So how much of the yearly methane emissions do the super-emitters account for and how much do they emit in absolute numbers? The article seems to be lacking the most interesting information…
Exactly. There's a good chance that climate change efforts are far better targetted at super emitters. We have limited resources and these are relatively low-hanging fruit.
I am always wondering why we constrain ourself in the case of fighting climate change. Yes, all spending will at some point have to be accounted for, but it is relatively easy for governments to borrow money if the political will exists.
To reduce global CO2 emissions to zero the estimates are in the range of 100-200% of global GDP. This seems to be an amount of money that could easily be raised as debt or created via monetary policy. What is holding back such an investment?
> Yes, all spending will at some point have to be accounted for, but it is relatively easy for governments to borrow money if the political will exists.
I think the next few years will show you why unchecked borrowing is a bad thing. Ultimately, the people who lose their homes pay for it.
> To reduce global CO2 emissions to zero the estimates are in the range of 100-200% of global GDP. This seems to be an amount of money that could easily be raised as debt or created via monetary policy. What is holding back such an investment?
Where are those numbers coming from? So far we have invested a significant amount and not seen anywhere close to those returns on investment.
Not only this, but in what Universe is 200% global GDP sustainable?
> This seems to be an amount of money that could easily be raised as debt or created via monetary policy.
Ultimately, somebody always foots the bill - and it's normally the poorest people who lose the most. What you're asking for is for these people to suffer. I don't consider this an acceptable trade.
I think the model of “we could fix this if we just tried harder and sacrificed more” is actually a pretty bad model for engaging with problems that don’t have a known, acceptable solution (so we’re ignoring garbage solutions to global warming like, prevent Africa from industrializing).
And I don’t mean that it isn’t true that we could try harder, I just mean that sometimes “trying harder” seems to make the problem worse rather than better.
I can think of a few problems like this:
- homelessness
- cost of college
- healthcare
- housing
I’m not sure if the critical factor is that the issues are morally charged and so encourage effort-heavy policies or if it’s because “trying harder” is really a supply-side subsidy, meaning money for healthcare providers or colleges or landlords. In practice at least it seems that supply side subsidies without cost controls are essentially useless, as the cost of the subsidized good rises to match the subsidy.
> supply side subsidies without cost controls are essentially useless, as the cost of the subsidized good rises to match the subsidy.
For a beautiful case study in this, in 2007 or so when they were turning off analog TV the US government allowed each household two vouchers worth up to $40 to buy a converter box, (provided the box did not offer a digital output). (Not) shockingly, not until these vouchers expired did any boxes come on the market priced under $40, even though they were not complex or expensive in cost.
Typical developed country debt/GDP ratio is around 50-100%. So same order of magnitude as the green transition, but still, add 100-200% to it and you tripl your debt or so. That's non trivial in a world where increasing the debt by 5% in a year is seen as a lot.
So has this resulted in previously unknown/unexpected super-emitters?
I'm curious if this has the potential to make a big difference, if there are e.g. pipeline leaks costing companies a lot of money that this can find, where the emitters have an incentive to fix it.
Or if will be largely useless, because all the unknown culprits turn out to be natural sources we can't do anything about, or industrial processes in places where enforcement is lax already and it won't change anything.
You might be interested in Climate TRACE. They produce a global inventory, identifying the largest individual sources of emissions, and publish it CC-BY - https://climatetrace.org/downloads
Southeast Asia? At least from the map someone else linked to, that seems to be a good part of the answer. Admittedly, I need to be smacked pretty hard with the clue bat because it isn't as apparent to me as it is to you.
It's sad we have reached a level of political correctness that means even American tax funded researchers are afraid to call out non-Western countries like China and India.
So CO2 isn’t the most potent, it’s the one that humans release the most compared to natural processes over last 100years.
Most potent is h2o (water vapor). The warmer the air, the more water vapor is held. Water retains an incredible amount of heat energy as well.
But very few articles talk about it.
In general, warming the earth is a runaway effect. More co2 means warmer air and oceans. This means more water retained in air and less in oceans. Which means even more warning. Warmer earth means less ice which reflects sunlight. Less ice means even warmer planet.
Venus is a great example of earth’s distant future if we don’t get the runaway warming under control.
Crude oil is the greatest blessing for human growth, but May also be a curse in disguise.
You are as far as I understand correct. The increase in water vapor amplifies the effect of CO2 and methane. And the amount of cloud cover vs the amount of water vapor makes modeling what happens very tricky and beyond what a lay person is capable of.
