New Mexico. How many do you have?
Not just fossil fuels, but vegans and vegetarians. They are gassy and bloated an produce 6% more greenhouse gases (GHG) than meat eaters.
"Shifting to dietary Scenario 3, which accounts for both reduced Caloric intake and a shift to the USDA recommended food mix, increases energy use by 38 %, blue water footprint by 10 %, and GHG emissions by 6 %.
These perhaps counterintuitive results are primarily due to USDA recommendations for greater Caloric intake of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and fish/seafood, which have relatively high resource use and emissions per Calorie."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-015-9577-y
3
@Fourteen14 In other words, if you read the article, any changes in food patterns is negligible to the overall issue. The food chain supply is not exactly the main contributor and even then it is negligible the changes in diet. It is possible your post is satire so apologize if I missed that.
4
Over 500 million years accumulation of carbon based deposits are being extracted and combusted over the course of about 200 years in the form of oil, gas and coal, so it defies logic that this wouldn't cause instability in the earth's atmosphere, unless of coarse you believe the earth is only 6000 years old.
43
Exactly. The same that believe that their savior is coming any minute to whisk them to heaven so there’s no need to worry about conserving this Earthly environment.
12
VOTE!
3
Oh c'mon. Everything will be fine.
We're banning plastic straws and plastic bags.
Once that's fully in place balance will be restored.
6
From the article. “Adding to climate concerns, the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities.”
Is Trump simply evil or was he sent by god to destroy life?
4
The reason we have so many nuclear weapons is to solve the population problem when the time is right. Unless we can do it from space via the Space Force.
2
To put the Trump emission regulation thing in perspective:
370000 tons of additional methane
80 times more potent than co2
Equivalent of 29 million tons of co2
Human activity emits 45 billion tons of co2 per year.
So, to sum up:
Trump's tilting at windmills (surprise)
We're probably doomed as a species
2
The fall of man seems inevitable. But not to worry. Some fraction of us will survive this brave new world. Just don't count on the rapture to save you. Just like Trump, it matters what you do, not what you say.
2
Seriously, this has been argued for decades. The gas boom/bu
Good luck with that. Trump just rolled back regulations on methane emissions and reporting. MAGA.
2
Gee, didn't Trump just relax regulations on the release of methane?
2
I'm shocked, absolutely shocked I tell you!
1
...and may not be.
We’re all so exhausted from lousy leadership. We write our reps, we call our reps, em we’ve marched. We won’t surrender, but when will leadership and courage reveal itself.
3
Why is the NYT not addressing the biggest problem of all which is overpopulation? Why??Instead they are beating around the bushes about fossil fuels.
No matter what you do, if you produce more an 1 offspring you are a net contributor to the problem.
2
I was instructed about that 50 years ago.
1
The cattle and poultry industry carries a carbon footprint many times larger than does the O&G sector. The coal industry which today provides the electrical energy boost to your EV car's rechargeable battery is even worse. The carbon footprint of a EV car is lower than that of a gasoline driven automobile only if its full power battery range exceeds about 350-400 miles.
While the scientific data related to greenhouse gases and its adverse affects on our climate is abundant and right on point, the way we think about the whole ecosystem as it relates to reducing our carbon footprint is entirely wrong. Stop eating meat, for example, and you will push needle in the positive direction far more than you ever will with buying EVs or Hybrid vehicles.
2
Without U.S. leadership in curbing emissions, it will just be a race to the bottom. The other side of the climate equation is the wholesale destruction of the rain forests, also called Earth's lungs. What's going on in the Amazon basin is mind-boggling and depressing.
Friends, be prepared (if that's possible) for warmer temperatures, more severe storms, ocean rise, flooding, drought, famine, mass migrations and wars fought over shrinking resources. I won't be around to see the worst of it, but my kids and grandkids will.
The clock is ticking down toward a dystopian future. The only hope I see is a change in leadership, not just in the U.S. but in the industrialized world. We need new leaders who take the problem seriously and act before it truly is too late.
8
The surge in methane is from vast quantities of methane hydrate in the arctic subliming (going directly from solid to gas). Hold on to your hats- it is going to warm up very quickly in the Arctic thus releasing even more methane. This is the beginning, sad to say.
14
All the fracking that is taking place while so much methane that could be recovered is emitted to the atmosphere to increase global warming is industry not thinking properly. If this emitted methane was captured and infused into the natural gas infrastructure as opposed to the environmental damage caused by fracking it would be a double environmental win. If regulations and business initiatives where presented to the oil industry it could have a significant impact as the US could be the world leader in this methane debacle.
6
Freedom isn't driving highways or ramming pristine environments in monster trucks and SUVs. Freedom isn't gunning through National Parks on snowmobiles spooking wildlife and eroding wildlife corridors nor is it spreading invasive mussels into our waterways or spilling gasoline into lakes and rivers with ski and cruise boats. Freedom isn't four-wheelers or motorbikes ripping hillsides and wilderness terrains.
Freedom is the right to vote.
When will we get a leader who will stand up to the oil industry and usher in a new vision of innovation that will free us from our death trap dependence on oil? There has to be a better way.
24
@Debra I can't believe how many people are afraid of your comment. I wish I had a thousand recommendations. Nation of cowering complacency.
2
@Patrick McCord Freedom requires moderation and responsibility. It isn't free.
Sorry, but we knew, and we denied.
It's called greed and complacency; it happened to America somewhere during the 70's, when we could have invested just a bit of that oil & gas money to create new, better energy source. Instead those industries made servants out of many in government on both sides of the aisle.
I guess lobbying is easier than addressing the issue, and those 'feel good' stories about the 18 year old who just wants to follow daddy into the mine are so beautiful.
That 18 year old would probably love to build and install solar energy panels or research into wind energy or ... the possibilities were, and are endless.
It just takes a bit of 'vision' and the desire to invest in the future for our children and their children, even if it costs us in the present. We can afford it.
That's certainly what previous generations did for us.
17
A population of a few million human hunter gatherers was apparently beyond the carrying capacity of the planet because many places where we showed up the megafauna disapppeared.
What enabled us to double our population many times into the billions was agriculture, which developed in the relatively stable Holocene period which we are watching recede rapidly in our rear view mirrors.
If we wreck agriculture our population will likely return to at best a few million and the reduction will not be a pretty sight.
6
Remind me again why a massive part of our budget goes to the military? Is that actually the will of the people?
We are a democratic republic after all.
Pretty sure if Americans could check a box to have their tax dollars go to maintaining a US military presence all over the world or supporting the US in bringing countries together and leading the way in research and innovation to find global solutions both for public health reasons but also for subsidizing research that will lead to solutions that will stimulate the economy.
It's a win win.
6
Fossil fuels, the republican party and the good old USA have destroyed the world.
14
So, are the GOP’s sacred cows off the hook?
3
www.livescience.com › 23678-methane-emissions-roman-times
Oct 3, 2012 - Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with 20 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, Sapart told LiveScience. ... 3 study detailed in the journal Nature, the researchers found that methane production was high around 100 B.C., during the heyday of the Roman civilization, and waned around A.D. 200 as the empire faltered.
AKA Wood burning
3
Still attacking this disease's vector, while its source rages om, unchecked: Population growth. The Earth's population has doubled since the 1970's, and today's growth is still 1%/year.
Only rigorous regulation of births can possibly help. Since the most egregious nations in adding to the Earth's population burden are Muslim, and that faith, today's fastest growing ethnic/religious group, absolutely prohibits any form of birth control or abortion: The planet is doomed.
10
@Austin Liberal Did you ever hear of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 publication The Population Bomb?
I think that you and him would fit together very easily. This Stanford University biologist with his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” selling in the millions with a message that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply too many of us.
Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.”
(source: a May 31, 2015 Times article)
Just the reaction to this foolish book, popularized in large part by the author's ability to persuade while a frequent guest of Johnny Carson, illustrates why climate change proponents should be careful and not lose their traditional right to being sceptical until proven otherwise.
Poorer countries, filled with fear from this book, committed human rights violations in attempting to lower the population before Erlich's disaster struck.
1
This isn’t one person writing a popular book. This is thousands and thousands of scientists from all over the world sounding the alarm. And from reading other climate change skeptics comments talking about grants that the government and scientists get is incentive for this is absurd compared to oil industry profits.
The effects are happening right now: ice caps melting, ocean and air temperature changes, acidity levels of the ocean, sea level rise (just talk to anyone in the Maldives). You need to turn down the Fox News talking points so you can hear the alarm.
4
@P Wils Maybe we have more to fear from climate censorship than from climate change.
Climate change. No doubt. Climate change due to human acts that will result in the end of the world or worse, not so sure.
You are aware of the Great Dust Bowl that hit the plains states during the 1930s? For almost ten years that area suffered from an extraordinary change in climate.
According to the National Drought Mitigation Center,
"Of all the droughts that have occurred in the United States, the drought events of the 1930s are widely considered to be the 'drought of record' for the nation."
Along with the droughts came record breaking temperatures and wind storms more violent than ever experienced. Soil was carried so far that the dark cloud could be seen from New York.
The greatest ecological disaster of the last century needed no human help, but if it had occurred during the last 30 years will you concede that it would have been blamed on climate change?
I'm not denying climate change. I'm bringing a healthy scientific scepticism to claims of human cause and catastrophic consequences.
How can a reasonable person not see that it is entirely in the interests of the scientists to go along? NASA's Earth Sciences division was headed for extinction until rescued by climate change. Redundant with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. How much money does the scientific community receive due to this threat?
And yesterday they received another ten billion incentives.
1
I guess it would be too much to expect the NYT to inform its readers that the methane emissions from food production (livestock and agriculture) are double the amount of methane emissions from oil and gas production.
This is the hard truth that in unspoken and apparently unwritten.
What is the agenda here?
Why would you only cover the oil and gas source of methane and never write about a source that is twice as large - human food production?
8
@Baron95 ....“Emissions from fossil sources are correspondingly larger than many have been estimating,”.....Did you miss the point of the article?
