Methane-spotting satellite that gives true readings of industry emissions hits skies in 2024 A methane tracking satellite that can calculate emissions of this potent greenhouse gas with extreme accuracy is due to go into operation next year, following the successful testing of its instrumentation aboard a jet aircraft. MethaneSAT is the name of the hardware and also the organization that has developed it, the latter …
Fewer cattle now than in 1900.
Vastly more road and air transport than 1900.
Vastly more power stations than 1900.
Vastly more polluting industry than 1900.
But certain sectors like to blame the cattle for everything.
Hopefully, this will be able to identify the major sources more easily.
===> Ex Deputy President of the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs of England and Wales, but it's not the coat to watch out for, it's the fragrant Wellington Boots ;-)
You are supposed to blindly accept all the cuts that impact you personally and ignore the ones that are orders of magnitude greater in impact when you count time, cost, ease of fix and impact.
The top couple preventable methane sources right now are oil and gas fields where the operators literally don't give a shit. Fixes that require hand tools and off the shelf parts, and a modest maintenance budget. Fixes that may help the operator avoid an industrial accident.
Instead they are harping on residential users and consumers to flog themselves for not installing an Arse meter on themselves.
Regardless of the whinging of activists and governments, I will make as many cuts to my footprint, large and small, that I can, but I will also not hold myself to a standard where all that work I put in just means the worst actor gets to waste more.
Worse around here they want to create an energy monopoly run by the power company, which I can assure you is massively corrupt. They want to make it illegal for the gas company to sell to the electric companies customers, even as a secondary or backup system. How likely is that to work out in our favor, right?
The climate emergency is big news these days, but by and large the great unwashed aren't being treated to many actual facts.
It's long been known that methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. However if you listen to most politicians, campaigners and self appointed "experts" in the media then you'd be forgiven for believing that carbon dioxide is the only greenhouse gas. Indeed according to most of what you read it's not carbon dioxide that's the problem, it's just plain carbon.
So what this satellite is going to do is give a lot of politicians, campaigners and "experts" a headache. They can't even differentiate between carbon dioxide and carbon so adding methane into the mix is going to make them look pretty stupid. As such I suspect they will report that the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas is a recent discovery.
So what this satellite is going to do is give a lot of politicians, campaigners and "experts" a headache. They can't even differentiate between carbon dioxide and carbon so adding methane into the mix is going to make them look pretty stupid. As such I suspect they will report that the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas is a recent discovery.
I think that ship has long sailed. There are already carbon sensing satellites that measure CO2 concentrations. Oddly enough, they're high over the Amazon and Africa. Presumably due to all the illicit industry hidden in the jungles. Alternatively, it's pretty obvious why given it's basic biology. Hot, wet climates produce a lot of methane and CO2 because organic stuff decays faster than the most evangelical global warming zealot's braincells.. Which also makes it amusing when the EU wants to do stuff like bringing back wetlands. Londoners drained their swamps when they realised it'd help prevent the ague, now, 'environmentalists' are bringing that back.
The Dutch might be taking it to extemes by reducing their food production capacity to increase housing stock, but that's already cost them a slightly used prime minister. Good luck convincing India to slaughter all their cattle, and politicians may want to look at anthropogenic vs natural CO2 and methane emissions. Then wonder why the actual science shows CO2 and methane levels follow temperature, and don't lead them.
Logically, if methane is so much worse than carbon dioxide, and one mole of methane combusts to give two moles of water and one mole of carbon dioxide, we'd be better off if we burnt all the methane!
I'm pretty sure that's not the message they're trying to get across, though...
extracting it in the first place? While some methane may be released as a by-product of the extraction of other materials, a large amount is the result of accidental (and sometimes deliberate) leaks in processing, storage and transport. In the past such leaks have been difficult to demonstrate meaning the companies have little (as in bugger all) incentive to fix the problem. Hence the satellites.
I'd be happier if it just stayed in the ground but at least stopping the leaks changes it from terrible to just plain bad.
