5 thoughts on “The CA Methane Leak”

  2. The current atmospheric level of methane is 1750 parts per billion. The leak so far has added 23 parts per trillion, a whopping 0.0013% increase. If the leak keeps up for another 116 years, the level of atmospheric methane will increase by 1%, to a staggering 1767 parts per billion.

    Just for reference, methane levels increased by 6% between 1980 and 2005, leveling off as the gas was more carefully collected for use as fuel.

  3. You think they have problems in Los Angeles. What if your local power company hired a D.C. based consulting firm calling itself “Justice and Sustainability Associates” to have “Community Energy Conversations” (it has an acronym — CECs)?

    http://www.jsallc.com/mge/community-energy-conversations/

    “JSA (the consultants and meeting “facilitators”), MGE (the Madison Gas and Electric company), and other stakeholders created an information rich environment prior to initiating actual conversations. ”

    The buzzwords! I am going to have to evacuate my house . . . make it stop!

  4. It would be interesting to compute the effective size of the methane leak caused by biomass burning.

    I’m referring here to how CO from biomass burning soaks up OH radicals in the atmosphere, which would otherwise go to oxidizing other things, primarily methane. The more CO released, the more methane is saved from destruction, causing in effect a net injection of methane molecules.

    I’ve also sometimes wondered if methane could be scrubbed from the atmosphere by releasing oxidizing species. The obvious one would be molecular chlorine, which is split by sunlight into chlorine radicals that react almost instantly with methane, extracting a hydrogen atom.

  5. The pictures show what looks like to be a distinct plume. Couldn’t they just put a hood over it and pump the methane into a system to store it or burn it off?

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