Posted on 01/19/2015 8:58:15 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a potent pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isnt surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air.
However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on their own, because they want to sell it, not spill it.
How much of a menace is methane from the oil and gas industry? The amount of leakage into the atmosphere is minuscule, says Dan Kish of the Energy Research Institute. Cows emit more methane when they pass gas than the natural gas industry, he notes. Look for the EPA to start regulating cattle.
Green groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund warn that emissions will increase through 2018 and have been claiming that drillers spew more methane into the atmosphere than ever before, that it is 84 times more potent a pollutant than carbon dioxide, and new regulations are overdue.
Actually, these claims are blatantly false. Not only is methane nontoxic (propaganda notwithstanding), but methane emissions are way down over the last seven years without these new regulations. Furthermore, the reductions correspond with a major increase in oil and gas drilling and increased use of fracking technologies.
The EPAs own data confirm this. From 2005 to 2012, methane emissions from natural gas systems have fallen by 15 percent while natural gas marketed production from drilling is up by more than 33 percent. (See chart.)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Methane on Earth is considered a disaster. Methane discovered on other worlds is considered wonderful and intriguing.
Agencies get 2 weeks to comment on Keystone XL
Global Warming on Free Republic
“The Methane Menace”... is that the new Star Wars sequel?
Farts Vader, you are NOT my father!
Environ-MENTAL-ism and astronomy obviously must not coincide.
Methane bubbles up naturally out of cracks in the ground whether the gas industry is there or not. At least the gas industry is finding a good use for it, and when it burns, it turns into carbon dioxide, which is a much less effective greenhouse gas, and plant food. Big win all the way around.
This is a farce!
It seems like the biggest source of methane through out the world is from termites. Every living animal farts.
Ping! Ping!! Ping!!!
Ernest! Have you seen this???
They got CFCs, which emboldened them.
Since then, they’ve tried shutting down chlorine, CO2, and (IIRC) water vapor. Common sense prevailed in those cases.
And produces CO2 whether living or dead.
The EPA needs to be dismantled and their employees banned from gov’t work for life.
Yep and termites emit more methane than all the cows in the world. There is no Greenhouse warming so none of these "Greenhouse" gasses matter.
Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide - Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? By Timothy Ball
No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)
Those two articles take Greenhouse Theory at face value and by the criterion set up in the theory itself finds no evidence of warming on the basis of greenhouse effect.
Sky-high hole blown in AGW theory?
"Forbes reports on a peer-reviewed study that uses NASA data to show that the effects of carbon-based warming have been significantly exaggerated. In fact, much of the heat goes out into space rather than stay trapped in the atmosphere, an outcome that started long before AGW alarmists predicted:"
That article explains why no Hot Spot has been found.
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Harvard astrophysicist dismisses AGW theory, challenges peers to 'take back climate science'
It Is Impossible For A 100 ppm Increase In Atmospheric CO2 Concentration To Cause Global Warming
Simple Chemistry and the Real Greenhouse Effect.
Those five articles each show that Greenhouse Theory has no basis in reality due to a direct conflict with the known laws of physics. No wonder the smoking gun "hotspot" can't be found.
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud
That article kills any thought of planetary warming from any cause. Think about it. If there is absolutely no sign of an acceleration of sea level rise how could the planet be warming? The rise in sea level in the last 100 years is far less than the average over the last 18,000 years caused by the inter-glacial period we are in.
Yes, they know. And they do want to control the numbers of cattle a rancher is allowed to have.
And, yes, humans emit methane, and yes, these jaybirds want to control the numbers of people. Or at least have the right to control the numbers of people, such that you have to have their permission to procreate.
This is all about control, and if you listen when these people talk among themselves it becomes abundantly clear.
They aren't worried about methane, they are worried about you doing whatever it is you do without their permission and without cutting them in.
Methane Hydrate
The world's largest natural gas resource is trapped beneath permafrost and ocean sediments
The Next Energy "Game Changer"? As natural gas from shale becomes a global energy "game changer," oil and gas researchers are working to develop new technologies to produce natural gas from methane hydrate deposits. This research is important because methane hydrate deposits are believed to be a larger hydrocarbon resource than all of the world's oil, natural gas and coal resources combined. [1] If these deposits can be efficiently and economically developed, methane hydrate could become the next energy game changer.
Enormous amounts of methane hydrate have been found beneath Arctic permafrost, beneath Antarctic ice and in sedimentary deposits along continental margins worldwide. In some parts of the world they are much closer to high-population areas than any natural gas field. These nearby deposits might allow countries that currently import natural gas to become self-sufficient. The current challenge is to inventory this resource and find safe, economical ways to develop it.
Item No 2:
What’s next, “catalytic converters” for livestock? I’ll bet they are in the works, or mandatory reductions in livestock herds (”it’s for the children”).
Or catalytic converters for humans...
the EPA is Obama’s SS.
Just another tool to be used.
This is more about power and control. “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
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