2
@Baron95 They have covered it, at risk of the prevalent ridicule over the issue. Also the Times has covered innovative and progressive agriculture initiatives
1
All the climate scientists are wrong - way too conservative. Climate change is happening far faster than anyone has predicted. It won’t be linear, but exponential through chain reaction after chain reaction in a downward spiral.
10
We know what to do: 100% clean energy, everywhere. Start with electricity and transport + stop eating beef. We know how to do this: political will—I live in Hawaii where we are moving toward 100% clean electricity, a legally binding mandate we passed in 2015. We have the technology. We know the costs are less than the costs of not acting. The biggest obstacle are fossil fuel companies and the feckless politicians who refuse to guarantee our kids a safe future. In 2020, vote, and vote for climate action. Because your life and especially your kids’ lives depend on it.
18
"Benjamin Hmiel, a researcher at the University of Rochester and the study’s lead author. “If these emissions are truly coming from oil, gas extraction, production use.."
Does not sound conclusive.
2
If you're under 30, have no illusions about this: older generations will not forfeit the profligate lifestyles they've enjoyed from burning oil nor will big oil give up their profits. Neither cares enough about leaving behind an uninhabitable planet for you and your children.
There was a chance if the U.S.A would have taken the lead decades ago, but let's not forget it's a nation that will allow the selling of flavored nicotine to its children and is actually deregulating environmental protections.
12
@Paulo We'd have had a chance, had the U.S. taken the lead decades ago...
1
"Oil and gas production may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the earth’s atmosphere than previously thought,"
Wow, ya think? I really had no doubts. Let's just wait 'til all that permafrost melts, then see how much more methane we can survive ... but let's just keep blaming cows.
4
Whenever anyone says we can't do anything because have to meet the world's energy demands ask yourself: is that the demand of responsible adults, or is it the demand of a screaming toddler.
4
We need to charge Trump crimes against humanity now. Our future generations will be breathing coal and fossil fuel toxins and thanks to our GOP and religions that support him. Lock them up now someone needs to be held accountable.
4
You were told it was the cows.
You were told it was the rice paddies.
In fact, it's the fossil fuel industry. Specifically, oil & gas extraction & sales. Even more specifically, across the Russian Federation, chiefly in Siberia, where most of the oil & gas fields Russians control are badly mismanaged.
Khodorkovsky was famous for actually trying to improve infrastructure on the oil-and-gas fields he took over, and to bring in best practices from the West, when he was arrested and subjected to the kind of sham trial, complete with expropriation & sadistically harsh punishment that Trump's role model, Putin, believed he is entitled to mete out, as Russia's "chief law enforcement officer."
I kid you not: we are headed for exactly that kind of abusive autocratic totalitarianism in the judiciary, if Trump continues to follow in Putin's footsteps, as he currently is being allowed to by a castrated GOP.
Russia's atrociously mismanaged oil-and-gas industry is accelerating the melting of permafrost & the soaring emission of methane. Affiliated entities in other countries are of course also culpable.
But the cunning use of false arguments, such as "people need to eat less meat, raise fewer cattle to curb methane emissions" has been perfected by Russian propaganda-masters who used to promote Marx/Lenin but now work for Rosneft & Gazprom. Russia pushes lies.
It's all misinformation & it is about time that it stopped.
To help the climate, quickly: Drive less. Please, drive less.
9
And of course, yet another Times gloom and doom article that fails to even mention the most critical cause of all climate related crises - out of control population growth in China, India and other 2nd and 3rd world nations that won’t do a thing to mitigate the energy demands of all these people. Too many people are the root cause of climate change, but it’s politically incorrect to focus on that so let’s focus on the cows these people eat and the cars they want to drive instead.
7
We are really in for it as Global Warming accelerates and increases the rate of perma-frost melting which is loaded with Methane.
7
The only candidate with any credibility on the issue is Sanders. He tends to believe scientists. If any of the readers really cared they could send his campaign a few bucks and vote for him.
4
@AS ...What? Get serious. Every one of the Democratic candidates has climate change high on their agenda. Personally, I think that if Sanders heads the ticket, Democrats are going to lose a lot of the down ballot races making it impossible to accomplish any of his goals. I think a more moderate candidate is far more like to be able to unite the country and move effectively on climate change.
2
@AS they did not vote for Inslee whose main platform was climate. they did not elect Gore whose main platform was climate. the readers don't care.
2
I used to work in oil and gas. It’s an incredibly bad industry. I worked in drill tooling and drilling inspection services.
While I was out on the rig sites, I can tell you there were near continuous chemical odors that I could not identify.
I was a mechanic in the US Army for 8 years. I know what machine oil smells like. I know what diesel exhaust and fuel oil smells like. The odors coming from drilling operations don’t smell like that.
Sometimes the odors were sulfuric. Sometimes they were just really sweet & metallic smelling. I’ve never smelled anything like that since I left those drilling pads. And those drilling pads are emitting whatever that is, 365 days per year, 24 hours per day.
Also, most oil industry employees are militant about maintaining secrecy regarding what goes on those drilling rigs. When independent or government inspectors are on site, great care is taken to ensure leaks are covered up, spills are buried or covered up, etc.
And people in the industry are going to vehemently lie and deny that too, because they know if the general public truly knew how much pollution the oil industry emits, there’s no way anyone would allow a rig within miles of their homes.
The overwhelming majority of oil industry workers would rather die prematurely of lung cancer than embrace careers in energy solutions that aren’t killing them, because they wear the harm being done to them as a perverse badge of honor. They LIKE the fact their jobs are killing them.
59
@Austin Ouellette ... Special thanks for posting this. Your insider's perspective is helpful.
3
Ms. Tabuchi
Thank you for this well written summary article about this latest report of greenhouse gas emissions. It is an important study and I recommend that we continue funding these studies.
I further believe we need to instrument the permafrost so that we can get a more precise measure of the RATE of release as the permafrost thaws. It is entirely possible that the release rate will be beyond human control by the end of the century and could cause a runaway release of this very potent greenhouse gas and could possibly warm the Earth to a point that much of life and its food supply would be in jeopardy including the extinction of many species, perhaps including our own.
I have a handle on how we could restore the atmospheric balance of carbon dioxide but believe that capturing and sequestering methane with some kind of process is a urgently needed research and technology development investment.
I urge the editors of the Times to send the environmental reporting team to all of the laboratories to check on their work in exploring processes for capturing and sequestering methane and the other greenhouse gasses. If we are not doing much I fear that the great run that our species has had on Earth will come to an end.
As you must know this is not an easy problem to solve because the World economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels and most technical solutions will cause a political donnybrook.
7
Controlling carbon dioxide is much more difficult than methane. We need to prioritize our efforts and make rational tradeoffs. Since the US proves unable to curb or offset the former, its best efforts should focus on regulating the latter.
2
Fake news! Fake news! We can't wean ourselves from fossil fuels! Don't Tread on Me! You can't tell me my diesel coal rolling hurts the environment! I'm free to do whatever I want!
The problem with this issue, and the country in general, is that the Founders expected a baseline of education, concern for the common good, and compassion that Enlightenment thinkers all took for granted. Yes, there were a ton of issues with the "old white men" who started this grand experiment, but we have managed to dumb it down past the point of salvaging. The very fact that there are dissenting opinions on the climate crisis more than proves that.
37
People forget that not every founder believed the average person would be educated enough or otherwise able to competently choose leaders.
7
@Matt When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, every state had property requirements that had to be met before a man was permitted to vote. This kept the overall level of education of voters high.
As Madison, the principal author of the Constitution said,
"The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right [to vote] exclusively to property [owners], and the rights of persons may be oppressed... . Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property [owners] ...may be overruled by a majority without property...."
The Constitution left it up to the states to determine who was qualified to vote. In 1856 North Carolina was the last to eliminate property ownership qualifications.
Thus the people of the country decided that the vote of an illiterate counted as much as that of a Nobel Laureate. The price for such high principles, according to the exit polls, was President Trump.
Do we reinstate the property qualifications to assure that we never get another Trump. Or, given the legal election of a Trump, do those of the higher intellect accept the choice of the lower class voters or do they push to remove the President from office as soon as possible on any grounds,
The nation seems to have decided in favor of a balance, where the higher classes will accept or reject a President depending on just how incompetent or dangerous he appears to be.
1
@Matt It’s like all we’ve kept is the “old white men” part.
1
I'm depressed that so few people are commenting about this today.
9
@JayC
I have found that Prozac has worked well for me in similar situations.
1
The quote by a person smarter than me comes to mind “Never in human history has a privileged class given up those privileges willingly “. We in the industrial world have grown fat dumb and lazy burning fossil fuels to give us a very comfortable life and most will be ok handing their children a not so rosy future rather than give up their trucks and SUV’s.
16
Methane bad - no methane ok.
Got it. Not stupid.
Natural gas heats my home and millions of others. And used for millions of jobs.
Whats the solution? I am not going cold - or wind, solar or geothermal.
4
Geothermal is actually a wonderful system. We put it in to our previous home, country property. A 4,000 century old Queen Anne brick home ran 200-600/ month during heating season before we put it in. Then the cost TOTAL to heat from October through April dropped to $605 our most severe winter in the next 8 years!
9
Nuclear power
2
@James luce ...Trump just relaxed rules on methane emission. The first step is to elect someone who will put tighter regulations back in place.
1
Self-evident that the fossil fuel industry doesn’t consider it economical to capture its own fuel-stock leaks right out in our own back yards (e.g. Bakken Basin)...
Digressing – this flaring has gone on for decades, so why the NYT considers this and German lignite mining to suddenly be news from time to time, escapes me…
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/hse/article/17279043/world-bank-global-gas-flaring-up-3-in-2018
Further, the total (as in, these things flare 24/7) energy dissipated annually by flaring likely far exceeds the entire usable production of wind and solar energy...
Yet, same said industry bulldozing ahead with projects to capture CO2 – with a good number of rural-state Senators in their Deep Pockets – saying they somehow can make that sequestration make economic sense...
