To put this in perspective, the 18300kg per hour from the Permian site is equivalent (over a 100 time horizon global warming potential) to a 500 Megawatt coal power plant's CO2 emissions (~1kg of CO2 per kWh of electricity) burning 24/7. Or, to put it another way, it accounts for the same emissions as about 0.3% of the entire US electricity grid.
18,300kg methane per hour * 24 hours * 365 days = 160,308,000kg (~0.160 million metric tonnes).
At 25x CO2 equivalent, that is 4,007,700,000kg (4 million metric tonnes).
4 / 767 ~= 0.5%, so in the ballpark of the parent comment.
Also possibly the second link is ton (~1016kg) vs tonne (1000kg), further tweaking the numbers.
And just about the Permian basin, Wikipedia says it "accounts for 20% of US crude oil production and 7% of US dry natural gas production" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(North_America)#...
So if all sites like this were measured, it might be more like 2.5% coal-use-equivalent?
It's even worse than that, since that's the effect over 100 years and we don't have 100 years. Over 20 years, 1 ton of methane is equivalent to about 80 tons of CO2 (compared to ~25 tons over 100 years), so about 3x worse than your numbers.
Several questions ask to contextualize this measurement.
Here's a highly-cited paper in Nature (including some of the researchers quoted in the OP) that describes how an earlier survey of California methane emissions went:
If I remember right, the state of CA asked for this survey. It was carried out by an instrument similar to that of the OP, but airborne, not on ISS as in OP.
(One effect of these regulations, that lay people may have noticed, is trying to get food waste out of the landfill stream, and into composting, so that it doesn't decay anaerobically and produce methane. In LA, for example, the LADWP is test-driving a program where food scraps - vegetables, but also meats and fats - are diverted into green bins.)
Strengthened regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure are part of this - I'm not saying the studies motivated these regulations, just that they are all part of policies heading in that direction.
The ISS measurements in OP have covered (and will continue to cover) a much broader area than the California airborne survey - but with less spatial resolution - so presumably a broad survey of mid-latitude super-emitters will be possible in the coming months.
> In LA, for example, the LADWP is test-driving a program where food scraps - vegetables, but also meats and fats - are diverted into green bins
Moved to SF from LA area. Sf does the green bins and it’s actually surprisingly nice to separate the compostable scraps out of the other trash. It keeps the trash bin much cleaner and much less stinky.
If I moved back to an area that didn’t require it, I’d still keep them separate and only re-combine at the curbside bin.
Carlsbad, NM isn't a big town. Head Southeast from there and it's quite a large stretch of land that's not used for much besides oil exploration, some cattle grazing, and the WIPP site. The population density is so low in that area that it seemed like a good place to test ways of storing nuclear waste long-term. This is one of the places where they're working on figuring out a way to warn future civilizations not to try and dig up what is buried there.
I'm not the least bit surprised it took aerial surveys to notice the situation.
Sadly, the environmental monitoring is woefully inadequate, even next to the western hemisphere's largest industrial complex (Freeport, TX ... though its a bit better of an example to use or include Deer Park / Houston Ship Channel as well because it's part of America's 3rd/4th largest city). Below the dashed line is a copy/paste of a comment I made two months ago on a post of ProPublica's dispersion model and public health impact modeling of self-reported emission events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32549653
I am very much looking forward to more and more satellites like this one and ESA's SENTINEL-5P and SCIAMACHY. But AFAIK they'll never be able to tell the difference between, say, ethyl acrylate vs. butyl acrylate (both incredibly toxic) or ethyl mercaptan vs. methyl mercaptan (both noxious/cause headaches at unbelievably low concentrations; ethyl mercaptan has an odor threshold of 0.35 parts per trillion).
So if one plant makes one chemical, and another plant next door makes a similar chemical, these satellites might let the public know that one of the plants is leaking, but both still would have deniability - "it's the other guy across the street". And you'd still not actually know which chemical you've been exposed to.
For that, you'd need monitoring stations with comprehensive sensor combinations at the property boundaries of each chemical plant.