Logically, if methane is so much worse than carbon dioxide, and one mole of methane combusts to give two moles of water and one mole of carbon dioxide, we'd be better off if we burnt all the methane!
Yep. It's one of those things that made me realise this was a con trick. We know CH4 photodisassociates in the atmosphere with UV. CO2 (and CH4) dogma is all about supposed 'trapped heat'. We know solar UV and it's general spectral composition and output varies over time. Yet alleged climate 'experts' fixate on thermometers at airfields and in car parks, not measuring solar variability or IR detection at any of CO2's well known absorption or emission wavelengths. Pyranometers and pyrgeometers are a thing that have existed for a long time, but for some strange reason, aren't part of the standard kit in WMO weather stations.
If this is all about 'back radiation', why didn't we start measuring it as soon as the greatest threat to humanity was identified? Or especially after the siteing problems of a lot of weather stations was identified. I guess it's good that we're measuring the effects of urbanisation and conversion to jet aircraft at airports though.
One of the large (and pointless) emissions sources is waste gas from oil extraction. Some places flare it to reduce the risk of explosions, and as a bonus reduce the climate impact. Some places don't bother, and nobody seems eager to push them to actually try to do some work with it.
For hilarity, some oil fields use electric pumps powered from the utility grid, fueled upstream by gas turbines, and waste flare the gas the well releases instead of using it to power the pumps. Sometimes there is even a good reason why, but most of the time it's just not something they bother to worry about. Not even when in some cases they could be saving or making money by addressing.
Too many more will blindly fight against any transparency improvement out of a gut reaction against anything that dares to look like regulation.
"There are already carbon sensing satellites that measure CO2 concentrations. Oddly enough, they're high over the Amazon and Africa."
Nonsense. All CO2 sensing satellites seem to be on low Earth orbit and therefore cannot be parked over Amazon and Africa.
Many of these satellites (and ISS) have an inclination that takes them over most of the globe.
"Good luck convincing India to slaughter all their cattle"
Why single out India? Russia is world leading methane emitter.
I think the poster was trying to say that the CO2 concentrations are high over the Amazon and Africa (*) - not the satellites.(*) How true that is, I don't know.
Get your data here!
https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/
Well, sort of. Good thing about climate change is it's funded instruments like this. Bad thing is it also allows people to interpret them. So you can create different views and spin the data depending on when and where you focus, ie NH summer will show higher carbon emissions than SH because most of the carbon comes from the biosphere. Sterilise the Earth, kill all the soil organisms, save the planet! There's also-
https://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/
But my statement isn't really controversial given it's in all the IPCC reports. Natural CO2 and methane fluxes dwarf anthropomorphic, and the exact quantites for both are pretty much WAGs. Hence the large uncertainties. But that's what real science is about.. narrowing those uncertainties.
RealScience, however is about stuff like this-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zi-G9ZsSJY
Photo opportunities for Spain's climate minister to virtue signal. You must make sacrifices, they carry on with private jets, limos etc. Plus any decent cyclist will know from looking at her foot position that she doesn't cycle very much.
" the actual science shows CO2 and methane levels follow temperature"
The "actual" science doesn't show that at all.
Check out potholer54's video (https://youtu.be/zQ3PzYU1N7A) for example, that looks at CO2, used sources in the video description.
" It seemed to try and convince by boring you to sleep, swamping you with wadges of flashes of documentation on screen and a limited amount of genuine argument/science."
I.e. just like any IPCC report. These people actually believe their own numerical models, for f**s sake. No-one sane (engineer) actually believes their numerical models. Ever. They might provide useful numbers, for just this moment, but taking them as a gospel is truly mind boggling.
Numerical model is an *engineering tool* used when *you have no idea what happens or why*: Literally a bunch of selected numbers/variables and curve fitting you like slapped on them, omitting all 'outliers'.
But the main problem: *All* of their models are predicting everything wrong. Since day 1. Even past, contradicting every science ever (I'm not saying 'other science' as I won't accept climatology as science: Science does not use numerical models, it has theories and proven formulas. Climatologists have neither, kind of a problem to them, so they degraded whole thing to just yelling louder. See: IPCC.
