Purdue researchers flew an airborne chemistry laboratory over natural gas-fueled power plants and refineries to measure greenhouse gases. They found that although these facilities are much better for the environment than coal or oil-fueled plants, the actual amount of pollutants produced is as much as 42 times higher than estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: Purdue University photo
Power plants that burn natural gas produce significantly less pollutants and greenhouse gases than coal-burning plants, according to current estimates of how much methane escapes from such power plants, as well as from oil refineries, and estimates could be off by a wide margin, a new Purdue University study finds.
For the past decade, natural gas has been replacing coal as a fuel for electric power plants. It’s become relatively inexpensive, and it’s much less damaging to the environment if – and it’s an important “if” – it doesn’t leak out of the system before it is burned to make power.
That’s because although burning natural gas is much cleaner than coal or oil, methane (which is mostly what natural gas consists of) has the potential to be even more damaging over the short term than coal or oil if it isn’t handled properly, says Paul Shepson, Purdue’s Jonathan Amy Distinguished Professor of Analytical and Atmospheric Chemistry.
“Methane is a 34 times more potent greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide,” he says. “It’s a better fuel all around as long as you don’t spill it. But it doesn’t take much methane leakage to ruin your whole day if you care about climate change.”
The breaking point for natural gas leakage is about 3 percent. If more than that leaks, the fuel has a bigger climate effect than burning coal.
“The good news from our study is that while emissions are greater than anticipated, natural gas-burning power plants are still cleaner, relative to burning coal” Shepson says. Shepson said this pilot study found that the amount of methane escaping from the plants was only 0.3 percent on average.
Even taking into account previous estimates of methane leakage in the supply chain of 1.7 percent, the total methane emissions are still below the 3 percent threshold, the study found.
The study also found that methane emission rates were significantly higher than two sets of estimates reported by the Environmental Protection Agency; the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory of Emissions and Sinks estimated that total methane emissions from all U.S. refineries and natural gas power plants was negligible in 2014.
At a meeting of TV Meteorologists last year in Austin, I was approached by Greg Fishel, of WRAL in Raleigh, who let me know that climate crocks videos were part of the process when he woke up.
I’ve heard from other TV mets, but also scientists, citizens, teachers who use these vids in their classes, even Capitol Hill staffers. These videos get used, and change minds.
Something to think about as we wind up for the summer field season. I’ll be laying out our plans in coming weeks – but if you wish to contribute again, you can click the button at the right. If you are looking for tax breaks, go to the Dark Snow Project page, and earmark your donation for Peter Sinclair 2017.
Snowstorm. Proof there can’t be any global warming. We’ll be looking for Senator Jim Inhofe to bring another snowball into the Senate.
As I posted yesterday, public concern about environment and climate has never been higher- just as the flying monkeys of the Putin/Trump administration are setting about to turn back the clock to the 1930s.
It’s similar to the rising popularity of ObamaCare, coming just as the Republican congress sets about to dismantle it. There may be some fundamental contradictions here.
There is still some question as to whether the monsters unleashed by Trump’s election can really do everything they have promised their wealthy donor, but it won’t be from lack of trying.
It all comes down to whether people have the will to resist.
For more than a decade, Sen. James M. Inhofe has raged against the scientific consensus that humans are fueling climate change, calling it “the greatest hoax” ever perpetrated on Americans. The Oklahoma Republican has blasted the Environmental Protection Agency as an “activist organization” that has unfairly burdened everyone from farmers to fossil-fuel companies.
Now the man critics once dismissed as a political outlier has an unprecedented opportunity to shape the nation’s energy and environmental policies. And he has helped populate the upper ranks of the agency he has derided with several of his closest confidants.
At least half a dozen former aides to Inhofe — and counting — have been hired into top positions at the EPA and the White House. The chief of staff and deputy chief of staff to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a fellow Oklahoman and longtime friend of Inhofe, spent years working for the senator. Pruitt’s senior advisers on air, climate and legal issues are Inhofe alumni. In addition, two former Inhofe aides have become top domestic and international energy and environmental advisers to President Trump.
“It gives me a level of comfort to know that we have a bureaucracy that’s actually going to be serving instead of ruling,” Inhofe said in an interview this week, describing his former staffers as qualified professionals who will protect the environment. “They are going to be very realistic. They’re going to do it in a way that will not be punitive. The previous administration was almost looking for ways to punish people.”
President Trump will travel to Detroit on Wednesday to announce a rollback of stringent fuel economy standards for cars and trucks that were put in place by the Obama administration — a welcome message to American automakers but one that could slow the push for a new generation of efficient vehicles.
The fuel-economy rules, aimed at cutting heat-trapping carbon dioxide, were one of the two main pillars of President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy. Put forth in 2012, they would have required automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, forcing automakers to speed development of highly fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrid and electric cars.