------------------------
I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of something with {sulfur, N-O bonds, aromatic carbon rings} -- no clue what precisely though!". This is the same capability of the most advanced atmospheric pollution satellites. Completely fucking useless for an area which manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic chemicals. The technology to measure individual chemicals exists, but the government isn't paying for it or installing it.
The ENTIRE east side of Houston metropolitan area is dedicated to or "next door" to massive chemical manufacturing. This is an industrial area nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond/Renton/Tukwila. This massive area has only 3 air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals[0]. During huge major events like the ITC fire[2], they often show no increased pollution at all. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But the 3 monitoring sites over 10 miles from me showed nothing at all.
Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: [0]... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: [1] Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful, they measure specific (large) families of chemicals so you can see very roughly what is leaking, even if it doesn't have "soot" in it.
The data used by ProPublica is actually far worse than the woefully inadequate data collected by TCEQ/EPA air monitoring stations -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But I know from working in them and living next to them that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem.
We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. They need to spend about $1 million per air monitoring station and build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected.
ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: [2]
In Turkmenistan a pit has been burning for over 40 years.
In 1971, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it [...] Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which, though not toxic, does displace oxygen [...] So the scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks' time.
China and the US have already committed to take no serious action. Here in the UK we have the same policy. The EU prevaricates (who can blame them). India also isn't planning to do anything. COP27 is a giant waste of time with champagne.
Looking forward to AR apps that map pollutant emissions from such data and project it as you travel about, making the invisible conscious. There will be more public pressure for reform if the public can see the see the point-source IRL.
If popularized that data could move real estate prices, with political fallout.
> One of the more popular theories is that Soviet geologists intentionally set it on fire in 1971 to prevent the spread of methane gas, and it is thought to have been burning continuously ever since.
Was there not some point where someone might have thought it a good idea to sink a gas wellhead half a mile away to drink that milkshake instead of letting it burn for 50 years?
YouTube is full of trash burning tutorials. Some of them are exceptionally stupid and talk about "clean burners", which is essentially a burn barrel connected to a leaf blower, such that the smoke is dispersed, creating the illusion of "clean" air.
Such dumb tutorials have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of views. Each video has dumb comments on them like "Oh yeah this burner is awesome, I made the same thing at home and it worked, thank you". YouTube declines to remove the videos.
A burn barrel burns trash at a lower temperature than an incinerator and doesn't do any sort of filtering. A burn barrel can generate more pollution than a small city, including harmful chemicals like dioxin and furans.
YouTube should ban all trash burning content. The makers of those videos should be deanonymized and be reported to environmental authorities. There should be a large crack down on stupid backyard burning content. It should be made illegal and each one of those residential superpolluters should be hunted down and thrown in jail.
It is so upsetting to watch those videos, with people saying "I saved $50 burning my trash at home, I am so smart". Fuck!
Also, the government should require garden equipment to have a fucking catalytic converter. But they won't because that will hurt their numbers. A gas powered leaf blower pollutes as much as a multitude of cars.
This is why trash pickup should be free. That way it will be disposed of properly instead of dumped on the side of the road or burned in backyard barrels. Yet most cities charge for trash pickup and are looking to charge even more or move to quantity-based fees.
You get what you incentivize. If you want people to dispose of trash in the least damaging way, you have to make that the easiest and cheapest option.
My family lived outside the city limits of a rural town and trash service wasn’t even available to us. Us and every single family in that situation used a burn barrel. There are a huge number of people in America that have never done it any other way!
While I sympathize with the sentiment, that creating some kind of censorship dystopia will magically solve the problem, the idea has no traction when most of the people doing so make less than $1 a day somewhere in a remote corner of the world. This is the problem I have with climate activism.
The best way to reduce pollution is to raise the standard of living for people around the world. People who are wealthy can afford cleaner forms of energy, they can afford to dispose of trash cleanly, they can afford to recycle. People that are poor have nothing to lose and don't care about "environmental authorities". "Let's ban X", "Let's force people to do Y" and "Throw them in jail" is not a reasonable or effective way to solve problems. It also further divides people and does more to hurt your cause than to promote it.
