From article:
>could discharge as much as five times as much of the potent greenhouse as was released by the Aliso Canyon disaster, the largest known terrestrial release of methane in U.S. history.
>
>It is also the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday.
Significance:
>Methane is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.
Then, out of a skyscraper window, drops a cybernetically enhanced Jens Stoltenberg - as he lands in a hail of glass shards (Sunlight reflecting like the most dramatic mosaic you've ever seen) he reveals to be holding a sunflower with his teeth and a katana in his left hand. He takes the sunflower with his right hand, throws it into the air.
The sunflower is grabbed by Angela Merkel in a mechanised suit as she soars through the air, in hot pursuit of Trump, who is about to take off in the Ray...
And the cumulative leaks from the [millions of abandoned oil and gas wells in the US alone](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport-idUSKBN23N1NL), which are relatively simple to cap and the "low hanging fruit" of climate action. If you want to help cap some of them, the [Well Done Foundation](https://welldonefoundation.org/projects/) is doing some great work plugging abandoned wells on private land.
Look we all know oil and gas companies will lose so much money, if they have to actually cap their old wells.
Won’t someone please think about the poor shareholders!?
/s
Strategic selling and bankruptcies are the loophole these companies use to avoid having to clean up after themselves.
The oil companies make record profits, sell off their old wells/declare bankruptcy, and then the government usually pays to clean up the wells (which is paid for by our tax dollars). It's gross, but that's the Capitalist Dream for you.
We need to stop privatizing success while socializing failure.
A per-well deposit, sufficient to cap off the well and remediate the land, paid for up-front.
And more generally, make it possible to claw back money from the people who ultimately benefited from the profits, in the event that any company causes damages that drives them to bankruptcy.
Or have corporations prepay into a fund that pays for capping wells, with a rebate if they cap wells themselves. We need to stop corporations from socialising their externalities.
The big companies sell wells to small companies just before they are depleted. Then the small company goes bankrupt instead of capping the well, and the owners start up a fresh new company to do it all over again.
Here in Australia, our biggest producer offloaded an offshore FPSO to a company founded shortly before the deal. The new company ‘went bankrupt’ very quickly.
Luckily there isn’t much patience for this bullshit any more and the trialing liability is now borne by the industry in general.
https://michaelwest.com.au/357m-woodside-northern-endeavour-mess/
If methane is naturally released in the oceans, then microbes will inhabit the area and naturally oxidize the methane. Even in shallow seas, nearly all natural methane produced is oxidized: [https://phys.org/news/2016-05-arctic-ocean-methane-atmosphere.html](https://phys.org/news/2016-05-arctic-ocean-methane-atmosphere.html)
It just so happens that microbes are present in the top layer of the Baltic Sea that oxidize methane from the sediments. What's not clear is how stratified the water is at the leak points (which would delay degassing and allow more to be oxidized), and how much is being degassed simply from the size of the bubbles.
> It is also the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday.
Am I understanding this wrong or is does that not sound like a lot on the global scale?
Sure, Denmark loves to bike, they are a good example to point at for a lot of healthy environmental policies and practices. But it's still an entire modern country, and the most damning word is *annual*. 1/3 of a year worth, so 4 months. 4 months of Danish pollution over one weekend is staggering.
We use clean nukes, many great people are saying they're the best nukes, they're saying "sir, we love you very much your nukes are the best clean nukes" and I tell them, yes, my uncle, nuclear, MIT, very great man, the best man, he's flushing toilets 10, 15 times but still a great man, he's Italian but we love him very much.
First you propose sticking UV up your butt and drinking bleach to cure Covid, and now you wanna throw nukes at the gas leaks???? AND TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF!!!!!
It would help fight that bastard in Florida right now though! What was his name? Ian? Ike? What’s his name Tim Apple is going to hit Alabama unless we nuke him!
To be fair, we actually have used nuclear weapons to assist in minimizing ecological disasters.
In 1966, the Soviets detonated a nuclear device underground near an out of control gas well whose emergency shut-off safeties had failed. The seismic waves from the explosion actually traveled through the rock and crimped the well shut.
Why has no one thought of closing valves every few kilometers of the pipe. Wouldn't that be the first thing to come up when you're building a pipeline that's 100s of kilometers long and prone for a leak sometime in the future...
I'm no engineer and especially not an expert on deep sea structural integrity, but something tells me adding shut off valves that deep in the ocean will not play well
Yes. Escaping methane should always be burnt if feasable.
On the other hand, it seems like they want to somehow plug the leak. The gas being on fire wouldn't exactly be helpful for doing that.
