Some projects don't deliver as many credits as promised; it turns out that landfills in the developing world don't yield as
much methane gas as expected because poor people don't throw away as much food as well - fed Westerners do.
Under some parts of Hydrate Ridge there is so
much methane gas, says German geologist Gerhard Bohrman, that it is constantly bubbling up into the hydrate zone.
Not exact matches
So far, the Obama Administration is giving the agricultural community a pass, even though it emits as
much or more
methane than the oil and
gas industry.
Estimates vary widely on just how
much methane is leaked from the vast network of oil and
gas wells, pipelines and processing plants, but the problem has cast doubt on how
much better natural
gas is than coal for the environment.
Even though the bulk of the added greenhouse
gas effect in our atmosphere comes from carbon dioxide,
methane — which is rarer — is
much more potent.
The total biomass of our livestock is almost double that of the people on the planet and accounts for 5 % of carbon dioxide emissions and 40 % of
methane emissions — a
much more potent greenhouse
gas.
With roughly 175 million gallons of sewage flowing into the city of San Diego, Calif.'s Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant (PLWTP) each day, the Metropolitan Wastewater Department (MWD) had so
much excess
methane gas that for a number of years... Continue reading →
The idea being raising cattle produces so
much methane (which is a far more potent greenhouse
gas than CO2) that the primary contribution to greenhouse
gases is actually the cow itself, not shipping, so eating local beef vs generic feed lot beef has little effect on the environmental impact.
A new peer - reviewed study discredits findings of controversial research claiming that higher concentrations of dissolved
methane in domestic water wells can be associated with proximity to nearby
gas - producing wells in northeastern Pennsylvania — and it does so using a
much larger sampling size and pre-drill baselines.
No greenhouse
gas has landed the oil and
gas industry as
much in the crosshairs of the federal government as
methane.
Another potential problem with relying too
much on natural
gas is that the fuel is primarily made up of
methane, a potent greenhouse
gas.
The research adds one important data point to the ongoing question of how
much methane, a greenhouse
gas with a warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide, is emitted in the life cycle of natural
gas production, transport and use.
«
Methane concentrations in drinking water were
much higher if the homeowner was near an active
gas well,» explains environmental scientist Robert Jackson of Duke University, who led the study published online May 9 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Decomposing submerged vegetation burps
methane — a greenhouse
gas which traps 25 times as
much heat as CO2 over a century.
Those trees are going to fall down and rot and turn into
methane, which is
much worse than carbon dioxide,» he said, noting that by turning wood chips into biofuel, his company would actually be reducing greenhouse
gases from the atmosphere.
Logically, say Howarth and other researchers interested in how
much methane leaks to the atmosphere, a higher lost and unaccounted for percentage would mean more
gas is escaping the system and warming the planet.
Another EDF - funded study is also underway in Boston, where Harvard University professor Steven Wofsy and others are working to use measurements of
methane in the atmosphere above the city to determine how
much of the
gas is being released.
PERMAFROST may contain large amounts of
methane and other organic
gases at
much shallower depths than was thought previously, say two Canadian geologists.
«We wanted to find out how
much methane is released in a region and were looking for spatial patterns in
gas emissions,» says lead author Katrin Kohnert from GFZ's section for Remote Sensing.
U.S. Geological Survey researchers estimate that the Blake Ridge alone, off the South Carolina — Georgia coast, contains 30 times as
much methane as Americans consume in natural
gas every year.
A surprising recent rise in atmospheric
methane likely stems from wetland emissions, suggesting that
much more of the potent greenhouse
gas will be pumped into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw and tropical ones to warm, according to a new international study led by a University of Guelph researcher.
Environmental controls designed to prevent leaks of
methane from newly drilled natural
gas wells are effective, a study has found — but emissions from existing wells in production are
much higher than previously believed.
«A bioreactor containing anaerobic
methane and ammonium oxidizing microorganisms can be used to simultaneously convert ammonium,
methane and oxidized nitrogen in wastewater into harmless nitrogen
gas and carbon dioxide, which has
much lower global warming potential.»
Harvesting that landfill
methane for use as a fuel also offers greenhouse
gas reductions, since
methane traps 23 times as
much heat in the atmosphere as CO2 over a century.