Any actual scientist might come to conclusion that (some) assumptions baked in the models are wrong. No idea how, but obviously wrong when predictions are *all* wrong.
Small counter example: Walnut tree was growing naturally, almost up to Arctic Circle, here in North until ~1100 or so. After that, no more. Now it grows similar way in Southern Germany, 2000 km more South. Deduction: Climate got colder. Funny thing zero climatologists admit that. Or Greenland being actually green for who knows how long until Vikings found it: Hundreds of years anyway.
When theory (or numerical model) can't explain observations, not only some of them, but *all* of them, it's simply BS. Harsh, but it separates BS from science.
Calling climatology 'science' degrades actual science to Fox News level: Actual scientists do hundreds of repeatable tests, analyze the results and if variance is too high, they ditch the result set and do tests again until it isn't. Then they create a theory based on the test results and use the theory to predict *next* set of results.
Then they do yet another set of tests (100 is about right amount) and compare the results to ones theory predicts: if there's less than 0.2% difference, we can call *the theory* 'science'. Nothing below proven theory is science, it's just fooling around and/or experimenting/finding a hypothesis and it doesn't prove anything at all.
Now, calling numerical model, some unknown clown (1) slapped together in an hour, 'science' basically nullifies the actual hard work needed to do actual science and I hate it.Them morons.
1) Like me: I could create a climate model in an hour and it would be as good as any other climate models existing, i.e. BS: Making numerical models is trivial: Take some numbers, slap curve fit on them and you have a model. Then you use that to predict future climate for next (or previous) 10 000 years. See: Hockey stick curve.
Amount of numbers is irrelevant when you choose the source yourself (like 'temp in location x between 1981 and 2004') and 'clean' 'outliers' out from the material. Easypeasy and you get *exactly* what you wanted.
Numerical model in general is creator's personal opinion/view of reality as you can make a model to say literally anything you want. That's literal opposite of science.
Check out potholer54's video (https://youtu.be/zQ3PzYU1N7A) for example, that looks at CO2, used sources in the video description.
Ok! Although from just a quick look at the sources cited, I have a pretty good idea where the story goes. And it's a good story, which contains a lot of actual science. Plus being an old video, things have changed and in stuff like this, the comments are often more interesting. So cherry picking this one..
Hi Potholer! Ive been watching your videos with great interest. In this video there is a fact which I don’t understand (as a non-scientist). The ice core graph shows that as soon as the temperature peeks in Antarctica, the co2 levels keep going up. As I understand the forcing of co2 is higher then the orbital forcing. I would assume that the changes in the milycovic cycles make the temperature in anartica goes down. What I don’t understand is why the co2 levels keep rising. It doesn’t sound logical that the global temperature keeps rising for another 800 years (which makes the CO2 levels go up due to warmer oceans) but the temperature at Antarctica is declining. Am I missing some crucial fact here? :-)
But we know we have ice ages. We don't know what causes them. We didn't have WMO weather stations scattered across the globe 600ka ago, so we rely on ice core samples as proxies. Much of this one is based on this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_Station#/media/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
which appears to clearly show CO2 lagging temperature. It also shows large temperature swings that are much larger than the one people are panicing about now. So much for 'unprecedented warming'. But.. this is all interpretations from compacted snow taken from 1 location. So it doesn't really tell us much about global temperatures, ie there's a lack of spatial resolution. Cores were also sliced into (from memory) 36 slices, so lacks temporal resolution. But the ice gets melted, dissolved gasses extracted and analysed, and conclusions drawn. Assuming this was done correctly, we know that ice from X depth contained Y CO2. We're less certain about effects like gas diffusion as snow compacts, or over time. Ice cores have kinda fallen out of favour because of these uncertainties, and itsotope proxies might be better. Or we end up with PAGES2K who just throw everything into a blender, publish the greatest proxy evah (despite rejections and corrections) and conclude that Thermageddon fast approaches.
