Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

EricMears

JKenH wrote: »

Actually, Mart, what I was suggesting was that we each had our own views on the conspiracy theory put forward on the video and we shouldn’t argue over it ad infinitum

It gets very boring for the rest of us when a small group of posters keep repeating essentially the same points !

JKenH

markin wrote: »

How to erase 100 years of carbon emissions? Plant trees—lots of them.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2019/07/how-erase-100-years-carbon-emissions-plant-trees-lots-them

..................................................................................

The Impending Big Auto/Oil Implosion Explained | In Depth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUC6lsLr04I
Here's where all the graphs are from https://seekingalpha.com/article/4225153-evs-oil-ice-impact-2023-beyond

Last 2 weeks? Hadn’t you noticed Mart?

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

Last 2 weeks? Hadn’t you noticed Mart?

Sorry Ken you've lost me.

If it's something interesting I missed, then please explain, I'd like to know, but if it's just more of the same argument baiting from you, then please stop it. If not for me, then for the sake of this thread.

Many thanks.

JKenH

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Sorry Ken you've lost me.

If it's something interesting I missed, then please explain, I'd like to know, but if it's just more of the same argument baiting from you, then please stop it. If not for me, then for the sake of this thread.

Many thanks.

For the purposes of this thread the "news" needs to be within the last two weeks.

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

For the purposes of this thread the "news" needs to be within the last two weeks.

Oh I see, but still not sure why you posted that at me. Having finally played your hand, can you please, please, please now move on. Thanks.

BTW, funny story, the title was changed and the two weeks added, after GA upset so many people on here, that was roughly the time so many of us started to put him on ignore to prevent arguments.

Martyn1981

Yet more bad news regarding the US shale gas industry, and by association the rest of the World too.

Turns out that US shale gas emissions (a slightly different methane gas) was being under recorded and is far, far greater than originally thought. With methane being around 80x more powerful than CO2 as a green house gas, it even seems that the US shale gas industry is worse than coal for AGW.

And the industry is still expanding. And Trump is in the processing of trying to remove the current (inefficient) monitoring. [Note - In fairness to Trump, fracking 'exploded' under Obama, but most of the race leaders in the Democrat nomination process have said, or suggested that they will restrict or ban fracking.]

Fracking may be a bigger climate problem than we thought

As greenhouse gases go, methane gets less attention than carbon dioxide, but it is a key contributor to climate change.

Methane doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long as CO2 and is reabsorbed into terrestrial cycles via chemical reactions within 12 years or so. But while it’s up there, it’s much more potent, trapping heat at roughly 84 times the rate of CO2. Scientists estimate that around 25 percent of current global warming traces to methane.

When it comes to reducing CO2 emissions, the chain between cause and effect is frustratingly long and diffuse. Reduced emissions today won’t show up as reduced climate impacts for decades.

But with methane, the chain of causation is much shorter and simpler. Reduced emissions have an almost immediate climate impact. It’s a short-term climate lever, and if the countries of the world are going to hold rising temperatures to the United Nations’ target of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial baseline, they’re going to need all the short-term climate levers they can get.

Worth reading this next paragraph a few times -

Howarth finds that if the lighter methane of shale gas production is explicitly accounted for, “shale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased [methane] emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately one-third of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade.”

Same story, this time from National Geographic:

Fracking boom tied to methane spike in Earth’s atmosphere

Scientists have measured big increases in the amount of methane, the powerful global warming gas, entering the atmosphere over the last decade. Cows or wetlands have been fingered as possible sources, but new research points to methane emissions from fossil fuel production—mainly from shale gas operations in the United States and Canada—as the culprit.

The “massive” increase in methane emissions occurred at the same time as the use of fracking for shale gas took off in the U.S., says Robert Howarth, an ecologist at Cornell University and author of the study published Aug 14 in the journal Biogeosciences.

“We know the increase is largely due to fossil fuel production and this research suggests over half is from shale gas operations,” Howarth says in an interview.

Martyn1981

Call me naive, no go on! But I sort of assumed Australia would have adopted similar tech/kit to us regarding coal emissions, to at least try to reduce some of the terrible impacts from burning coal, but it appears they doing a bit less than I thought. [Note - I think their vehicular emissions are also behind the times, now I come to think of it.]

