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EPA under counting U.S. methane emissions by 50%; far worse pollution than anyone realized

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posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 02:28 PM
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A study was published in Journal Science that claims the U.S. EPA under-counted total methane emissions by roughly 50%.




Based on atmospheric sampling, the study estimates that this missing methane amounts to 14 terra grams (Tg) of methane; that's equal to 6.4 billion pounds, or as much as the weight of 1.4 million new Ford F150 pickup trucks.



If people continue to deny what's happening folks, we're going to pass the tipping point real soon and then there won't be any damn thing we can do about saving our arses. We'll be entering a human extinction level event. Through my dangerous gas theory threads I list a series of different phenomenon that I believe are caused by rapidly escalating amounts of methane gas in the atmosphere, trapping the sun's heat at dangerous levels, causing global temperatures to rapidly rise. Some of those events include the sonic booms, sky noises, volcanoes, earthquakes, sinkholes, torrential rains, high winds, freak hail storms, mysterious explosions and fires, unexplained human deaths, mass animal die-offs, disease outbreaks, and more. You can check all this out in my threads.

Methane is 20 times worse than carbon dioxide as far as trapping the sun's heat but it has a much shorter life span at just under a decade. So, normally, it wouldn't be such a threat because of its short life span but when there's too much releasing, then it's far worse, which is what's happening today. It's more of a threat to global warming because excess hydrogen sulfide release right along with methane is causing more methane to emit because the hydrogen sulfide is reacting away the hydroxyl radicals that always mitigated the amount of methane. It's a chain reaction that is getting out of control, because the more gases that release, the more the temperatures continue to climb, causing more gas to release. The hydroxl radicals can't keep up. We're definitely fast approaching a tipping point.

One area that should be of great concern is the Arctic region. This area is warming on average the fastest out of anywhere on the planet and it has the most vulnerable of methane storage with frozen hydrates of the gas by the billions of tons in the shallow Arctic shelf. This gas is stored just under the permafrost. Normally, hydrates in the deeper ocean are so far below that it takes a lot longer to warm those waters and much longer after that for the hydrates to melt, but in the shallower waters of the shelf, it's already happening.

According to this article, they believe 17 million tons of methane gas per year is escaping from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf alone.

Twice as much methane releasing from Arctic Shelf than previously thought

In an effort to hide the dangers of Fracking, the government via the EPA just recently released a report that methane emissions from natural gas are actually decreasing. The EPA claimed that 2012 data showed a 2% decrease in emissions from 2011.




This treatment of methane emissions from natural gas is difficult to reconcile with the new Science study by Adam Brandt of Stanford University and his colleagues, the most comprehensive analysis of both "top-down" and "bottom-up" methane-emission studies ever.

Top down studies take air samples from aircraft or towers. These types of studies offer an accurate measurement of overall methane emissions, but they are not as well suited to attributing emissions to particular sources compared to bottom-up methods, which measure emissions directly at the source. The estimates of missing methane are based on direct sampling of the atmosphere, whereas the EPA inventory involves many assumptions and depends upon accurate self-reporting of voluntary emission reduction efforts by the extraction companies.



M ethane pollution from US far worse than anyone realized






GRAPH: The bar on the left shows the total methane emissions, including three largest sources, for the year 2012 in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Inventory (draft version released February 2014). The next bar shows the most likely estimate of missing methane (50 percent under counting) on top of the emissions in the EPA inventory. The two bars to the right represent the lower and upper ends of the possible ranges for missing methane, 25 percent and 75 percent as large as the EPA inventory total.

The EPA greenhouse gas inventory uses data from "bottom up" studies to develop emission factors for different components of the entire natural gas system from production (extraction from the ground), to processing, transmission and distribution. These emission factors are part of an attempt to calculate representative quantities of pollution released with each of the activities that make up the natural gas system. Roughly speaking, there is an emission factor for conventional-well completions and a lower one for reduced-emission-well completions that use pollution controls. The emission factor is multiplied by the number of well completions of each type to estimate their contribution to total emissions from the natural gas system.

