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Comment by tanto | Hacker News Reader

> Together, the Turkmenistan sources release an estimated 111,000 pounds of methane gas per hour

If this is happening all the time, then the number of global methane emissions due to human activity on this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions) Wikipedia page can't be valid.

Crazy how human negligence and greed might end humanity.

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Maybe I'm misreading something, but I don't understand the discrepancy. According to the wiki article, human output is 363 megatons/year. 111,000 lb/hr = 55.5 tons/hr = 0.5 megatons/year. Still a lot though!

Turkmenistan produces ~2.2% of global natural gas. Scaled across all producers, the result would be 20.2 MT/yr. Also, this is from a tiny part of Turkmenistan.

> In Turkmenistan, EMIT identified 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar.[1]

That's around 50 miles away from the eastern edge of a 750 mile wide country which is covered in oil fields and refineries[2].

[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/methane-super-emitters-mapp...

[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ippa-Uca/publication/31...

I think you are right! Apparently I was misreading. Still a lot unnecessary waste one might say.

From some Google Searches...

111,000 pounds of methane, multipled by factor of 80x, equal around 388M tons of CO2.

A car produces around 4.6 tons of C02 per year. So this makes the emissions equal to about 84M cars driving around for a year. Google says there are around 1.46 Billion cars in the world.

So this amount of greenhouse gas is around a 5.7% increase in our overall car emissions.

(edited based on feedback below)

The issue is that this methane is not being oxidized. Burning the methane as it is released is an easy solve. Yes this increases CO2 at the ratio your specify (~1ton Methane to 2.75 CO2) but that is still much better than releasing it as Methane gas.

Methane gas in the atmosphere causes 80x the greenhouse effect that CO2 causes.

Quoting here but;

Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. At least 25% of today's global warming is driven by methane from human actions.

No, 80x is about right for the 20-year time horizon; Wikipedia lists it as 86. You're right that the 20-year Global Warming Potential is lower than the 100-year, but the 20-year is already what the poster you were replying to was using. The 100-year is around 25 to 31.

They edited it after my comment, as they note.

Also, the extra warming from methane can trigger unrecoverable tipping points, such as melting ancient glaciers and permafrost, whose effects will last for thousands of years.

What is meant by 25% of today's global warming? 25% from what baseline? From what median? From what time period?

It is somewhat deceptive framing, because methane can not accumulate in the atmosphere the way CO2 does. Its levels in the atmosphere will break down relatively quickly if we reduce output, unlike CO2. But the present level of methane in the atmosphere basically captures about 30% as much heat as the present level of CO2. That still leaves CO2 as significantly larger immediate problem and the much larger future problem. We must do what we can, observing that every little counts - a little, and every lot counts a lot.

Don't forget what methane breaks down into... Water vapour and co2. So it's not like it breaks down and is no longer an issue n

Yeah but that CO2 is already part of the ppm that is measured. And water vapor of course, has the ability to cool or heat depending on the position in the atmosphere and amount of particulates for it to condensate on (to form clouds).

You shouldn't formulate the system like that - without any proportion. The proportions are what matters.

I'd assume the previous 10,000 or so years wherein humans created civilization up to about 1980.

No, we don't have anything close to a precise global temperature over the entire Holocene (the period you describe, that we are presently in, coinciding with the end of the most recent glacial period). We at best have spotty tree rings, ice core samples (which are inherently limited to arctic regions), and other various rough proxies which have a higher margin of error than we have observed in even the past 100 years.

Good, broadly available, consistently measured temperature data from daily mercury record keeping was mainly only really done in UK and colonial U.S. until the late 1800s. Even then most of the world did not maintain standards for temperature stations until the early to mid 20th century. Global temperature estimates that actually span the whole globe were not really possible until the weather satellite era, around the late 1970s. So there is a big problem when comparing the precision and breadth of modern temperature data with historical estimations for a number of reasons. Not least of which is that we do not really see the sample rates of historical data necessary to estimate the periodic, even as small as decadal, swings to any high degree of accuracy.

I'm guessing: rate of carbon-dioxide-equivalent being added to the atmosphere each year.

>In 2019, [the President of Turkmenistan] appeared on state television doing doughnut stunts around the crater to disprove and correct rumours of his death.[14]

Interesting proof of life.

Turkmenistan is a country that keeps John Oliver excited. That's saying a lot.

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