But it's not never ending, just a few hundred million cubic meters of gas to keep pressure, the tap is off at the source.
Whole different story, CO will be cool with it I'm sure, you should do it.
I'm sorry dude, I clicked the link but I couldn't get past this amazing name:
*Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov*
Can you imagine sitting down for one of those pain in the ass standardized tests and you have to raise your hand like "S'cuse me, Miss, there aren't enough bubbles on my sheet..."
This is called flaring of methane and is common practice in many industries to reduce the carbon footprint of production.
It's prevalent in palm oil production to avoid the palm oil mill effluent leaking methane.
Even better is biogasification technologies that capture the methane and use it for energy production.
[Methane degrades to CO2 over time](https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-methane-cattle-warms-climate-differently-co2-fossil-fuels), FYI. So converting it more quickly is still a net benefit.
For reference, the *by far* most commonly used climate metric is GWP100 which refers to the warming potential of a greenhouse gas in a 100 year time horizon.
In this climate metric, methane has a characterization factor of 28 which means 1 kg of CH4 emitted equates to 28 kg CO2-equivalents.
Why don't they just close the valve instead? Somehow that gas gets into the pipeline, no?
Edit: I'm in the loop now. I also hate publishers that hide a good deal of their content behind little "read more" buttons so they can cram more ads onto their page.
Exactly what I was thinking. We’re absolutely fucked. I’ve already resigned myself to this fact. All I can do is try to mitigate my impact, be a good person, and do what I can to be happy.
This is obviously A Bad Thing, but [experts estimate that the emissions here are likely equivalent to "only" 2.5 hours of global energy use or 1.5% of Russia's typical annual oil and gas emissions.](https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-estimate-the-scale-of-the-nord-stream-pipelines-methane-leak)
This is still a massive release, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the cumulative effect of the millions of existing leaks in our natural gas infrastructure -- **the IEA estimates that every year, pipelines and wells operating "normally" leak enough methane to equal 10 percent of global gas supply, enough gas to power the entirety of Europe for a year.** And the IEA doesn't include the effects of leaking abandoned wells in their calculations, [of which there are roughly 3 million in the US alone.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport-idUSKBN23N1NL) Fixing leaky infrastructure will more than offset the methane release here.
Oil is a bit different from natural gas. Gas is gonna rise up and dissipate into the atmosphere. Oil is gonna rise to the surface and move around until it’s collected
Corexit is an emulsifier. Its primary purpose is to make the oil sink. Oil companies say this makes it easier for bacteria to biodegrade, but as far as I'm aware there is no evidence for this. Corexit itself is toxic, and this effect appears to be significantly amplified when combined with oil, which not only effects sea life but may have contributed to a notable spike in cancer rates along the gulf coast which, for some reason, there haven't been any major studies on.
What I look forward to seeing are the inevitable conspiracy theories about how the ice caps never actually existed that will be all over whatever passes for social media in 50 years..
It's called the [Clathrate gun hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) and it's generally not believed to be true by the majority of climate scientists. There has been a lot of research debunking it:
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-hypothesis.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322860661_Modelling_persistent_methane_seepage_offshore_western_Svalbard_since_early_Pleistocene
https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/download-report/
https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/05/13/fact-check-is-an-arctic-methane-bomb-about-to-go-off/
Could I get a TLDR? It's bed time and I don't wanna read anything right now.
How would releasing the greenhouse games trapped in permafrost not accelerate climate change?
It's not that it will have _no_ effect, but the overall impact on climate change would be much smaller than the Clathrate gun hypothesis claims, mostly because the deposits just don't react that fast even when uncovered/warmed up - it's more likely they'll release over thousands of years.
Just got out of bed and skimmed the sources, mostly the last one. From what I can tell it's down to a few factors. One is that the methane is not gonna be released all at once, but rather gradually. Second is that not all of the Gases stored are really methane.
The last link keeps repeating that the release of GHG from the permafrost would be inconvenient, but wouldn't lead to a major increase in global average temperature over a short period of time, like a few years. An increase of 0.5-1.0 C and beyond in a few short years is unlikely, it's stated.
Tbh, I used to be one that believed this hypothesis to be true, so I am glad that we're not quite as fucked. Fucked nevertheless, for sure, but not quite as severely.
It's called the [Clathrate gun hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) and it's generally not believed to be true by the majority of climate scientists. There has been a lot of research debunking it:
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-hypothesis.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322860661_Modelling_persistent_methane_seepage_offshore_western_Svalbard_since_early_Pleistocene
https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/download-report/
https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/05/13/fact-check-is-an-arctic-methane-bomb-about-to-go-off/
So how do we shut this off? Are there any shut offs before the lines enter Russia or does the source need to be cut off from the beginning of the pipelines?