PS
With tonight’s free pay-per-view for all mixed-martial-mud-wrestling, some timely debate dialog from “Casino” – when a commissioner from Clark County, Nevada, visits Ace (De Niro) to plead for his nephew’s job reinstatement, only to be lectured:
“…I'm sorry, but he knew about our gettin' hit on three big machines in a row and he did nothing about it…
“…That means either he was in on it or, forgive me for saying this, he was too dumb to see what was going on. Either way, I cannot have a man like that workin' here…
DC has dozens like this, workin’ there…
2
As I understand the article, the research has novwa
Don't care one bit. Every minute of every day, there are 9,700 aircraft in the sky guzzling 1 gallon of fuel a second each, 55,000 maritime vessels who measure fuel by the ton, and then the billions and billions of cars on the road. If you think your Prius and solar panels are gonna save the planet, you are terrible at math. I won't change my carbon burning lifestyle one bit.
6
@Matt
No, Matt.
If I were in a crowded boat that was rapidly taking on water and the other occupants were unwilling to bail out the boat – I’d still grab a bucket and give it my best. Since when does taking responsibility for doing the right thing depend upon what others are doing?
7
@Charles
Your comparison, while heartfelt, is apples and oranges, but exemplifies my point about math. If I lose 1 million dollars, it hurts, but if Jeff Bezos loses 1 million dollars? You see?
@Matt I see. I see that some of us have a conscience, care about others, particularly those younger people who will suffer the consequences of our actions more than we, and we are willing to do the right thing. Others, like yourself, prefer to do the math. I'm sure you will sleep well.
1
The headline to this article is useless and misleading (and, most likely, was not written by the reporter.) It is careless, and easily correctable, extraction processes that are behind soaring methane levels, not fossil fuels in general (not that fossil fuels are blameless). Substituting "fossil fuel extraction" for "fossil fuels" would make the headline reflect the content.
5
@Eileen Hays They're never written by the reporter.
We have known, since the 1960's, that burning fossil fuels creates air pollution that breaks down the protective ozone layer around Earth, and thus creates Global Warming. Now, as this article shows; add Methane to that. It is bad enough knowing that burning gasoline in our cars is "killing us". Now add the Industry known as "Big Oil" - just dumping their waste, Methane, into that toxic mix.
Although they have been greatly criticized, Solar and Wind Power can generate all of the Electricity we need. We have the ability to "grow our own gasoline" with Bio-Diesel - crop based alcohol fuels - that can power a vehicle without polluting the Air at all.
Now, Big Oil is not going to reap an obscene profit from this switch, but - ask me if I care about Big Oil's future.
Again and again, Environmental Safety, Public Health, Clean Water Quality ... they all take a back seat to Corporate Greed.
There will be no more Glaciers in "Glacier National Park" in less than 20 years. Run out of clean Water, and you're not going to live very long.
We are rapidly running out of time to have a livable, beautiful Earth for our Grandchildren to enjoy. But, clearly, Big Oil and the idiot in the Oval Office do not care.
4
Your understanding of fossil fuel based CO2 emissions as it relates to global warming is misinformed.
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/15/is-the-ozone-hole-causing-climate-change/
@W.Wolfe
We knew.
I thought we had gone to blaming cows for methane.
3
@Rich Murphy They are part of the problem, along with over seven billion fluctuating humans. It all adds up.
2
this article just shows that our climate scientists are just guessing -- they use one data set then oopsie, they find that dataset was in error -- significant error. And they have to redo their analyses. Amazingly, all these adjustments always seem to favor the anti fossil fuel people (i.e. climate alarmists) -- I'll be more impressed when they make a correction that shows they were overestimating something that supported the CC agenda.
7
@Ralphie There is no dispute at all about that greenhouse gases increase retention of heat.
That is a simple fact that can be demonstrated by anyone.
13
@Ralphie
The thing is, scientists have been underestimating the damage we are doing and the results of that damage, such as ocean temps and arctic melting, as discussed in this article. So effects of pollution with heat-trapping gasses that scientists thought might happen by the end of the century are happening now.
There's no going back.
Too bad people have spent the last generation or so denying scientists' warnings. We could have had a head start on dealing with this.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/
2
@Ralphie
Ok, you just left your car in the sun with the windows rolled most of the way and your kids inside.
Doctors and scientists can’t agree on whether dehydration or renal failure or heat stroke Is the biggest risk and their time of death estimates keep changing.
You can criticize them all you want, but they all agree your children will die. How about you do something to save your kids, and then maybe help the scientist make better estimates next time, rather than just picking nits and stomping your feet for better answers
I never thought carbon was the worst culprit and here it is. The audacity of Professor Jacob to suggest that previous estimates can't be wrong! Of course they are wrong. They contain thousands of assumptions -- assumptions that aren't facts. Each number reported by a company is not a fact unless it has been independently verified. Professors at Harvard are incredibly naive when it comes to corporations and it hurts the research.
6
Anti-fracking and climate activists have ben warning media and the public about this for a LONG time, based largely in the research of Cornell scientist Anthony Ingraffea, see his 2011 analysis:
Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations
https://www.acsf.cornell.edu/2011Howarth-Methane
7
One more huge reason Trump needs to be defeated in November. Mike Bloomberg is our best shot to beat DJT and also happens to know more about climate change than any other candidate. He’s put his money where his mouth is on this issue in particular.
14
Most people respond with outrage at news of climate change, yet fail to make any meaningful changes, study says
5
Electric cars use 80 times more carbon to manufacture than a standard gas automobile. 3 ingredients for the batteries have to mined, and a lot of it is done with child forced labor. Tom Steyer got rich in the fossil fuel business, then once he was done, he jumped into the green business. Not because he believes in it, because he can make a fortune doing it.
5
@JOSEPH -- your figures are incorrect - but please tell us - what kind of tree do the gas or diesel carmakers harvest engine blocks, transmissions, body panels from?
Where do they harvest platinum for catalytic converters, and lead for lead-acid batteries from? Oh, and motor oil, transmission oil, gasoline - where again does that stuff come from? Underground?
The child labor you mention is related to current practices in Congo at some cobalt mining operations. The practices aren't due to electric cars - since cobalt has been widely used already in your phone, your electronics, your car's electronics, and in the fossil fuel and plastics industries that bring so much revenue to Texas where you sent your message from.
So why pretend it's because of electric cars that labor practices in Congo are horrible, when you'd been able to ignore the same situation when it was convenient to you and not a risk to Texas' big industries?
And why not address the problem by forcing change in the practices, by auditing and enforcing standards when purchasing materials? The oil and gas biz could have been a strong force for that if it mattered.
3
Soon, as things warm up the permafrost will melt and release methane from methane hydrates, and the methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean will defrost and release more methane. At a certain point that will be enough to overwhelm human sources of green house gases.
All other concerns are secondary or tertiary in nature. There is only one real threat to human existence.
I fully expect that we will go extinct in the next hundred years or so. At the very least their will be a huge population adjustment. I wonder who will be the first nation to try and implement the final solution. Most likely the US.
5
@Chris As an euphemism "Population Adjustment" ranks with "collateral damage".
We can do this the easy way or the hard way. We are choosing the hard way.
1
@WSB People get really angry when you don't use euphemisms. I also wanted to project a little sarcasm. Many people will die, some will live in holes in the ground, but soon we will pass a point of no return, and it will happen despite any efforts by us.
The "final solution" is somewhat of a euphemism as well, since what I meant was that at some point a nation with a big army will decide that the only way to save humanity is to kill most of humanity. So, carpet bombing and poison gas to kill large populations for no other reason than there are too many people.
In the presentation linked to below the glaciologist Richard Alley shows a map of the world with red areas where he says that if we don’t change our ways, by the time his students are old the average summer would be hotter than anything yet experienced, with 90 percent confidence.
And that we would lose 40 percent of the ability to work outside in the hot months, with some countries it’ll be closer to 100 percent. (unless you can afford an air-conditioned tractor)
By late in this century you’d start to have places where it is projected to be too hot to survive outside, it’s like being locked in a hot car on a summer day with no air conditioning, you die.
Next century those areas would spread. We’re talking about taking the average out of human experience in a world where our food is already stressed by heat.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&t=38m45s&v=KsecTT1SIrg
6
Keep it in the ground.
Solar. Wind. Batteries.
16
@M And nuclear.
2
Words 5 and 6 in this piece are key.
'May be'
Which also means 'may not be'.
Junk Science!
4
@Arch Stanton. So people can continue to ignore the mainstream science? Scientists, god love them, do not speak in absolutes, they speak in confidence intervals and probabilities. Yet these are pretty clear in this instance. As the planet burns, probabilities become facts.
11
@Arch Stanton -- this will seem foreign to you, but scientists and people writing responsibly about it tend not to be completely certain about the natural world, unlike those who are constantly willing to deny things they see as somehow threatening.
Surfside FL? Elevation is zero feet above sea level. It's near Miami Beach where they raise half a billion in taxes to raise their roads and install pumps just to handle what high tides do now that there's more ocean than there had been.
Here's your island with four feet of sea level rise. That amount "may be" what happens before the end of this century. Of course, it's not certain, so it may be less.
It may also be more. Especially if we drag our feet.
https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/4/-8919159.165652098/2984405.4640666647/15/satellite/none/0.8/2050/interHigh/midAccretion
2
Re: "...Oil and gas production may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the earth’s atmosphere than previously thought, new research has found..."
As a child, I witnessed the dinosaur extinction event addressed, solely, by images of various ancient animals looking skyward...w/o further explanation; nobody knew! Fast-forward 50 years, and science has clearly, established this Extinction_Event included an asteroid impact just, off the Yucatan coast.
The primary difference between a T-Rex, hunting in prehistoric Montana, 'N, looking up / south in response to that impact of 66 million years, past, and a hominid, walking down a Montana sidewalk, oblivious to traffic / pedestrians, via headphones, is...
We hominids can STILL, avoid participating in the 1st major Anthropocenic event: a Mass_Extinction!
1
I recently saw a documentary highlighting the alarming levels of methane from cattle.
