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I would think that the producers are incentivized to reduce leaks to be able to sell more. Do you have any numbers on how leaky natural gas production is? What

by ryao 10y ago

I would think that the producers are incentivized to reduce leaks to be able to sell more. Do you have any numbers on how leaky natural gas production is? What about for natural gas production from biomass? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas That being said, you can think natural gas is great without thinking about CO2 at all. Switching to natural gas would eliminate dependence on oil from the Middle East, which ought to be a good thing.

jartelt 10y ago
You are only incentivized to reduce leaks if the profit from selling the additional natural gas is larger than the cost of reducing the leaks. It is difficult to track down all the leaks because you cannot see a leak with your eyes (like you can see oil leaking from a pipeline). The key difference is that it is much harder to stop a gas from leaking than it is to stop a liquid like oil from leaking.
- ryao 10y ago
  Isn't that why the gas has a smell added to it?
knieveltech 10y ago
Unless unprecedented carbon capture systems are discovered petrocarbon-based energy systems are not defensible in the medium to long term regardless of what flavor of market fuckery you try to bring to bear. The greenhouse effect isn't concerned with or impacted by geopolitics.
- ryao 10y ago
  How do you propose vehicles operate without a carbon based fuel? Natural gas is cheaper at the low end for automotive transportation than electricity and it is the only feasible option for jet engines that does not involve oil. Let's not forget commercial shipping, which cannot operate on solar panels due to low surface area. I consider eliminating demand for oil to reduce funding of terrorist attacks to be a higher priority than eliminating carbon based transportation. If you do not, then there is always production of natural gas from biomass, which makes natural gas carbon neutral: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas For what it is worth, natural gas has a higher energy density per unit mass than gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Switching to it in transportation actually reduces energy requirements such that reductions in carbon dioxide output would be higher than the theoretical numbers: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11
  - knieveltech 10y ago
    Global atmospheric temperatures are an existential threat. International terrorism is not. It might be worthwhile to check the assumption that halting warming will be possible while maintaining all of the transportation infrastructure we've grown accustomed to over the last 102 years. What sounds better to you, a working ecosystem or cheap airfare?
    - ryao 10y ago
      I will take the cheap airfare. I think you will find most of the world population would take the lower air fare too, regardless of what you say. You can see your goals achieved with natural gas thanks to biomass conversion methods, but do not expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about eliminating CO2 emissions as you are. The most you will get is willingness to make things renewable for security or financial reasons. Natural gas can both reduce the cost of air travel, which definitely can get people on-board and improve security by cutting demand for oil, which ought to matter to my fellow New Yorkers.
      - knieveltech 10y ago
        "I will take the cheap airfare." Let's hope technology pulls of a miracle before this flavor of myopic insanity destroys the planet. You do realize you just said that you'd rather be able to affordably fly than have a working biosphere, right? What were you planning on eating for the mid-flight snack? An arm rest?
        ryao 10y ago
        The planet used to be warmer 600 years ago. Nature adapted to the lower temperatures. If temperatures rise, it will adapt to the higher temperatures, provided that they even happen. The projections that claim temperature rises do not consider the inevitability of renewable energy. Renewable prices will drop over time while fossil fuel prices will increase over time. Eventually, fossil fuels will be more expensive and renewables will take over. Even if the most severe predictions on the internet are true, there is no need to eliminate he use of carbon based fuels. Speeding up the transition to renewable carbon based fuel production would be more than sufficient.
nickparker 10y ago
Most of what I'm saying is coming from a lecture by Prof. Howarth at Cornell this past Fall. His full slides are linked at [1]. His second lecture in the series [2] suggests upstream emissions from a well are about 1.3%. That's not enough to justify significant investment in capture for production increases, but it's enough to do enormous damage to the environment. The first set of slides explains that damage reasonably well, but the TL;DR is that Methane screws us far more in the short term, and all the timelines that matter at this point are short term. I don't have any information on biofuel production. I think it's an open question whether it's useful for grid-scale energy production -- again, gas turbines are wonderful base load generators -- but I'd be extremely hesitant to support it's use in transportation. Oversea shipping is a challenging problem that may be served well by gas as a stop-gap, but long term it should move to compact nuclear reactors which use non-weaponizable fuel elements or new energy dense storage methods like lithium air batteries. For ground transportation, it's really hard to justify anything other than direct electric vehicles at this point. The energy density of natural gas isn't that great relative to current Li-Ion packs when you consider tank weight, and any pure ICE vehicle has to deal with large braking losses, which EVs can recover trivially. The various flavors of hybrids are a decent solution, but I'm a huge proponent of the pure EV model with parked EVs doubling as a grid-scale storage solution. [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0TmRmSUs4TjJRdVk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0TmRmSUs4TjJRdVk... [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0aUVUQ2tEcXNwTVU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0aUVUQ2tEcXNwTVU...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

by ryao 10y ago

jartelt 10y ago

You are only incentivized to reduce leaks if the profit from selling the additional natural gas is larger than the cost of reducing the leaks. It is difficult to track down all the leaks because you cannot see a leak with your eyes (like you can see oil leaking from a pipeline). The key difference is that it is much harder to stop a gas from leaking than it is to stop a liquid like oil from leaking.