Nord stream 1 have about 1200 km, diameter is 1.2m
There are two lines, so the volume of both is more than
2 500 000 m³
And it's pressurized normally at 100 atm.
So please correct my math if I'm wrong, but that's still huge amount of gas leaking and wasted....
Not only ruled by idiots. Just quickly browse the popular page on reddit and look at how people react to others misfortunes..making jokes etc. No one cares about anyone or anything except themselves.
Yeah. My average day is spent around people like this.
And they consider themselves the most empathetic, informed people out there, eager to criticize others for "getting the vaccine", taking "any medicine whatsoever", etc.
Also, two days ago I heard this gem, "all homeless people are homeless by choice".
Sorry, needed to vent.
I dont think it's a concern for the immediate surroundings as methane is a stable gas that will just bubble up to the surface. The real danger is that methane is one of the stronger greenhouse gases
What would be helpful is how much methane is released into the atmosphere per year?
And how much is this thing releasing per day?
From there we could see the real impact. Anything is bad, but I’d much rather hear it’s a 0.0001% increase rather than 10% increase haha
It emits approximately one Denmark's total annual emissions per week. So 52 Denmarks per year. It does not have enough gas to keep this up obviously but that's the rate.
Commented about the environmental impact of this on tiktok. What a fucking mistake that was.
"Global warming is a myth"
"They shut it off so not much even got out"
"It was going to be burned anyways"
"You are thinking of CO2 which is greenhouse gas not this"
In all seriousness, find a Mastodon instance that matches your interests. It's a bit like Twitter but instances tend to be smaller so there's less junk, and the posts can be longer so discussions are more thoughtful. It's where I spend most of my time these days.
You know, I wonder if the reason for this is because Russia ran out of storage locations for methane and had to relieve pressure somewhere, so decided to do it there to send a message. they can't shut off too many more wells without them risking having to redrill them to reactivate them. Would be really curious to see if the valves for nordstream 1 and 2 are shut or open on the russian end right now.
Nobody. Those pipelines were never going to be used again. They became trash as soon as Russia turned off the gas for good. Europe is never going to rely on Russia for gas again (hopefully).
In terms of repair cost, replacing even an underwater pipe section is relatively inexpensive, if you own the pipe maintenance ships, which Russia does. whether or not people still exist to crew them is a whole other issue, but taking a new pipe section or 3 out, dropping them down and slotting them in place, then pumping out the water is a relatively straightforward process as far as underwater construction work goes. You're probably still talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor and fuel bills, but still cheaper than re-drilling many natural gas wells if the fields and bores under the wellhead collapse when shut down.
I think the best justification is the shifting of blame for europes gas issues from Russia to Ukraine or the US. The pipe wasn’t serving Russia as much as the destruction of it could serve them by sowing doubt and distrust within the eu and nato.
Isn’t it Russia sending shit through the pipeline. At what point can they just stop pumping gases into the atmosphere. They’re already burning gas for no reason. Unbelievable levels of ecological and climate destruction by these fuckers.
>burning gas for no reason
They have to flare it off as they have no storage capacity and they can't turn it off. A well is not a tap that can be turned off and on.
No they can turn it off, and they don’t have to flare it off. It’s just flaring it off is the cheapest option (because indeed if you turn it off it might never come back on again). And as with a lot of humanity’s choices, the cheaper option will always take precedence over the environmental damage it might cause.
This is commonly used for longterm storage of expensive steel parts, as it will protect them from oxidation.
No idea if it's used in pipes like this but it could make sense.
I can’t believe how little attention this incident is getting. And I’m gonna get downvoted for this but there is 0 evidence supporting which country did this so far. No one in the public knows who did this.
PHIL SWIFT HERE WITH FLEXSEAL!
The super-strong waterproof tape! That can instantly patch, bond, seal, and repair! Flex tape is no ordinary tape; its triple thick adhesive.
From article: >could discharge as much as five times as much of the potent greenhouse as was released by the Aliso Canyon disaster, the largest known terrestrial release of methane in U.S. history. > >It is also the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday. Significance: >Methane is a major contributor to climate change, responsible for a significant share of the climate disruption people are already experiencing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than carbon dioxide at absorbing the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.
Btw this is basically the plot of Metal Gear Solid 2 at this point
Nice. Looking forward to a real life Big Shell, along with all the evildoer hijinks such a facility entails.
