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Comment by cheesysam | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure disrupting the ecosystem at the bottom of the pond is an ecologically sound move. Biodiversity is important!

Obviously I understand this is a proof of concept and not the solution to fossil fuels.

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Agreed this was one of the first things I thought outside the balance of energy required for the whole thing doesn't make much sense.

What are we supposed to take away from this project other than its kind of neat and that methane occurs natural in the environment? We are not about to mining ponds for methane - we already have plenty of it accessible at LFG, waste water treatment facilities, methane from O&G operations.

it probably speeds things up rather than killing them, and you know on the scale of BP pouring millions of oil into the ocean, I reckon what this guy is doing is absoloutley fine and the environmental damage is well within range of what the local environment can cope with and recover from within a reasonably small time frame.

It's "probably" ok? Based on what?

Methane is a much more potent green house gas than CO2.

>and you know on the scale of BP pouring millions of oil into the ocean, I reckon what this guy is doing is absoloutley fine and the environmental damage is well within range of what the local environment can cope with and recover from within a reasonably small time frame.

But BP serves millions of customers. If you normalize by that (ie. pollution divided by customers), my guess is that digging up ponds is more environmentally damaging than buying gas at the gas station.

if you destroy the support systems that all organic life depends on, then you aren't serving the customers all that well...

I think you're misreading my comment. It's not to say that it's okay for BP to spill oil, it's that all things considered, the environmental impact of a tank of gas (extracted using current methods) is much less than what this guy is doing. Imagine the alternative: rather than every american filling up at the gas pump, they're dredging up ponds/ditches for methane. How much environmental impact would that cause? Is that better than the occasional oil spill we get?

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