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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> the flaring at Gazprom’s Portovaya plant is an “environmental disaster," with about 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide being emitted every day

This is hyperbole. Venting the gas would be an environmental disaster. Flaring just burns it somewhere different.

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This is not hyperbole.

a) A lot of gas is feedstock for chemical reactions generating products e.g. fertilizer. Russia is burning that gas and creating 100% pollution rather than useful products.

b) For all the Russian gas would have been burned in Europe, this effectively doubles the pollution because Europe has to replace the gas that Russia is flaring off from alternate sources.

But isn't that fertilizer then packaged, shipped around the world, stored in warehouses, all of which produces more emissions, until it's finally put into the ground to grow crops which are harvested (again more emissions) which are then packaged, chipped around the world (again more emissions), until they feed mostly animals which produce methane, which are then transported, slaughtered, processed, packaged, distributed to grocery stores (starting to see the pattern here, more emissions) all so we can doot-doot-beep-beep around in our little air conditioned emissions machines to the store to pick up and cook and then throw like a 1/3 of the meal away because left-overs aren't as satisfying?

Yes, but that is still going to happen. Only now we also have this "extra" amount being burned.

But is it? Europeans are talking about not being able to afford their heat this winter, they're talking about food shortages, people are going to have to make due with less.

Afford is something else than not doing anything at all. Govt will finance any real shortages. Food crisis did not materialize too despite widestream doomsaying.

Do you think that energy consumption in Europe this winter will be greater/equal/less than energy consumption last winter?

Smaller, by 5-10%. Depends on how many nuclear reactors France will manage to reconnect to grid.

not really. Now there are fertilizer shortages, lower fertilizer usage due to price spikes and shortages.

Russia is simply doing almost the best they can, which is flaring it rather than venting it. I was hoping they would plug a lot of wells back in February. But I suppose they didn't have crystal ball and had more priority things to deal with.

you're forgetting the extra gas burnt as a result of that gas not being sold

so at least 2x as much carbon is being produced (and even worse if the flared gas is replaced by coal instead of more gas)

Burning it either way is a environmental disaster, even though venting would be worse still. We need to globally ramp down fossils extraction quickly.

It was going to be burned anyway. It is either this, or cap the wells. Methane is worse for the environment than CO2.

Assuming Europe buys gas from somewhere else then yes it is still an environmental disaster double the gas is being burned

With any luck.

So this increases the global greenhouse emissions by about 0.0066%.

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