Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/29/2009 3:40:27 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
The greater Los Angeles area is emitting more than double the amount of methane than previously estimated, according to a new study.
A greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2), most man-made methane (CH4) emission comes from agriculture -- rice paddies, livestock, and biomass burning are all big contributors. As a result studies have largely ignored the methane coming from urban areas, and regulatory agencies have had to rely on guesswork to fill in the gaps.
Debra Wunch of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and a team of researchers measured greenhouse gas emissions in the south coast air basin, a bowl of smoggy air that hangs over Los Angeles, its suburbs, and some 15 million inhabitants.
According to the latest estimate by the California Air Resources Board, human activity in the basin should only emit about 260,000 tons of methane each year. But after taking readings from August 2007 through June 2008, the team found that the annual rate was much higher: some 600,000 tons.
Much of the area's electricity comes from burning natural gas, which is almost entirely made up of methane. Approximately 10.5 million tons of natural gas was shipped into the south coast air basin in 2006; if two to three percent of that is leaking into the atmosphere, it could account for a large part of the discrepancy.
"If it's coming from a few potent leaks, one could hope to put a plug in it," Paul Wennberg also of California Institute of Technology, and a co-author on the study due to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters said. "This stuff is valuable. If you can get enough of it, you want to burn it."
The excess gas could also be trickling out of cars' exhaust pipes, landfills or sewage treatment plants.
Worldwide, the human activity and natural processes like ocean methane seeps and wetlands decomposition combine to emit approximately 582 million tons of methane each year. If cities around the world have similar methane emission patterns as Los Angeles, the team estimates urban areas could account for as much as 10-15 percent of that total.
"The hope is that the processes operating in California may be happening in other cities around the world," Amy Townsend-Small of the University of California, Irvine said. "If so, this model will be applicable in cities around the world."
Determining how much methane cities give off -- and the sources responsible -- are crucial steps toward controlling emissions in the future. Ultimately, getting a handle on methane emissions could go a long way toward limiting the effects of global warming.
CRAP!
First of all, I believe the word is gases.
What's in dispute? There has been nothing but cooling in this century regardless of CO2 levels. Thousands of summertime cool temperatures have been broken this year alone, not to mention snow in Israel and Baghdad and record cold temperatures killing wildlife in Tibet in recent winters, record ice formation in the Southern Hemisphere.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (around .04%) amounts to a fart in a hurricane, and is an insignificant level regarding temperature retention.
Nitrogen and Oxygen make up 99% of the content of the atmosphere and thank God they are there acting as insulation (greenhouse gases) to keep us from alternately freezing to death at night and frying during the daytime.
99%...why aren't the Chicken Little morons screaming about the dangerous levels of Nitrogen?... Or the serious toxic tsunami of real pollution (visible from space) coming out of China and India?
The answer: Because it's not the US.
Yes, but if you apply UV radiation to these gasses they warm.
That is chemistry. The climate sciene is disputed.
Perhaps you are also a flat earther and a creationist. Thus, there will be no point in having a conversation about what constitutes science.
Pinto Beans
So, all those artsy-fartsy people in the greater LA area aren’t nearly so artsy after all.
Yeah, and perhaps I'm not. Perhaps you are an Algor religionist who worships at the altar of flawed computer models with fraudulent data, not reality based science.
Thus, there will be no point in having a conversation about what constitutes science.
I believe CO2 retains heat...in significant amounts, like 2, 5 or 10%
But you can't explain how global temperatures are declining as CO2 levels allegedly increase, can you.
You are say the effect (gases warming) is the cause. That is wrong the cause is the UV radiation not the gases.
A blanket in your bed doesn’t make you warm either. It is your body heat. But without that blanket, your bodyheat would escape. Thus, I dont understand your point.
This is hilarious, where did you get it? I am trying to copy it to send to friends in Canada but can’t get it to copy.
It is similar to the methane that is also found on Jupiter's moons. It all is obviously caused by humans and can only be reduced by more government regulations..
1). What makes CH4 “25 times more powerful” than CO2?
2). Note that this is LA, home to a vast herd of eco-elitists who never weary of shaming the world for its indifference to the environment, all the while living in a city that is to the environment what the H-Bomb was to Bikini Atoll.
Anybody checked the tar pits lately? :)
Ah yes, the watermelon party...Green on the outside, Red on the inside.
I think y’all have had enough!!!
We can tell you do not get it because you buy into the man made myth.
it’s the cow farms... or the bean and cheese burritos.
A fart mobile.
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