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?
I find the cognitive dissonance on emissions stunning: we've made basically no effort to cut emissions for over 40 years, now people are shocked that there are a LOT of emissions happening. WTF did anyone expect? The power of people to believe "someone else is fixing it even though there is no reason they would" is incredible.
I was looking for a lazy man's view - a map of all the super emitters of methane with color gradients or size coded spots. I was disappointed that it was purely technical and aimed at those who work in the field.
What is crazy to me is that Bitcoin mining may be the only viable solution to this problem. Its the only profitable way to incentivize the capture of this methane, regardless of location.
»Meanwhile, recently published studies set the estimate for total global methane emissions from the industry at 80-140 million tons per year, while the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) methane tracker estimates emissions at the lower end of this range.»[1]
Companies do have health and safety groups out there working on these things. Of course, the bigger the company the slower, more inefficient, and incompetent they tend to be. Prices can range - some things can be patched, but many times the reason for the leak is age and it requires a new piece of equipment. So, there you would have permitting to handle, expensing the equipment at either the field level or, most likely, well level, which would kill the "economic-ness" of said well/well pad which never sits well with a company and may make them rethink it and just plug the wells - equipment could be low to high hundreds of thousands - really depends on the piece and size. In terms of frequency, People are fixing these things daily, small projects to fieldwide initiatives. In terms of someplace like Turkmenistan, anything can be fixed with money. In that part of the world, your best bet is financial incentive. I mean, it is unethical, but just pay the "expediting fee" for the local warlord/mayor/president - usually a "donation" to an orphanage or fund that doesn't really exist. The cancer rates thing is interesting - the well in question is possibly a Marathon well. Their record isn't the greatest (Look into Paw Creek, NC and Marathon's "small leak" at their terminals there). No scientific data on this at hand, but as a person who works in oil and gas and chemicals with an oddly high number of friends who have had some type of severe cancers, I would say this would be hugely helpful to the general public.
[+] [-] Robotbeat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neRok|3 years ago|reply
18,300kg methane per hour * 24 hours * 365 days = 160,308,000kg (~0.160 million metric tonnes). At 25x CO2 equivalent, that is 4,007,700,000kg (4 million metric tonnes).
This link about US electricity generation: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 shows 767 "million metric tons" from coal, or 1.55 "billion metric tons" from all sources.
4 / 767 ~= 0.5%, so in the ballpark of the parent comment. Also possibly the second link is ton (~1016kg) vs tonne (1000kg), further tweaking the numbers.
And just about the Permian basin, Wikipedia says it "accounts for 20% of US crude oil production and 7% of US dry natural gas production" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(North_America)#... So if all sites like this were measured, it might be more like 2.5% coal-use-equivalent?
[+] [-] mort96|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowings97|3 years ago|reply
And what % of US energy needs does that site supply to the grid?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] grammers|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloudermilk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mturmon|3 years ago|reply
Here's a highly-cited paper in Nature (including some of the researchers quoted in the OP) that describes how an earlier survey of California methane emissions went:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3
If I remember right, the state of CA asked for this survey. It was carried out by an instrument similar to that of the OP, but airborne, not on ISS as in OP.
California has standards for methane emissions (e.g., https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/fact-sheets/oil-and-gas-met...) that are now covering landfills and oil and gas infrastructure, and dairies -- three of the largest categories of large emitters.
(One effect of these regulations, that lay people may have noticed, is trying to get food waste out of the landfill stream, and into composting, so that it doesn't decay anaerobically and produce methane. In LA, for example, the LADWP is test-driving a program where food scraps - vegetables, but also meats and fats - are diverted into green bins.)
Strengthened regulations on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure are part of this - I'm not saying the studies motivated these regulations, just that they are all part of policies heading in that direction.
It is believed that large oil companies are aggressively selling off oil pumps/fields to get out from under this responsibility. (https://www.propublica.org/article/california-oil-wells-shel...)
