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‘Mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed
- danielfoster 4y agoI’m all for making personal sacrifices to reduce the impact of climate change, but maybe this should be fixed before telling people they can’t fly?
- mrpopo 4y agoSure, go tell the people in Turkmenistan that they should pay more taxes to pay for the installation to flare or plug that hole. And hope that nobody on the supply chain will sell critical components in order to buy nice things for their children. Oh, and btw they don't really fly that much. Not sure which people you meant. ;)
- sph 4y ago> "the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions" > "Most of the facilities leaking the methane were owned by Turkmenoil, the national oil company" Makes me wonder if we should one day have, alongside the crime against humanity, the crime against nature itself.
- robin_reala 4y agoThere’s an extensive push to get an international legal basis on this. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocide .
- paganel 4y agoIf that means the Global South invading countries like the US or the UK in order to stop big ecociders like Shell, Exxon, Chevron or P&G, then I’m all for it. Unfortunately we all know that those are not the intended targets of that legislation.
- jupp0r 4y agoInvading other countries is against international law, and is exactly what these regulations aim to prevent.
- paganel 4y agoSo, then, how are they going to stop those supposed ecocides? Meaning, how are they going to enforce those regulations on countries that are not following them?
- red-iron-pine 4y agoThere are enforcement methods that don't involve invasions
- paganel 4y agoSuch as? More to the point, and putting ecocide and genocide in a similar ballpark, doesn’t anyone remember Rwanda anymore? Or Srebrenica? (this latter labeled technically as a massacre). Does anyone believe that those atrocities could have been stopped by “harsh words” alone? Or by economic sanctions? They weren’t. Enforcement in this case means imposition of force, which in an inter-state situation means invasion or, at the very least, a military attack (see Kosovo in ‘99, technically not an invasion).
- jupp0r 4y agoI didn't count UN sanctioned peacekeeping as "invasion", but I can see how this could be seen as a purely semantic distinction. I personally think it should be one instrument on the table as a matter of last resort, mainly for the purpose of deterrence.
- jones6ofMont 4y ago[dead]
- foverzar 4y ago
- h0l0cube 4y agoMaybe more carrot than stick makes sense here as law enforcement doesn't really work for an authoritarian state. If there was enough financial incentive to lower emissions and keep them lower, I'm sure the Turkmenistan government would. Unfortunately (according to TFA) they are more allied to Russia and China which take a hands-off approach at best.
- DrScientist 4y agoI wonder which country has the most emissions? ( China followed by US, and India ). If you adjust by per capita - then all the energy producing countries are top - but then they are emitting for other people - Turkmenistan isn't producing all that energy for domestic consumption. Easy to point fingers. It's the consumers, not the producers per se that are the problem.
- kashunstva 4y ago> Turkmenistan isn't producing all that energy for domestic consumption > It's the consumers, not the producers per se that are the problem. Irrespective of which party is the proximate cause of energy extraction in Turkmenistan, the large volume leakage of methane according to the article is not an inevitable byproduct of oil drilling. What’s more, the incremental costs of controlling methane emissions are tiny. And finally, consumers couldn’t go re-light methane flares at the drill sites even if they wanted to.
- red-iron-pine 4y agoIn other words, Turkmen Oil is fucking up and not doing basic methane leak management. All of the discussions around who is a larger consumer are pointless; the point is that they could be doing more, and at a very small cost to them directly.
- RobotToaster 4y ago>If you adjust by per capita - then all the energy producing countries are top If you use consumption based accounting, Luxembourg comes out number 1, apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#Consumption-based_emissions:_annual_carbon_dioxide_emissions_in_metric_tons_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
- You-Are-Right 4y ago[dead]
- bregma 4y ago[flagged]
- blokey 4y agoWhat the heck does same-sex marriage have to do with "crimes against nature"? Note, that same-sex relationships exist /throughout/ nature and marriage itself is not "natural". Me thinks your biases and agenda is showing...
- zowie_vd 4y agoI don't necessarily agree with his point but homosexuality (/sodomy/buggery) used to be categorized as a crime against nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_against_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_against_nature
- Sharlin 4y ago[dead]
- sph 4y agoI knew someone was thick enough to make that remark, seemingly unaware of the two different meanings of the word "nature". 1. Basic or inherent characteristics of something. What GP is trolling about. 2. The entire global ecosystem and physical phenomena on planet Earth or the Universe at large. What I was talking about.
