Note this is just further, more detailed confirmation of stuff we already knew for a long time.
This is why landfill is, and always has been, near the bottom of the waste hierarchy, below even incineration with energy recovery.
People who sell fossil fuels have regularly argued that we should just bury trash and have lots of silly arguments as to why that is the case.
But the various recycling schemes used in EU, Singapore etc. are clearly better on basically every metric which isn't "sales of fossil fuels".
For the methane issue, seperate recycling of food, agricultural and other organic waste into biogas and fertilizer is the obvious solution. GHG negative methane!
Germany is a world leader in this, but even they can do more.
Korea is another great example in recycling food waste. The country's food culture historically created a lot of food waste (although the total food waste had been reducing lately), and being a limited territory like Singapore, they recycle everything they can. Separating food waste is mandatory and you can get fined for not doing it. They use the recovered food waste as pig feed, compost and bio-gas.
Methane goes away after 20 years. Carbon Dioxide stays around for thousands of years. We should spend 100% of our resources transitioning to extremely cheap sustainable electric energy.
That is the only option for turning the tide on climate
Nitrous Oxide from Nitrogen fertilizedrs applied to broadacre grains is another gas being watched and thought about:
> In broadacre cropping, fertiliser production and use accounted for 58 per cent of the Australian wheat crop's greenhouse gas footprint in the past five years, according to the Department of Agriculture.
> Of that, 31 per cent occurred on-farm, a large part of which came through the volatilisation of nitrogen fertiliser, where nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere.
> Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
There are mitigating strategies, in principle the most appealing would be legume crop rotation, however:
> "I guess naturally the go-to option is to grow more legumes in the rotation, because when we grow legumes we don't need to apply nitrogen to meet production," he said.
> "But it's not as simple as that, because there are greenhouse gas emissions such as nitrous oxide associated with the breakdown of legume stubbles."
There are also denitrification inhibitors. Some are even natural (procyanidins and others). I can imagine growing crops engineered to produce and release these.
Should I applaud that in a few years we will be able to visualise individual animals' methane emissions when clearly this follows a Pareto distribution and shutting down the largest offenders will have the greatest impact.
Instead it seems we want to congratulate ourselves again that we created more data points about our methane-guilt. It is clear to me that if this kind of tech can be used to slap fines on people it will. And so we can create new markets for allowable methane emissions!
This is a great option because it helps small and poor municipalities to retrieve the initial cost of setup up a Methane based power plant.
After some x years of BTC mining, the initial investment is fully paid back. Afterwards, they can choose to continue mining BTC or simply hook up the power plant to the electricity grid.
Every time we get better instrumentation and revise that data, the share of emission from fossil fuel handling explodes. I can only imagine it will keep growing until we have satellite surveys of all sources on the entire world.
Yes, current data for most of these things are estimates based on complicated extrapolations.
Being able to measure them more accurately, particularly in countries that don't publish any reliable information is going to be interesting.
As far as I'm aware the current new info is generally summarized as "worse than we expected" since overestimates (i.e. accurate estimates) would get heavy pushback without solid data to justify them.
> The Landfill Gas-to-Energy facility is currently producing ±8.5 Megawatts of continuous power. 8.5 Megawatts of electricity can power a minimum of 8,500 homes during peak demand and about 17,000 homes off peak.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
This is why landfill is, and always has been, near the bottom of the waste hierarchy, below even incineration with energy recovery.
People who sell fossil fuels have regularly argued that we should just bury trash and have lots of silly arguments as to why that is the case.
But the various recycling schemes used in EU, Singapore etc. are clearly better on basically every metric which isn't "sales of fossil fuels".
For the methane issue, seperate recycling of food, agricultural and other organic waste into biogas and fertilizer is the obvious solution. GHG negative methane!
Germany is a world leader in this, but even they can do more.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-technology-busines...
[+] [-] mrpopo|3 years ago|reply
https://earth.org/food-waste-south-korea/
[+] [-] hulitu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gitfan86|3 years ago|reply
That is the only option for turning the tide on climate
[+] [-] defrost|3 years ago|reply
> In broadacre cropping, fertiliser production and use accounted for 58 per cent of the Australian wheat crop's greenhouse gas footprint in the past five years, according to the Department of Agriculture.
> Of that, 31 per cent occurred on-farm, a large part of which came through the volatilisation of nitrogen fertiliser, where nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere.
> Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
There are mitigating strategies, in principle the most appealing would be legume crop rotation, however:
> "I guess naturally the go-to option is to grow more legumes in the rotation, because when we grow legumes we don't need to apply nitrogen to meet production," he said.
> "But it's not as simple as that, because there are greenhouse gas emissions such as nitrous oxide associated with the breakdown of legume stubbles."
so that needs quantification and further study.
Other approaches are discussed:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-11/grain-industry-push-t...
[+] [-] greggsy|3 years ago|reply
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/ani...
[+] [-] pfdietz|3 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466050/
[+] [-] karol|3 years ago|reply
Should I applaud that in a few years we will be able to visualise individual animals' methane emissions when clearly this follows a Pareto distribution and shutting down the largest offenders will have the greatest impact.
Instead it seems we want to congratulate ourselves again that we created more data points about our methane-guilt. It is clear to me that if this kind of tech can be used to slap fines on people it will. And so we can create new markets for allowable methane emissions!
[+] [-] DFHippie|3 years ago|reply
We fine people for littering even though there are also murders.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
https://mobile.twitter.com/ghgsat/status/1537051266127482880
https://www.ghgsat.com/en/case-studies/coal-mining-methane/
So now they have the data they should only look at Russian coal mines?
[+] [-] CTDOCodebases|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/turning-garbage-into-...
[+] [-] zwirbl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leetnewb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janandonly|3 years ago|reply
After some x years of BTC mining, the initial investment is fully paid back. Afterwards, they can choose to continue mining BTC or simply hook up the power plant to the electricity grid.
A classic win-win.
[+] [-] janandonly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoingIsLearning|3 years ago|reply
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/essd-12-15...
One question I raise is how much of the methane leaks related to oil & gas activity also include accurate data on abandoned oil/gas wells?
The method described in the paper should perhaps in the future confirm the accuracy of the current estimates.
[+] [-] marcosdumay|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
Being able to measure them more accurately, particularly in countries that don't publish any reliable information is going to be interesting.
As far as I'm aware the current new info is generally summarized as "worse than we expected" since overestimates (i.e. accurate estimates) would get heavy pushback without solid data to justify them.
[+] [-] mistrial9|3 years ago|reply
https://www.methanesat.org/2021/06/28/edf-announces-satellit...
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franksvalli|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkawn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway48294|3 years ago|reply
> The Landfill Gas-to-Energy facility is currently producing ±8.5 Megawatts of continuous power. 8.5 Megawatts of electricity can power a minimum of 8,500 homes during peak demand and about 17,000 homes off peak.
[+] [-] onemoresoop|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
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