Australian power stations among world's worst for toxic air pollution

The Victorian SO2 air pollution hotspot covers a population of more than 470,000 people, and the NSW hotspot covers an area of more than 1.7 million people, but Greenpeace said the the impacts from secondary pollution covered a far greater population.

In Sydney alone, more than 100 premature deaths a year are thought to be caused by pollution from coal-fired power stations. Nationally it’s more than 4,000.

“Australian coal-burning power stations are polluting at levels that would be illegal in China and most other parts of the world,” said Jonathan Moylan, a campaigner with Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

“Air pollution is the price our communities pay for the federal government’s failure to stand up to big polluters. It’s time for state environment ministers to show leadership by championing health-based sulphur and nitrogen dioxide standards, strong pollution limits for industry and speeding up the switch to clean renewable energy.”

JKenH

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Yet more bad news regarding the US shale gas industry, and by association the rest of the World too.

Turns out that US shale gas emissions (a slightly different methane gas) was being under recorded and is far, far greater than originally thought. With methane being around 80x more powerful than CO2 as a green house gas, it even seems that the US shale gas industry is worse than coal for AGW.

And the industry is still expanding. And Trump is in the processing of trying to remove the current (inefficient) monitoring. [Note - In fairness to Trump, fracking 'exploded' under Obama, but most of the race leaders in the Democrat nomination process have said, or suggested that they will restrict or ban fracking.]

Fracking may be a bigger climate problem than we thought



Worth reading this next paragraph a few times -




Same story, this time from National Geographic:

Fracking boom tied to methane spike in Earth’s atmosphere

That isn’t good.

The reason for my comment here is the reference to wetlands as a source of methane. That made me think about my wildlife pond (as I do know that if the sediment gets disturbed methane gas erupts) and I did a bit of googling.

This article confirms urban ponds are important GHG sources.

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2643

Now my pond is only about 80sq.m surface area but there are a lot of water bodies about and it seems artificial ponds as used by farmers and large reservoirs are a much bigger problem.
I then came across this article in the Guardian (apologies if it has been posted before).

The hydropower paradox: is this energy as clean as it seems?
New research finds that the world’s hydroelectric dams generate a surprising amount of greenhouse gas emissions

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=storage+reservoirs+emit+methane&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

I have no angle on this, it was just something I hadn’t really thought about.

JKenH

I was listening to Radio 4 this evening and heard about this.

How vaccines could fix our problem with cow emissions.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190806-how-vaccines-could-fix-our-problem-with-cow-emissions

ed110220

JKenH wrote: »

That isn’t good.

The reason for my comment here is the reference to wetlands as a source of methane. That made me think about my wildlife pond (as I do know that if the sediment gets disturbed methane gas erupts) and I did a bit of googling.

This article confirms urban ponds are important GHG sources.

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2643

Now my pond is only about 80sq.m surface area but there are a lot of water bodies about and it seems artificial ponds as used by farmers and large reservoirs are a much bigger problem.
I then came across this article in the Guardian (apologies if it has been posted before).

The hydropower paradox: is this energy as clean as it seems?
New research finds that the world’s hydroelectric dams generate a surprising amount of greenhouse gas emissions

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=storage+reservoirs+emit+methane&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

I have no angle on this, it was just something I hadn’t really thought about.

It's worth noting that methane emissions from hydroelectric dams vary greatly from dam to dam and depend among other things on the size of the area flooded, whether vegetation was removed prior to flooding and whether there is a strong seasonal cycle in water levels. Generally only the worst dams in the tropics have GHG emissions in any way comparable with an equivalent fossil fuel plant, typically where a large area is flooded for a small amount of electricity generation and where a strong seasonal cycle in water levels allows abundant plant growth when water levels drop and then the water level rises and floods the vegetation, causing it to die, decay under water and release methane.

There are other good reasons why many hydroelectric schemes aren't green such as flooding and destroying important habitats, blocking fish migration etc, but again I wouldn't say all are on balance bad. On balance I'd say garden ponds are highly beneficial to the environment.