Records are made to be broken but should be done naturally and without doping and steroids. The 2012 heat record for the lower-48 states smashed the warmest year record for the contiguous USA by a full degree Fahrenheit. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc.
What happened with the 2012 heat record would be like Bolt shaving a full second of the 100 meters sprint record. And that would not be natural.
Here is another data point driving home just how hot 2012 was. Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the 20th century average, again according to NOAA.
The climate is on steroids. It has changed already. Seas and temperatures are already up and going up further, as more heat trapping gas is pumped into the atmosphere.
methane is an extreme concentrated blanket...it is the worse global warming gas.....It leaks naturally and un naturally.....we can do something about the man made leakage. Actions speak louder than words. Fast track means fast thinking and now....
ReplyDeleteYour comments about nat gas and fracking make as much sense as congressman’s Jesse Helm’s complaints in ’89 about artwork funded by the NEA. Like the right-wing Helms, you are blinded by ideology and see only what you want to see.
DeleteA new study by MIT researchers shows the amount of methane emissions caused by shale gas production has been largely exaggerated. The researchers, O’Sullivan and Paltsev , found that companies are already capturing about 70 percent of potential “fugitive” emissions. Also, CO2 resides in the atmosphere for over a century, but methane only lasts in the atmosphere for around a decade. So your “blanket” is full of holes.
You can find the paper by searching this title: Shale gas production: potential versus actual greenhouse gas emissions
by O'Sullivan, F. and S. Paltsev
You can search this blog to find numerous other ways that methane is being contained. Please refrain from poisoning the public with your ideological junk. You can do better than Jesse Helms.
The gas industry can do more to capture methane and will be required by federal law to do green completions by 2015. 70% of shale gas wells are green completed now. But capturing methane is important for the reason you state. Methane, however, does degrade within 15 years. Carbon dioxide persists for 100 or more years so the carbon dioxide my car puts into the atmosphere driving to work today will be there for a long, long time.
DeleteI am speaking from a gas extraction area that is not utilizing the techniques you refer to. We still have venting and blowoffs and flaring on a daily basis. I just want to see this done at the highest standard-one that allows the folks living in the gasfields to have a quality of life.
DeletePlease read EPA description of methane gas....It explains how potent it is. So let's agree that gas extraction and processing should not be adding to the methane in the atmosphere. As far as a date that we can expect "green completions"? I am not holding my breath!
ReplyDelete