A limitation of the bottom-up studies upon which the EPA inventory relies is a requirement that researchers obtain access to natural-gas operations. It has been challenging for researchers to secure permission to do that type of work. As a result, bottom up studies struggle to attain large sample sizes that would give confidence that they are broadly representative of the whole industry. There is also a concern that the companies that volunteer to be measured are likely to be the most responsible operators, i.e. lower emitting. Evidence is accumulating that a small number of leaks are responsible for a large fraction of methane emissions, and these outlier emissions are most likely emanating from the less-responsible producers.



The evidence is all around us every single day, but the government, the media and the powers that be are trying to hide it from us. All these phenomenon should be garnering much more news attention than it does, but it's largely ignored. These phenomenon are rising in intensity and frequency. Freak storms, extreme heatwaves, massive sinkholes, fireballs, more and more disease and drug-resistant bacteria, earthquake swarms, volcanic activity, massive gas explosions and sonic booms...it's all there every single day. All you have to do is pay attention and you'll see for yourself. These things aren't normal at this frequency of occurrence. Sure, they are things we've experienced before, but not like this. We all need to collectively come together and change our attitudes before it's too late!



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 02:34 PM
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As an avid carnivore, I wonder how much Methane Cows account for, rampant farming etc...


What ever the various sources, can't we at least agree that cleaning up a bit would benefit us all.

I always view the anti-man-effected climate change people to people arguing the right to Crap on the carpet.



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 02:38 PM
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benrl
As an avid carnivore, I wonder how much Methane Cows account for, rampant farming etc...


What ever the various sources, can't we at least agree that cleaning up a bit would benefit us all.

I always view the anti-man-effected climate change people to people arguing the right to Crap on the carpet.


According to the graph above, almost 10 million tons of methane gas comes from the cows each year. Whoa! Time to eat less McDonald's burgers I guess.

I agree with you. We all need to start cleaning up our acts and not next year, but now.



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 03:08 PM
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This is all so crazy that I even have a theory on what happened to that missing plane. The media and TPTB ignore the gas threat and no one has even once mentioned the idea that a gas plume may have turned that plane into a "ghost plane" but yet they will examine black holes. That's because they know how preposterous the idea that a black hole swallowed the plane, but yet they realize the frightening reality that these gas plumes can and do exist. I believe that only a gas plume could have done this to the plane...something that could knock out everybody on the plane so quickly that nobody had time to text or call for help. I think the pilots started to know something was wrong and only had time to turn the plane towards the nearest runway to do an emergency landing, then the gas knocked them all unconscious, even the passengers, eventually killing them and turning the plane into a "ghost plane" that flew several hours southwest into the vast openness of the Indian Ocean. That's where the debris pieces were spotted by the satellite, but they are all but gone now and will never be found. Identical to happenings that probably took place in the Bermuda Triangle years ago when all those ships and planes were disappearing.

The Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis has been pretty accurate in his predictions over the past couple of years. He predicted early on what types of fires and explosions would increase and they have. He said that we'd fail to pay attention until there was mass human casualties, such as this missing plane. In this case though, authorities won't acknowledge that this could be the case, coming close though by saying a possible fire broke out on the plane. One of the predictions he made two years ago was that plane crashes would increase and by watching his site, you'll see that there are numerous small plane crashes happening every day, and most of them are upon landing when their landing gear fails. One just the other day was there brakes ignited on fire on the runway. Check out his site for more information the why and the how's.

Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis

Check this out...a plane took off from Kuala Lumpur and 20 minutes after take off it ignited into fire and had to emergency land. Gas plumes will cause fire. This is the same airport that the missing plane took off from two weeks ago. Very interesting.

Source
edit on 22-3-2014 by Rezlooper because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 03:27 PM
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Florida is a hot spot for methane and hydrogen sulfide events. I spent two months in Florida this winter and at least a dozen times I encountered the 'rotten egg' smell either driving or being in the open air somewhere, and several of those were in Ocala. Also, I've spent my whole life visiting in Florida almost every year and I don't ever recall the water being so bad. It's always been a 'too much iron' bad, but never had the 'rotten egg' smell and strong. I'm talking about water coming out of people's faucets. My friend that lives down there over the past couple of years tries to tell me its just Florida water...but, there shouldn't be actual gas in your water...and there is now. My conclusions...there is a lot of dangerous gas coming up underneath Florida and this following story coming out a couple of days ago leads me to believe that it's now releasing in a violent sort of way. In Polk County, south of Orlando, residents are reporting hearing loud sonic booms every night in the late night hours. It's like thunder, but it isn't. One resident said it reminded her of the space shuttle booms. The police have no answers for the concerned residents.