3
@Leonardo Garcia We raise cattle, which are supposed to graze on meadows and return there feces and water to the land without requiring use of fertilizer which are made using much natural gas which releases a lot of methane and the fertilizer plants which also release much methane.
Also we use a lot of fossil fuels for the machines use to raise crops.
@WSB ...It doesn't quite work that way. When you raise an 80 lb calf to an animal that you market at 800 lbs, 720 pounds of something is forever leaving your pasture. Where did that 720 lbs come from? And that 720 lbs isn't all carbon. Think about it.
If a host has a chance of recover, the parasites must be either removed or prevented from doing further damage. The earth is the host, humans are the parasites. Hopefully, we still have the opportunity to stop doing further damage to the earth. Otherwise, the future for humans might not be promising.
2
Another grim warning from 'wacko environmentalist, liberal agenda scientists. But, but, but...it'll hurt the economy to do something about this.
The future of Earth is starting to look more like Geidi Prime than Caladan...maybe more like Arrakis (Dune) if we wipe ourselves out sooner (nod to Frank Herbert). Thanks, so-called conservatives.
In the words of that great American philosopher Bob Dylan, "115th dream,"
I just said good luck.
2
I hope everyone of vetoing age understands that their futures are perilous unless we vote for candidates that put climate change at the forefront of all other issues.
It means vote for a Democratic candidate that believes in the science you are being taught, hopefully in our schools.
It can happen faster than we can adapt unless we act now.
No less than human extinction is the brutal truth.
14
Human fossil fuel burning increased natural methane release from tundra and under sea formations in cascading rates,there is little doubt about this,not to mention ocean acidification from atmospheric carbon.
Many of my fellow Republicans are skeptical of this and I try to convince them otherwise. Liberal friends and relatives rightly scold me on this. But.. those on the left are also adamantly against nuclear power also and believe solar,wind and batteries can replace fossil fuel worldwide.
The result of 'deniers' policy or 'green new deal' solutions will both be just the same,catastrophic.
As Bill Gates Andrew Yang advocate, the best solution is new technology mass produced small modular nuclear reactors that can be set up anywhere in the world. We could potentially replace most fossil burning power sources over 20 mw by 2060 this way.
If only I could convince fellow Republicans of atmospheric carbon threats.
If only I could convince Democrats of the difference between relative dangers of nuclear radiation and cascading atmospheric carbon.
7
"The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities." If you care about your grandchildren, please VOTE BLUE in November.
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@Detached The Republican agenda to eliminate all those "burdensome regulations" (John Boehner) may be the end of things as we know them. Profits over people.
2
Having grown up a few miles from a long-time refinery, (that had the audacity to close up shop because they received a well-deserved $45M fine,) I have always wondered why the energy industry could not find some way to harness and reuse the methane or whatever it is that they burn out those stacks. Too costly? Then one of you energy industry genuses please, explain it to us, especially in view of just how critical climate change has become. Please.
6
@Truth at Last
The gas that is burned in “those stacks” (flares) is waste gas or safety releases from different parts of the process. Flares have a pilot just like your furnace to stay lit all of the time in case of a release.
Burning the waste gas prevents the methane and other hydrocarbons from entering the atmosphere, as combustion of the gas produces primarily CO2 and water.
Some processes are more efficient than others but flaring is largely a safety related practice. It also has the benefit of reducing overall GHG impact as the equivalent amount of CO2 released during combustion traps less heat as the article describes.
Many of us in the industry are well aware of this and have taken initiative to curb the release of methane whether by means of flaring or recapture. The Trump administrations move to loosen these regulations has baffled many in the industry and we have actually lobbied against this.
5
@Kevin B Thanks for responding Kevin. I guess they shouldn't have used a picture of it for the article heading since what you said makes it misleading. Thanks again for the education.
People need to know that it’s not just cars and heating fuel — fossil fuels are the source of nearly all plastic, too.
Are you drinking out of a single-use water bottle today? How about that lid on your take-out coffee? Those plastic bags you filled with produce at the Greenmarket? Even those plastic stickers on your crunchy New York apples?
The fossil fuel industry is making these single-use plastic things and selling them to us for great profits at the expense of the Earth and probably our health too.
The bill introduced by Senator Udall last week (that has slim chance of passing) would take small but meaningful steps in the right direction. It would put some responsibility back on the producer, a concept called extended producer responsibility.
It doesn’t take much imagination to guess which industries are opposed to it, and relatedly, why Europe is way ahead of us.
Choose biodegradable materials, choose glass, choose metal. Don’t give your money to fossil fuel companies.
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@Human: Plastics and petro-chemical products are EVERYWHERE: anything polyester or nylon (clothing, shoes, carpet, drapes), dyes and finishing agents for textiles, packaging for anything, food preservatives, fertilizers, soil conditioners, herbicides & pesticides. Shall I go on? So choose organic - cotton, silk, lyocell. And your food too! Going vegetarian or vegan isn't enough if you are still consuming conventional. It's a tremendous lifestyle change, one which I fear most Americans are just too lazy to adopt.
@Human
So, the plastic stickers on fruit are gonna end life on the planet? It’s views like these that make the right laugh at the left.
@Human ....Using fossil fuels to make plastic is a lot better than burning them. Plastics can be recycled.
I have had great skepticism towards "site reported" emissions since the mid-1970s. My brother-in-law worked as one of the company environmental technicians at the copper smelter in Hayden, Arizona.
He quickly found that the company itself was doing a great deal to make certain that their Federally-required self reporting would underestimate their emissions.
My favorite: "Smelting Weather". Whenever there was a windy and rainy night - the company would push production to the absolute max, as the emissions couldn't be measured under those conditions.
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"...that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities..."
This is criminal.
Methane release (or any combustible or other hazardous gas), for any reason, can be simply detected by a wire range of wireless monitors readily available worldwide.
Typically, methane gas if needed to be released for operating reasons it is burnt in what are called "flares". Release into the open is not only a personnel hazard but an explosive one as well.
Who is asking for this and why?
4
On many occasions, I have dealt with the media and have discovered that, as the subject becomes more complex, the less likely the media's report will be accurate.
So my questions would be to the Scientists and I would ask, "What did the article get right and what was wrong?"
I think the very last few sentences of the article sums it up well - more data is needed!
I have been in labs, talked with scientists engaged in high end research and have even helped with projects. So it is not as if I am ignorant of the problems/issues our scientists face - which are many and of which the problem of communicating complex issues to the public is but one challenge!
If the public were to actually research these problems, they would find that there are no easy solutions. Want electric cars and green power? You will need solar panels 3 miles wide on each side of every road in our country.
Want wind power? Like electric cars, you would need to dig up a lot of ground for the rare earth metals needed by the equipment. Lithium extraction/production does a lot of damage. Tons of concrete for the base. No easy solutions!
Hydrogen? It contributes to greenhouse gases and over 90% is made using fossil fuels.
Lets say we cut back oil production to 1960 levels (75%) to 21 MB per day from current 94.7 MBD... We would not stop CO2 levels from rising each month only slow it down to 1 ppm per month.
So how many people reading this could reduce their energy needs by 75% by tomorrow?
0
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Re: "...If the public were to actually research these problems, they would find that there are no easy solutions. Want electric cars and green power? You will need solar panels 3 miles wide on each side of every road in our country..." {@The Critic}
Or...we could offer tax, and/or, other incentive(s) to each, 'N, every landlord across the U.S. (and/or, earth!), to place solar panels on millions of otherwise, unused roofs!
On any future home won...I will certainly do this, and I may suggest a revolving Hw - S/w arrangement with the S/p manufacturer to test new, (improved), panels on my roof for a discount / other incentive!
1
@The Critic 1st we were told by the industry that there was no climate change. Then we were told fossil fuel production wasn't the cause; global warming was a naturally occurring event. Now you want to claim that the alternatives can't be an improvement.
Perhaps we should have stayed in the stone age until all the stones were used up. But the stone workers didn't have a good lobby or Fox News.
Funny, I can remember when it was argued that we shouldn't make cars more efficient because lighter cars would be more dangerous. I remember your comment on that one.
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@Harvey Bernstein
The Critic has never commented on lighter cars, you're just making that up!
You are also putting words into The Critic's mouth. He was very clear that there are no easy solutions. Not once did he say that alternatives can't be an improvement.
@R.G. Frano
If you have taken the time to read The Critics previous posts, you would discover that he has invested over 50K into green solutions for his home/property.
The average family income is just under 60K per year.
Even with tax incentives, most families simply do not and will never have the resources required to lower their energy usage by 75% and even if they did, The Critic correctly points out that it would only slow the rise of CO2, it would not stop it.
So what he is saying is that the only way to stop Climate Change is to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, which won't happen even if you reduce fossil fuel usage to 1960 levels!
Science, and experience, tell us that on a sunny day, closing the windows on your car will cause it to heat up enough to kill those inside.
Greenhouse gasses do the same to our planet. The sun is always shining on it. The gasses close the windows on the Earth, with us inside.
21
Perhaps the climate argument could be reframed by seeing fossil fuels as a resource to be carefully preserved rather than a dragon to be slain.
There are a few applications for which fossil fuels (especially petroleum products) can’t be easily replaced and for which there’s no immediate solution.
Fossil fuels aren’t fundamentally evil. We couldn’t have gotten where we are without them. They remain useful and are limited in supply.
We can continue to support the reality of AGW and avoid antagonizing thin skinned contrarians at the same time if it’s done thoughtfully.
7
Big headline for one little study -- have to read alllll the way to the end for the important scientific point: "Dr. Petrenko, one of the Rochester study’s authors, said that the huge undertaking of studying giant ice cores meant the study relied on a small sampling of data. “These measurements are incredibly difficult. So getting more data to help confirm our results would be very valuable,” he said. “That means there’s quite a bit more research to be done.”"
3
The oil and gas industry are a force for destruction, so a force for evil, if you interpret evil as an all inclusive intent to destroy the habitat that all life depends on to survive. Their duplicitous dealings have been going on since the 1970s which included promoting bible studies as the science curriculum to cast doubt on the established science that tried to raise awareness about their evil doings. They are powerful and entrenched in all world governments.
