
Fracking in North America could be partly to blame for methane spike – study - colinprince
https://www.newsweek.com/fracking-u-s-canada-worldwide-atmospheric-methane-spike-1454205
======
btilly
[https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels-
are-g...](https://www.wired.com/story/atmospheric-methane-levels-are-going-up-
and-no-one-knows-why/) is a somewhat older but a much more informative and
balanced article.

The td;lr version is that there is a minority that blames fracking, but most
have concluded that it doesn't fit the data. There are a bunch of other
theories as well. And the isotopes are not definitive. The fact that someone
recently wrote an article concluding otherwise doesn't actually change this
since neither data nor the line of argument are particularly new.

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peter303
The irony of natural gas is that while it emits half the carbon of coal or
gasoline per same amount of energy release, methane is 20 times amore potent
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So a 3% leakage pretty much erases its
green house savings. No fuel company wants to leak and waste that much
methane, but stopping leakage is not easy.

One of the few facts the President got right is the US has reduced carbon
emission more than any other country be converting from coal electricity to
natural gas electricity. That is mainly because the US was highest or second
highest carbon emitter for decades with any fractional decrease having impact.
The decrease has pretty much stopped withcoal plant closures slowing.

Environmentalist se natural gas as a transition phase to full renewables.

~~~
masklinn
> methane is 20 times amore potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide

The 100-year GWP of methane is ~30, but only because it has such a short
atmospheric lifetime (~12 years).

Over shorter terms its way worse, the 20-years GWP is >80.

~~~
Retric
The other way of looking at this is how much Methane is removed from the
atmosphere every year vs how much is added. In that context, many continuing
sources of emissions have negligible net impact year to year.

This is why Methane concentrations where basically flat from 1998 to 2008.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane)
Methane does however turn into CO2, but represents a small percentage of
overall CO2 emissions.

~~~
aoeusnth1
No, that doesn’t seem like a useful way to look at it.

The old methane break down into CO2 regardless of our current emissions. Our
choices now affect future emissions of methane, the effects of which are
essentially independent of the past methane release.

Finding a consistent yardstick (methane = 30x CO2) seems better than
pretending it’s not a problem just because there’s some delayed negative
feedback loops already in play.

~~~
Retric
The issue is we already experience climate based on the current methane
concentration. If the addition is exactly equal to the removal, we don’t get
climate change from Methane.

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acidburnNSA
Fracking is the primary reason a bunch of *nuclear power plants in the USA are
shutting down early. The over-supply of gas from fracking, plus the inherent
simplicity and efficiency of gas turbines makes them crazy hard to compete
with. The carbon-free nuclear plants weren't overly expensive to operate, but
when the electricity revenue dropped (especially in deregulated markets), they
started struggling mightily.

Nukes produce 60% of the carbon-free energy in the USA. As they shut down,
they're often replaced with natural gas, which locks in carbon emissions and
indirect emissions from pipelines and the wellheads.

It's on the nuclear people to figure out how to get operating costs safely
down. But boy howdy it'd be nice if their carbon-free nature could be valued
higher, or if fracking could be made more expensive.

This is also a big part of why coal is struggling, but this doesn't bother me
because coal is high carbon and high in killer air pollution (especially
outside the US. Air pollution kills 4 million people/year globally [1]).

[1]
[https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/](https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/)

~~~
aldoushuxley001
I've never heard anyone refer to nuclear power plants as simply "nukes"; just
a heads up that that's very confusing as most people will think of "nukes" as
nuclear warheads instead.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Thanks. In the industry it's common but glad to hear this feedback. I edited
above.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
Absolutely and thanks, I didn't realize it was so common, but sounds like it
is very widely used within the industry.

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Mengkudulangsat
I've read about an unorthodox solution [1]. Can anyone comment whether these
are actually practical in the field?

[1][https://www.upstreamdata.ca/post/natural-gas-venting-how-
bit...](https://www.upstreamdata.ca/post/natural-gas-venting-how-bitcoin-
solved-a-160-year-old-problem)

------
known
Although Methane is far less abundant than carbon dioxide and stays in the air
for only a decade or so, molecule for molecule its warming effect (calculated
over 100 years) is 25 times higher

[https://archive.is/vThtr](https://archive.is/vThtr)

~~~
tremon
Ahh, but what happens to methane after that decade or so? Doesn't most of it
decompose via oxygen into water and carbon dioxide?

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bbojan
Fracking also releases radioactive radon from the ground -
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618083347.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618083347.htm)

However, as regulations consider it "natural" (it wasn't man-made, although it
was released as a result of human activity), frackers are not required to do
anything about it.

So we have a repeat of the tragedy of diluted pollution - as long as your
pollution is invisible and evenly distributed (like radioactive waste from
coal plants), nobody cares. But concentrate it instead of releasing it to the
environment, and there's public outrage (high-level nuclear waste).

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londons_explore
I have a hypothesis that fracking sometimes causes impermeable rock layers to
become permeable, and dissolved methane ends up in water underground. Over
years, that water ends up in tapwater/rivers/oceans where it isn't under
pressure, and the methane comes out of solution.