I believe the US government has been fining methane super emitters for some time [1]. The problem is China is the bigggest emitter - nearly double the next highest country, which is India, followed closely by the US. That said, the US emits far more than any other country per capita.
It is a big problem. We need a more integrated system than just having the US fine domestic companies that emit too much, I think. The obvious way to workaround that sort of fine is just to outsource manufacturing and emissions to China.
A first-pass attempt could be for countries that want to do something about the problem to start up some sort of carbon credit market, with heavy tariffs for goods imported from outside the market.
Is 'per capita' a useful metric other than to give the largest emitters some sort of retort?
One person living alone on a private island who cooks food on a fire several times a day might have a really high 'per capita' score, but in the grand scheme of things it's utterly irrelevant.
China doesn't have to do anything because they've convinced the world that per-capita matters. It doesn't matter.
I'm also willing to bet China's population is smaller than they say. And I'd also bet their emissions are higher than they say. Nothing that comes out of China's mouth can be trusted.
In your opinion what should pollution be measured as a function of? If you choose not to measure it per capita, then every country, no matter how large or small will be measured equally, setting up perverse incentives for smaller countries to have pollution heavy environments.
> what should pollution be measured as a function of?
Consumption? China is a huge emitter, but a large percentage of that comes from making products destined for America and Europe. IMO the emissions for those products should be assigned to the country that is purchasing them.
If all he does is cooking food on fire, he definitely won’t have a high per capita score, per capita by definition gives you an average. If he does below average than your average western citizen, the score of his country will be less of that.
We obviously have to account for it per capita — you would surely not allow as little CO2 emission for China as you would to, say, Hungary. Like, that would be completely unfair.
"Fair" is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for cooperation, which itself is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for solving the problem.
It's also much easier to convince someone that "no more X for you" is fair if you have a cheaper and better alternative to X. We're getting there for that.
If the world was a democracy, the needs of the many would outweigh the needs of the few .
Countries are very arbitrary lines on a geopolitical map.
Take Europe and India, they have roughly similar landmass , number of people and linguistic diversity so why European states get their own measures and Indian states do not ?
If you don’t measure per capita , you are effectively seeing all humans are not equal, some have more rights and privileges than others , that is dangerously close to how slavery operated
But what if the US provides more? We have to consider what each person gets per unit of pollution.
Hypothetically, nation A could generate pollution wastefully, while nation B could do so less wastefully, but provide 10x as much.
Eg.
“ The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor," said Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com.”
I was thinking about that. On one hand, per capita tells you the relative use per person, which is useful for who consumes the most (most wasteful lifestyle). We know this will almost always be America.
On the other hand, we could measure per gdp and see who generated the most value from that pollution. This would probably help the US relative to other nations in ranking. It may hint at how efficiently the consumption is.
Of course economic output isn’t everything in life, there’s other ways to determine value and fairness and all that, but it’s be an interesting comparison to per capita.
Eg. The hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor," said Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor at Edmunds.com.
The alternative would be to say that Americans are worth more than Chinese (and Europeans and everyone else) and have a God given right to emit twice as much.
Absolutely not unless you think the very worst most dysfunctional working group you’ve experienced at work should be able to make life-and-death decisions.
Obv such a decision would be a vetoable Security Council authorization. Certainly this would still be less provocative to the world community than a unilateral attack, such as a US sub attacking a plant in the former USSR, or China attacking a plant on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
And I guess it would be a last resort, after making an offer to fly in the tech and know-how to flare the methane instead. "Get me Red Adair on the hotline NOW!"
Though they aren't the only ones mentioned in the article, I love the work GHGSat is doing! If anyone from there reads here, would love to connect. https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaseroderick/
In this context "super-emitters" means strong outliers, locations or events where unusual amounts of something (i.e. methane) are being released.
This often correlates to either accidents that have not been detected/fixed, to deliberate pollution for financial again, or to something nobody realized was significant before.
“Do deliberate”, I think. Like the mafia setting up a hazardous waste disposal company, and then simply dumping the waste into a ditch. Makes them a lot more money.
I mean "deliberate pollution" not so much in the "evil villain who directly wants to ruin the environment" sense, and more like "I'd rather have $X in profit than spend anything to handle this properly, whatever happens next is somebody else's problem."
Mostly oil fields which are not or improperly flaring or gaz infrastructure which are leaking. Can also be landfills where decomposition create methane but still mostly the oil industry. For “normal” emitters, you can add to that cattle farms.