The rules have been widely praised by environmentalists and energy economists for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and its greenhouse pollution. If put fully into effect, the fuel efficiency standards would have cut oil consumption by about 12 billion barrels and reduced carbon dioxide pollution by about six billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations.
Two Thirds of Americans now worry “a great deal”, or “a fair amount” about climate change – just in time for Vladimir Putin’s wrecking crew to begin dismantling (so they think) of our tools for dealing with it.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Record percentages of Americans are concerned about global warming, believe it is occurring, consider it a serious threat and say it is caused by human activity. All of these perceptions are up significantly from 2015.
Forty-five percent of Americans now say they worry “a great deal” about global warming, up from 37% a year ago and well above the recent low point of 25% in 2011. The previous high was 41%, recorded in 2007. Another 21% currently say they worry “a fair amount” about global warming, while 18% worry “only a little” and 16% worry “not at all.”
Pollster Ed Maibach of George Mason University had a similar analysis in December.
From the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. (EUMETSAT)
This visualisation shows the polar ice concentration of the northern and southern hemispheres throughout 2016, as seen by the DMSP and Metop satellites
Elon Musk, the billionaire co-founder of electric car giant Tesla, has thrown down a challenge to the South Australian and federal governments, saying he can solve the state’s energy woes within 100 days – or he’ll deliver the 100MW battery storage system for free.
On Thursday, Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s vice-president for energy products, told the AFR the company could install the 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage that would be required to prevent the power shortages that have been causing price spikes and blackouts in the state.
Thanks to stepped-up production out of Tesla’s new Gigafactory in Nevada, he said it could be achieved within 100 days.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, the Australian co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Atlassian, on Friday tweeted Elon Musk, asking if Tesla was serious about being able to install the capacity.
Musk replied that the company could do it in 100 days of the contract being signed, or else provide it free, adding: “That serious enough for you?”
Not really out of line. Solar plus storage breaking out all over, way ahead of estimates from just few years ago.
SolarReserve’s CSP technology with integrated thermal storage provides 24-hour solar power, and is ideally suited for Chile’s grid with round-the-clock power needs due to its huge mining industry. To bid 24-hour solar at 6.3 cents is a world record for CSP (Concentrated Solar Power), a form of solar utilizing heat from the sun that can be stored thermally. Chile has open auctions for both fossil energy and renewables, and no subsidies. Continue reading “Lock Him UP!! He’s Craaa-zy! Elon Musk’s INSANE Solar Deal.”
2017 has been weirdly warm so far despite a lack of El Nino conditions. If Jan/Feb temps were representative it would end up surpassing 2016 pic.twitter.com/9l5S0BGux1
Both Zeke Hausfather, above, and Robert Rohde, below, have been members of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures group, formed by climate skeptic physicist Richard Muller – significantly, with funding from the Koch Brothers – that closely examined surface temperature records to finally settle, (at least in Muller’s mind), what every major scientific group has known for 40 years.
Yesterday, both of them tweeted observations about how global temperatures are playing out.
Normally, following a giant El Nino, such as we saw in 2015-16, we would expect a temporary drop in global temps, possibly with a complimentary, cooling La Nina event.
That is not what we see.
The question arises – will we set new global temperature records 4 years in a row?
With both January and February 2017 being warmer than the 2016 average, the odds of 2017 finishing warmer than 2016 continues to increase. pic.twitter.com/48rsfvmOXK
Vid above from NASA celebrates the advances in earth observation that Republicans want to do away with – due to discoveries that inconvenience their client fossil fuel corporations.
Below, RCA film from the 60s celebrates satellite advances.
It is almost inconceivable to imagine a weather forecast without a satellite view of clouds sweeping across the globe, but in the spring of 1960, the view from space was a ground-breaking novelty. The first satellite designed to observe clouds was TIROS-1, or the Television InfraRed Observation Satellite, and it launched on April 1, 1960. The satellite carried two tiny television cameras, each weighing about two pounds. One camera captured a wide view of the Earth about 450 miles below, while the other recorded a narrower, more detailed view.
TIROS-1 orbited from pole to pole, snapping photos every 30 seconds, as illustrated in this series of images. The images were stored on tape recorders on the satellite until TIROS-1 came into range of data stations in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, or Kaena Point, Hawaii. The first of the images, labeled “frame 2,” shows the Red Sea. The water is black, and vegetated land on either side is also dark-colored. The deserts of the Arabian Peninsula on the east and the Sahara Desert of Africa on the west are light gray. The brightest features in the image are clouds.
When TIROS-1 acquired frame 3 thirty seconds later, the satellite had moved northwest. By frame 6, the Nile River has become the focus of the image, though its distinctive triangular delta is partially covered with cloud. In the last frame, the shore of Egypt and Libya runs along the lower portion of the image, while the focus is on clouds over the Mediterranean Sea.
Below, former NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenko explains the difficulty of explaining the importance of satellite weather observations to science-challenged congress-critters.
