
NASA Flew Gas Detectors Above California, Found ‘Super Emitters’ - zeristor
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/nasa-flew-gas-detectors-above-california-found-super-emitters
======
danielfoster
As an individual I'm happy to make sacrifices for the greater good, and this
is an example of why we should not accept the narrative that consumers bear
the brunt of reducing emissions.

Maybe California should do a few more of these flights before finding
something else to ban?

~~~
bravo22
Per the article, most of the sites were landfills, dairy farms, and natural
gas facilities. All of those are directly controlled by consumer demand.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
This is demonstrably false, please stop perpetuating it. CO2 emissions are 90%
down to tragedy of the commons.

I can have the exactly same lifestyle in Saudi, in USA and in France, yet per
capita emissions in France are 3 times lower than those in USA, and 5 times
lower than in Saudi.

People in Saudi do not have 5 times better lives. In fact a huge chunk of the
population is an underclass, some work as slaves on construction sites.

Competent management and regulation matters, a lot.

~~~
khawkins
41% of US emissions come from the power industry while in France, where
nuclear power is widespread, it's only 13% from power. But very rarely do I
hear calls from people who care about this stuff call for switching the
nation's energy to nuclear.

[https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/us-
co2-emissions...](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/us-
co2-emissions/)

[https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/france-
co2-emiss...](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/france-
co2-emissions/)

~~~
austhrow743
Every discussion of energy I've ever seen has had a large portion of people
making pro nuclear comments.

~~~
Iv
Because that's the transition power that has the math and history to back it.
Its window is closing though. It would have made a ton of sense in the 80s or
90s but the antinuclear have won: we stayed 40 more years in the fuel economy
until renewables matured enough to be a credible alternative.

We are not there yet though: intermittence (and to some extent construction
speed) still favor nuclear power but maybe not for that long.

------
punnerud
In Norway we place plastic over the (food) landfill, gather the methane and
use it for electricity production. When there is no more methane the same
landfill is used as soil for food production.

~~~
mogadsheu
I interned for a landfill gas capture company a long time ago. Apparently it’s
quite tough to make payback on the investment.

If value is applied to the degradation and GHG abatement, some groups might
find it worthwhile.

~~~
doc_gunthrop
In this case it sounds like something that could be subsidized by the
government if it provides a net benefit to the general populace (by reducing
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere).

~~~
brandmeyer
Flaring it early would produce most of the GHG reduction benefit. The
resulting CO2 has a tiny fraction of the total warming potential of the
unburned CH3. For cases where it isn't economical to recover the methane, the
public still benefits.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
Most of the GHG reduction benefit in terms of the GHG contribution of the
methane itself. However, there is also the benefit of the fossil fuel
combustion that is displaced if you collect and burn for power. This is
exactly the sort of thing that a carbon tax would incentivize if it were at
all economically sensible.

~~~
gbrown
So long as there's a positive carbon return on adding the extra
infrastructure.

There very well may be, but adding pipes to burn off excess methane is way
easier than generating and transporting electricity.

------
TrevorAustin
Some very smart friends of mine do this with airplanes to find leaks in
natural gas plants and pipelines:
[http://kairosaerospace.com/](http://kairosaerospace.com/)

~~~
AWildC182
Their wing strut mounting of that sensor pod causes me a lot of concern... I
don't think Cessna ever expected crazy torque loads on strut meant for
tension.

