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The Invisible Catastrophe: Record Methane Leak in CA
- clumsysmurf 11y agoWhile this was going on, there was another smaller methane gas leak just north of Porter Ranch. Whats interesting about this one, is the intentional effort to conceal it. An airplane pilot using an infrared camera to record methane levels of the main leak noticed the second leak. Employees of The Termo Company snaked a 2.5-inch pipe away from oil pumping equipment to hide its opening under a tree. http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/03/18/58697/during-porter-ranc-stealthy-oil-workers-hid-anothe/ http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/03/18/58697/during-porter-ranc...
- hanniabu 11y agoThat's fucked up, this stuff is so frustrating and pisses me off.....this stuff will keep happening until stronger fines are in place. Rather than setting petty fines, the fines should instead be something like 0.5% of the company's revenue. That'll get them listening because it's a substantial enough amount that the risk of getting caught isn't worth it.
- jacobolus 11y agoIf there were some kind of general carbon tax, I assume the fee for "greenhouse equivalent of 1.7 million cars for a year" would be pretty big.
- Retric 11y agoMethane breaks down in around 10 years into CO2. So, it's not quite that bad.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoAnd then CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by plants and algae, so it's really not bad at all! /s
- im3w1l 11y agoMy understanding is that if you release an extra tonne of CO2 today, there will be an extra tonne in 10 years, in 20 years and in 100 years, because the systems you mention are already working at full capacity.
- Xylakant 11y agoThe problem is that we're mostly releasing CO2 that has been captured by plants millions of years ago and turned to coal/oil/gas. Releasing the same amount of CO2 from freshly grown plants would be neutral.
- adrianN 11y agoCO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time. A large part of the released CO2 will stay basically forever. http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.12... While Methane is bad, releasing the equivalent amount of CO2 would be way worse.
- InclinedPlane 11y agohttp://www.internetslang.com/_2FS-meaning-definition.asp http://www.internetslang.com/_2FS-meaning-definition.asp
- quanticle 11y agoYes, but in the meantime, methane retains heat 84 times as efficiently as CO2, to the point where even though there is still 200x as much CO2 as methane in the atmosphere, methane still accounts for roughly a quarter of all global warming.
- Retric 11y agoIf global warming was a short term problem or if this was going to continue indefinably then sure. But, in 10 years this is the same as an extra 2,000 cars for 10 years. 2,000 * 10 * 84 = 1.7 million cars for 1 year. Methane basically forces you to see future climate change effects today. But, it's the ever compounding release of CO2 that's the long term problem without an obvious solution. PS: IMO diluting focus is an issue. If two things are bad there is a tendency to stop thinking a that point. Even if knowing which one is 100x worse is very important.
- sitkack 11y agoMeanwhile the extra 10 years of 84x heat capture has powered the warming positive feedback cycle. Elevated temps put more moisture into the air, raise the temp, the raised temp causes trapped methane in the arctic to enter the atmosphere. The atmosphere (and the oceans) aren't a balance sheet.
- Retric 11y agoYour vastly overstating effects. At 84x this may cause the next year to be ~1 hours worth of extra CO2 ahead, but that delta is going to drop down over time. (980 million cars in the world / 1.7 = 1:576, transportation is 30% of CO2, not sure what % is cars but 50% = 1:6,405 = 44 minutes:1year ) It's like saying a stunt jumper hit the ground sooner because they carried a camera on the trip. Yes, they might have been 'ok' for a few extra Nano seconds, but that's not why the parachute failed to deploy. PS: For scale, if everyone in the US drove a Prius it would help and be useful, but not stop global warming.
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- madaxe_again 11y agoThere is, carbon credits, but they're a joke that are used to further line pockets rather than reduce emissions.
- drjesusphd 11y agoThey won't reduce emissions until they're mandated by law. And yes, one would expect lots of people to get rich off them. That's kind of the point; it's a market solution.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoThat, or prison sentences.
- sologoub 11y agoThat AND prison sentences.
- andremendes 11y agoWhat I find also very interesting is that the headline of the article states it as it was workers fault, while I'm pretty sure it was a top-down order to hide. Owners/management doesn't seem to get the blame.