Scientists are continually working to improve estimates of just how
much methane, a potent greenhouse
gas, is being emitted from the Arctic.
They found that wells located within 1 kilometre of an active shale -
gas drilling site contained 17 times as
much methane on average as those further away.
Shining a laser through the
gas, TLS can measure spectral lines with far higher resolution than terrestrial telescopes and detect
methane with
much greater sensitivity.
In a separate study, Katey Walter, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, showed that
much of this buried carbon may emerge as
methane, a greenhouse
gas some 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
But based on that data, they estimate that emissions from abandoned wells represents as
much as 10 percent of
methane from human activities in Pennsylvania — about the same amount as caused by current oil and
gas production.
What the findings might actually mean for earth will depend heavily on how
much carbon dioxide,
methane and other greenhouse
gases yet gets billowed into the atmosphere, and how quickly.
Yesterday, two Cornell University professors said at a press conference that fracking releases large amounts of natural
gas, which consists mostly of
methane, directly into the atmosphere —
much more than previously thought.
While this represents a
much smaller percentage of overall greenhouse
gases than carbon dioxide,
methane is about 20 times more effective at trapping heat.
But if in the process the same carbon is converted from carbon dioxide to
methane — a
gas with a
much higher impact on climate — it is then that we need to worry.»
That's bad news for the atmosphere when the
gas in question is
methane, the primary component in natural
gas that is a
much stronger greenhouse
gas than carbon dioxide.
The study observed active
methane plumes rising from the seabed, but most of the
gas was not from hydrates and
much of it did not reach the atmosphere.
And that's why a group of scientists set out to better estimate how
much methane is escaping in the U.S. To do that, they surveyed more than 200 sets of field measurements and scientific papers from the past 20 years to learn whether increasing use of natural
gas could prove a climate boon or bane.
The National Research Council in Washington, D.C., estimates that dairy cows account for as
much as 20 percent of human - induced emissions of
methane, a potent climate change — causing greenhouse
gas.
On Earth, microbes have churned out as
much as 95 percent of all atmospheric
methane, so finding that
gas in Mars» air would have been solid circumstantial evidence of life.
However, the cooling achieved by ocean whitening is modest and appears unable to do very
much to maintain permafrost and prevent the release of the greenhouse
gas methane.
Until recently, little was known about exactly where and how
much methane was emitted during oil and
gas activities.
Seawater sulfate is a problem for
methane in two ways: Sulfate destroys
methane directly, which limits how
much of the
gas can escape the oceans and accumulate in the atmosphere.
A dispute between two environmental scientists is creating a controversy over how
much methane is leaking from natural
gas production and is contributing to global warming.
The issue of how
much methane comes from fossil sources crosses both onshore and marine environments of the permafrost region and includes both natural sources and losses of
methane from oil and
gas exploration and transport.
But there are two greenhouse
gases, which are actually
much stronger than carbon dioxide:
Methane, with a warming potential 30 times as strong as carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide, -LSB-...]
Lakes release a greenhouse
gas,
methane, but exactly how
much has been somewhat of a mystery.
The study shows that during drilling, as
much as 34 grams of
methane per second were spewing into the air from seven natural
gas well pads in southwest Pennsylvania — up to 1,000 times the EPA estimate for
methane emissions during drilling, Purdue atmospheric chemistry professor and study lead author Paul Shepson said in a statement.
there are more toxix
gases being released into the atmosphere than CO2, namely the greatly ignored
methane is
much more harmful, think Of biogass produced through wast biomass indeed but musch more toxic.
Request for clarification from a retired engineer: when it's said that
methane is N times the greenhouse
gas that CO2 is, is that purely taking into account their absorption spectra relative to the blackbody emission from the surface, or does it take into account saturation as well, since
methane constitutes a
much smaller percentage wrt CO2?
There's plenty to do,
much of which is continuing lines of effort that are already under way — as with communities and organizations and media identifying a host of problems, from Volkswagen's cheating to continuing leakage of
methane from «super-emitter» sources in our oil and
gas infrastructure.
Much of our food waste ends up in landfill where it rots releasing
methane, a harmful greenhouse
gas.