A Large Methane 'Hotspot' Has Been Discovered Over the Southwest US

Satellite Data Shows U.S. Methane ‘Hot Spot’ Bigger than Expected

One small “hot spot” in the U.S. Southwest is responsible for producing the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States – more than triple the standard ground-based estimate -- according to a new study of satellite data by scientists at NASA and the University of Michigan.

I've been reading around the net about this paper, consensus is that this is the result of 5 coal-fired power plants just to the south.

a reply to: links234

I don't see any coal plants 'Just to the south' - but there are a few spread out ( all much smaller than a coal plant ) buildings close enough that I might wonder what they actually are.

Peculiar find. S&F

Its all those darn farting cows again.
2nd verse same as the first.

a reply to: links234

I've been reading around the net about this paper, consensus is that this is the result of 5 coal-fired power plants just to the south.

Interesting "consensus".

Where can we find this "consensus" ??

I wonder how much methane gets produced from burning coal.

I think they have filters for that, but I'll find sources later.

a reply to: DigitalJedi805

Four Corners Generating Station. You can find it on Google using this address: 301-349 Road 6800, Waterflow, NM 87421

a reply to: xuenchen

Consensus of various internet comments, nothing official. I suppose I could've excluded that. Methane is emitted by both coal plants and coal mines. You can read about that at the Energy Information Administration website.

There's also a nice list of methane emission levels of North American coal plants at CEC.org.

Interesting. The plant I work at is listed as emitting 90'ish tons of methane, but we don't even have natural gas on site and it isn't a byproduct of burning coal. I guess we've just been eating too many beans. So much for that statistic.

a reply to: lynxpilot

Check with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources on that.

Rush Island
Electric Generation and Emissions in 2011

All data that MDNR has is collected from the EPA which collects the data from the power plant itself. I don't know what else to tell you.

Drop a match see how much goes BOOM!

#Ebolabreak

a reply to: links234

Why is no one talking about the elephant in the room?

Do you think it could have anything to do with the current explosion, (no pun intended) of hydraulic fracking and natural gas production going on across the southwest?

Here's the satellite imagery from the article you sourced;


And here's one that shows the areas of shale gas concentrations and production zones;


I'm no photo analyst and I'm certainly not an expert in satellite imagery, but even I can see the correlation between the two images.

a reply to: Flatfish

Dat sneaky lil' elephant!

I buy this more than coal plants...

It is far from smallI would move away from there if I was witihin 100 miles Wow scary

Just think of all the bad fart jokes circulating with this article.

We don't even monitor natural gas much less report numbers to Missouri DNR or EPA. Coal plants have CEMS (Continuous Emissions Monitoring System) that look at NOx, SOx, CO, CO2, opacity (soot), mercury, and sometimes an oddball like sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid. Methane doesn't even fit into the picture of reportables and a plant that doesn't have methane fuel, even for just igniters or something like that, won't be monitoring for it. The linked article is really strange to me and I have no idea where they got their data. There is no link to the data from the Missouri DNR site, just the 2011 report itself. I could see that there may be some strange byproducts of combustion that nobody thinks about until they actually measure it, but methane doesn't really fit into the coal-burning picture. On a long shot, the statistics may have been based on assumptions related to releases of natural gas from coal mines or from piles of mined coal, but that isn't monitored. And the same releases would occur when somebody dug a foundation for their house or the new Walmart, so that's also kinda moot. I'm biased, but I think we're being fed a lot of BS in an effort to monopolize and control the energy industry by our tyrannical federal government. It doesn't make a lick of sense to regulate US energy generation when China, India, and other "developing" countries don't have the same regulation and their emissions far exceed anything the US could ever dream of. If the whole greenhouse gas thing is true, then we can choose to die from global warming in 50 years as paupers and slaves to the Chinese or die from global warming in 49 years whilst maintaining a decent lifestyle.