- emp_zealoth 11y agoIt is fun watchimg USA literally eat itself alive. Almost as fun as watching Titanic crash right from it's bow
- guelo 11y agoUnstoppable Gas Leaks in Texas Even Worse than California’s, Media Silent: http://theantimedia.org/unstoppable-gas-leaks-texas-even-worse-californias-media-silent/ http://theantimedia.org/unstoppable-gas-leaks-texas-even-wor...
- thrownaway2424 11y agoThis one makes a better story because of the concentration of the problem. The Barnett Shale is 5000 square miles. A huge distributed gas leak on an area that big is harder to impress people with.
- jdmichal 11y agoSo I loaded up Google Maps to get a visual of the neighborhood, and found that someone has conveniently tagged the leak location as a "tourist attraction". https://www.google.com/maps/place/2015+Methane+gas+leak,+California+91326 https://www.google.com/maps/place/2015+Methane+gas+leak,+Cal... The Walmart shopping center is here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walmart+Supercenter,+19821+Rinaldi+St,+Porter+Ranch,+CA+91326 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walmart+Supercenter,+19821...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 11y agoIt's a sad comment on the state of our media and body politic that this has not been headline news. But no signifying image of the enormous damage means that it's hard to get and hold people's attention.
- jonah 11y agoI've been hearing about it since the beginning but maybe it's just "local" news? I live an hour-and-a-half away.
- reitanqild 11y agoHow many times more powerful than CO2 is methane as greenhouse gas?
- netinstructions 11y agoDirectly from the article... > Over a 20-year period, methane is estimated to have a warming effect on earth’s atmosphere 84 times that of carbon dioxide.
- hirsin 11y agoApproximately 21x.
- oppositelock 11y agoOk, so set the gas plumes on fire, should be better for greenhouse effect.
- trhway 11y agoand whole world is doing it, like they really care :) http://skytruth.org/viirs/ http://skytruth.org/viirs/ btw, notice how activity decreased in 2015 vs. 2014 with oil prices falling
- JumpCrisscross 11y agoIt's actually done to prevent clouds of flammable gas, mixed with air, from forming around the vents. The environmental benefit is a plus on the side.
- trhway 11y agoreminded - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufa_train_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufa_train_disaster "The explosion occurred after a pipeline began leaking liquid natural gas[1] (mainly propane and butane), creating a highly flammable cloud that was soon ignited by wheel sparks from two passenger trains heading in opposite directions near the site of the leak. "
- kohito 11y agoFrom the article: “Climate change is not a real thing for most of these people,” Stern said. “But you change your mind quick when your kids are puking.”
- kevinskii 11y agoAir pollution != climate change.
- foota 11y agoI would argue that air pollution is definitely a kind of climate change, when you interpret the phrase literally.
- themartorana 11y agoWhatever gets people believing...
- themartorana 11y agoDownvoters, seriously, what could possibly be wrong with that? Maybe you see it as being snarky? It wasn't.
- rahilsondhi 11y agoMethane == climate change. > Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is more than 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period. https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.ht... This is heavily discussed in a documentary I watched recently, "Cowspiracy."
- hueving 11y agoRight, but it's not climate change that is causing the puking. Put it this way, if we didn't have a greenhouse gas problem, the parents would still be pissed if their kids are puking.
- simplemath 11y agoWe need another Teddy Roosevelt. Or for the general population to start giving a shit. About anything, really.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoThose are both terrible strategies for trying to fix the problem. How about doing more science or more journalism? Those things have the dual benefits of helping solve the problem and actually being possible without zombie time travel.
- foota 11y agoThe science and journalism are both clearly there, it's that people don't pay attention to it, or even intentionally ignore what it's saying.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoWhat is journalism for if not that?
- mdorazio 11y agoThe American general population unfortunately tends not to care overly much about things that don't directly impact them in the short term. People have so many immediately pressing things in their lives, like unemployment, debt load, putting their kids through school, etc. that a thing like climate change which might have ramifications for their grandchildren are too easy to ignore. What we really need is more science-based governing policies with respect to environmental impact, but that again relies on the public electing officials with that stance. I don't have a good solution, but it's a broad enough problem that there isn't a simple fix.
