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Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

Will be interesting to see how this capability unfolds. They’ve proven this can be done using an instrument not even designed for the task. A specialized instrument may be able to detect other greenhouse emissions. Imagine the kind of high resolution accountability that might be possible. But does the political will exist in the US to expose ourselves that way? Our political donors that way? Our country as one of the largest emitters?

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A reminder that Bush II redefined NASA's mission statement to exclude monitoring & observing the earth.

This is part of a long & still alive political agenda, which, best I can tell, attempts to bring apocalypse to this planet. There's money to be made now, & even the end of the world is not to stop that. Ignorance & fantastical belief outweigh reason & observation in much of the political world, & when in conflict defunding observability & evidence gathering has been alarmingly popular in a vast vast amount of said political world.

Heavens only knows how much more we'd know (and how much ealier) if this wasnt a mis-use of an instrument intended for other science, and instead an accepted & responsible & up-front role encompased in NASAs mission statement & their programme.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nasa-earth-removed-mission-...

Such as this CO2 measurement, made from a dedicated instrument for the last ~8 years: https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/science/

It uses broadly the same technique as in OP -- spectroscopy to detect the absorption of sunlight from the presence of that particular chemical species. Because the above instrument was designed for the purpose, it's much more accurate and able to distinguish small variations in CO2, not "just" large plumes.

The history of remote sensing is more or less a 50-year long series of events like this:

-Sensor system is designed and launched for specific mission goal

-Someone finds an unexpected and important use for the data, completely unrelated to the original mission goal

-Eventually a specialized platform for the unexpected use case is developed and launched

-Someone finds a new use case for this data

And the process repeats. LANDSAT 1 (formerly ERTS-A) was originally conceived to find undiscovered deposits of minerals. Turned out it was useful for a hell of a lot more than that.

It's now possible for independant charities to do this:

https://www.methanesat.org/

The government would only publicize the emissions that benefit us politically, which are likely the primary polluters we already know about (China, India, etc).

Corporations are multinational. The atmosphere doesn't care if that methane plume came from a plant in the US or a US-owned plant in Nigeria. Or on an rig in the North Sea.

Corporations are multinational, but politics still plays favorites.

The Primary polluters are still China and USA. India is a far 3rd and emits 50% less CO2 than the USA. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271748/the-largest-emitt...

https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/06/22/ranked-the-top-10-...

India can be #1 in most plastic dumped into the oceans. We're all #1 in our own special ways :p

I’m not sure what those figures are for. They list India with 126.5 million kg of plastic “dumped”, yet the Phillipines is #1 with nearly 3x that amount of plastic waste going down its rivers into to oceans: 360 million kg (3.6 × 10^5 Metric tonnes) of plastic waste according to https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803

In other news, its obvious which region has trash problems

There are a lot of countries out there, even if the us is unwilling to, it would be in the interest of many middle powers to do so.

What would happen if this information was public?

If the information was public, after remedying all of the methane leaks, we would still maintain above normal temperatures for a decade or two, then we would normalize temperatures around 2050, if all of the leaks were capped by tomorrow.

Due to the toxic nature, I still wouldn't recommend sunscreen without knowing exactly what is in it.

> Due to the toxic nature, I still wouldn't recommend sunscreen without knowing exactly what is in it.

What? Are you a bot?

It was a simple gesture implying that due to the hotter temperatures, sunblock may actually compound the problem.

We can expect the above normal temperatures for a decade or two after the methane is contained. Don't toxify the body with sunscreen and make it worse.

https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/the-trouble-with-sunscr...

Perhaps biddy biddy biddy :p

Yeah I'd rather get some "potentially unsafe" chemicals in my body than definitely get severe skin cancers all over my body

https://www.cancer.org.au/iheard/are-chemical-sunscreens-saf...

You grow old with your own body. Thats obviously your problem

I use a hat.

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