- emptyfile 4y ago[dead]
- Keyframe 4y agoMakes me wonder if we should one day have, alongside the crime against humanity, the crime against nature itself. It's not necessarily different.
- sph 4y agoIt is, because the latter is worse. Being a major cause of climate change does not only affect humanity, but future generations and all life on Earth as well. It is an order of magnitude worse than genocide. When a single entity is responsible for it, because of negligence or malice, the punishment should be more draconian than if it "only" caused harm to humanity.
- drewcoo 4y agoI live in the US, where we don't recognize any of that.
- atleastoptimal 4y ago[flagged]
- Grum9 4y ago[flagged]
- smcl 4y agoThe dismissal of environmentalists as "lol eat bugs" is really fucking sad, to me. It's like you're delighted that this happened because you get a chance to wind up some people you dislike. I mean whatever we say here or believe doesn't change what happened in Turkmenistan, it's just sad to be reminded what kind of hurdles exist when talking about making the world a little bit better :-/
- throwawaylinux 4y ago> The dismissal of environmentalists as "lol eat bugs" is really fucking sad, to me. I don't see it as a dismissal of real environmentalists, more a laugh at the hypocrite corporatist ruling class who take their private jets and mega yachts to conferences where they pat one another on the back and tell everybody else to eat bugs. Them, and the army of sycophants and apologists who they've fooled.
- PoignardAzur 4y agoI have a pretty strong suspicion that the average person who holds this discourse does not support political actions against global warming even when they would hamper big corporations and rich people (eg carbon taxes, cap-and-trade policies, closing coal plants, pre-planned ICE vehicle bans in 10 years, etc). The last person who gave me this spiel said it right after suggesting I take the place from france to canada, and got mad I suggested they install an electric stove instead of a gas one.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
- onion2k 4y agoIt's a shame they can't capture it and sell it to Europe. They'd be making $billions.
- ZiiS 4y agoThey could; they just make $billions either way.
- xwdv 4y agoHeavy polluters should have assets seized by military force as a matter of global security.
- ed_mercer 4y agoYou mean like, a special military operation?
- xtian 4y agoBeautiful green ecofascism. You are truly on the cutting edge ideologically.
- xwdv 4y agoNo way around it. We already have some form of ecofascism by forcing companies to adhere to environmental regulations, for no other reason besides “the environment must be protected”. Getting a military involved is just the last resort when all other warnings fail.
- xtian 4y agoOh yeah, the multinationals are so afraid of regulations from the captured state which further entrench their existing monopolies. They’re so afraid of the military being dispatched from the centers of international finance to suppress and seize potential threats in developing countries. All in the name of “the planet”.
- sph 4y agoAll of forms of fascism, ecofascism is one I could agree with. We're way past the point of having to be tolerant of people polluting Earth, air and sea. If the individual is shamed for throwing cigarette butts on the floor, executives of oil companies, knowingly releasing tons of methane in the atmosphere need to be launched into the Sun itself. Not get a slap on the wrist and go scot-free.
- thriftwy 4y agoSelflessly bringing Tropical Hyperborea[1] closer for us Russians. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMAG0QiGhQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMAG0QiGhQc
- Geee 4y agoThe best solution is to mine bitcoin with it. They can quite easily turn the methane into money. There's a company doing this: https://www.weforum.org/videos/this-start-up-catches-waste-methane-to-power-data-centres https://www.weforum.org/videos/this-start-up-catches-waste-m...
- Kuinox 4y agoBurning the fuel simply would be even better solution. Or with the computing power, you could do more useful stuff: training AI, simulating protein folding, predicting weather.
- Geee 4y agoYes, that's possible (and which Crusoe Energy does too), but bitcoin is "the best" i.e. the easiest and probably the most profitable solution. There are additional challenges for general purpose data centers or GPU clusters, which limit their practicability in these conditions.
- Kuinox 4y agoIt's also the most useless for humanity. We are takling about a protocol where you must waste the most ressource in order to validate a transaction and get paid for it.
