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CO2 reduction is nice, but we need to focus on sloppy methane leakageSince the start of the industri [1]

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Date: 2023-10-18  

Since the start of the industrial revolution, methane has caused maybe 30% of the atmospheric warming to date. Currently an estimated 40% of methane discharge into the atmosphere comes from leaks in the petroleum industry. To give you an idea of the scale of what this means, methane leakage from fracking efforts in the Marcellus Shale fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia contributes as much to global warming right now as 3 times all of the CO2 from all (non-petroleum) activity in the US.

Yes, we need to do lots of things to try to at least slow down our path to potential collapse like renewable energy yada yada, but methane leakage is the biggest contributor of human induced climate change. Yet most people haven't even heard of it. The cow burp thing, maybe. But the severe repercussions of skyrocketing methane levels is ignored like some fancy academic trivia.

Talking about our impending collapse and even extinction has become a taboo topic. People respond with “I don't really watch the news anymore.” or “Why dwell on things beyond your control?” So here's the deal. Yes, you can ignore that your car seems to be making a waka-waka soound on right turns, ignore an engine warning light, and if you want to, you can pretend the roads are perfect and just drive at speed over the potholes and try to ignore the resulting obviously rough ride. But if you keep driving anyway with a flat tire, you're not gonna make it to work on time, even if you drive faster.

The statistic often cited is that methane is 80 times as strong as CO2 as a greenhouse gas over 8 years. It's also 28 times as strong over 80 years. Both are oversimplifications. Methane traps a lot more heat than CO2, over 100 times as much upon entering the atmosphere but in the process gets broken down into water and CO2 in 9-12 years. Methane is the primary contributor of global warming.

Turns out lots of the “clean transition fuel” methane extracted by fracking kinda leaks way more than just drilling for oil. The way we have been estimating our methane emissions for years has been to just accept the petroleum industry's stated percentage leaks and multiply that by production figures. Big oil doesn’t even measure methane leakage it seems, and the calculated leakage of course hasn't been even close to the actual amount. They could make an effort to capture those leaks and make more money, but they are lazy and for the most part would rather suppress regulation and be recalcitrant in general. With all their superprofits they could have easily owned all the new clean energy, but nope.

But those pesky scientists have developed methods to monitor methane leaks and yes, its much much worse than the estimates. “The monitoring technology and efforts are inadequate yet they can identify underreporting by 70%.” That’s baseline from scantily funded research and it’s way worse in several countries.

The most galling thing about all of this is that the oil companies could actually make even more money if they captured the leaking methane and sold it. But Big Oil doesn't want to do anything they didn't decide to do themselves, and have invested a tiny fraction of their ever increasingly blockbuster profits with owning politicians for decades. Hell they suckered us all into increasing government subsidies by 2 trillion since the start of Putin's war on Ukraine to a tune of $7 trillion dollars a year. Despite wholesale barrel prices dropping, they did some old fashioned oligarchy price jacking and made unprecedented profits and hey, guess what – all the CEO really cares about is his Christmas bonus.

So of course, Big oil doesn't give a rat's ass about methane leaks, any more than Joe Manchin cared that selling decades of accumulated waste grade coal has polluted his constituency. I'd like to know what our greedy elite think all that money is going to do for them when the system breaks and they die too. Bezos and Musk aren't going to invite them to live in a spaceship filled with cheerleaders, is what's up.

Fortunately, there are some adults in the room. The Biden Administration launched a plan to address methane emissions. The Methane reduction plan's regulatory enforcement is through the EPA, so of course Republicans are doing the bidding of Big Oil, and continually attempting to cut EPA funding. They have managed to sell the bogus trope that business in America is burdened with way too much ted tape and regulations. Nobody seems to have been able to cut through the chrome and clarify that the bulf of those rules are Consumer Protection Regulation. All this is despite the fact that the Methane Reduction plan is a very middle of the road plan filled with compromises. It provides billons in incentives to Big Oil FFS to deal with their massive leakage.

But honestly I think we're past the tipping point with this and many other systems. But it's not over yet, and I think we need to all know what is going on, prioritize, and do what we can. We can at least do our best to delay the worst. I mean, if you were to get cancer would you just give up and die because you are going to die eventually? Hell no, life is amazing and you would want to get the best modern technology and care possible and live as long as possible. This is the pinnacle of civilization. Yes, many infuriating large scale stupidities are underway but just being aware is already doing something. Get the other people on the bus to scream math the bus has a flat tire before it flies through the railing into the ravine.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/18/2199096/-CO2-reduction-is-nice-but-we-need-to-focus-on-sloppy-methane-leakageSince-the-start-of-the-industri?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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