Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates | Hacker News Reader

Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates

nature.com

207 pointsdigital5594 comments

In case you're wondering, burning natural gas does produce ~half the CO2 you would release from burning various types of coal, [0] the dirtiest (yes, much worse than all of the nuclear power accidents combined[1]) of all methods of electricity production.

But it still produces CO2! And at the rate at which natural gas is taking over a greater share of the energy production of the world economy, we are still looking at catastrophic global warming.[2][3]

[0]https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

[1]https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

[2]https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fu...

[3]https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fu...

In a five year period Methane traps ~100 times more energy than the equivalent quantity of CO2, so not burning Methane because it escapes is far worse than burning it!

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/methane-vs-ca...

The comparative effect between CO2 and methane varies as we vary the timeframe. One thing we do know - reducing methane will have an immediate impact, whereas reducing CO2 will have a lasting impact. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0026-8

Methane breaks down into CO2 and water, so we get the carbon dioxide regardless.

There are many embedded assumptions in your statement that do not hold up to scrutiny. Methane "breaks down" to CO2 and water? This is difficult to parse. I do not think that methane generally breaks down to much of anything at standard temperature and pressure. Do you mean the combustion of methane produces CO2 and water? The latter is true, but OP's point is that this combustion produces A LOT less CO2 as compared to the equivalent (in BTUs) amount of coal.

According to Wikipedia, in the troposphere and stratosphere, Methane reacts with hydroxyl radicals to give CO2 and H2O.

Which brings us around to the subject of the article ;)

But it also doesn’t hang around for that long. Maybe better in the long term to release it than burn it?

For most of the ways methane breaks down, it gets converted to CO2 anyway[1]. So it's better to break it down to CO2 immediately to avoid the stronger greenhouse effect of methane.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si...

Your link suggests your assertion "For most of the ways methane breaks down, it gets converted to CO2 anyway" is just plain incorrect. In the atmosphere, methane becomes -CH3 (- used for dot because I don't know how to do that), the free radical eventually forms formaldehyde. Methanotropic soil bacteria can break down methane to CO2, but there is nothing to support your assertion that most of the ways methane breaks down [make] CO2.

The page at that link says:

« The most effective sink of atmospheric methane is the hydroxyl radical in the troposphere, or the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere. As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. »

So if the page is right, possibly not "most of the ways", but at least "most of the methane".

There are multiple reactions involved. The methane gets converted to formaldehyde, which gets converted into CO, which then gets converted into CO2.

> yes, much worse than all of the nuclear power accidents combined[1]

I'll get it out of the way up front; I'm absurdly pro-nuclear.

Sunlight and radiation are both essentially high-energy, carcinogenic radiation. Technically, I'm sure they are very different, practically they are very similar.

I'd be really interested to know how the amount of sunlight reflected of a solar panel stacks up against something like the radiation levels in the Fukushima exclusion area after, say, 10 years. People ignore sunlight because it is familiar, but from an engineering perspective it is quite hazardous.

Without having any evidence on the subject whatsoever, I'd not be at all surprised if workers at an industrial solar plantation to be at higher risk of cancer than workers at a nuclear plant. I'd love to know how a solar plant working normally stacks up against a rare nuclear disaster by the numbers.

I’m sorry but this is completely apples and oranges. UV is not, in fact, “high energy” in any physics sense of the word. I’m not sure what the transmission of UV to a solar panel is but I’m sure it’s not 0%, and with all of this, workers can protect themselves with clothing and Titanium Dioxide. The bad part is the spectrum.

> UV is not, in fact, “high energy” in any physics sense is the word.

But since a solar power plant is generating industrial levels of electricity by harvesting solar energy, it is clearly high energy in some practical sense.

> workers can protect themselves with clothing and Titanium Dioxide.

Each year many Australians (I'm from Australia, the number is >5,000) get diagnosed with skin cancer caused by sunlight. A double digit percentage of them die. Just because something is theoretically controllable doesn't mean that it is safe.

0 people died of radiation poisoning so far from the most recent nuclear disaster (Fukashima). Now, I am comparing apples and oranges, but it is entirely plausible that the cancer risks of a solar plant and a nuclear plant are comparable.

I'm not sure I follow. "High Energy" has a very specific meaning in physics, which typically refers particle physics, which may include nuclear physics but would definitely not include the UV spectrum. Energy, in the photonic radiation sense sense, refers quite literally to the wavelength of a photon. UV is not high energy. It's the energy of a photon which is the bad stuff for cancer. UV is energetic enough to damage molecular bonds, but that's easily mitigated through clothing (which workers _already_ wear) and titanium dioxide, which completely absorbs those photons.

