Space Station Astronauts Spot the World's Largest Methane Polluters (nasa.gov) 41
"NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission is mapping the prevalence of key minerals in the planet's dust-producing deserts — information that will advance our understanding of airborne dust's effects on climate," NASA announced this week.
"But EMIT has demonstrated another crucial capability: detecting the presence of methane, a potent greenhouse gas." In the data EMIT has collected since being installed on the International Space Station in July, the science team has identified more than 50 "super-emitters" in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States. Super-emitters are facilities, equipment, and other infrastructure, typically in the fossil-fuel, waste, or agriculture sectors, that emit methane at high rates. "Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming. This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed — quickly," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
"The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth's climate. EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potent greenhouse gas — and stop it at the source...."
"These results are exceptional, and they demonstrate the value of pairing global-scale perspective with the resolution required to identify methane point sources, down to the facility scale," said David Thompson, EMIT's instrument scientist and a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. "It's a unique capability that will raise the bar on efforts to attribute methane sources and mitigate emissions from human activities."
Relative to carbon dioxide, methane makes up a fraction of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, but it's estimated to be 80 times more effective, ton for ton, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the 20 years after release. Moreover, where carbon dioxide lingers for centuries, methane persists for about a decade, meaning that if emissions are reduced, the atmosphere will respond in a similar timeframe, leading to slower near-term warming.... "Some of the plumes EMIT detected are among the largest ever seen — unlike anything that has ever been observed from space," said Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at JPL leading the EMIT methane effort. "What we've found in a just a short time already exceeds our expectations."
For example, the instrument detected a plume about 2 miles (3.3 kilometers) long southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin. One of the largest oilfields in the world, the Permian spans parts of southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. In Turkmenistan, EMIT identified 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar. Blowing to the west, some plumes stretch more than 20 miles (32 kilometers).... With wide, repeated coverage from its vantage point on the space station, EMIT will potentially find hundreds of super-emitters — some of them previously spotted through air-, space-, or ground-based measurement, and others that were unknown.
"As it continues to survey the planet, EMIT will observe places in which no one thought to look for greenhouse-gas emitters before, and it will find plumes that no one expects," said Robert Green, EMIT's principal investigator at JPL.
"But EMIT has demonstrated another crucial capability: detecting the presence of methane, a potent greenhouse gas." In the data EMIT has collected since being installed on the International Space Station in July, the science team has identified more than 50 "super-emitters" in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States. Super-emitters are facilities, equipment, and other infrastructure, typically in the fossil-fuel, waste, or agriculture sectors, that emit methane at high rates. "Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming. This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed — quickly," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
"The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth's climate. EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potent greenhouse gas — and stop it at the source...."
"These results are exceptional, and they demonstrate the value of pairing global-scale perspective with the resolution required to identify methane point sources, down to the facility scale," said David Thompson, EMIT's instrument scientist and a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. "It's a unique capability that will raise the bar on efforts to attribute methane sources and mitigate emissions from human activities."
Relative to carbon dioxide, methane makes up a fraction of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, but it's estimated to be 80 times more effective, ton for ton, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the 20 years after release. Moreover, where carbon dioxide lingers for centuries, methane persists for about a decade, meaning that if emissions are reduced, the atmosphere will respond in a similar timeframe, leading to slower near-term warming.... "Some of the plumes EMIT detected are among the largest ever seen — unlike anything that has ever been observed from space," said Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at JPL leading the EMIT methane effort. "What we've found in a just a short time already exceeds our expectations."
For example, the instrument detected a plume about 2 miles (3.3 kilometers) long southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin. One of the largest oilfields in the world, the Permian spans parts of southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. In Turkmenistan, EMIT identified 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar. Blowing to the west, some plumes stretch more than 20 miles (32 kilometers).... With wide, repeated coverage from its vantage point on the space station, EMIT will potentially find hundreds of super-emitters — some of them previously spotted through air-, space-, or ground-based measurement, and others that were unknown.