- elevenfist 11y agoI have family in the midwest. The problem isn't that they don't care or aren't busy, they don't know what's going on most of the time, or they know the wrong thing because they just skim one newspaper and occasionally listen to the radio. Yes tgey have computers, internet, and smartphones, but they're not using them to investigate issues or much at all.
- rabbidruster 11y agoNot directly related, but another interesting potential catastrophe in St. Louis. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-st-louis-underground-fire-20151010-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-st...
- Eupolemos 11y agoThat is roughly equivalent of the farts of 6 mill cows, just standing there. Just saying for comparison, not for some "don't eat cows" agenda. Cow fart source: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3054212/collecting-cow-farts-the-stupid-brilliant-solution-to-global-warming http://www.fastcoexist.com/3054212/collecting-cow-farts-the-... (208l of methane farts = 135g/day. 120 days = 16.2kg. 97 x 10^6/16.2 = roughly 6 x 10^6.) Just smell that dairy air...
- pitchka 11y agoYup. Imagine all that methane coming from ~1.5 billion cows on a yearly basis. I don't have to, it's happening already :D Methane is 80 times more potent (long-term) than CO2 for global warming. I personally can't wait for the economic prosperity of India and Africa. The beef and dairy business will top the oil one as the biggest pollutant, if it isn't topping already. Why are there no regulations and taxes for them?
- morsch 11y ago> The beef and dairy business will top the oil one as the biggest pollutant, if it isn't topping already. It isn't. Agriculture accounted for an estimated emission of 5.1 to 6.1 GtCO2-eq/yr in 2005 (10-12% of total global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs)). (IPCC AR4[0], slightly revised to 5.0 to 5.8 GtCO2eq/y in AR5) That's all agriculture, including livestock, this (IPCC AR5[1]) is just "cow farts": Enteric Fermentation. Global emissions of this important category grew from 1.4 to 2.1 GtCO2eq/yr between 1961 and 2010, with average annual growth rates of 0.70% (FAOSTAT, 2013). [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter8.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-ch... [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter11.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_a...
- pitchka 11y agohttp://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM Here's an 18% estimate while transportation is 13%. Here's a 51% estimate, trumping everything else. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 No one can say with certainty. Although, raising 100 billion animals yearly, most of them having over 250lbs, I'd say it's pretty close for CO2. When it comes to methane, cow farts are 65% of our methane emissions. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
- fapjacks 11y agoJailtime. Jailtime. Jailtime. Long sentences.
- Zigurd 11y agoI wonder why this is downvoted. Industrial and white collar crimes are generally orders of magnitude worse, in terms of physical destruction and financial loss, than street-level property crime. Why aren't the sentences (and enforcement, and prosecution) proportionate to the impact?
- VeejayRampay 11y agoLet's be honest, it's the power of money.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoCan we talk about the visible catastrophe of the exurban development? I'm a lot more upset about the total lifetime cost of the depicted subdivision than I am about the one-time industrial calamity.
- zbyte64 11y agoWe can, maybe you should submit an article instead of trying to redirect the conversation?
- thrownaway2424 11y agoI'm discussing the photographs that are in the linked article. Am I supposed to not see the juxtaposition between a complaint about the global warming effects of a methane release, and the guy who is depicted in front of his Rolls Royce, in front of his 3-car garage, on one of the many culs-de-sac in the space filling graph of an unwalkable carscape? Am I supposed to feel like Charles Chow gives one flying handshake about global warming? Part of me feels like the Times is doing a subtle, sly job here, and part of me feels like they missed the whole story.
- williesleg 11y agoSounds like we found the cause of carbon emissions.
- npunt 11y agoThis piece was a perfect opportunity for the New York Times to use data and charts to visualize the magnitude of the problem and the timeline of the discoveries and activities. Instead we got a wall of text, and numbers without context like '97,100 metric tons'. I'm sure somewhere deep in there the context was provided, but it wasn't readily available for me as a reader to make a quick assessment of the issues importance, and whether to dedicate 15 minutes to reading it. Specifically, the lack of subheads and figures made the article really hard to skim, which is rather inexcusable in the age of internet publishing. The only images are a guy with a rolls royce, an overhead shot of the area, a pool, and a gate. Not exactly compelling stuff, nor highly descriptive or additive. The article is very well researched and real journalism went into it, and its a shame it wasn't put together well. EDIT: dove into this problem more on my blog -- http://www.nickpunt.com/2016/03/31/journalism-and-user-experience/ http://www.nickpunt.com/2016/03/31/journalism-and-user-exper...