You are right that both hazards for cancer risks in both plans are well understood, but one is mitigated by spending hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment, construction, water, a regulatory commission, constant improvement of procedure and policy, education, and clever engineering.

The other requires long sleeve shirts and a hat.

"Technically, I'm sure they are very different, practically they are very similar."

Practically they are also very different. For one, the types of radiation you'd worry about at a plant penetrate more than just your skin. With solar, you can wear long sleeves, a hat, gloves and maybe some sunscreen on your face and you are very, very protected. To get the same kind of assurance in a nuclear plant you need significant infrastructure (or a lead suit).

You are spreading misinformation on the internet, and this is not good. Please don't do that.

> With solar, you can wear long sleeves, a hat, gloves and maybe some sunscreen on your face and you are very, very protected. To get the same kind of assurance in a nuclear plant you need significant infrastructure (or a lead suit).

Statistically, I have met people who will die of skin cancer caused by sunlight. Including quite possibly my grandfather.

Sure, you can say the blame lies with them, but the fact is that there are mountains of evidence that we don't manage ambient sunlight to a standard that would be acceptable in an industrial setting.

> You are spreading misinformation on the internet, and this is not good. Please don't do that.

No, I'm pointing out that people are irrational when it comes to radiation risk. In practice, it is completely plausible that a normally operating solar plant is more carcinogenic than a normally operating nuclear plant. Given how rare nuclear distasters are, and how overblown the responses are [1], it is even plausible that they are more carcinogenic than a failed nuclear plant in the modern era.

The risk of both solar and nuclear are low in practical terms.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...

To anyone reading "“tremendous opportunity” to reduce methane emissions by developing systems to quickly detect malfunctions at oil and gas facilities" and running to the garage to connect an RPI to an off-the-shelf 5$ sensor and submit her YC2019 application: The tech is there. It's been there for years. Everything is in place, this is a political/emission tax/EPA/incentive issue per-se.

I was just thinking about this in reference to organizations like the Citizen's Climate Lobby. The real technology that needs to be developed here is a politically feasible way to levy taxes on known carbon emitters.

Run for office or support candidates who align with preventing/mitigating climate change. It is the only way. All of the tech in the world is useless if you can't enforce its use.

So are a lot of other startup opportunities, but that just means you don't mention it during the presentations for your funding rounds

If the technology is demonstrably easy to make, and there is a clear need for it, and yet it's still not in wide use, then I would say there certainly is a "tremendous opportunity". The fact that some people have failed to take advantage of the opportunity doesn't mean other people shouldn't try.

This is an issue about regulations.

You will not see regulations against the fossil fuel industry under a republican president, house and senate.

Here is a TED talk my dad just gave about a satellite they're building to track down the source of these methane leaks and fix the issue:

https://www.ted.com/talks/fred_krupp_what_if_we_tracked_meth...

What is the detection limit?

Would your Dad be interested in him and his team doing an AMA?

For folks who didn't read the article, the real problem is that methane is much more efficient a greenhouse gas at trapping heat compared to CO2: by some estimates, 86 TIMES more potent.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...

This is so sad. Any ideas on how stuff like this could realistically be fixed? Are there any incentives that could be put in place? What would be the incentive for the people that have that power to make those changes?

Removing lobbyists, removing buyable politicians, electing politicians that believe in science

Remove the mandatory bribe quota first and the politicians will follow.

Mandatory bribe quota?

You need X amount of money to run a campaign and you get money primarily by accepting campaign contributions from completely charitable wealthy donors and interest groups whose objectives just happen to align with your political ideology.

If you chop out the euphemisms and rationalization, it's a mandatory bribe quota.

What is the order of magnitude of X?

A few million for a senate or house seat. The total cost of the election is several billion. Peanuts in comparison to what lobbyists get in return. It would be extremely economical for us taxpayers to fund it ourselves.

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php?cycle=2018&di...

Founded rigup.com to try address this issue. Improving the quality of the cement casing is a huge factor, along with hiring competent workers and scheduling inspections.

It all comes down to creating financial incentives. IIRC, Obama's proposed fracking regulation (that most presumed Hilary would run with) called for regular visits of sites. Sadly it never passed.

Once Trump undid the only thing Obama got through, federal land methane restrictions, companies had no incentive to worry anymore. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/climate/trump-methane-rul...

> companies had no incentive to worry anymore

I know what you are saying, but I want to add that it's insane: The owners of the companies have to live in this world, as do their decedents. Also, they are not all sociopaths who don't care if people die and suffer.

