The irony would be thick if this satellite were launched on a next-Gen methane fueled rocket.
(That is the trend now, kerosene and hydrogen are out, methane is in.)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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About to be the only reason anybody looks into North Dakota.
Google detecting farts from space.
Adds your fart map to your monthly gmaps timeline!
I think aside from Cattle a large source of Methane Emissions would be Flare Stacks from Pumpjack Locations. Technically it's illegal to burn off the excess natural gas, but the punishment is a fine.
Curious to see how this will flame the "China making up all the bad gases" data simplification while it will omit everything else in that regard as they won't be its business.
The supposition currently is Russia is a huge emitter, especially Siberia as the permafrost melts.
These positive feedback mechanisms are the sleeping giant.
It will be very useful to track this over time.
Siberia isn't the permafrost melting - those emissions correlate to known Oil and Gas Wells, that mostly have been just left open, so that they can be used easily again. Melting permafrost is still releasing relatively little.
I work in O&G and my own firm just spent the last three years hunting for and patching pipe leaks by looking for methane emissions.
This is something they've been crowing about for a while, but its been a problem for decades that only got treated as something worth fixing when the cost of aerial reconnaissance dropped. Its a classic negative externality that energy companies simply don't want to acknowledge until the price is right.
If you think this is the only case in which lax regulation has left the lid off Pandora's box, don't ask what was up with the BP oil rig explosion or look to hard into the number of gas leaks polluting the Mississippi river or... really... ask any questions at all about the state of safety and soundness of O&G infrastructure.
Yep...makes Synthetic fuels an even more no-brainer for me personally. Granted, it doesn't for those companies and lobbyists because it's going to be a lot more expensive initially, but if there's really a will to do something against climate change, the first thing to do should be taxing those companies doing this shit willfully and knowingly to hell and back. A few wind turbines with some electrolysis machines suddenly become a lot cheaper.
And it's a Win-Win for everyone - lots of people keep their jobs, execs keep getting money and I can keep driving ICE - and no extra co2, methan or other gasses are being released. And with these Satellites, there's actually a way to keep companies from being shit.
But that may very well be a bit too utopian...
Google of course, being one of the biggest polluters on Earth, knows that Real Recognizes Real.
Creating and parsing this data set would also create a shitload more carbon emissions and necessitate building more datacenters, wouldn't it?
Cane here to see how people were gonna spin this as a bad thing. Was not disappointed.
Before you get excited, farts have on average about <0.01% methane. Its mostly hydrogen sulfide.
Just means I need to make more. I'm gonna get on the map, just you wait.
Party pooper
Reminder: "The Nord Stream gas leak emitted up to 500,000 tons of methane : NPR"
That written looks way more impressive than 0.5 Mega tons, or 0.0005Gt, which is how global emissions are often noted.
Now I'm curious how it ranks in scale with other emissions
Fuck me, Google is doing something good.
They realized that biosphere collapse wouldn't be profitable in the long run.
They will fuck this up / drop it. History ensures this.
It's hard to trust in companies now. I bet the news in the following months is "Methane increasing green house gasses more than fossil fuel. Look at this colorful, interactive map from Google!"
But... Methane is fossil fuel?
They remembered their old moto for a split second.
Great, now I have to worry about this every time I order a curry
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