- gaur 11y agoThis is another example of "long-form journalism". Some people apparently consider the buried information and irrelevant fluff to be a feature, not a bug.
- buf 11y agoCannot upvote this enough. Laughed out loud.
- jonah 11y agoYeah, it's not "news" as it's been going on for months and is largely "resolved" now.
- Mvandenbergh 11y agoThere's really very little point in putting the information in a very concise, actionable form because the vast majority of readers are not in a position to do anything about it.
- strommen 11y agoIt's not a NYT-quality chart, but I've created a visualization of the problem here: https://www.uscleanenergyfund.com/blog/visualizing-the-california-methane-leaks/ https://www.uscleanenergyfund.com/blog/visualizing-the-calif... Spoiler alert: this "catastrophe" is a minor blip on our nation's overall greenhouse emissions.
- barbs 11y agoMan... it's so disheartening to read about these things. I feel like even if I reduce all my emissions to the best of my ability - use only renewable energy, don't eat meat, don't drive etc - my net effect is only a drop in the ocean compared to catastrophes like this. And this is a total accident: it's not something that could be blamed on apathy, or laziness. Maybe negligence? But it feels like the expulsion of carbon gases is so hard to stop even with good intentions. I can't help but feel so powerless against this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- beatpanda 11y agoYou're right, your personal contributions don't mean a lot because you're making choices in an economic system engineered, physically and politically, to favor fossil fuels. Something like a decade ago, activists switched gears from "consumer choice" campaigns to regulatory and physical sabotage of fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure. Don't worry about your car, but do help those committed nerds showing up to regulatory hearings in your area. The Bay Area has several of these infrastructure fights going on as we speak.
- JoshCole 11y agoYou are a human. You are capable of going to a different planet. Communicating with me over a temporal and spacial gap is trivial to you. You are likely a programmer; creating tools which allow for that communication is within your ability. We're made in God's image. Making planets that are habitable, therefore, is within the ken of our image. Also we're responsible for having dominion over this planet and all the critters and plants that are in it. In China, they have a program to help clean the air in which they shoot the pollution out of the sky with water cannons. A hundred years ago there weren't any cars or commercial planes. There are solutions. There are even solutions that we would be blown away by; whats to stop a drone collection army that re-collects released emissions or a bio-logical version which does something similar? We aren't powerless. In the tower of Babel, man wanted to build a tower that would them reach the heavens. God stepped in and put a stop to it, confusing language. We can do things that are amazing and we can do things that are terrible. Humans are so capable that when they set their mind to do something, it takes an act of God to stop them. Do you see fish getting out of their cage and walking on the moon? If you do, your species put them there. I'm going to go back to writing out things which make the world behave as I order it to now. I want people in one location to be able to watch things in another location without going there; and I want them to see invisible features of the things like an audit log of what occurred there. Not clairvoyance though, just our usual so every day that it has become normal science-fiction-like world.
- hackuser 11y agoIs there any liability for this? If I spilled toxic waste on your land, I'd have to pay to clean it up and possibly more for mishandling it. If I spill invisible toxic waste in the whole world's atmosephere, do I get to impose the costs on everyone else?
- madaxe_again 11y agoThe latter. The atmosphere is generally viewed as a convenient place to dump whatever with no consequences. Like the ocean! No consequences at all, nosiree.
- yeukhon 11y agoThere are laws to penalize leaks if the leak is caused by misconduct like not following safety protocol or not built with safety measure. But the penalty is so lightweight corps just ignore. There are too many drilling leaks every day, so what? $250,000 fine? Fuck that. Easy money and it is the practice of energy company to sub-contract the drilling so fault will never end up on them. Sub-contractors sub-contract and more sub-contract. Yeah, a merge sort, but penalty never bubble up. Also, there aren't enough human resource available to do inspection.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoIn practice the entity which actually spills the toxic waste conveniently has no assets to recover. See many many historical cases of US vs. Cult of The Invisible Hand, Incorporated cases since the 80s. You need federal-government-scale investigation and prosecution resources to go after the money behind the shell companies. Also it's quite possible for anyone to cause an ecological catastrophe far beyond their ability to recompense.