If you live in an urban environment, do your absolute best to become car free and mostly vegetarian. Envision your city as a mostly car free environment where huge freeways and parking lots have been regreened with the sound of Wild bees and birds. Imagine that slow creeping weight loss as you walk or bike, nature bathing your way to work.
Live is weird. Our biggest heroes today will be the people who fought hard to reduce their carbon and methane footprint. No guns, no hand to hand combat, just walking and gardening.
7
Why is there no discussion in the relative merits of burning off methane versus releasing it when there is no infrastructure for capturing it?
Obviously it’s better environmentally to burn it off, but the alarmists just don’t want to say that. Gets in the way of reporting absolute disaster.
4
Trump's rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025.
This is why Trump and the fossil fuel funded party aka republicans need to be voted out of every part of our gov't if our kids and grandkids are to have a habitable planet to live on. Why do some Americans not get this fact?
6
I absolutely love how so many people blame this on trump, the current administration and republicans in general. We've been hearing doom and gloom about climate change since the late 1960's (remember the great Neil Young lyric: "look at mother nature on the run, in the 1970's"). Since that time, we've had numerous dem presidents, dem controlled senates and dem controlled congresses. Do not put the blame for this solely on Republicans. That would just be naive.
And didnt the last study say the methane was coming from all the cows that are being bred to feed the world's almost 8 billion people? I'm starting to think all these studies is just the academics chasing research money. Oh yeah let's do a study that says this or that and just take the cash
5
@bored critic On an important point, your comment shows that you are simply uninformed about the science. I am an agricultural scientist who works on climate change, and your point about cows in relation to the current research is just plain wrong. Cows are a major, increasing, human source of methane, and the science on this has been clear and unchanging for many years. The research mentioned in the NYT article is about OTHER (industrial fossil fuel) sources. And guess what, there can be many sources, just like there are many sources of carbon dioxide! A big problem with climate deniers is reflected in the old saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," or really, people who don't know much about something thinking that they know a lot . This attitude is led from the top!
I doubt that you would go to your neighborhood mechanic for brain surgery (or vice versa!), and yet you seem to think you know more about climate change than scientists who who have been trained in it and studying it for decades.
Finally, I agree with you that dems should have been doing much more. They do deserve some of the blame. But even the too-limited efforts they have tried have often been blocked, or reversed, by republican climate deniers.
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@bored critic The Obama administration finally instituted a requirement to capture the leaked methane, which is, after all, product. The Trump administration quickly reversed the requirement. The explanation seems to be that the large producers are willing enough, as long as their competitors are required to as well. The small producers have won, at least for now, because they cannot afford the immediate financial hit.
I'm distressed by the inaccurate title of this article, as well as some inaccurate explanation.
2
@bored critic Maybe you haven't noticed that the forecasts of "doom and gloom" that began to emerge in the 60's and 70's are actually happening, almost right on schedule as predicted: loss of polar ice, acidification of the oceans, intensified weather events, temperature changes affecting agriculture and the food supply, loss of animal diversity due to changing seasonal patterns . . . the list goes on and on. Perhaps you should take a good look at what's happening to our planet. It's not doom and gloom to report on what's facing us, which by now looks like a full blown, unavoidable climate disaster.
It's the grossest kind of ignorance to mock the knowledge and insights provided by climate scientists. To me, they are offering us a chance to start getting ready for the much diminished and much harsher world that we are creating.
Just keep partying, dude. Things are gonna get a whole lot less boring over the next twenty years.
3
Is this news?
The FF Industry is the primary driver (along with consumer over-consumption) of most Human created CO2.
Has been true for the past 200 years.
5
If the worst case scenario, also the most likely, occurs, we will have 5 more years of increased profit taking and decreased activity regarding the impact of our behavior on our only home - our planet. Why doesn't some group do a study on what that will look like (and release it before the elections, please!).
3
It's 2020. If you can afford it and you aren't driving either an electric or hybrid car you are part of the problem. I'm sick of people who say they are concerned about the environment as they pull into their office job in a guzzling SUV.
6
@Jackson
Electric motors are much more efficient than internal combustion engines. Even if you are charging your car using only a coal powered grid (which isn't the case nearly everywhere in the country) you are getting the equivalent of about 80mpg in terms of carbon emissions. If you charge your car in a location where there is a lot of green energy like California, your estimated MPG equivalent is north of 200mpg.
Batteries are recycled and re-purposed.
2
@Gunnar
Your electric car is almost always using nearly 100% natural gas or possibly coal.
It is marginal demand. With rare exception we have other uses for any clean energy - buildings, street lights, industry, etc.
2
@Gunnar
The interrelated FF-automobile industries have thwarted electric/hybrid cars from being efficiently developed/produced. Might lessen their profits, natch.
We are the only species that destroys not only our own backyard, food and water supply but all other living creatures as well purely out of greed, convenience, and "progress".
8
...”said Benjamin Hmiel, a researcher at the University of Rochester and the study’s lead author. “If these emissions are truly coming from oil, gas extraction, production use, the industry isn’t even reporting or seeing that right now.””
I see capitalists around every corner. The self-made man/woman. Land of opportunity. Manifest Destiny.
I have no problem with capitalism per se. But as noted above, capitalism steps on the individual or the population every time.
And now the Planet is fighting for its life.
The bottom line here is adequate government regulation, plain and simple. Capitalists have never proven to put the common interest ahead of their own. And I would never expect them to. But understand, this is what capitalists do. It’s all they do. Each day, every day. Self interest. And I congratulate them for it. I expect no different.
So let me repeat...”The bottom line here is adequate government regulation...”
Around every corner.
4
The CEOs and Boards of these entities in violation should be sent to prison for crimes against humanity.
4
The real problem with methane has to do with the vast quantities which will be released as frozen stores of it melt in the North.
But the bigger problem is CO2 due to its very long life in the atmosphere. They say know your history or be doomed to repeat it.
The carbon cycle for the last 2 million years was doing 180-280ppm atmospheric CO2 over 10,000 years and we’ve done more change than that in 100 years.
The last time CO2 went from 180-280ppm global temperature increased by around 5 degrees C and sea level rose 130 meters.
Graph of the last 400,000 years of global temperature, CO2 and sea level http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/images/impacts/slr-co2-temp-400000yrs.jpg
6
Its important to examine corporate green goals carefully, and when that happens, they usually turn out to be empty. A big clue is that BP apparently gives few or no details about how it will achieve its overall reduction goal: benchmarks, measurements, or enforcement. Without those, this is just a matter of trying to buy time with the public. We must not buy that! We need huge mandatory governmental efforts to meet climate goals, which will also create millions of jobs.
Second, climate offsets, like soil carbon sequestration from planting trees, is mostly a ruse. This is for reasons noted above (lack of adequate standards and measurements) and because offsets will not help to meet climate goals without eliminating fossil fuel use. The math and science are clear. But they are a favorite of the industry because they let them off the hook for doing what is really needed. The public needs to be wary of, and reject, these self-serving initiatives that they are going to be hearing more and more of.
6
BP's CEO was in place less than 2 weeks when he set this agenda - so let's see where it goes from here. One of his 10 aims was to measure rather than estimate methane leaks and then reduce them by 50 percent. Given the uncertainty over methane sources demonstrated in the Nature article that could be an important shift.
Many articles on fossil fuels focus on the supply side and production. What about demand? It is clear that affordable, reliable energy is foundational to our standard of living, and in raising the living standards of billions of people around the globe. The scale and scope of energy usage is such that fossil fuels will be needed for the long haul to accommodate population growth and increased living standards even if alternative energy sources are implemented on a large scale. We will need them all. Naysayers need to take a look in the mirror at themselves as nearly everything they do, have, need, is delivered in part by fossil fuels somewhere in the supply chain.
2
And of course the standard response by the GOP will be that humans are not responsible for any climate change. If they admitted the opposite, then they would be obliged to do something about it. And that would mean fewer campaign contributions.
8
Can the green new deal movements call attention and organize loud and constant protests against this administration's insane rollback of methane reduction regulations? Climate is such a complicated issue, oil and gas media buyers and influencers have used the public's lack of knowledge to pretend they have no linkage to this pollutant, which has vastly accelerated the warming of the oceans. All this time they said gas was a cleaner bridge to a renewable future. The oil and gas industry must be held financially liable for the lies and unthinkable damage they have caused.
11
@Barbara They are having huge earthday protests this year all over the country (April). We need to all get out and join the march and give a loud signal to DC that we are not going to tolerate the damage they are doing much longer. Vote!
1
BP's goal of 2050 is a long way off, given the urgency of our situation.
9
The good news here is that we can control a larger fraction of methane production than we thought since we are producing more than we thought.
The bad news is that methane is beginning to escape the permafrost and there’s more than twice the carbon licked up there than is currently in our atmosphere.
And the melt rate of the permafrost will continue to grow.
7
@Erik Frederiksen There's even more methane at the bottom of the ocean than in the permafrost. The oceans are reaching a thermal state (much like a battery) where the amount of heat they are able to hold is reaching an upper limit. At some point, you can expect methane to seep from the ocean floor.
7
@Erik Frederiksen
Edit: “locked” up there.
1
Just watched a documentary featuring Mary Beard on Ancient Rome in which one segment discusses the rise in methane levels 2,000 years ago (based on air bubbles in ice core samples). Not sure how much fossil fuels the Romans were burning then. No, the documentary did not attribute the rise to volcanic activity.
2
Sorry to burst you bubble, but there is absolutely no way to phase out natural gas, unless you want to go back to coal. It provides the vast majority of our electricity and heat. Anyone suggesting that it can be replaced with renewables (wind which does not work when there is no wind, and solar which does not work when there is no sun), is either being disingenuous, or just does not understand how we not only thrive, but survive.
