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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sourceedit on 22-3-2014 by Rezlooper because: (no reason given)
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.