[HN Gopher] Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters
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Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters
Author : nixass
Score : 87 points
Date : 2023-08-05 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (innovationorigins.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (innovationorigins.com)
| crazygringo wrote:
| So has this resulted in previously unknown/unexpected super-
| emitters?
|
| I'm curious if this has the potential to make a big difference,
| if there are e.g. pipeline leaks costing companies a lot of money
| that this can find, where the emitters have an incentive to fix
| it.
|
| Or if will be largely useless, because all the unknown culprits
| turn out to be natural sources we can't do anything about, or
| industrial processes in places where enforcement is lax already
| and it won't change anything.
| edrxty wrote:
| No mention of MethaneSAT? There's an EDF funded private satellite
| mission launching in a few months to go hunt methane emitters
| with high accuracy
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| My hypothesis is that unknown emissions like these is why climate
| change seems to be happening faster than the models suggest.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder what to do with this sort of information.
|
| Perhaps our governments could add a carbon tariff or something,
| if it is relatively easy to measure how much carbon is being
| emitted and where.
| euroderf wrote:
| Does the United Nations have conventionally-armed cruise
| missiles ? Shouldn't it ?
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Absolutely not unless you think the very worst most
| dysfunctional working group you've experienced at work should
| be able to make life-and-death decisions.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I know I've been in meetings where I've wished for the
| sweet relief of death.
|
| Would the use of force need to be unaimous, super majority,
| simple majority, or a unilateral decision?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I believe the US government has been fining methane super
| emitters for some time [1]. The problem is China is the
| bigggest emitter - nearly double the next highest country,
| which is India, followed closely by the US. That said, the US
| emits far more than any other country per capita.
|
| [1] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/19/callon-permian-
| basin...
| secondcoming wrote:
| Is 'per capita' a useful metric other than to give the
| largest emitters some sort of retort?
|
| One person living alone on a private island who cooks food on
| a fire several times a day might have a really high 'per
| capita' score, but in the grand scheme of things it's utterly
| irrelevant.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It _is_ a bit weird that we need so many emissions per
| person in the US. In the very least it ought to be a sign
| of where there's slack in the system.
| sargun wrote:
| In your opinion what should pollution be measured as a
| function of? If you choose not to measure it per capita,
| then every country, no matter how large or small will be
| measured equally, setting up perverse incentives for
| smaller countries to have pollution heavy environments.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| The alternative would be to say that Americans are worth
| more than Chinese (and Europeans and everyone else) and
| have a God given right to emit twice as much.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I guess it would be the Europeans who are worth the most,
| right? Since they have smaller countries.
|
| Unless we were to consider the whole of the EU as the
| unit of carbon-blame.
| kaba0 wrote:
| If all he does is cooking food on fire, he definitely won't
| have a high per capita score, per capita by definition
| gives you an average. If he does below average than your
| average western citizen, the score of his country will be
| less of that.
|
| We obviously have to account for it per capita -- you would
| surely not allow as little CO2 emission for China as you
| would to, say, Hungary. Like, that would be completely
| unfair.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Yes because we polute to provide for people. You wouldn't
| expect the USA to absolutely polute the same amount as
| Liechtenstein.
| WithinReason wrote:
| So the solution to climate change is to break up China into
| smaller countries that have emissions that are utterly
| irrelevant!
| kaba0 wrote:
| The mathematical analysis solution!
| bee_rider wrote:
| Even that would be tricky, they've got a couple cities
| that are bigger than the median EU country.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a big problem. We need a more integrated system than
| just having the US fine domestic companies that emit too
| much, I think. The obvious way to workaround that sort of
| fine is just to outsource manufacturing and emissions to
| China.
|
| A first-pass attempt could be for countries that want to do
| something about the problem to start up some sort of carbon
| credit market, with heavy tariffs for goods imported from
| outside the market.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| That's exactly what the EU is doing - right now putting in
| place the "CBAM" (carbon border adjustment mechanism)
| nipponese wrote:
| Related: Five Things You Should Know About COP26 - Reducing
| methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming
|
| https://www.state.gov/dipnote-u-s-department-of-state-offici...
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to mention it, what are the super
| meters? What country are they located in and what are they doing?
| Terr_ wrote:
| In this context "super-emitters" means strong outliers,
| locations or events where unusual amounts of something (i.e.
| methane) are being released.
|
| This often correlates to either accidents that have not been
| detected/fixed, to deliberate pollution for financial again, or
| to something nobody realized was significant before.
| brmgb wrote:
| Mostly oil fields which are not or improperly flaring or gaz
| infrastructure which are leaking. Can also be landfills where
| decomposition create methane but still mostly the oil industry.
| For "normal" emitters, you can add to that cattle farms.
| idlewords wrote:
| I feel attacked.
| tomrod wrote:
| Though they aren't the only ones mentioned in the article, I love
| the work GHGSat is doing! If anyone from there reads here, would
| love to connect. https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaseroderick/
| schnuri wrote:
| I'd love to see a list of the largest emitters.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I agree - it would be great if the data was public. I'm sure a
| large amount of this comes from natural gas flares.
| dsukhin wrote:
| The data is indeed public [0]. But beware, it's huge to
| download; it's also available in a hosted/queryable interface
| on Google Earth Engine [1].
|
| [0] https://scihub.copernicus.eu/twiki/do/view/SciHubWebPorta
| l/W...
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/earth-
| engine/datasets/catalog/...
| tlrss wrote:
| You might be interested in Climate TRACE. They produce a global
| inventory, identifying the largest individual sources of
| emissions, and publish it CC-BY -
| https://climatetrace.org/downloads
| codethief wrote:
| So how much of the yearly methane emissions do the super-emitters
| account for and how much do they emit in absolute numbers? The
| article seems to be lacking the most interesting information...
| bArray wrote:
| Exactly. There's a good chance that climate change efforts are
| far better targetted at super emitters. We have limited
| resources and these are relatively low-hanging fruit.
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