7
@Erik There are many sources that provide electricity and heat. Nuclear, Geo-thermal, hydro-electric, and plenty of other sources that don't burn carbon. That you failed to acknowledge them ruins any argument you are making about renewables nor the mention of batteries and capacitors for storing energy produced by renewables for days they aren't generating energy. It is a disingenuous argument that anyone with a background in energy production will ignore.
14
@James Wallis Martin Why don't you check the EPA web site and find out the percentage of our electricity that comes from renewables. And what is your alternative to natural gas for heat? There is none. As for storing energy, why hasn't it happened on more than a tiny scale? Because it's not feasible.
4
@Erik. Bubble not burst, just bummed out by naysayers who use any detail of the complex issues involved to advise giving up and working on our suntan. Erik, have you ever heard of batteries and other physical modalities to store electrical energy to use on still, dark days and nights. You may also consider that a reduction in greenhouse gas production would be a major contribution to the overall goals we need to meet to conserbe a liveable world. It is possible to reduce our overall energy utilization if we didn't consider wastefulness as an American birthright.
10
Human utilization of fossil fuels is like poking a stick at a monster in a dark corner: we don't know when that monster will react, killing us all. We should consider our taking carbon from beneath the ground as even more dangerous than building nuclear power plants.
Scientists are increasingly becoming convinced that the amount of CO2 and methane we have already spewed into the atmosphere will result in the end of civilization, so BP's stated intention to become carbon-neutral by 2050 is of little significance. The fossil fuel industry is the enemy of all humans and most of other known life on the planet.
26
@D M You mean it's the people who purchase the fossil fuels that are the enemy of all humans. If we stopped purchasing them the fossil fuel companies would be out of business. But since we cannot survive without them, we purchase them.
2
@Erik You keep wanting to blame the consumers rather than the fossil fuel companies. Funny but humans have survived for thousands of years without burning off fossil fuels and managed just fine. We either get ready to let fossil fuels go or the earth will let us go, how do You want it.
2
@Erik You could blame the users of Oxycontin for their own deaths, but the family that made and distributed them for their own selfish monetary benefit are rightly getting a large part of the blame. I look at the fossil fuel industries in the same light as the Sackler family. Go at the source.
2
We need to be shifting our efforts toward adapting to climate change rather than trying to stop it. Our entire modern civilization relies on carbon and greenhouse gas pollution and that will not change. Again, it WILL NOT CHANGE. We’d be better off strengthening our physical infrastructure to better survive wildfires, hurricanes and sea level rise. Everything else is pointless naval gazing at this point.
6
@Andy Do you mean that we should develop gills and a hard carapace to deal with raised water levels and excessive temperatures. Or do you suggest building 40m high walls around every continent?
8
@Andy Global warming is here. We must indeed plan and prepare to deal with it for generations to come.
Part of the plan would be to mitigate what we can. A conscious and deliberate move toward green energy can make some difference. The technology and innovation in the alternative fuels industry has come a long way and continues to be refined. Green fuel will soon match (in a few cases it already has) and eventually surpass fossil fuels in costs. Yes, third world countries and developing countries like China and India will continue to pollute but North America and Europe can lead in the development of new technologies.
Remember, things are going to get worse. Worse weather, extinction of thousands of species and eventually more wars fought over resources like food and water. We are past the tipping point. Man has caused this catastrophe and the next generations will deal with it for who knows how long. But, I promise you that at some point, fossil fuels will be a thing of the past, forever vilified by the generations that will live with it's consequences.
Be pragmatic and do what you can. Cynicism never solved anything.
4
@Andy I hope you realize that humans and our needs aren't the only things of importance on the planet.
1
It should also be noted that artificial fertiliser plants have been shown to be huge sources of atmospheric methane, further bolstering the case for the urgent adoption of integrated, regenerative agriculture techniques for all agricultural land.
16
"...the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities." "Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience." Earth Inst. Columbia Univ. "The last few years have also seen record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes, the three warmest years on record for the globe, and continued decline in arctic sea ice. These trends
are expected to continue in the future over climate (multidecadal) timescales. Significant advances have also been made in our understanding of extreme weather events and how they relate to increasing global temperatures and associated climate changes." U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM 2017.
Since the announcement of AOC's "Green New Deal" there have been repeated attacks by the Trump admin and the right wing in the US to discredit the impacts of climate change that a re occurring now and will intensify in coming decades. Those Americans who truly care about their children and grandchildren will start taking the waning seriously all the dependents will suffer greatly in the future due to rising sea water and food shortages.
45
Very useful and alarming.
Fossil fuel companies are actively resisting efforts to get them to monitor and mitigate emissions caused by their activities. They are working against the public welfare in this obstruction.
If the fossil fuel companies aren't willing to mitigate these emissions, it would seem that the need to simply eliminate the use of fossil fuels becomes even more important.
40
@StatBoy Many fossil fuel companies are actively engaged in monitoring and limiting emissions, particularly those with a European presence, where stricter regulation drives adoption of company-wide policies. It's important to not paint with too broad of a brush.
4
@StatBoy Would you like to freeze in the winter and melt in the summer? And hitch a ride to work because there is not enough electricity to charge your car?
2
@StatBoy
The only reason fossil fuel companies produce this form of energy is because consumers want to burn the stuff.
The problem is the consumer....the solution is dirt cheap hydrocarbon fuels.
1
“We’ve identified a gigantic discrepancy that shows the industry needs to, at the very least, improve their monitoring,”
No, not even "the very least." Monitoring the death of the planet? Morbid hobby. The focus should be on stopping it, and now.
173
@C. Whiting You can't make a change if you don't first make an observation. You have to know when and where the leaks are occurring in order to prevent them.
1
@Alex
Sure do, Alex, but "at the very least, improve their monitoring" lets these folks off the hook. We need far more than numbers. They are making money hand over fist. I'd say "at the very least" they can stop fracking and other reckless practices that put so much greenhouse gas in our shared atmosphere.
4
This helps guarantee a hot miserable future for all not yet born. At a near future point frozen methane hydrates will be massively released from the melting permafrost. The price to be paid for unrestricted baby-making and a greedy,consumerist way of life. The planet would otherwise be cooling considering where we are in the Milankovich (orbit-axis-wobble cycle).
18
@Shillingfarmer You are correct about where we are in the Milankovich cycle. Therefore, the heating we are seeing is even larger than it appears since the cooling that should be taking place is not occurring
2
We are documenting our destruction of this planet and its diverse biosystem, yet we are doing nothing of consequence to stop our behavior. For an intelligent species, we are remarkably stupid.
338
I think it matters what kind of intelligence you are measuring. People tend to think of technological advancements as intelligence which is one aspect of a larger field of study. Right now it feels like more emphasis is needed with emotional intelligence given base instinct is the primary human motivator.
6
@Padfoot It means inconvenience and less stuff—-our slow homo sapiens brains only wired for immediacy gratification.
11
@Padfoot
I agree wholeheartedly with one minor exception.
"For an intelligent species, we are remarkably [arrogant
greedy, lazy AND] stupid."
42
In its first year, the Trump administration repealed the methane rule promulgated during the Obama administration. This rule would have required monitoring and detection of methane leaks.
Repeal of the rule makes it cheaper for oil and gas companies to operate and is the kind of deregulation that Trump touts in his speeches. Of course, Trump never mentions the environmental impact of deregulation.
37
We are doing our share our solar panels are doing their job on a brilliant Californian day, we pump more energy into the grid than we use thanks to intelligent conservation, turning lights off etc.
But then our upbringing was in Europe in the grey days following the war.
Too many Americans through laziness, ignorance or willful disregard for science are not playing their part in preserving our planet.
Per capita we are the biggest abusers of Mother Earth in the industrialized world.
I do hope that Climate Change along with Health Care are the two major topics in this election and Americans see these two critical issues as fundamental to our ongoing security
30
So the title places blame entirely on fossil fuels, and then the lead sentence says "...may be responsible...".
I'm sure this "investigation" will be fair and objective coming from the same N Y Times that has published the historical travesty known as the 1619 project, a lie-ridden revisionism exercise.
4
@Objectivist Well, the story is about the study published in journal Nature, which it is true is on the same topic as the NYT investigation, but is independent.
A reading of the paper in Nature supports the headline. The qualifier "may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane" in the opening sentence of the NYT story seems to me to be an appropriate way to mention the results of one scientific finding. Further scientific work may not find this result not to be the case, but for now, it's the latest research, and state of the art.
I'm afraid your disparaging of the 1619 project with somewhat unhinged rhetoric isn't even worth a rebuttal.
3
@Objectivist
"the 1619 project, a lie-ridden revisionism exercise"
Please educate us poor uninformed readers on just what specifically is "lie-ridden" and "revisionism" about The 1619 Project.
I will patiently await your reply.
@Objectivist What lies are in the 1619 Project?
1
United States carbon dioxide emissions have decreased somewhat since around 2007 but given the finds of this study and others on methane emissions it is unclear if the US carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions have declined at all and it is also unclear if replacing coal power plants with natural gas power plants has resulted in an decrease in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Reducing emissions is all about metrics but if emissions can't be accurately measured this complicates efforts. When it comes to Trump and climate change Trump is basically on a suicide mission with regard to the US and entire world. It is unlikely that climate change will wipe out all of human life but a population crash in the order of perhaps 90%-95% may be possible if emissions are not significantly reduced.
4
We really do not deserve the power we have over this beautiful planet.
We make sweeping changes to environments that took untold years to evolve without understanding the consequences.
It is not hard to forecast that pipes, whether they carry liquid or gas, will leak. Leaks of methane from our natural gas infrastructure are likely the rule rather than the exception - and we’re surprised by this.
Nature’s patience is not limitless.
51
We've been sold the line, over and over, that natural gas is better for the environment than other fossil fuels, sort of like "Pork, the other white meat."
Natural gas (methane) has long been known to be a dangerous greenhouse gas with 80 times the potency of C02. Yet frackers break up bedrock and inject it with "proprietary" chemicals, releasing much of the methane previously trapped underground into the atmosphere before it ever gets to the well-head to be measured. Leaking infrastructure (like that shown in the article's videos) follows, and we're left with poisoned groundwater, and an overheating planet.