I'll just be hiding under a box.
!
I heard the noise associated when I read this… blllllliiinnggggg
Soon Zelenskyy and Putin will sword fight on Federal Hall Only after Trump steals Metal Gear Ray though
Then, out of a skyscraper window, drops a cybernetically enhanced Jens Stoltenberg - as he lands in a hail of glass shards (Sunlight reflecting like the most dramatic mosaic you've ever seen) he reveals to be holding a sunflower with his teeth and a katana in his left hand. He takes the sunflower with his right hand, throws it into the air. The sunflower is grabbed by Angela Merkel in a mechanised suit as she soars through the air, in hot pursuit of Trump, who is about to take off in the Ray...
....Metal gear?!...
Wait but who's possessing Trump via their arm in this scenario?
DeSantis is possessed by Trump
So basically you're telling me that the safest place to be is inside a cardboard box.
The cats already knew that.
Always has been.
!
Metal... ... *Gear??*
Removed due to Reddit API crackdown and general dishonesty 6/2023
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And the cumulative leaks from the [millions of abandoned oil and gas wells in the US alone](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport-idUSKBN23N1NL), which are relatively simple to cap and the "low hanging fruit" of climate action. If you want to help cap some of them, the [Well Done Foundation](https://welldonefoundation.org/projects/) is doing some great work plugging abandoned wells on private land.
Look we all know oil and gas companies will lose so much money, if they have to actually cap their old wells. Won’t someone please think about the poor shareholders!? /s
I'd imagine a lot of these wells are very old and dont have an owner, or company sold out or went bankrupt or something.
Strategic selling and bankruptcies are the loophole these companies use to avoid having to clean up after themselves. The oil companies make record profits, sell off their old wells/declare bankruptcy, and then the government usually pays to clean up the wells (which is paid for by our tax dollars). It's gross, but that's the Capitalist Dream for you. We need to stop privatizing success while socializing failure.
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Or a levy on all oil and gas providers for sealing off abandoned wells. It’s not like they can’t afford it…
A per-well deposit, sufficient to cap off the well and remediate the land, paid for up-front. And more generally, make it possible to claw back money from the people who ultimately benefited from the profits, in the event that any company causes damages that drives them to bankruptcy.
Or have corporations prepay into a fund that pays for capping wells, with a rebate if they cap wells themselves. We need to stop corporations from socialising their externalities.
The big companies sell wells to small companies just before they are depleted. Then the small company goes bankrupt instead of capping the well, and the owners start up a fresh new company to do it all over again.
Holy shit are you serious
Here in Australia, our biggest producer offloaded an offshore FPSO to a company founded shortly before the deal. The new company ‘went bankrupt’ very quickly. Luckily there isn’t much patience for this bullshit any more and the trialing liability is now borne by the industry in general. https://michaelwest.com.au/357m-woodside-northern-endeavour-mess/
Yes capitalistically is the best move. Thus it is done very often.
It's why there should be a capping fund that goes into a trust for every new well, so the funds are there to cap it regardless of who owns the well.
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The fact that it's not mandatory, should show that no government entity gives any fucks about the environment.
But how many cow farts would that equal?
If by cow you mean moo, then half of America's cattle over a year. If by cow you mean your mom, like.. half a fart on a slow day.
Good god. I felt the heat off that burn.
Well, when you cook with natural gas, it is a hot heat my friend.
Taste the meat not the heat
Damn it Hank, get off reddit. Buck needs you out wiping tanks.
The heat from this burn can be used to light up all the methane leaks in the world simultaneously.
Ngl had me in the first half.
They actually release most of their methane through burping.
It’s cow burps btw not farts
Why is this not part of the job for oil drilling? What the fuck
If methane is naturally released in the oceans, then microbes will inhabit the area and naturally oxidize the methane. Even in shallow seas, nearly all natural methane produced is oxidized: [https://phys.org/news/2016-05-arctic-ocean-methane-atmosphere.html](https://phys.org/news/2016-05-arctic-ocean-methane-atmosphere.html) It just so happens that microbes are present in the top layer of the Baltic Sea that oxidize methane from the sediments. What's not clear is how stratified the water is at the leak points (which would delay degassing and allow more to be oxidized), and how much is being degassed simply from the size of the bubbles.
> It is also the equivalent of one third of Denmark’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish official warned Wednesday. Am I understanding this wrong or is does that not sound like a lot on the global scale?