ryao 10y ago
Isn't that why the gas has a smell added to it?

knieveltech 10y ago

Unless unprecedented carbon capture systems are discovered petrocarbon-based energy systems are not defensible in the medium to long term regardless of what flavor of market fuckery you try to bring to bear. The greenhouse effect isn't concerned with or impacted by geopolitics.

ryao 10y ago
How do you propose vehicles operate without a carbon based fuel? Natural gas is cheaper at the low end for automotive transportation than electricity and it is the only feasible option for jet engines that does not involve oil. Let's not forget commercial shipping, which cannot operate on solar panels due to low surface area. I consider eliminating demand for oil to reduce funding of terrorist attacks to be a higher priority than eliminating carbon based transportation. If you do not, then there is always production of natural gas from biomass, which makes natural gas carbon neutral: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_natural_gas For what it is worth, natural gas has a higher energy density per unit mass than gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Switching to it in transportation actually reduces energy requirements such that reductions in carbon dioxide output would be higher than the theoretical numbers: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=73&t=11
- knieveltech 10y ago
  Global atmospheric temperatures are an existential threat. International terrorism is not. It might be worthwhile to check the assumption that halting warming will be possible while maintaining all of the transportation infrastructure we've grown accustomed to over the last 102 years. What sounds better to you, a working ecosystem or cheap airfare?
  - ryao 10y ago
    I will take the cheap airfare. I think you will find most of the world population would take the lower air fare too, regardless of what you say. You can see your goals achieved with natural gas thanks to biomass conversion methods, but do not expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about eliminating CO2 emissions as you are. The most you will get is willingness to make things renewable for security or financial reasons. Natural gas can both reduce the cost of air travel, which definitely can get people on-board and improve security by cutting demand for oil, which ought to matter to my fellow New Yorkers.
    - knieveltech 10y ago
      "I will take the cheap airfare." Let's hope technology pulls of a miracle before this flavor of myopic insanity destroys the planet. You do realize you just said that you'd rather be able to affordably fly than have a working biosphere, right? What were you planning on eating for the mid-flight snack? An arm rest?
      - ryao 10y ago
        The planet used to be warmer 600 years ago. Nature adapted to the lower temperatures. If temperatures rise, it will adapt to the higher temperatures, provided that they even happen. The projections that claim temperature rises do not consider the inevitability of renewable energy. Renewable prices will drop over time while fossil fuel prices will increase over time. Eventually, fossil fuels will be more expensive and renewables will take over. Even if the most severe predictions on the internet are true, there is no need to eliminate he use of carbon based fuels. Speeding up the transition to renewable carbon based fuel production would be more than sufficient.

nickparker 10y ago

Most of what I'm saying is coming from a lecture by Prof. Howarth at Cornell this past Fall. His full slides are linked at [1]. His second lecture in the series [2] suggests upstream emissions from a well are about 1.3%. That's not enough to justify significant investment in capture for production increases, but it's enough to do enormous damage to the environment. The first set of slides explains that damage reasonably well, but the TL;DR is that Methane screws us far more in the short term, and all the timelines that matter at this point are short term. I don't have any information on biofuel production. I think it's an open question whether it's useful for grid-scale energy production -- again, gas turbines are wonderful base load generators -- but I'd be extremely hesitant to support it's use in transportation. Oversea shipping is a challenging problem that may be served well by gas as a stop-gap, but long term it should move to compact nuclear reactors which use non-weaponizable fuel elements or new energy dense storage methods like lithium air batteries. For ground transportation, it's really hard to justify anything other than direct electric vehicles at this point. The energy density of natural gas isn't that great relative to current Li-Ion packs when you consider tank weight, and any pure ICE vehicle has to deal with large braking losses, which EVs can recover trivially. The various flavors of hybrids are a decent solution, but I'm a huge proponent of the pure EV model with parked EVs doubling as a grid-scale storage solution. [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0TmRmSUs4TjJRdVk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0TmRmSUs4TjJRdVk... [2]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0aUVUQ2tEcXNwTVU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ocJG5BVzw0aUVUQ2tEcXNwTVU...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]