But we still don't know what causes Ice Ages, mini-Ice Ages (eg the LIA). For some reason, the Earth decides to chill. Ice advances, everything north of the Laurentide Extent has a bad day-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_Ice_Sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million years ago to the present.
Well, a lot longer than a day, and a repeat would seriously affect NY real estate prices. There's tonnes of geological evidence that this happens periodically, which means it may well happen again. And we don't know why. The even bigger challenge is we don't know why they end.. Which is the problem for CO2 dogma.
If we assume CO2 is the 'control knob' regulating temperatures, to trigger an ice age, CO2 levels have to drop massively. How does this happen? The ice cores don't show concentrations falling that much, but that's a CO2 sensitivity question, ie what exactly is the relationship between CO2 and temperature? The video is old, so uses outdated IPCC assumptions of 3.3C warming per doubling. These are outdated because both models and observations show this to be incorrect. If CO2 sensitivity is lower, then it's even harder to explain ice ages because effect exceeds cause. And then there's the opposite problem. Much of the Earth is much colder, and covered with ice. Ice alters the albedo and we reflect more energy. So what causes the ice to melt and retreat? So wrt CO2 dogma, where does all the CO2 come from to turn the temperature back up, and the ice age to end?
Which we don't know. So we create another (epi)cycle to explain this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Theory_constraints
Where for some unknown reason, the Earth decides to go for a wander. Orbit changes, insolation changes, so the energy we get from the Sun falls and so does our temperature. Then, we decide to go back to our 'normal' orbit, and the process reverses... Which is fine, except for explaining the collossal energy changes (ie gravitational, probably) that somehow push our entire planet away from the Sun, and then drag it back later..
Alternatively, there's some unknown solar effect that causes irradiance/insolation changes and triggers the ice ages. Climate 'scientists' assume solar output is pretty constant, even though we know it really isn't because we know there are solar cycles.. But again it's an effect exceeds cause problem. This is why the actual science is fascinating, and far from 'settled'. There could be geological effects, eg an isthmus gets eroded and ocean currents altered which effect the climate. We do know for certain however that climate change is nothing new, and has happened many times in the past.. And probably without any human contribution.
But so it goes. We know that the vast majority of CO2 and CH4 emissions are natural, not anthropogenic. We know that the biosphere prefers warmer, wetter climates and tends to die off when it's cold and dry. Or hot and dry. We know that organic life dies, decays and gives off the vast majority we can detect in the atmosphere.. So it follows that CO2 and CH4 emissions would rise as we emerge from the depths of an ice age. But there are still huge uncertainties in sources and sinks, which is why experiments like this are great for narrowing those uncertainties.
Alternatively, why are we doing this, when the 'science is settled'? Surely we should be diverting all the funding from climate 'science' into the 'renewables' lobby so they can waste it building more windmills and solar?
> Surely we should be diverting all the funding from climate 'science' into the 'renewables' lobby so they can waste it building more windmills and solar?
In what sense is building wind turbines and solar "wasted"?
The reserves of oil and gas under the planet are finite: sooner or later we'll run out. We'd better have something ready in time for that.
And no, I don't expect nuclear fusion ever to give power which is cheap *or* clean, let alone both.
In what sense is building wind turbines and solar "wasted"?
Depends what you mean by 'wasted' I guess. If you're on the receiving end of the subsidies, it's not wasted. The 'renewables' scumbags think it's been an excellent investment, and want even more-
https://www.renewableuk.com/news/645089/Energy-industry-urges-Government-to-reform-clean-power-auctions-to-maximise-benefits-for-consumers.htm?mc_cid=9511e5b1d2&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
The budget for fixed-foundation offshore wind alone would need to be at least two and a half times higher than its current level to maximise the capacity which could now be secured in this year’s auction. It also suggests that fixed-foundation offshore wind should be put back into a separate budget pot to maximise deployment.
The second measure focusses on the need to support emerging technologies such as floating wind and tidal stream projects, to accelerate cost reductions and build up supply chains. This could be achieved by setting clear deployment targets and ringfencing budgets for each technology, to ensure that each secures a minimum amount of new capacity.
