Satellite Detects Largest Release of Methane in the World | Hacker News Reader

Satellite Detects Largest Release of Methane in the World

nytimes.com

67 pointsjbegley55 comments

Another source: https://www.dailyexpertnews.com/science-space/one-location-9...

The releases are from a coal mine in Russia. Detected in January. The coal there is known to be mixed with pockets of methane, which they blow off with fans. So it's intentional, but probably not intentionally malicious.

But malicious nonetheless. I fail to see how this can be viewed as anything but a rather serious crime.

I think you’re confusing ‘harmful’ and ‘malicious’. Maliciousness entails knowledge. Harmfulness can be unknowing.

And as for crimes, they’re a jurisdiction-dependent notion. Let’s not play so fast & easy with terminology as to make it meaningless.

Maliciousness is more than just knowledge of doing harm. It is a desire to intentionally do harm.

> Maliciousness entails knowledge

Wouldn't using fans to blow off the methane require knowledge?

Wait until you find out about what happens with disused oil wells.

Because it may come off as biased and retaliatory? Consider all the persistent pollution from many other nations much worse than this that no one does a thing about.

Wonder if we are at the point where rogue nation states start blackmailing other countries to not cause a climate catastrophe. A game of "chicken", but instead of nuclear weapons, pollution will be used. "Want me to stop polluting? Pay me or give me..."

Much of Russia is essentially pro-global warming. They see the northern ice cap melting and their climate becoming more mild as a way to tap the potential of their land and northern coast.

Oh, please. 67% of Russians reported that they are worried or a little bit worried about global warming [0].

[0] https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Oh please yourself.

Those people live in Moscow and St Petersburg. The Russian government does not act on an opinion poll of Russian people

I think Ipsos[0] knows how to conduct its polls.

Meanwhile an informal poll among 10000 users of a pizza delivery app gave 88% concerned about global warming[1]. That's your people living in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsos

[1] https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2022/05/27/glavnymi-ekologichesk...

Russia is a petro state too. Without oil and gas they are nothing.

what is america without gas and oil?

About 92% other businesses.

Oil and NatGas account for about 8% of the US economy (and that's the best case figure that the American Petroleum Institute can come up with)[1]. US exports are trivial.

In contrast, Russia's exports are 68% Oil and NatGas. [2]

Of course, for now, Oil and Natgas are key strategic components to every economy. That does not mean that supply and demand mean the same thing for every economy.

[1] https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/taxes/oil-and-nat...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17231

That's the same argument as saying food is only 4% the economy. Try taking food out of the equation and see how the rest fares.

I think you are confusing export with consumption. Russia's fossil fuel production is mostly slated for export, and thus they are very sensitive to the international demand for said fossil fuels. In comparison, US production is mostly slated for internal use, so international demand does not impact the economy as severely.

Yeah (as sibling poster pointed out) I guess that it was more of a distraction point from throwaway. I just read and thought of it in broader terms of oil and gas being super important to any modern civilization.

What you say is true though, short term, but I think I might still rather be in Russia's position in terms of fossil fuels than that of the US, when we look at things long term. What Russia has the option of doing - which is also being discussed elsewhere in this thread - is using those resources domestically, to grow/develop its own industries and (currently dwindling) population. In fact that's what they're being pushed to do by the sanctions (as they have been developing their agriculture as a response to previous sanctions). I've been really really skeptic of the sanctions (to put it mildly) since the beginning. They will always find ways to sell their resources (if they want to).

Even though the sanctions are imperfect, they still have a very real effect. At an absolute minimum, it vastly increases the overhead of the sanctioned country to sell it's oil, and those who do work around sanctions can demand and get a large discount, thus reducing revenues. Even more effective are the supply-side sanctions, and the Russian auto and air transportation industries are already seeing serious effects, which will only get worse.

No.

The argument by throwaway71271's is pointless and made only as a distraction from the initial point that Russia is a petro-state heavily dependent on oil export - without those EXPORT revenues the entire state is at serious risk of collapse.

Obviously EVERY economy has many critical components that are yet a small percentage of the overall economy; your mention of food is an excellent example. These are not the question here.

The only relevant point is that the USA is not even close to dependent on it's exports of oil and gas. In fact, NatGas exports were entirely banned until recently. If all USA oil & NatGas activities were suddenly done on a nonprofit basis at cost, the economy would only shrink marginally. If Russia did the same thing, it would likely collapse on a timescale of single-digit months.

A tech and finance powerhouse.

Tech at the moment sure, but there's nothing that stops the geographical location from shifting. There are skilled IT people around the world, there just aren't that many tech hubs like Silicon Valley.

Finance? Remind me again how much debt the US has and how close it was to defaulting last year (saved by being forced to raise the debt ceiling yet again)? Things aren't looking much better right now.

>"Tech at the moment sure, but there's nothing that stops the geographical location from shifting. There are skilled IT people around the world, there just aren't that many tech hubs like Silicon Valley."

Except that tech in the US is also NYC, Seattle, Austin and Boston too. It outgrew the SV hub years ago now. Those locations are the results of location shifting.

>"Finance? Remind me again how much debt the US has and how close it was to defaulting last year (saved by being forced to raise the debt ceiling yet again)? Things aren't looking much better right now."

"Finance" is used to describe the industry of and around investment banking. It is very different and distinct from the context of the US Treasury which you seem to be conflating. Further the US was never even close to actually defaulting on its debt last year. What happened in October was a bit of political theater around something known as the "debt ceiling." This is simply the agreed upon amount that congress says the US can have outstanding. This is very different from sovereign defaults that result from not having the means to pay. There is a primer here [1].