I think it's a mistake to think they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps it's the powerful propaganda machine that runs through the WSJ and other business publications, but whatever the cause, it's a problem that I think can be overcome.

Don't be so naive, my friend. There is ample evidence to show that either a) those people believe in their ability to avoid consequences (see the difference between responses to rising sea levels between poor and wealthy florida neighbourhoods) or b) are heavily incentivised to believe there are no consequences (the old saw of a man being able to believe or disbelieve anything if his paycheck depends on it).

I work with Oil and gas execs. They are almost uniformly very conservative and do not believe in any aspect or climate change, or taking activity to mitigate the effects.

They are not the receivers of propaganda, they are the creators of propaganda.

It's mostly political. The conservatives argue no regulation of any kind is needed because the industry will self-regulate and capture all the leaking methane because it's lost money.

(Mysteriously, the methane continues to leak, and oil & gas continues to lobby against requirements to fix the leak)

As a secondary improvement, cheaper monitoring equipment might make the political fight easier to win.

Another improvement, the gas is owned by the public, and I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line- after the leaks. O&G has little incentive to avoid wasting resources that "belong" to someone else that they have not paid a dime for. Just pump more.

>> I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line

That's not true in any regime I'm aware of. Ownership and royalties are accounted for at the zone, which is well before the wellhead, let-alone downstream. Any loss between where the gas is produced and the final sale is known as "shrinkage" which can be allocated to different buckets, most commonly fuel and flaring. I'm not sure where leakage would be accounted for, probably "Transmission" or "Distribution".

What's criminal is that unaccounted for gas (known as UAF) is widely measured on the end-user distribution network, so I'd be very surprised if Oil Co. didn't have all the information they need to figure out loss from the wellhead. They either can't be bothered to amalgamate the data or just don't want to know the answer (or do and keep it secret).

more aggressive surveillance - there is a ton of gas leak detection technology out there, but its use is optional in most places...

Carbon tax

Methane tax.

Methane contains just as much carbon as carbon dioxide does. (By volume; by weight it would be a lot more.)

...but is 84x more potent as a greenhouse gas as if we burn it.

If we not burn it, actually

Fracking ban.

Fracking and horizontal drilling are the only things that have kept us out of a global energy crisis.

Without their application to tight oil and gas fields, the world would be firmly on the downslope of the global Hubbert peak right now.

Ban it at your peril.

If we had invested the Iraq war money into solar infrastructure including batteries in the grid, we would be ahead of the game and peak oil would be moot.

"Take all that money we spent on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and WE CAN EXPLORE SPACE, TOGETHER, BOTH INNER AND OUTER, forever … in peace"

Really depressing that this is considered an extremist view.

Who said it is?

The millions of politicians around the world act like this is an extremist view.

That's a Bill Hicks quote.

And the EU would not be dealing with a migration crisis.

While the US refuses to take Sirian migrants.

I really feel really bad you are getting down voted. There is lack of understanding of how shale revolution reshaped America and its energy independence here in this forum.

What has energy independence actually done for America? We are still fighting wars in the Middle East.

For decades people were saying we need to end reliance on foreign oil. Well, we've ended it. What has that gotten us besides underpriced gasoline?

Cheap energy inputs make everything else cheaper.

Financially cheap (in the short term), but environmentally very, very expensive.

Don't worry, the rest of the world carries the cost - more so now that the US is out of Paris.

Then the US likes to point out how "unfairly" they are being treated on trade ...

Not really. Nobody is buying American LNG. It is not a competitive product hence the Russia-hate and tariffs on imported solar panels. Plus renewables are cheaper. British shipyards are raking it in making giant wind turbines instead of Titanic sized ships. Because of the shale 'revolution' America has missed the boat, the only bright light being the much-shorted TSLA.

The global "energy" crisis is only an oil crisis.

I don't see much crisis going on with solar, efficiency improvements, or even coal and gas...

An oil crisis is an energy crisis. Half the energy used in the US comes from either Petroleum or Natural Gas. Look up how much of it is solar.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/

Q1 electricity production in US:

Natural gas 409,806GWh

Wind 104,801GWh

Wind is significant.

https://renewablesnow.com/news/wind-solar-farms-produce-10-o...

Maybe those fractions would be very different if oil and gas were more expensive.

Oil and Natural Gas are very difficult to replace. Look at the German Energiewende program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende_in_Germany

Exactly. When a large chunk of a low level of the economy gets upset all the higher levels get screwed up.