The ISS measurements in OP have covered (and will continue to cover) a much broader area than the California airborne survey - but with less spatial resolution - so presumably a broad survey of mid-latitude super-emitters will be possible in the coming months.
[+] [-] mint2|3 years ago|reply
Moved to SF from LA area. Sf does the green bins and it’s actually surprisingly nice to separate the compostable scraps out of the other trash. It keeps the trash bin much cleaner and much less stinky.
If I moved back to an area that didn’t require it, I’d still keep them separate and only re-combine at the curbside bin.
[+] [-] whatshisface|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanhuff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjsw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|3 years ago|reply
From what I understand basic environmental monitoring is done in 2022 around all major industrial facilities in the U.S.
[+] [-] msrenee|3 years ago|reply
I'm not the least bit surprised it took aerial surveys to notice the situation.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
This wasn't a surprise. Laws had been previously passed specifically to allow this to continue.
[+] [-] gausswho|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lob_it|3 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62917498
Its not in the US, but once its in the atmosphere, the whodoneit is long gone.
[+] [-] abruzzi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runnerup|3 years ago|reply
I am very much looking forward to more and more satellites like this one and ESA's SENTINEL-5P and SCIAMACHY. But AFAIK they'll never be able to tell the difference between, say, ethyl acrylate vs. butyl acrylate (both incredibly toxic) or ethyl mercaptan vs. methyl mercaptan (both noxious/cause headaches at unbelievably low concentrations; ethyl mercaptan has an odor threshold of 0.35 parts per trillion).
So if one plant makes one chemical, and another plant next door makes a similar chemical, these satellites might let the public know that one of the plants is leaking, but both still would have deniability - "it's the other guy across the street". And you'd still not actually know which chemical you've been exposed to.
For that, you'd need monitoring stations with comprehensive sensor combinations at the property boundaries of each chemical plant.
------------------------
I live in the western hemisphere's largest integrated industrial complex (Freeport, TX integrated with the eastern edge of Houston as well). Note that Freeport, TX has ZERO state or federal EPA VOC analyzers which can actually detect which chemical is leaking. They can only detect "this amount of something with {sulfur, N-O bonds, aromatic carbon rings} -- no clue what precisely though!". This is the same capability of the most advanced atmospheric pollution satellites. Completely fucking useless for an area which manufactures something like 15-20% of all USA domestic chemicals. The technology to measure individual chemicals exists, but the government isn't paying for it or installing it.
The ENTIRE east side of Houston metropolitan area is dedicated to or "next door" to massive chemical manufacturing. This is an industrial area nearly equal to the area encompassing all of Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond/Renton/Tukwila. This massive area has only 3 air quality monitors which test for these kinds of chemicals[0]. During huge major events like the ITC fire[2], they often show no increased pollution at all. I lived next to leaks every day and because I worked in the plants I knew the smells - one day acrylates, next day thiols, next day hydrocarbons, etc. But the 3 monitoring sites over 10 miles from me showed nothing at all.
Here is the one "correct" monitoring station near the chemical plants of Houston: [0]... but several of its analyzers are often offline/broken/pending maintenance. Here's a map of all the other ones: [1] Generally single/dual color dots mark "not-useful" monitoring sites which might measure only PM2.5 or Ozone, for example. The 4+ color dots are generally useful, they measure specific (large) families of chemicals so you can see very roughly what is leaking, even if it doesn't have "soot" in it.
The data used by ProPublica is actually far worse than the woefully inadequate data collected by TCEQ/EPA air monitoring stations -- because what ProPublica used was "self-reported" data from the chemical plants. But I know from working in them and living next to them that many leaks are never reported and many leaks are never even known internally! Our government's data collection is a travesty. ProPublica couldn't use the real air quality measurements because having 2-3 points across 1000 mi^2 is completely useless for the wind models they wanted to apply to the problem.