"As it continues to survey the planet, EMIT will observe places in which no one thought to look for greenhouse-gas emitters before, and it will find plumes that no one expects," said Robert Green, EMIT's principal investigator at JPL.
Great, just what we need (Score:3)
Another article giving people who don't want to do their part ammunition to point to someone else "buh buh buh but,... New Mexico!"
Obviously that's not the important part here and the observations are good, but we all know how this data will be used.
Being Sure (Score:2)
The only question is: Will they nuke them from orbit?
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If they nuked them from orbit, the methane would obviously catch on fire and generate nasty carbon which is just as bad for the planet!
see here:
https://gml.noaa.gov/education... [noaa.gov]
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No, Space Lasers work better. No radiation but will instantly get the attention of the Stock Market investors as their profits go up in smoke.
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Fair enough...but they could certainly do better than some politically charged headline that was blasted through every mainstream news outlet.
Detect all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Shit won't change.
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Sure it will. (Score:3)
Detect all you want. Shit won't change.
Sure it will.
A "superemitter" is a profit opportunity: Knowing exactly where your operation is leaking that much potentially saleable fuel from a concentrated point or small area tells you right where to go to either fix it (so it goes into current process flows) or capture it (so it can be sold).
Small leaks all over the place in unknown locations will not pay for the hunt. Small leaks in known places may be easy to fix, once it's known they're there. But a giant l
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...
Or just flame it off to CO2. It's about 25 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 and has a half-life in the atmosphere of about 9 years, after which it turns to CO2 anyhow. So burning it off right away gets rid of something like 96% of its greenhouse boosting effect for that couple decades.
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Well, yes, but also (Score:5, Interesting)
Emissions from farming are in the range of 145Tg (teragrams/year). https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2020.0451
This is 145 million tons/year, or 400000 tons per day. Or 16000 tons/hour.
50 tons an hour for the worst global hotspot is not nothing, but it is about a part in 300. Fixing these point emitter sources is important, but not remotely going to fix anything.
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Maybe they're just looking to start with the ones they can FIX. Individual ranchers aren't responsible for much by themselves, and the industry has lobbied (bribed) their legislators so as to be untouchable. So if you work your way down the list, these "point sources" may be the best bang for the buck, for now.
And those white squares are oil wells. I was able to locate the exact spot on google maps and was expecting to maybe see a small refinery but nope, just a few tiny oil wells. Three wells exactly c
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Stop subsiding animal agriculture.
Right. Stop growing and eating cattle. Return the great plains to the buffalo. And let them belch all that methane.
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Farming should also be forced to stop exploiting immigrant labour also.
The problem being that farmers are politically active and have a huge amount of influence on policy making. This is true in both the US and Europe and any government that tried to remove the various subsidies that farmers live on would not last long.
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50 tons, times how many instances? I mean, that's kind of important.
Re:Well, yes, but also (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very "glass is half empty" way of looking at it. 50 sites times 50 tons/hour is 2500 tons per hour. That's about 15% of the total emissions from all agriculture worldwide, just from getting 50 plants to fix their leaks at a total cost that's so small compared to the size of the problem, it might as well be zero. And they say there are probably hundreds of others they haven't spotted yet, so the benefit will be even bigger.
Suppose I told you we could reduce methane emissions from all agriculture worldwide by 15%. And suppose it took hardly any time and cost hardly anything. Wouldn't you say that's a pretty big deal?
It doesn't mean we would ignore the other 85% and call the problem solved. But wow, who would have imagined it was possible to make such a big difference so quickly and easily?
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*munches on hamburger*
Maybe they should ban Taco Bell (Score:2)
Because we all know what happens when we eat Taco Bell.
remember to shoot the messenger (Score:2)
I'm waiting for the effort to make satellite observations of the environment illegal.
Can't make the oil companies mad.
EMIT mission (Score:2)
Sorry. Yuri just farted next to the spectroscope. Never mind those last readings.
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Don't go shaming me! (Score:2)
It's hard to digest with all the crazy and bad reports in the news.
Terrible! (Score:2)
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