There is already incentive for the private operators to not lose these gases during production or transmission as it cuts into their margins. This is like leaving money on the table.

That's not necessarily true, though, if capturing it costs more than just letting it leak.

I am not saying there are really no bad or incompetent actors.. but it costs the industry $2 billion per year because of these loses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/climate/methane-leaks.htm...

And if they could fix that for $1B/year, they'd do so.

Instead, you can find industry groups quoted in that article complaining about the study.

The problem is that, given the greenhouse forcing, those leaks will arguably cost society much more than a few $billion per year. It's just that the gas industry isn't legally responsible for that. And that's why they don't want to stop the leaks.

Many companies don't do shit as long as they operate with a profit.

What happens often is that s small player seizes the opportunity and then gets bought.

Maybe there are regulations that keep smaller and / or separate entities from acting in this regard.

Then why are they letting it continue to escape? Proof is in the pudding.

Well the regular government really dropped the ball there, fortunately the dwarf government was more vigilant.

Satellite image of burning gas as a "waste product" from five years ago. Note there are no large cities of people there.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/28/article-2269517-17...

I downvoted you for linking to something from the Daily Mail rag. Nothing they publish is reliable or trustworthy.

Sorry mate, first image link in a DDG search nothing profound, Not even familiar with who they are, granted I was pretty sure they they did not take the snap. I will try to be mote discerning next time (the thought had crossed my mind to figure out whence it came)

The article is about unburned leaking gas, which has an extra-large greenhouse effect. That's why the gas is mostly burned, if it can't be used.

I wonder how this fits into the 21% of the total emissions... being 33% (fossil fuels) of the 64% (human induced sources)

https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissio...

tl;dr:

> methane emissions in 2015 were about 60% greater than estimates from the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory: a 2.3% leakage rate compared to the 1.4% estimate from the EPA. “Instead of coming from the well to the pipeline, the gas is escaping through vents or other openings in the system, and it adds up to a lot of emissions,” says Alvarez.

An unfortunate title (does nature do click bait now?). Why use the term dwarf instead of quoting the numeric value (or say "more than double")?

Shouldn't the correct title be "New methane leak estimate dwarfs government estimates"

From the article...

"They then extrapolated the figures to estimate methane leaks at the national level."

8 million -> 13 million metric tons (+60% increase) of Methane seems like a big jump.

Not saying we shouldn't pay attention when some estimates are wrong, but perhaps it's not the best idea to take an alarmist's attitude: https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/06/hansens-testimony-30th-an...

That blog is much more propagandist than anything James Hansen ever did.

So which facts did he get wrong exactly? Sure, it may looks so, but so far everything I've read on this blog is correct.

If you're thinking about the scenario A/B/C stuff, he's ignoring the effects of the drop in atmospheric CFCs.

Also much more on methane in particular: https://motls.blogspot.com/search?q=methane

Scott Aaronson's response to Lubos Motl's skepticism is informative:

"My position is an incredibly simple one: just like with the link between smoking and cancer, or the lack of a link between vaccines and autism, or any other issue where I lack the expertise to evaluate the evidence myself, I’ll go with what certainly looks like an overwhelming consensus among the scientists who’ve studied the matter carefully. Period. If the climate skeptics want to win me over, then the way for them to do so is straightforward: they should ignore me, and try instead to win over the academic climatology community, majorities of chemists and physicists, Nobel laureates, the IPCC, National Academies of Science, etc. with superior research and arguments.

"To this, the skeptics might respond: but of course we can’t win over the mainstream scientific community, since they’re all in the grip of an evil left-wing conspiracy or delusion! Now, that response is precisely where “the buck stops” for me, and further discussion becomes useless. If I’m asked which of the following two groups is more likely to be in the grip of a delusion — (a) Senate Republicans, Freeman Dyson, and a certain excitable string-theory blogger, or (b) virtually every single expert in the relevant fields, and virtually every other chemist and physicist who I’ve ever respected or heard of — well then, it comes down to a judgment call, but I’m 100% comfortable with my judgment."

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1307

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1720 is probably even better for a HN audience. (Lubos apparently claims that P=NP is equally likely to P!=NP).

Except, that most scientists (physicists that I know) who independently checked the issue seem to agree with Lubos.

All scientists that I know (including the physicists) disagree with Lubos. This includes former skeptic, Richard Muller. As Aaronson suggests, the physicists that you know should publish their papers.

Physicist here. This is not my field, but I know lots of physicists and I am not aware of a single one who is a climate skeptic. I'm curious what population of physicists has such contrasting opinions. Geophysicists at oil companies perhaps?

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