{"id":15874,"date":"2015-08-19T14:12:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T21:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15874"},"modified":"2015-08-19T14:12:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T21:12:33","slug":"methane-problem-worse-than-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/19\/methane-problem-worse-than-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Methane Problem Worse Than Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only Republicans still insist that man-made global climate change is not a critical reality, and I have no doubt that the stupidity exhibited by the leadership is completely willful.  I\u2019m sad to say that the level of methane pollution by the Natural Gas industry is much worse than previously thought because of a combination of the industry lying about it and EPA underestimation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0819pollute\"Natural gas gathering and processing plants leak much more methane than producers have reported, and even more than the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated, according to a study<\/a> released Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Researchers at Colorado State University found that U.S. gathering and processing facilities \u2014 where natural gas from nearby wells is consolidated for distribution through pipelines \u2014 leak 2,421,000 metric tons of methane each year. The facilities emit 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas every year, roughly eight times the amount previously estimated by the EPA<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Gathering facilities \u201ccould be responsible for something like 30 percent of emissions for all natural gas production,\u201d the study\u2019s lead researcher, Anthony Marchese, said on a press call Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more effective<\/a> at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame. It is the primary ingredient in natural gas.<\/p>\n

The amount of emissions tracked in the study has roughly the same 20-year climate impact as 37 coal-fired power plants, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, is part of a series of studies organized by EDF that will compose the largest inventory of methane leaks in the U.S. natural gas industry to date. An earlier report in the series found<\/a> that oil and gas operations on federal and tribal lands leaked $360 million worth of fuel in 2013.<\/p>\n

Controlling methane emissions, especially as the United States increasingly extracts and uses natural gas, plays an important role in the effort to curtail climate change. On Tuesday, the Obama Administration proposed<\/a> a new rule that seeks to regulate methane emissions from the oil and gas sector\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Since the study and the new rule were released in the same day, I consoler it highly likely that the new rule is based in an outdated estimate of the problem and needs to be strengthened right away.  I trust that the Obama Administration will respond appropriately, but we need to keep our eyes open to make sure.<\/font><\/p>\n

However, the EDF contention that the Natural Gas industry is the the biggest source of methane leaks in the nation may not be correct.  I think there is one larger.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"0819methane\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only Republicans still insist that man-made global climate change is not a critical reality, and I have no doubt that the stupidity exhibited by the leadership is completely willful.  I\u2019m sad to say that the level of methane pollution by the Natural Gas industry is much worse than previously thought because of a combination of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}