...Andrew MacNish Porter, Policy Manager at Scottish Renewables, said: “The Contracts for Difference scheme has played a key role in renewable energy being the cheapest form of electricity in the UK.
This is what is known in most trades as a lie, and possibly a fraudulent lie. CfDs briefly made 'renewables' cheaper than gas, but only because of the political decision to ban Russian oil & gas. Because of the way the market is rigged, it made 'renewables' as expensive as gas, because the wholesale price is based on the most expensive form of generation. This generated massive windfall profits for the 'renewables' scumbags. They claim to benefit consumers, yet 'renewables' have done nothing of the sort. Instead, the more we've 'invested' in 'renewables', the more our electricty prices have increased. And now we're being told that despite wind being the 'cheapest form of electricity', they need even more subsidies.
Crazy idea. If floating offshore wind costs £300/MWh, and nuclear or coal cost £80/MWh (or less), maybe.. just maybe, we shouldn't build floating windmills? Or the market should be allowed to build floating windmills, if they think people will willingly pay a massive premium for their product. Which is of course intermittent, so there'll also be the cost of adding batteries, or an alternative to provide electricity when the wind isn't blowing. As has been the case over the last few weeks when the UK has had light winds due to the high pressure.
But there are alternatives-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsnorth_power_station
A 2GW powerstation forced to close and a more efficient replacement scrapped because Greenpeace prefers bird slicers. The UK has large coal reserves, or could buy coal from a lot of non-Russian markets. But even though the proposed replacement would have reduced CO2 emissions due to it being a more modern and efficient design, it was forced to be abandoned. Or instead of wasting £200bn+ on wind & solar, we could have built more nuclear power stations. Of course Greenpeace don't like those either. They're cheaper than 'renewables', but 'renewables' funds Greenpeace.
The reserves of oil and gas under the planet are finite: sooner or later we'll run out.
People have been saying this since the '60s at least and it wasn't true then, and it isn't true now. There are enough proven oil & gas reserves to last for decades, and exploration companies keep finding even more. Plus if it ever becomes really necessary, we can make synthetic oil and gas. Only that requires cheap, reliable energy.. which 'renewables' simply can't deliver.
...the resolution and "real timeness" of the data will be?
Well.. it will be better than the current WAGs we currently base trillions in spending decisions on. It should help identify the sources (and potentially sinks) of methane, and help narrow the uncertainties between natural and anthropomorphic. I can pretty confidently predict that at the high level, it'll look much like this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
Keeling's Tellus article of 1960 presented the first monthly CO2 records from Mauna Loa and Antarctica (1957 to 1960), finding a "distinct seasonal cycle...and possibly, a worldwide rise in CO2 from year to year. By the 1970s, it was well established that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide was ongoing and due to anthropogenic emissions.
Although as is often the case, the last part is just a tad contentious. It tells us nothing about CO2 levels from say, 1750, so says nothing about CO2 increases being a result of warming following the Little Ice Age. It doesn't show the reduction in atmospheric CO2 due to the Covid shutdowns either, but that's because the human contribution is pretty insignificant compared to the natural ones.
But in science, more data are generall always good. Unless of course the data shows something inconvenient, but then it can always be 'adjusted', as much climate data is. As long as the raw data are available, scientific debate can continue and knowledge advanced. Downside is there's no data yet, and it'll take a while to collect anything statistically significant, especially when climate 'science' works on 30-yr moving averages. It might show methane emissions are much higher over say, tropical regions, and those are higher than originally assumed.. But we kinda know this already given the vast majority of the CO2 and CH4 is natural, not man-made. If the resolution's high enough, it may also show fugitive emissions in unexpected places, in which case those could be good candidates for oil & gas extraction.
True, the _majority_ of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural, what we're concerned about is the "topping up" of that by anthropogenic burning of ("natural") fossil fuels.
In any case, much more carbon is locked up around the world in carbonate sedimentary rocks. Maybe we could encourage more of that to happen, in the oceans, to permanently lock the stuff up. Combine feldspar with CO2 in industrial quantities and dump the limestone formed.
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