- AnthonyMouse 11y agoThere is a dead simple solution to this which we've known about forever. Require companies that drill for oil to carry adequate insurance.
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- mirimir 11y agoThe ConocoPhillips leak in the San Juan Basin is larger. And not so easily sealed. https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.15/in-the-southwests-four-corners-methane-has-a-dark-side/methane-emittersinfographic-jpg/image_view_fullscreen https://www.hcn.org/issues/47.15/in-the-southwests-four-corn...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- omegaworks 11y agoWhat will it take for us to recognize there is only one Earth. We all share the same air. "Daddy, did it use to be hard to breathe when you were little too?"
- rtkwe 11y agoThe timeline for the damage is longer than the timelines that pretty much any of the large institutions that could affect change is setup to handle. Add the need for collective action across the world and it's a really hard problem. Any problem that takes more than a lifetime to take effect is going to be difficult to make people take action on.
- peter303 11y agoMethane creares half as much CO2 per BTU of energy as gasoline. However methane its self is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2. So if more than 2.5% of methane leaks into the atmosphere, it cancels its relative cleanness. I dont think anyone knows how natural or idustrial leakage there is. But some groups are attempting measure.
- AnthonyMouse 11y agoThe last time I made this argument it got like eight upvotes and ten downvotes without any of the naysayers explaining themselves, so I'm going to make it again. A carbon tax imposed by a majority of industrialized countries would be net profitable for countries that aren't large net petroleum exporters at the expense of countries that are. The carbon tax reduces consumption (i.e. demand) for petroleum, which reduces its pre-tax market price according to supply and demand. In other words the higher after-tax price of oil causes more people to buy electric cars and build out non-fossil power generation, which means less burning of oil and coal, which means less buying of it. So you have a $2/gallon tax but the resulting drop in demand reduces the pre-tax price of petroleum by $1/gallon (or whatever), which means you're only actually paying $1/gallon more for gas. Meanwhile you have $2/gallon worth of tax revenue which you can give back to the people paying the gas tax via a negative income tax or whatever you like. The extra $1/gallon is money not paid to Russia and Saudi Arabia, which we get instead. It's free money at the expense of antagonistic countries. The fact that it also happens to save the world is just a nice side benefit.
- kbenson 11y agoIf you subsidize people buying gas with taxes from buying gas, isn't that a net equilibrium, and people (if perfectly rational) should buy the same amount of gas (since it costs the same in the end)? I understand that some people would buy less because there's an aversion to spending more, or people that just can't afford it in the moment, but I'm not sure it makes sense, economically, as you've explained it.
- AnthonyMouse 11y agoThe tax credit is fixed, not based on how much gas you buy. The average person pays $2000 in tax (but the oil now costs $1000 less pre-tax) and then gets a $2000 tax credit. If you burn less oil than average you still get the $2000 credit but pay only $800 in tax, so switching to oil alternatives puts that much more money in your pocket.
- xer0x 11y agoApril fools!?
- emgoldstein 11y agoThere's one fact that is never mentioned in this story. Methane is lighter than air (about 0.7th the density of air). The methane leak is above Porter Ranch (about 1200 feet, a fact that is mentioned). You know that and I know that. But do most NYT readers know that? If not, why doesn't the writer mention it? He does mention elliptically that the town residents are smelling mercaptans, not methane. He doesn't mention that the methane can't possibly be reaching them. It seems like this simple science fact would bring a lot of clarity to the picture. (In related news, the greenhouse effect is O(log n), as a function from greenhouse gas concentration to thermal forcing. I'm sure everyone here knew this as well.)
- hueving 11y agoOn mobile chrome the page randomly reloads and the article disappears after about 5 minutes of reading. The mobile web is a sad state of affairs if nytimes can't even get a page reliable enough to read a whole article!
- a_imho 11y ago>The mobile web is a sad state of affairs after almost 10 years of the release of the iphone, still can't get my head around that people willingly choose that inconvenience in the name of the dictated cool.