- Geee 4y agoIt's not used to validate transactions; it's used to protect the transaction from double-spending, i.e. to protect the property from theft. It's impossible to protect private property without a cost. Usually, private property is protected with laws and guns, but not everyone has access to these, or they come bundled with various external costs, or they fail to provide protection. Which is why Bitcoin is useful.
- Kuinox 4y ago> to protect the property from theft. It also help theft by laundering money.
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoIt's always been there. 20 years ago my father went for business in Turkmenistan, and all this was already in place. This country is one of the biggest producer of fossil fuel, it's an ultra-dictatorship, and has strong commercial partnerships with France. It's very well known. So why is there sudden medias coverage of this? I'm now doubting more and more that the politicians and medias really care about any environmental issue and that, like terrorism and pedophilia, it's used to motivate another agenda. The problem is, unlike terrorism and pedophilia, climate change is an urgent issue that affects every single human in the world, so I really want this to be a genuine concern. But some part of me now always wonder if somebody, somewhere, is not preparing us to invade Turkmenistan 2 years from now.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoMedia coverage of methane leaks is going up because: a) progress on various other sources (e.g. coal) means remaining issues move up the priority list b) new satellite measurement techniques let us pinpoint blame, rather than do back of the envelope calculations based on educated guesses and global averages, which were bad enough but less actionable. https://www.ghgsat.com/en/technology https://www.ghgsat.com/en/technology
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yorwba 4y agoThe media coverage has always been there, too. Even this particular instance is part of a long-running thread: 2021-10-31: UN launches International Methane Emissions Observatory https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/methane-observatory-launched-boost-action-powerful-climate-warming https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/methane-... 2022-11-11: UN announces satellite-based Methane Alert and Response System https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-announces-high-tech-satellite-based-global-methane-detection https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-annou... 2023-01-19: Kayrros wins contract to supply the satellite data https://www.satelliteevolution.com/post/kayrros-to-supply-unep-international-methane-emissions-observatory-with-global-detection-capacity https://www.satelliteevolution.com/post/kayrros-to-supply-un... 2023-03-06: The Guardian publishes their first(?) article about data obtained from Kayrros https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed... 2023-05-09: The Guardian publishes the follow-up submitted to HN here. Lots of long-running situations are like this, constantly getting reported on at a level below most people's awareness threshold, and then when you stumble across one such report, it suddenly feels like a flood. See also the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
- mrpopo 4y agoNo one here talking about the US being right behind, despite being an alleged democracy, with regulatory frameworks in place (supposedly), orders of magnitude more money invested in fossil fuel extraction, a much larger population, free press, etc. ?
- specialist 4y agoThere's plenty of outrage to go around. If we survive, there'll be plenty of time to assign blame. But right now, any and all methane emissions must be stopped, as best able.
- mrpopo 4y agoI'm not trying to assign blame (if anything, all other top comments do, one of them is talking about putting Turkmen on trial for crimes against humanity). I'm looking at the emissions and see Turkmenistan and the US are clear leaders on the methane leaks problem. And this place is full of US readers, therefore I believe it's worth discussing. Any and all methane emissions must be stopped, including in the US, where all US citizens reading me should use their democratic power, write to their representants by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever to try and change the situation. Turkmenistan is a poor country with rampant corruption and therefore it's harder to hold it to the same standards as a developed one.
- specialist 4y agoYa. Reducing methane emissions in the USA isn't trivial either. Before these satelites provided independent verification, our oversight regiment was mostly self minitoring and reporting. That worked as well as you can guess.
- boffinAudio 4y agoSomeone tell Elon this is the perfect place to put some refueling refineries for Starship ..
- tareqak 4y agoHow much of those emissions come from the Darvaza gas crater? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
- philipwhiuk 4y agoProbably none because the problem here is unburnt methane.
- rapjr9 4y agoWhy doesn't the plume sometimes ignite? I know methane is lighter than air so it would rise straight up, subject to winds. Seems like an electrostatic spark from say dust in the air would happen once in a while and ignite the plume. Or some kid launching a bottle rocket on a day with sideways winds. Maybe the gas concentration quickly becomes too low to ignite?
- jschveibinz 4y agoOn a lighter note, I’m sure there is a Farside cartoon of the ‘scientist’ characters that specifically addresses this particular issue.