~~~
donarb
In the PyCon video (link posted elsewhere), a questioner asked if they had
thought of making the pod able to be controlled during banking to keep the
data from being tainted with outlier values. The speaker described that FAA
rules determine what can be attached to the airplane so it was better to make
the pod dumb and fix the data in post processing. Presumably they built the
pod as light as possible to fit under FAA regs.

~~~
StillBored
I'm not sure there is a weight regulation beyond the general guidelines
provided by the manufacture which probably don't cover major alterations like
this. Its probably more like what they could get the local A&P to sign off on.
Part 43
([https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-43](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-43))
is mostly about how the alterations are to be made than dealing with the
specifics of the alternation.

Beyond that, its likely is a permanent mark against the air-frame which makes
it basically impossible to resell. Including the fact it might have added an
additional inspection interval at the strut attachment points. Might even have
ended up as an experimental cert due to not conforming to the type any longer.

Also, i'm not so sure there is a lot of formal engineering going into a mod
like this on a GA plane. More likely someone has a rough set of parameters for
air-frame shear/etc stress and a quick calculation said that the additional
stress at 120MPH and landing shock was a small percentage of the total.

------
azernik
The most interesting sentence isn't the headline, but rather:

> Landfills accounted for 41% of the source emissions it identified, manure
> management 26% and oil and gas operations 26%.

i.e. perhaps the best reason to recycle or compost is to avoid the methane
emissions from natural decomposition.

~~~
jobseeker990
Compost IS natural decomposition, my dude.

~~~
lotyrin
A composting operation could potentially capture its gasses though, compared
to landfills.

~~~
dilyevsky
There are landfills that capture methane too. Some even turn it into onsite
power source (in which case it’s re-emitted as co2 but oh well)

~~~
thombat
It's still good news, since methane is a more potent greenhouse gas -
depending upon the timeframe and calculation method it's generally reckoned to
have between 30 and 100 times the warming potential of C02 [1]. Moreover a
power station then has a CO2-rich exhaust stream, which is probably the best
place for industrial carbon capture.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-
gree...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-
gas-is-methane/)

------
mthoodlum
272,000 sites surveyed. 0.2% of the sites account for 46% of emissions.
272,000 sites * 0.002 = 544 sites.

544 sites account for 46% of the state's emissions.

Yet the article states, "A handful of operations are responsible for the vast
majority of methane emissions."

~~~
sorenn111
is your contention that 46% does not constitute a majority? I think the
distribution is pareto enough that the headline is not so crazy.

~~~
softwaredoug
To be a pedant it might be a plurality (biggest one), but not a majority
(>50%)

------
jashkenas
Here’s a quick and dirty notebook that uses NASA’s published data to visualize
where the ‘Super Emitters’ are located around California:

[https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/californias-methane-
supe...](https://observablehq.com/@jashkenas/californias-methane-super-
emitters)

------
semerda
Where is EPA in all this?

Mountain View Shoreline (right behind Google HQ) used to be a landfill site
for 3 decades before being turned into a park. Plenty of families visit it for
the nature walks, kiddie play areas and water activities. Then few weeks back
I heard a bang and hissing; a methane release valve opened
[https://youtu.be/kq3CnXU5OtU](https://youtu.be/kq3CnXU5OtU)

I don’t know if this is normal for it to be so low but since then I’ve learnt
the whole area has these to stop it from combusting. Methane is also a dirty
gas that affects cognition.

Add to this the SuperFund sites water & land pollution and one has to question
what the heck is going on here.

It gives a whole new perspective on how we are killing our earth hoping the
problem will be solved by someone else in the future :(

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FollowSteph3
Almost feels like running a code profiler to find the hotspots

------
kaycebasques
80/20 rule [1] strikes again?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

~~~
therealdrag0
I feel like this is brought up every time a minority number is responsible for
a majority number, regardless of how far off 80/20 it is. That seems silly.

------
dev_dull
> _The report doesn’t identify these “super emitters,” but notes that
> landfills give off more methane than any other source in the state. NASA’s
> equipment found that a subset of these landfills were the largest emitters
> in California and exhibited “persistent anomalous activity.”_

Is the problem here that the trash is breaking down, or it's breaking down in
a suboptimal way (such as anaerobic activity) that's causing methane to be
released instead of a more benign gas?

------
newnewpdro
We really need automated continuous monitoring and alerting of these things.
It doesn't take much time for an event to release huge quantities of what was
thought to be contained gas into the atmosphere.