Mysterious booms worry Osceola and Polk county residents

Johnny Mnemonic of the Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis says he believes that most of these booms are heard in the wee hours of the night time because the atmosphere expands in the day because of the heating, but then at night time as it cools, it constricts and causes the gas to ignite. Or, if the gas is exploding out from the ground, maybe the same effect, the constriction adds just enough pressure to cause the gas to pop! It may already be close to the surface and ready to explode out. Keep in mind, this is also the region that is the sinkhole capital of America. In the area of these booms is the same place where that resort collapsed into a massive sinkhole last year. One hour to the west is Seffner, FL where the man was swallowed up in his bedroom and died from a sinkhole. This is also the area where I spent two months traveling back and forth between Tampa/Sarasota area over to Daytona Beach, and I encountered many 'rotten egg' smell gas plumes.

It's getting very interesting as things continue to pick up. It will be pretty hard to ignore soon!



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 09:36 PM
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This is exactly the news we don't need. What it means is that it might already be too late to reverse climate change. As you have pointed out, methane is far worse than carbon dioxide.

The really bad news is that we can't influence the methane release directly like we can with CO2 unless someone figures out a way to trap it and distribute it for human use to burn off and quickly.



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 09:40 PM
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I bet they aren't even counting the methane coming from us guys farting. They would have to raise the emmissions up a hundred percent

On the serious side, as the earth warms there will be a lot more quickening of the earth causing sinkholes and effecting gas lines in the cities. Even the frost can rupture a gas line under the right conditions.
edit on 22-3-2014 by rickymouse because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 22 2014 @ 09:57 PM
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Thank you for the information.

What ecactly do you propose we do about it?

Most people are just struggling to pay the bills and survive. New regulations would just cost more money and jobs that we can't afford right now.

Seriously, we are in a pickle.



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 01:00 AM
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liejunkie01
Thank you for the information.

What ecactly do you propose we do about it?

Most people are just struggling to pay the bills and survive. New regulations would just cost more money and jobs that we can't afford right now.

Seriously, we are in a pickle.


You are correct, we are in a pickle. It is difficult for some of us to change because we can't afford it, but yet we can't afford not to. One of the main things is our thirst for energy. We have to stop drilling IMO, and start using green energy. We have to stop using chemicals in agriculture across the Midwest, this is all running off into the Mississippi and right down into the Gulf, causing the massive dead zone and drastically warming the waters messing with the Gulf Stream. Those are just a couple of things. There are plenty of little things we can all do to stop contributing to it as well, but I know, it's easier said than done because it's what we are all accustomed to. We're definitely in a pickle.

I like this experiment a city in Mongolia did a few years ago to keep cooler winter temps longer into summer.

Mongolia bids to keep city cool with 'ice shield' experiment

Problem is...I can't find any stories since the experiment to see if it worked at all. In this experiment they drilled down into the ice and brought the water from below it to the surface to freeze again and repeated this process until they had ice that was 7 meters thick. The idea is that it will take longer to thaw keeping the summer temps more reasonable later into the season.

Actually, we have a major natural experiment happening in the United States this year with 93% of the Great Lakes covered in ice right now. This is one of the most ice-covered years. Meteorologists already said in news reports that they expect this to allow a much cooler and longer spring. Too bad we couldn't do this all across the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere...if it actually works. The way the temps and additional snow events are happening right into spring anyways, it's going to bring a late snow melt this year to, which should help.

If something like this happened...it could help slow down the methane release by slowing down the warming temperatures in both the oceans and the air.



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 01:17 AM
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As usual you paint a small picture using many brush strokes.

Fracking. That's the culprit. They crack plates just to trap a drop of it.

It's all guuuud....

