[HN Gopher] Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters ___________________________________________________________________ Satellite supergroup spots methane super-emitters Author : nixass Score : 87 points Date : 2023-08-05 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (innovationorigins.com) (TXT) w3m dump (innovationorigins.com) | crazygringo wrote: | So has this resulted in previously unknown/unexpected super- | emitters? | | I'm curious if this has the potential to make a big difference, | if there are e.g. pipeline leaks costing companies a lot of money | that this can find, where the emitters have an incentive to fix | it. | | Or if will be largely useless, because all the unknown culprits | turn out to be natural sources we can't do anything about, or | industrial processes in places where enforcement is lax already | and it won't change anything. | edrxty wrote: | No mention of MethaneSAT? There's an EDF funded private satellite | mission launching in a few months to go hunt methane emitters | with high accuracy | downWidOutaFite wrote: | My hypothesis is that unknown emissions like these is why climate | change seems to be happening faster than the models suggest. | bee_rider wrote: | I wonder what to do with this sort of information. | | Perhaps our governments could add a carbon tariff or something, | if it is relatively easy to measure how much carbon is being | emitted and where. | euroderf wrote: | Does the United Nations have conventionally-armed cruise | missiles ? Shouldn't it ? | declan_roberts wrote: | Absolutely not unless you think the very worst most | dysfunctional working group you've experienced at work should | be able to make life-and-death decisions. | dylan604 wrote: | I know I've been in meetings where I've wished for the | sweet relief of death. | | Would the use of force need to be unaimous, super majority, | simple majority, or a unilateral decision? | IAmGraydon wrote: | I believe the US government has been fining methane super | emitters for some time [1]. The problem is China is the | bigggest emitter - nearly double the next highest country, | which is India, followed closely by the US. That said, the US | emits far more than any other country per capita. | | [1] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/19/callon-permian- | basin... | secondcoming wrote: | Is 'per capita' a useful metric other than to give the | largest emitters some sort of retort? | | One person living alone on a private island who cooks food on | a fire several times a day might have a really high 'per | capita' score, but in the grand scheme of things it's utterly | irrelevant. | bee_rider wrote: | It _is_ a bit weird that we need so many emissions per | person in the US. In the very least it ought to be a sign | of where there's slack in the system. | sargun wrote: | In your opinion what should pollution be measured as a | function of? If you choose not to measure it per capita, | then every country, no matter how large or small will be | measured equally, setting up perverse incentives for | smaller countries to have pollution heavy environments. | numbers_guy wrote: | The alternative would be to say that Americans are worth | more than Chinese (and Europeans and everyone else) and | have a God given right to emit twice as much. | bee_rider wrote: | I guess it would be the Europeans who are worth the most, | right? Since they have smaller countries. | | Unless we were to consider the whole of the EU as the | unit of carbon-blame. | kaba0 wrote: | If all he does is cooking food on fire, he definitely won't | have a high per capita score, per capita by definition | gives you an average. If he does below average than your | average western citizen, the score of his country will be | less of that. | | We obviously have to account for it per capita -- you would | surely not allow as little CO2 emission for China as you | would to, say, Hungary. Like, that would be completely | unfair. | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | Yes because we polute to provide for people. You wouldn't | expect the USA to absolutely polute the same amount as | Liechtenstein. | WithinReason wrote: | So the solution to climate change is to break up China into | smaller countries that have emissions that are utterly | irrelevant! | kaba0 wrote: | The mathematical analysis solution! | bee_rider wrote: | Even that would be tricky, they've got a couple cities | that are bigger than the median EU country. | bee_rider wrote: | It is a big problem. We need a more integrated system than | just having the US fine domestic companies that emit too | much, I think. The obvious way to workaround that sort of | fine is just to outsource manufacturing and emissions to | China. | | A first-pass attempt could be for countries that want to do | something about the problem to start up some sort of carbon | credit market, with heavy tariffs for goods imported from | outside the market. | lock-the-spock wrote: | That's exactly what the EU is doing - right now putting in | place the "CBAM" (carbon border adjustment mechanism) | nipponese wrote: | Related: Five Things You Should Know About COP26 - Reducing | methane is the fastest strategy available to reduce warming | | https://www.state.gov/dipnote-u-s-department-of-state-offici... | declan_roberts wrote: | The article doesn't seem to mention it, what are the super | meters? What country are they located in and what are they doing? | Terr_ wrote: | In this context "super-emitters" means strong outliers, | locations or events where unusual amounts of something (i.e. | methane) are being released. | | This often correlates to either accidents that have not been | detected/fixed, to deliberate pollution for financial again, or | to something nobody realized was significant before. | brmgb wrote: | Mostly oil fields which are not or improperly flaring or gaz | infrastructure which are leaking. Can also be landfills where | decomposition create methane but still mostly the oil industry. | For "normal" emitters, you can add to that cattle farms. | idlewords wrote: | I feel attacked. | tomrod wrote: | Though they aren't the only ones mentioned in the article, I love | the work GHGSat is doing! If anyone from there reads here, would | love to connect. https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaseroderick/ | schnuri wrote: | I'd love to see a list of the largest emitters. | IAmGraydon wrote: | I agree - it would be great if the data was public. I'm sure a | large amount of this comes from natural gas flares. | dsukhin wrote: | The data is indeed public [0]. But beware, it's huge to | download; it's also available in a hosted/queryable interface | on Google Earth Engine [1]. | | [0] https://scihub.copernicus.eu/twiki/do/view/SciHubWebPorta | l/W... | | [1] https://developers.google.com/earth- | engine/datasets/catalog/... | tlrss wrote: | You might be interested in Climate TRACE. They produce a global | inventory, identifying the largest individual sources of | emissions, and publish it CC-BY - | https://climatetrace.org/downloads | codethief wrote: | So how much of the yearly methane emissions do the super-emitters | account for and how much do they emit in absolute numbers? The | article seems to be lacking the most interesting information... | bArray wrote: | Exactly. There's a good chance that climate change efforts are | far better targetted at super emitters. We have limited | resources and these are relatively low-hanging fruit. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-05 23:00 UTC)