We don't actually have any data. The government is failing us. They need to spend about $1 million per air monitoring station and build them along the perimeters of each plant so that leaks can be assigned to the offending companies, and they need to be built near housing so that we know how families are being affected. ITC fire which blanketed houston's sky in smoke: [2]
0: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id...
1: https://tceq.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id...
2: https://abc13.com/deer-park-fire-2019-itc-houston-air-qualit...
[+] [-] pojzon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TEP_Kim_Il_Sung|3 years ago|reply
In 1971, when the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, a group of Soviet geologists went to the Karakum in search of oil fields. They found what they thought to be a substantial oil field and began drilling. Unfortunately for the scientists, they were drilling on top of a cavernous pocket of natural gas which couldn't support the weight of their equipment. The site collapsed, taking their equipment along with it [...] Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which, though not toxic, does displace oxygen [...] So the scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks' time.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/giant-hole-ground-has-...
[+] [-] stuaxo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lob_it|3 years ago|reply
The article indicated a 20% rise in cancer rates in populutions around these oil sites from 2015 to 2018.
We can only wonder how many decades this has been occuring in oil-rich countries with poor recordkeeping.
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|3 years ago|reply
Project site: https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/
[+] [-] hirundo|3 years ago|reply
If popularized that data could move real estate prices, with political fallout.
[+] [-] fortysixdegrees|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexfromapex|3 years ago|reply
I posted the original NASA article a few days ago, which has better info than this Smithsonian article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33349999
[+] [-] akerr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakub_g|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
> One of the more popular theories is that Soviet geologists intentionally set it on fire in 1971 to prevent the spread of methane gas, and it is thought to have been burning continuously ever since.
[+] [-] hinkley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xen2xen1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|3 years ago|reply
Such dumb tutorials have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of views. Each video has dumb comments on them like "Oh yeah this burner is awesome, I made the same thing at home and it worked, thank you". YouTube declines to remove the videos.
A burn barrel burns trash at a lower temperature than an incinerator and doesn't do any sort of filtering. A burn barrel can generate more pollution than a small city, including harmful chemicals like dioxin and furans.
YouTube should ban all trash burning content. The makers of those videos should be deanonymized and be reported to environmental authorities. There should be a large crack down on stupid backyard burning content. It should be made illegal and each one of those residential superpolluters should be hunted down and thrown in jail.
It is so upsetting to watch those videos, with people saying "I saved $50 burning my trash at home, I am so smart". Fuck!
Also, the government should require garden equipment to have a fucking catalytic converter. But they won't because that will hurt their numbers. A gas powered leaf blower pollutes as much as a multitude of cars.
[+] [-] SoftTalker|3 years ago|reply
You get what you incentivize. If you want people to dispose of trash in the least damaging way, you have to make that the easiest and cheapest option.
[+] [-] TexanFeller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oceanplexian|3 years ago|reply
The best way to reduce pollution is to raise the standard of living for people around the world. People who are wealthy can afford cleaner forms of energy, they can afford to dispose of trash cleanly, they can afford to recycle. People that are poor have nothing to lose and don't care about "environmental authorities". "Let's ban X", "Let's force people to do Y" and "Throw them in jail" is not a reasonable or effective way to solve problems. It also further divides people and does more to hurt your cause than to promote it.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mmaunder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bhurn00985|3 years ago|reply
Anyone knows what actions will be taken based on this data ?
[+] [-] gryzzly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omgJustTest|3 years ago|reply
Any climate scientists who make active predictions about how much we don't know?
[+] [-] cratermoon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reacharavindh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestaub|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boshomi|3 years ago|reply
[1] Progress on methane emissions by energy companies, but numbers still don’t add up: UNEP | 31 October 2022 | https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1130047
[+] [-] Tepix|3 years ago|reply
- How hard is it to stop these leaks? How expensive?
- If it's relatively cheap and easy, why hasn't it been done in the past already?
- How can we excert pressure on emitters like Turkmenistan to stop the leaks?
- How long does it take to do this?
- How much of a difference will it make for the climate (and perhaps local cancer rates)?
[+] [-] coffeeshopgoth|3 years ago|reply