Just try poking holes in the headers, and then wonder why the engine runs differently....

No more whacking our peepees, please.

# 220
edit on 23-3-2014 by TheWhiteKnight because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 01:34 AM
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Sooner or later, there wil be hefty fines just for passin some gas



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 01:59 AM
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Hitler on Global Warming and Al Gore





posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 02:14 AM
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Rezlooper
This is all so crazy that I even have a theory on what happened to that missing plane. The media and TPTB ignore the gas threat and no one has even once mentioned the idea that a gas plume may have turned that plane into a "ghost plane" but yet they will examine black holes. That's because they know how preposterous the idea that a black hole swallowed the plane, but yet they realize the frightening reality that these gas plumes can and do exist. I believe that only a gas plume could have done this to the plane...something that could knock out everybody on the plane so quickly that nobody had time to text or call for help. I think the pilots started to know something was wrong and only had time to turn the plane towards the nearest runway to do an emergency landing, then the gas knocked them all unconscious, even the passengers, eventually killing them and turning the plane into a "ghost plane" that flew several hours southwest into the vast openness of the Indian Ocean. That's where the debris pieces were spotted by the satellite, but they are all but gone now and will never be found. Identical to happenings that probably took place in the Bermuda Triangle years ago when all those ships and planes were disappearing.

The Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis has been pretty accurate in his predictions over the past couple of years. He predicted early on what types of fires and explosions would increase and they have. He said that we'd fail to pay attention until there was mass human casualties, such as this missing plane. In this case though, authorities won't acknowledge that this could be the case, coming close though by saying a possible fire broke out on the plane. One of the predictions he made two years ago was that plane crashes would increase and by watching his site, you'll see that there are numerous small plane crashes happening every day, and most of them are upon landing when their landing gear fails. One just the other day was there brakes ignited on fire on the runway. Check out his site for more information the why and the how's.

Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis

Check this out...a plane took off from Kuala Lumpur and 20 minutes after take off it ignited into fire and had to emergency land. Gas plumes will cause fire. This is the same airport that the missing plane took off from two weeks ago. Very interesting.

Source
edit on 22-3-2014 by Rezlooper because: (no reason given)


You do realize airlines are pressurized and the air it gets is from the engine its cooled by a heat exchanger then filtered and pumped into the cabin. So trust me if methane hit a jet engine the engine would blow up before methane got into the cabin.



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 02:39 AM
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Methane is the real threat, I absolutely agree. With carbon, it still serves a necessary and, in the end, essential role to our very survival as a species. We need Co2 or we die. Period. First the plants, to be specific..then we get to experience the joy of oxygen depletion if it isn't around.

Methane on the other hand..isn't so beneficial in any way I know of, at all. I also agree with the fracking concerns as a major one. I was off watching educational vids in my college network last night when I came across one of the largest deep sequestration operations in the world. What mattered and is apparently measurable in other large scale ones as well is a literal shift in the ground...soil...earth..level beneath the injection points. It's injection a mile or more down, of course, but the hyper accurate laser measurements and such can still see the buldge created by it.

All that pressure HAS to find ways of gaining balance and equilibrium with it's environment..and that must, by simple logic, eventually come with displacement of SOMETHING. Methane is something we know is in pockets and vast pools, in different forms and also, deep down there.

This is all insanity. The ONLY decent thing is that Methane lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere compared to many times that for carbon. Of course, the secondary damage the methane imbalance does for long term natural systems won't heal anywhere like 12 years...but if all emissions ended now, the science I've read say that's time to clear by nature.

Now just stop feeding cows, farting after dinner, throwing anything away to go into landfills ..oh...and yeah...figure a way to skip that whole bathroom need yourselves...and we'll cut those emissions down to size! (scary huh?)



posted on Mar, 23 2014 @ 04:48 AM
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reply to post by Rezlooper
 


Also, I've spent my whole life visiting in Florida almost every year and I don't ever recall the water being so bad. It's always been a 'too much iron' bad, but never had the 'rotten egg' smell and strong. I'm talking about water coming out of people's faucets.

You sure that's gas and not just sulfur water? Me and my brother used to call it poop water when we were kids.







 
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