I'm surprised to not see any reference to the Aliso Canyon leak in this thread
yet:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliso_Canyon_gas_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliso_Canyon_gas_leak)

------
branchan
There's also currently a push by many countries to have carbon monitoring
satellites above their countries.

For example: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-
satellit...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-satellites-
that-can-pinpoint-methane-and-carbon-dioxide-leaks/)

------
gniv
So what can be done about landfills? Burying stuff seems expensive/energy
intensive.

~~~
wongarsu
Many European countries (Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc) don't allow landfills
for common household trash. The solution obviously has many facets. Mostly it
breaks down to waste separation (e.g. different bins for plastics, compost and
paper that are emptied for free, with high fees for the rest to encourage
people to separate), recycling what you can and burning the rest. Burning
trash produces energy and you can deal with produced gases at one central
location, what's left after burning is easy to landfill because it's much less
volume and basically doesn't decompose.

~~~
athenot
The result of what's incinerated is often used for construction, like for road
bases. So it's turned into a valuable material instead of being wasted.

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mtnGoat
this is interesting data... im not a scientist, but what causes the methane
from the garbage dumps? rotting organics or just everything in general? is
there not a better way to dispose of specific types of trash creating these
gases?

Obviously not a small problem to solve. I think if the gov started identifying
and fining these emitters, they would invest more into these types of
solutions.

------
magic5227
So most importantly, how can we follow up and ensure the state works to
capture/fine these locations? The article is paywalled, is it likely this will
be actively followed up on?

Maybe all of us HN readers should write a note to Gov Newsom?

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neonate
[https://outline.com/97yPNJ](https://outline.com/97yPNJ)

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tjbiddle
Are there any composting services in the US? I'm living in Bali right now and
I found a local service that gives me a bucket, I put all my organic waste
into it, and once a week they come to replace it with a clean bucket.

If I wanted, I could request the compost back - but I don't have any use for
it and would rather other consumers get a bit extra.

I pay ~$2/mo for the service (Again, Bali prices).

~~~
jdavis703
Yes, large and medium sized cities in California mostly have them.

------
totally
Great example of gathering and using data to effect change.

------
jeffdavis
The following says that methane is not an important greenhouse gas:

[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-
irrelevant...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-
greenhouse-gas/)

Can someone who knows better tell me if that's good science or not?

~~~
donarb
A website that quotes Breitbart is a signal that they are not serious about
providing accurate scientific information.

~~~
jeffdavis
OK, let me change my question to:

Some random person told me that the parts of the spectrum that are absorbed by
CH4 are already absorbed by H2O, which is way more prevalent, so the CH4
doesn't matter much.

Is that true/valid/scientific?

~~~
mturmon
Nearer the top of the atmosphere, the concentration of H2O is much less, and
the argument breaks down, because it’s the top layers that radiate to space.
Lower in the troposphere, photons are being absorbed and re-radiated, but not
escaping.

In general, this stuff is complicated, and it’s easy for people using
“motivated reasoning” to come up with the answer they want. Lots of comments
reflecting such misinformation appear on HN — it’s frustrating.

So, listening to random people isn’t such a good idea. Much better to read a
report from people who study this stuff, like:
[https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/](https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/), which
I recommend to technically interested nonspecialists.

(I eat lunch with one of the co-authors of the technical paper in _Nature_
linked to the OP, the press release is:
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7535](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7535),
paper is:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1720-3))

~~~
jeffdavis
Thank you for a simple, intellectual answer.

Obviously I am not taking in information without skepticism, otherwise I would
not have asked the question.

But if I can't read something like that and refute it, then obviously I don't
understand the issue very well. The best way to remedy that is to ask (not
ignorant silence), so I'm a bit disappointed with the other replies who
ridiculed me for asking.

~~~
mturmon
Without a lot of background (some mix of grad school, regular interaction with
experts at conferences, reading journal publications) you will be easily
misled by motivated reasoning, which is everywhere in this domain. People
spend their careers on this stuff. Undergrad physics, chemistry, and earth
science is not enough.

Resources like the overview report I linked are critical.