This article isn't 'news' as in new. But it does bring the issue to the general public, if long after the methane's left the barn.
Our leaders have been warned, and warned again. But cash in the pocket is a soothing thing.
I'm beginning to feel that too many of us just don't have what it takes to save this place before it's dead.
112
@C. Whiting You mean like zero population growth and extreme frugality? That’s what it will take and no one ever talks about them.
11
@C. Whiting
Oh don't worry, this place (the planet earth) won't be dead. It's been here 4.5 billion years. We don't need to save the planet. We need to save ourselves!
12
@frank
I simply do not understand such a perspective.
It is not only us we are imperiling, it is the entire ecosystem of complex life. That is what I mean by "this place." Rubble, and perhaps fungus will still be here? Dismissive, flippant, and exactly what I mean by questioning whether we truly grasp the enormity of this crime.
11
A market system that does not count "costs" such as emission of greenhouse gases and pollutants can not be expected to reduce them without serious government regulation -- it is much more profitable to just make the emissions. And managers of companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to mazimize profits. So we get many new forms of the "tragedy of the commons". When the economic system rewards behavior that is destructive in the long term, this is the behavior we will see.
11
I’m an avid news reader, but climate stories are so rage/depression inducing, I can only glance at the headlines. What can we do when supposed liberal cities like NYC barely pretend to recycle. Places like the Permian basin are remote to most people who live in Texas and New Mexico, and the politics of zero regulation are extremely popular there- lots of jobs in otherwise economically depressed regions.
We need an energy miracle, as Bill Gates says. And we need a way to transition oil and gas workers into clean energy workers. There are solutions in electrical storage tech/installation, smart grid electric transmission, slow wave nuclear, fusion, solar, geothermal, tidal and wind.
1
@JJ
The Permian Basin is disgusting. Malodorous, bad visibility, all that stuff. Housing prices are through the proverbial roof because temporary workers need a place to live. Most of them are single men. They don’t have any stake in the local community, and leave every weekend to go party in some bigger city. When the boom is over they will take their crusty Carhardts and move on.
Families are only “winning” if they own oil companies or rental properties, and only temporarily.
But people here in NM love it, like they loved being Ground Zero for the Bomb, and they love their Dear Leader Trump. Makes them feel part of something and important.
@JJ If Bill Gates is so concerned about the environment, he should be throwing his fortune, and enlisting his similarly rich friends into fighting the Kochs and their ilk to stop them from destroying our planet.
1
"provided few new details". This quote is from a BP plan, but might be applied to the whole article. The key takeaway is that methane, CH4, is 80 times more potent than CO2 as a heat trapping gas in the atmosphere. It has been several years now that scientists have been reporting, that with increased CH4 emissions from fracking, at the wellhead leaks (many deliberate), and burning natural gas, that there is NO Savings in Carbon Emissions by Using Natural Gas over other fossil fuels. Bolstering this is satellite data showing increased CH4 in the atmosphere over the fracking areas of Pennsylvania, i.e. this is even visible from outer space. In addition melting permafrost is also a source of additional CH4. And with development, additional meat production for human consumption is also a source for more CH4 in the atmosphere.
This is all part of the tipping point, where the carbon particles already put into the atmosphere by human consumption of fossil fuels will by itself lead to more warming. All of this in the aggregate is happening now.
This means that even more drastic action is needed now to combat climate change, or big time efforts by governments to switch out of fossil fuels into sustainable green energy, a real-time possibility. And the energy will not only be cleaner, but cheaper.
But what we have is a government, led by our Criminal-in-Chief, to willfully make global warming worse and energy more expensive, especially the external costs of floods and fires.
10
Did t the last study say the bulk of the methane was from cows? Which were being bred to feed the almost 8 billion people on the planet. Then there were swamps and peat bogs. We've been hearing doom and gloom since the 1970's. (Neil Young lyric: "look at mother nature on the run, in the 1970's"). In today's paper: Japan opening coal fired plants. It's all about getting the research grant money.
5
@bored critic I can't tell whether you are for or against climate change action. But the facts are that sea levels are rising (see the article in the Times). Soon it will be too late. Unfortunately with have a low intelligence president who only cares about money. We will soon be past the point of no return. The Earth doesn't care about humans - we've only been around for 200,000 out of 4,500,000,000 years.
2
"It's all about getting the research grant money" - nonsense. This is a clever meme invented by climate change deniers. Scientists succeed by proving each other wrong. That's why science is our most reliable (but still imperfect) guide to the truth.
2
@bored, “Fossil Fuels Are to Blame...”
The article says nothing about cows being the cause. If you do not include sources for your facts, why should anyone believe you? Especially if what you are saying runs counter to the narrative.
a tech mogul, whose name is just on the tip of my tounge, and has been running a 25 - 30 Billion USD science experiment of his own, once said unrestricted emissions is a planetary experiment we should not be running - unspoken is the reality thst even his successes cannot compensate for our ever increasing energy consumption
2
This is such a waste on two levels.
First, methane released into the atmosphere with no energy benefit makes no sense.
Second, methane can be used to fuel clean fuel cell energy production that doesn't contribute to climate change.
There is an obvious win-win solution here if the relevant parties can be pressed to implement it.
13
@Warren Ludford
This makes sense but eliminating regulations for environmental protection bothers Liberals (thinkers), that's why it is being done.
The fossil fuel industry will have no more regulations and no stranded assets, the climate be damned. Fox News and Republicans will make sure of that, their children be damned.
25
@Sherry
We've been hearing climate doom and gloom since the 1970's. Since then I believe there have been a few democrat presidents, dem controlled Senates and dem controlled congresses. Dont put the entire climate change concept on republicans. That would just be naive.
3
@bored critic
Democrat Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House in the early 80s; guess what the first thing Ronald Reagan did as President? It's been the same story every since.
2
Credulously, there are those that say such basic scientific research is pursued only in the name of greed, to chase those fat government research grants, as greed is the most basic of human motivations. It is wise to apply the adage that "every accusation is a confession."
The ox being gored is the richest industry in the world, that has purchased politicians and media across the globe to advance the denial of the external costs of their industrial production, that is slowly (less so recently) poisoning the world we all share.
13
Relying on “industry monitoring” got us where we are today, along with industry lobbying to shrink government (i.e. outsider monitoring) to where it could be “drowned in a bathtub“. Guess what — people and coastlines are drowning. We need more and better action to replace fossil fuel and every elected official who still pushes it, from the top down.
10
Let's not ignore the significant natural sources emanating from peat bogs and swamps plus the vast methane emissions from sea beds and methane ice , all of which are impossible to stem.
2
@Ron B
Thawing the arctic will add much to methane release. Addressing climate change now is one way to help stem, rather than accepting all as completely impossible.
18
@Robert
Correct, , but that's only part of a bigger natural phenomenon.
2
@Ron B The study looked at the natural emissions--since 1750--and they were so small that they couldn't have contributed much to the methane in the atmosphere now. That's HOW the Rochester study determined the oil industry is lying. Read the beginning of the article again.
1
Observe all the gas flamed off wells in the west. Crews travel though the night performing this operation.
1
When I lived in Santa Barbara, or visited SB 1st time in '69, it used to annoy me that gas from the oil rigs offshore would just get burned off.
The companies said it was "too expensive to capture". Too expensive for whom?
Now the oil companies want to leave the rigs in place instead of removing them like they agreed to when they were granted the leases.
It was the same for rigs offshore Long Beach, Ca and all over Louisiana, plus parts of Los Angeles where gas and oil was extracted.
I think by now most of us realize that we've been sold lies by these companies. In Louisiana the delta is settling as they do naturally but the rate of settling has slowed ever since the oil industry went offshore after depleting onshore wells.
The rate of settling was much higher after pumping onshore was underway. That finding is by a Tulane U. geologist.
Our politicians repeated the lies and now we have a guy in office who says lies all day long.
Fracking will not keep us on top of the fossil fuel energy boom and with a recession coming we will be under the thumb of the of the OPEC countries and Russia again. Fracked wells stop yielding oil much faster than wells used to but produce methane long afterwards.
Remember to vote for change again this November and build a fossil-fuel free economy.
7
The fossil fuel criminals don’t care if they destroy the atmosphere. It is all about the money, baby. And they don’t understand why their children hate them.
9
The house is on fire! We need to do more research.......
1
I'm glad I'm 68. I worry about mu grandkids.
5
Conservatives from Biden to Trump are responsible for destroying the earth. And guess what? The fossil fuel industry won’t pay to clean up the mess. Typical chrony capitalism. That’s why you’ll never meet a Republican who doesn’t lie.
1
Thank god I'm an American and not an earthling.
1
Each day, Trump and his Republicans act to make our planet less & less inhabitable for our children and grandchildren around the world.
The window of opportunity to effectively mitigate Climate Change is rapidly disappearing.
The remaining 2020 Democratic Candidates will try to cut & paste portions of Governor Jay Inslee’s comprehensive & actionable Climate Change Mitigation Plan.
We must go with the Real Deal.
Just wringing our hands won’t get the job done.
The winning Democratic Party 2020 Ticket: President Warren (build a green economy) + Vice President Inslee (save a blue planet)! W+IN 2020!
+++++++++++++++
FYI: Here’s an excellent article by David Roberts of Vox which explains Governor Inslee’s Climate Change Mitigation Plan:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/7/30/20731958/jay-inslee-for-president-climate-change-justice-plan-green-new-deal
3
"the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan that effectively eliminates requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities......the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025"
Our current Trumpian-GOP 'leadership' is stepping on the gas pedal of manmade fossil-fuel-based climatic suicide.
This is akin to being on a passenger plane with kamikaze pilots counting their piles of cash.
Hit the EJECT button, America !
November 3 2020
175
It should surprise no one that shifting from a process with well-studied harms (coal), to one with more obscure harms and more data collection challenges (natural gas), might turn out to be far less beneficial than first appears.
