4 ms·
1,300 metric tons of CH4 leaked per day seems massive. Total anthropogenic U.S. emissions are 30 teragrams - 30 million metric tons (http://www.pnas.org/content
by noondip 11y ago
1,300 metric tons of CH4 leaked per day seems massive. Total anthropogenic U.S. emissions are 30 teragrams - 30 million metric tons (http://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20018.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/110/50/20018.full.pdf). An extra half a million tons of this stuff per year is probably not good, although I'm not an expert and the data seems subject to some controversy.
- gizmo686 11y agoIt is worth pointing out that your link says 30 million metric tons of CH4. The biggest concern I am aware of (from the global perspective) is the global warming effect, for which it would be more meaningful to talk about all greenhouse gas emmisions. The EPA estimates that we released the equivelent of 6,742 million metric tons of CO2 in 2013 (scaled to look at the warming effect over a 100 year period) [0]. The standard conversrion of CH4 to CO2 emissions is 25x, so we are leaking 32,500 metric tons CO2 equivelent an hour. If we assume this leak will last for 1 year, it will leak a total of ~285 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, or about 4% of our annual emissions. [0]http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/pdfs/usinventoryreport/US-GHG-Inventory-2015-Chapter-2-Trends.pdf http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/pdfs/usinventoryreport/US-...
- noondip 11y agoI've read the 25x conversion number is low and out of date. Is the following source more credible than EPA? > In the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, methane has a lifetime of 12.4 years and with climate-carbon feedbacks a global warming potential of 86 over 20 years and 34 over 100 years in response to emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global-warming_potential#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global-warming_potential#cite_...