It's also unclear what you mean by "Things aren't looking much better right now." Despite experiencing the same stubborn inflation as the rest of the globe, the US has had something of a miracle recovery since the beginning of the pandemic. The unemployment rate as of May was 3.6% which is about what it was before the pandemic. There's been many other bright spots as well [2].

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debt-ceiling.asp

[2] https://www.thebalance.com/how-is-the-economy-doing-3306046

Obviously which is why smart countries diversify and constantly adapt to changing circumstances.

The real capital of a nation is its people.

neither of those exist without gas and oil :)

Neither of those exist without energy, which is a fine distinction from "gas and oil".

And entertainment

while I can see how your statement is true-ish - and maybe meant as snarky rebuttal or something, maybe funny - sure.

I think the GP was meaning that without being able to extract and sell gas and oil, Russia would be nothing compared to what it is today... I would guess that if the whole world shunned oil / gas and went electric only by the end of the year, that Russia would not have a lot of other industries to make up for lost sales, and the whole country would be what, more than 50% poorer or something? With not much else to sell to make up for the lost export money. (I am guessing from very little study)

indeed it would be catastrophic for the US and many other places if it were not for oil and gas today and tomorrow - but that was not the point of the conversation direction at the time I believe.

Modern civilization is nothing without gas and oil.

Less of an invasion risk.

my retirement age neighbor from Pennsylvania is also "pro global warming" by this definition.

Most of the Russian population concentrates on places with very intense heatwaves that make the international news often due to the amount of deaths.

So, maybe there is some government propaganda that way, but I doubt most Russians would want hotter summers.

I had never considered this. Are there other countries with this stance?

Do you have any sources?

US, Canada, and some parts of Europe could also have a similar "silent" perspective... things will get worse, buy they'll be able to maintain a competitive advantage (so relatively speaking it could get better for them) at feeding people and keeping them healthy (and helping them live longer - don't undermine future monopolies on real anti-aging and medical techs... if you're a 140+ IQ individual and have a change of living 20+ yrs in another country, you will emigrate there), so all the world's best brains will "drain" towards them, giving them even more advantages.

China should invest seriously into making itself more a more livable / enjoyable country and into securing its agriculture instead of their grand space, AI and social engineering projects, if they want the slightest chance of competing in the new game...

The US isn't that devious. It's more akin to a dog eating a trail of kibbles made of fossil fuels. Won't look up, can't stop, keeps tasting good.

Ah, yes and no. There's probably a very serious assessment of risks at a national level, and the result: Heartland productivity, more droughts in SW, more floods in SE, better mobility in bearing strait, yadda yadda ... just kind of seemed OK and not worth fretting over vs the then-perceived economic cost of pivoting away from fossil fuels.

well, when the most devious thing ou can do is less/nothing... this is the big nasty ethical dilema with climate change and access to medicine... maybe evils vs stupid is just two sides of the same coin...

How climate change might benefit Russia, two articles over on https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russ... and https://medium.com/predict/how-climate-change-is-transformin...

The upsides are seldom discussed but there seem to be many regions that would net benefit.

For example, if average temps do indeed warm as some predict much of the Midwestern US and Canada would enjoy longer growing seasons which would result in more tillable farmland and larger yields.

Increased CO2 in the atmosphere also leads to larger agricultural yields. Commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their greenhouses to raise the CO2 to 1200 ppm or so. This can double or even triple yield.

You are fully ignoring the fact that it's not just warming, but also an increase in climate chaos. They are just as likely to get mega freezes randomly, along with regular tornadoes or droughts as they are to get longer growing seasons. Calling it "warming" is a misnomer.

Not quite. Calling it "warming" was found to be inconvenient once the observations failed to confirm the models.

"Climate chaos" is the new sexy, focus-group tested term. Not based on science, but a solid foundation of confirmation bias.

A EE professor I used to respect once told me he doesn’t believe in global warming or whatever because some ice core data was taken from Siberia, and they probably do sloppy science.

You put things in scare-quotes until your house is blown down

The area I live in has experienced floods, tornados, blizzards, thunderstorms since time immemorial.

The frequency and intensity of these events hasn't changed, but our ability to measure, capture and share the effects with a large audience sure has. Something to think about.

Just common sense. Russia has vast resource-rich areas in Siberia that with global warming would become habitable. They have relatively few large coastal cities (compared to the US and Europe). And the Arctic sea being clear of ice year round would open up a shorter/faster shipping route for China-Europe than the current one through the Suez canal.

Edit: Also to address your question about whether there are others, I'm Finnish and have strongly considered buying land in Lapland as a long-term investment (thinking grandchildren+ here).

See, for example, Brazil: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/brazil-demand-u...

I think that's fair. The EU is trying to push stricter environmental laws in countries outside of The Union.

1. Great, another thing that's "Putin's fault"

2. Great, due to #1 we don't really have any power anymore at the negotiation table

The US alone emits almost 20,000 tons of methane per day just from eating hamburgers (.0126 pounds per hamburger x 300 million people) or about 10 more than this big scary Russian hole. Yet no one bats an eye.

Out of all the countries I've been to there's actually some which go even crazier than the USA. I think Brazil is notable in this regard, every restaurant I went into had steak. Even a pizza parlor is like you don't want pizza? We got Picanha!

Your base assumption is that every American eats one hamburger per day?

That doesn’t sound right. It has to be at least two or three, minimum

Add in dairy and other animal products and the effect is much worse. But seeing from downvotes, people rather bury their head in the sand and blame an evil boogeyman than realize their own implication in the problem.

There's quite a bit of discussion on GHG emissions of food, especially red meat. One video is here [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Hq8eVOMHs

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