There is no getting around the need for conservation, carbon-neutral energy and gas-free buildings. Many people who claim otherwise tend to be angling for subsidies or votes. Rather than gambling on politicians acting like adults, maybe us lowly consumers should take the lead.
2
Ford sold over 900,000 F150 trucks last year, a vehicle that averages 17 mpg. 900,000 gas guzzling trucks, the majority of which will haul more kids to soccer practice than loads of equipment to the job site. Imagine the impact if every two car house drove just one VW Golf (non diesel..) that average 35 mpg.
96
@Midwest Josh
Three points:
1) Does anyone still believe VW on anything?
2) Ford? Reminder that Hitler said Henry Ford was his "greatest inspiration".
3) You are probably correct that the F150's are hauling more kids to soccer practice than equipment. Perhaps it is a reverse status symbol for those who cannot afford a more expensive vehicle, and for those with their own, um, personal shortcomings.
8
@Midwest Josh As a matter of fact, I have used my F150 to take my kids to soccer practice. But I also use it to pull a camper, haul equipment, and plow my driveway. None of which I could do with a VW Golf.
You drive what works for you and I'll do the same.
5
@Mark Shyres
1) What do you drive?
2) How long did it take for you to build that ivory tower?
3) What would you suggest the government mandate for transportation of children to soccer practice?
4
Not like Trump and his administration cares about climate change in the least. He has rolled back so many environmental protections he bogusly claims increases economics growth. Many of these sites in use today, are Superfund cleanup sites of tomorrow. So, while they make billions off these site today, we, the taxpayers, will have to pay billions to clean up their sites after they've exploited, and them shut down. America is falling behind in many areas because our leaders are reactive to situations instead of proactive. We need leadership that understands an ounce of prevention is much more effective for a healthy society, instead of ignoring open wounds. Or worse, create more wounds for his self serving objectives!
12
'“That means there’s quite a bit more research to be done.”' So then in, let's say, ten, twenty, thirty, or maybe, fifty years, whatever, we'll know everything there is to know about fossil fuel emission. By then, however, we won't need studies to inform us that we are perishing. I don't like Bernie Sanders, but he wants to ban fracking immediately, and does seem to have a rational understanding of the absolute emergency of this climate crisis, coming to be known as the sixth Great Extinction. We have to try. ACTION is required, not neurotic procrastination. Continue the studies, yes, but not as an excuse to delay and/or obfuscate.
9
When one stops in a petrol station to fill the tank, one casts a vote. Markets respond to demand.
5
At the individual level do you enjoy a heated home in the winter? Do you drive an automobile?, Do you purchase plastic products? Do you used modern medicine? What are your consumer habits? It is time to look at ourselves and either abstain form the consumption of products that are known contributors of "climate change" or accept the environmental impacts. Furthermore it is fine and well to shame American/Western society for their consumption but until India, China and Africa get on fully on board, all this commotion about how a small fraction of world population needs to change will do nothing. It is vital to get this message to those countries and have them also abide to the negotiated terms if we really care about global change for the better.
6
@Mystery Lits
"What are your consumer habits?"
Do you have a choice? Blaming India and China no longer works, if it ever did anything other than confuse the weak-minded. The US is still the No 1 polluter per-capita!
I'm in Redmond where I see dozens of Teslas every few minutes and the power for them comes from hydroelectric. It could come from wind/solar/other renewables instead.
Yes, the drivers are wealthy but if more people get money instead of the Kochs, the Bloombergs, and the Adelsons, then maybe they would buy more electric vehicles. Especially when the power costs less than oil and gas.
Put it on top of the fact that most of the wealth in this country has gone to the 1% since Reagan we could be getting health care too.
The rest of the world still wants to be American so let's build the Green Economy and get them to emulate us.
6
@Mystery Lits You are confusing shame with deep concern. To become enlightened can be extremely painful, if the news is very bad. But as responsible adults, who would like to try to stave off self-annihilation, building inner walls to ward off our fears will only make the situation worse. Facing the truth is essential. You're right, each person needs to lower their own consumption dramatically, but as importantly, the government needs to ban fracking and facilitate the switch to less polluting energy sources as soon as is humanly possible. America is a giant polluter. Africa is not. China needs to be held to strict standards by a new, responsible administration, enforcing with sanctions if necessary.
1
@lightscientist66 I love how you think we (the American people) are the problem and are willing to absolve China (who are now the largest polluter per capita), India and Africa. Like I said it will be the self flagellating liberal elite who suggest we "little people" need to buy $60,000 electric cars to "do our part".
1
Alas, too little, too late. It is good to learn energy companies are feeling pressure to reduce harmful emissions. But it is not enough. The article shows that we are still discovering information about emissions and the environment, while global warming is rushing ahead of our research and certainly our paltry efforts at mitigation. In the American Congress, we still have dozens and dozens of climate change deniers and minimizers. Thirty years, I think, and we'll know a lot more. It will be too late, but there will be fewer people with their heads in the sand.
I believe that we will find that fracking will pollute freshwater; wholesale dredging of the sea beds worldwide for sand to make concrete will disrupt ecosystems; agricultural runoff into the seas, directly and via rivers will increase toxic algae blooms that destroy fisheries and ruin residential life for those living near shore. It will be an overwhelming mess and will disrupt economic activities widely. THEN corporate deniers will clamor for action. Well, we have an $800 bn defense budget each year. Maybe we could start defending the environment.
195
@Gary Pippenger Well said. As far as disrupting economic activities, that is a given...and will hopefully happen much sooner. The “economy” and glorification of growth are at the root of the problem.
35
@Kate If by growth you mean not only economical, but also population growth, then I agree 100% with you.
3
@Gary Pippenger The Pentagon is actually working on fuel efficiency and some environmental issues mainly because Naval bases are threatened by sea level rise and they recognize climate change as a "threat multiplier." If Congress critters deny climate change, vote them out. If you're worried you can't due to gerrymandering, do what Pennsylvania did and sue in State Court. We got new districts and more Democrats out of that. Replace the climate change deniers with saner people who will admit what's happening and do something. Not sure if they're doing enough, but Dems do something, Republicans just pretend it isn't happening.
7
“That means there’s quite a bit more research to be done”
A researcher calling for more research. Shocking!
3
In a few hundred years when the population is cut back sharply and emissions fall the Earth over millennia will begin to heal. The Earth isn't going anywhere but statistically humans will occupy space on this planet for a blink of the eye in time.
10
@Glen If we don’t reduce our numbers, a die off is certain. One way is compassionate, one is devastating. We seem to be choosing the terrible way.
7
@Kate - We (in the so-called "first world") refuse to reduce our overconsumption and WASTE of fossil fuels, and the die-off is well underway.
I just watched a show on PBS called "Polar Extremes", and it clearly explained how global warming - and cooling - is driven by the natural phenomenon of the carbon cycle, which essentially describes how carbon atoms in the earth go from being held "captive" in the earth and water (and ice), to being released into the atmosphere. And when the carbon level increases in the atmosphere we get global warming, and when it gets reabsorbed into the earth, cooling. This cycle is natural, and happens repeatedly over tens of thousands of years.
But when mankind releases even more carbon than the natural cycle would do, it accelerates the warming period. And it doesn't have to increase the temperature by a lot, a few degrees can bring on a return of tropical conditions over most of the globe, inundating major population centers, and creating massive destruction.
I encourage anyone who wants a clear understanding of this threat to watch this program.
Of course, no one from the fossil fuel industry will. They want to remain in the dark, and keep the rest of us that way too. Despite this desire, those at the top of this industry know full well what they're doing. Just like the tobacco industry knew, and the chemical industry knew what it was doing dumping waste into our water. But as long as "no government" Republicans are in charge - at any level of government - they will continue to threaten our existence. Ignore that at your own - and your loved ones - peril.
39
@Kingfish52 I also highly recommend watching "Polar Extremes". The last 50 years have brought on this extreme climate emergency based on suddenly accelerating CO2 in the atmosphere, something that the earth and all living beings cannot adjust to. Very frightening.
3
@Kingfish52 _ One doubts there will ever be a similar program on FOX.
1
Calls to ban natural gas or fracking are too simplistic and basically cut off rational debate. Efforts should be doubled to stop leaks and certainly cease all voluntarily releases. But we can’t do anything to (a) slow the replacement of coal or oils with gas, give the latter’s lower carbon emissions; or (b) replace natural gas as a heating fuel until renewable replacements can be scaled up to meet demand, which is enormous. It’s a thorny problem because, simply, there is no better alternative right now. One thing for sure, though: nobody talks much about conservation any more, it’s all about ban this or ban that. But: We can heat homes with less natural gas just by adopting conservation practices and technologies currently used in Europe and modern Asian cities. Where are the big incentives? Do not let perfect be the enemy of good - this is within our means.
14
@MWR
Nuclear could replace gas, and do so with zero emissions.
1
Methane is a far more potent green house gas than carbon dioxide, though it lingers in the atmosphere much less than CO2. Most importantly, it is very useful as a fuel; it is a fossil fuel, but as fossil fuels go, it is far less harmful than others, such as coal.
Methane is the most common fuel for heating American homes, and is used in about half of American homes. Most of us use it for cooking. It is the most common means of electricity generation in this country, used for over a third of US power production.
It may well be better to switch to renewable sources that don't contribute to green house gases, but until we can do so, methane (natural gas) is often the best alternative.
So. Not only is methane a potent greenhouse gas when released into the atmosphere, it also has great commercial value. Thus, by any reasonable standard, it is inappropriate to release it in to the atmosphere. It is entirely appropriate to put strong regulations into effect to prevent this.
If this requires energy companies to spend money to reclaim methane and to monitor for leaks, that's fine.
80
Intelligent towns are responding to the public safety hazards shown by this article and so many others by legally changing the building code to not allow gas plumbing in the buildings on the basis of public safety--it starts fires and explosions to cook on gas. Redwood Energy, the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bloomberg's funding and the NRDC have all focused their energy on empowering cities with legal advice and technical strategies. Now that the pollution from buildings kills more people than pollution from power plants, it's time to stop burning gas in buildings!
12