Anyone who knows the field better able to comment on my hypothesis?

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ptah
Is this widely accepted? if so, why is there no G7 outcry like for the amazon
rainforests?

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mogadsheu
The guys over at GHGSat in Montreal are doing great work. They take satellite
imagery of methane releasing sites and model their output. Not perfect but for
a broad estimate it’s not bad.

When I worked in energy we took part in an investment vehicle called the OGCI
to invest in them.

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AcerbicZero
Maybe I've been listening to too many JRE podcasts, but at this point I think
I've accepted that the Earths climate was, and is going to continue to change
with or without humans. I'm all for cleaning up our poor environmental
behavior, but methods to manipulate the climate at a large scale should be
considered if we want to keep pumping out people, consuming resources _and_
enjoying the current temperate climate.

The big issue under all of this, is that we're going to start having to waste
resources paying down "climate-debt", and those resources could be better used
elsewhere. At the same time environmentalism has a clear and direct value, but
it can't be allowed to get in the way of progress as we really don't know how
much time we have before a big enough rock falls from the sky and Earth gets
another do-over.

~~~
mildweed
Things that should not be part of the "Should we work to mitigate climate
change" discussion: 1) Meteor strikes 2) Whether or not it'll be hard

Question: You believe climate change is not caused by our actions, but you
believe climate change can be stopped by our actions? How does that work?

------
dang
Can you please edit swipes like "Wrong." out of your comments to HN? It's
unnecessary and makes your comment acerbic when it would be just fine without
it.

The way to reply to a wrong comment is to supply correct information, which I
assume is what the rest of your comment does.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Edit: detached from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20816911).

~~~
acidburnNSA
You bet, done. I was responding to the unfounded accusation of being
disingenuous. You're totally right that the community is better without that
kind of reaction, and the comment is way better with out it. Thanks. Forgive
me.

~~~
tempestn
I would like to thank you for your replies throughout this thread in general
though. It's actually ironic that you got called out for this one, since I was
just thinking that you were doing a great job responding to various
misconceptions in a positive, informative, and non-judgemental manner. Really
enjoyed reading your comments.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for saying so. I'm sure it's clear that I love
doing this.

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fromthestart
A couple issues with the science here:

>Between 2005 and 2015, global rates of fracking went from producing 31
billion cubic meters per year to 435 billion

>In the last half of the 20th, century levels of methane in the atmosphere
rose. They then plateaued, and spiking in 2008.

So the shale gas revolution started in 2005, but the spike didn't occur until
2008? Also it isn't clear if this was a transient spike or the author is
referring to a sudden and sustained increase.

> While methane released in the late 20th century was enriched with the carbon
> isotope 13C, Howarth highlights methane released in recent years features
> lower levels. That's because the methane in shale gas has depleted levels of
> the isotope when compared with conventional natural gas or fossil fuels such
> as coal, he explained

First, all conventional gas is "shale gas," except for a tiny minority of
highly atypical cases where reservoir sections have experienced prolonged high
temperatures and matured further. Thus almost all natural gas ultimately comes
from shale - fracking is merely extracting it at the source, where it does not
significantly differ in composition from gas which has migrated to reservoir
in conventional extraction. So, second, I'm suspcious of the use of c13 to
differentiate fracking and non fracking sourced methane, but I'm not a
petrophysicist. It should be related to the age of the fluid, and I don't
expect shale gas to be substantially younger than reservoir gas in most cases.

~~~
_delirium
On the second point, whether ¹³C can be used as a signal to differentiate
fracked vs. non-fracked gas, the paper [1] does discuss this a bit. This seems
to be the key paragraph:

 _Several studies have suggested that the δ¹³C signal of methane from shale
gas can often be lighter (more depleted in ¹³C) than that from conventional
natural gas (Golding et al., 2013; Hao and Zou, 2013; Turner et al., 2017;
Botner et al., 2018). This should not be surprising. In the case of
conventional gas, the methane has migrated over geological time frames from
the shale and other source rocks through permeable strata until trapped below
a seal (Fig. 2a). During this migration, some of the methane can be oxidized
both by bacteria, perhaps using iron (III) or sulfate as the source of the
oxidizing power, and by thermochemical sulfate reduction (Whelan et al., 1986;
Burruss and Laughrey, 2010; Rooze et al., 2016). This partial oxidation
fractionates the methane by preferentially consuming the lighter ¹²C isotope
and gradually enriching the remaining methane in ¹³C (Hao and Zou, 2013;
Baldassare et al., 2014), resulting in a δ¹³C signal that is less negative.
The methane in shales, on the other hand, is tightly held in the highly
reducing rock formation and therefore very unlikely to have been subject to
oxidation and the resulting fractionation. The expectation, therefore, is that
methane in conventional natural gas should be heavier and less depleted in ¹³C
than the methane in shale gas._

[1]
[https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/](https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/)

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treggle
There must be solid reasons why fracking isn’t at fault.

