Energy

Why Methane Is a Large and Underestimated Threat to Climate Goals – Yale E360

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Why Methane Is a Large and Underestimated Threat to Climate Goals – Yale E360

“The more aggressive the temperature goal, the more important potent, short-lived greenhouse gases such as methane become,” says Rob Jackson, professor of energy and environment at Stanford University. In a new analysis with Abernethy, Jackson calculates that measured on a timeframe to the mid-2040s — the likely deadline for capping warming under the Paris Agreement — methane is three times more important than assumed under existing regulations.

“We are severely undervaluing methane,” says Abernethy. “We need drastic climate action in the short term to achieve our Paris Agreement goals. Methane is the best lever to make that happen.”

This will require action against not just leaks from oil and gas infrastructure, but also the many biogenic sources, such as landfills and livestock. But achieving that is being undermined by what Abernethy calls the “arbitrary and unjustified” timeframe under which regulators currently assess the gas.

120/240V Single Phase 3 Wire Explanation And Demonstration

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The split phase system in America is a bit confusing but actually it's kind of ingenious in the sense that no wire has more than a 120 volt potential to ground. But it turns out there is more than meets the eye - the nuetral line actually carries any current not equal between the two phases back to the transformer - and if it's disconnected only the lowest amperage of the two phases will work. Fascinating stuff.

77 WABC – 1965 Northeast Blackout – DAN INGRAM.

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A half century ago, under bright moonlight of rush hour, they were playing the popular hit song, Jonathan King's Everyone is Going to the Moon -- as Dan Ingram would describe -- in a Key of "R", because the tape deck playing the song would slow down as the electrical frequency dropped at the start of the Great Northeast Blackout. Definitely one of the great moments in radio history. A creepy song to be playing at the start of the blackout, especially under a full moon. Not to mention Jonathan King is a creepy individual -- he would later go to prison as a pedophile. As they said, the electricity slowed down, as the load on the grid exceeded what power plants could put out, as they started shutting down automatically as they lost power and circuit breakers overloaded. The great power failure happened when the grid was most strained -- it was rush hour, on a cold night with lots of electric heat operating, along with street lights on and office buildings still lit brightly. They say based on comparisons of this tape versus the normal speed recordings of Edward's Everybody is Going to the Moon, the grid frequency was about 50 Hz -- or the power had browned out to about 1/6th of the normal power. In an analog world, this meant lights dimmed, elevators ran slow, and tape decks played slowly -- until the power finally quit. Here is the normal speed version of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00XbDRuI78Y

NPR

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Coal companies found ways to shed cleanup of old mines : NPR

Miles Hatfield was walking into his dining room when he felt the wooden floor give way. His legs dropped hip-deep into water that had pooled under the brick house in the green hills of eastern Kentucky where he had lived for the past 40 years, trapping him in his own floor.

Hatfield, a retired coal miner, raised two boys in the house a few miles from the West Virginia border and added on five rooms as his family grew. But the red water running off from the nearby Love Branch coal mine had turned his backyard into a marsh, ruined his septic system, and finally sucked him through his floor three years ago.

Love Branch used to be owned by one of the biggest coal companies in the U.S. Federal law requires companies to clean up the land when they finish mining — and Love Branch hasn't produced any coal in more than a decade. But the former owner, now named Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc., transferred the mine and its cleanup obligations to a smaller company in 2018, the year before Hatfield fell through his floor.

NPR

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Promises on fighting climate change are falling far short : NPR

World leaders will begin climate talks in Egypt in a little over a week, and tensions are expected to run high in the negotiations to reduce heat-trapping emissions.

Now, new research shows the world has already fallen drastically behind in adopting the changes needed to avoid a future with even more extreme storms, heat waves and floods.

Collectively, countries have promised to reduce heat-trapping emissions by about 3% by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. That's far from the 45% drop that's needed, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program.

NPR

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Greenhouse gases reach a new record as nations fall behind on climate pledges : NPR

GENEVA — The three main greenhouse gases hit record high levels in the atmosphere last year, the U.N. weather agency said Wednesday, calling it an "ominous" sign as war in Ukraine, rising costs of food and fuel, and other worries have elbowed in on longtime concerns about global warming in recent months.

"More bad news for the planet," the World Meteorological Organization said in a statement along with its latest annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. It's one of several reports released in recent days looking at several aspects of humanity's struggle with climate change in the run up to the U.N.'s latest climate conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. The U.S. pledged billions to fight climate change. Then came the Ukraine war Goats and Soda The U.S. pledged billions to fight climate change. Then came the Ukraine war

Of the three main types of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — the biggest jump from 2020 to 2021 was in methane, whose concentrations in the air came in with the biggest year-on-year increase since regular measurements began four decades ago, WMO said.

"The continuing rise in concentrations of the main heat-trapping gases, including the record acceleration in methane levels, shows that we are heading in the wrong direction," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

Methane is more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, but doesn't stay in the atmosphere nearly as long as carbon dioxide and there's 200 times more carbon dioxide in the air than methane. Over a 20-year time-period, a molecule of methane traps about 81 times the heat as a molecule of carbon dioxide but over a century it goes down to trapping 28 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.