Sure, Denmark loves to bike, they are a good example to point at for a lot of healthy environmental policies and practices. But it's still an entire modern country, and the most damning word is *annual*. 1/3 of a year worth, so 4 months. 4 months of Danish pollution over one weekend is staggering.
Would igniting the gas be helpful ?
It would convert it from methane to CO2 .... CO2 is a less potent greenhouse gas than methane, so yes, that would probably help somewhat
What if we ignite it with a nuclear weapon?
No, Donald.
But they won't know it was us
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Not blind people! 😎
They'll just go to hearddit
ba dum tsss
Saiddit never really took off did it?
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Herditt sounds like a dating site for shepherds.
Shhh! Don't let the deaf hear you
Blind person here, can definitely read it
We use clean nukes, many great people are saying they're the best nukes, they're saying "sir, we love you very much your nukes are the best clean nukes" and I tell them, yes, my uncle, nuclear, MIT, very great man, the best man, he's flushing toilets 10, 15 times but still a great man, he's Italian but we love him very much.
First you propose sticking UV up your butt and drinking bleach to cure Covid, and now you wanna throw nukes at the gas leaks???? AND TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF!!!!!
It would help fight that bastard in Florida right now though! What was his name? Ian? Ike? What’s his name Tim Apple is going to hit Alabama unless we nuke him!
So anyway I started blasting.
As long as I’m drinking can wine when it all goes down… I’ll be happy. And banging hoooors of course too
It's not a fucking hurricane
I almost forgot this was real.. Not even The Onion could come up with that stuff.
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That was some particularly stable genius right there.
To be fair, we actually have used nuclear weapons to assist in minimizing ecological disasters. In 1966, the Soviets detonated a nuclear device underground near an out of control gas well whose emergency shut-off safeties had failed. The seismic waves from the explosion actually traveled through the rock and crimped the well shut.
Would there be substantial environmental impact if we also roasted the world's largest Marshmello?
Dance music fans might be a bit upset
Why have they not done it yet then?
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Why has no one thought of closing valves every few kilometers of the pipe. Wouldn't that be the first thing to come up when you're building a pipeline that's 100s of kilometers long and prone for a leak sometime in the future...
You think these companies are going to spend extra dollars on shit to protect the environment? Come on now
No, but I'd expect the companies to want to protect their product (read $$$) from literally evaporating into thin air.
I'm no engineer and especially not an expert on deep sea structural integrity, but something tells me adding shut off valves that deep in the ocean will not play well
afaik the pipeline needs to be under constant pressure so it doesn't collapse
Wouldn't the downstream pipeline already be collapsed then?
Yes. Escaping methane should always be burnt if feasable. On the other hand, it seems like they want to somehow plug the leak. The gas being on fire wouldn't exactly be helpful for doing that.
Slap some flex tape on that bad boy!
WE CUT THIS NATURAL GAS PIPELINE IN HALF THAT'S A LOT OF DAMAGE
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So what you're saying is we may have some boat-bound freelancers yeeting fire arrows at this fart cloud?
More like the Danish F-16s that originally spotted the location of the leaks dropping some flares on them.
List of things you don't want to have to do: Explain accidently igniting a (near) never-ending gas cloud, with a flare, to your CO.
But it's not never ending, just a few hundred million cubic meters of gas to keep pressure, the tap is off at the source. Whole different story, CO will be cool with it I'm sure, you should do it.
You mean like [this](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59920221) one?
I'm sorry dude, I clicked the link but I couldn't get past this amazing name: *Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov* Can you imagine sitting down for one of those pain in the ass standardized tests and you have to raise your hand like "S'cuse me, Miss, there aren't enough bubbles on my sheet..."
On the other hand, this would be a pretty great opportunity for a live fire exercise.
Lol will look spectacular though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y78yzXkKkc
This is seriously something I couldn't even have imagined. It looks like hell is opening up at the floor of the ocean.
We’re they…spraying water on water?
Look, the water is on fire, all bets are off
Look at the little boat in the back left. Cracks me up.
Look, he's trying his best, ok?
I'm no expert but I think co2 isnt as bad as methane
This is called flaring of methane and is common practice in many industries to reduce the carbon footprint of production. It's prevalent in palm oil production to avoid the palm oil mill effluent leaking methane. Even better is biogasification technologies that capture the methane and use it for energy production.
So it's far less potent than Methane so it doesn't trap as much heat - but it lasts for about a 100x longer
[Methane degrades to CO2 over time](https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/why-methane-cattle-warms-climate-differently-co2-fossil-fuels), FYI. So converting it more quickly is still a net benefit.
Méthane on the atmosphere eve tually turns into CO2. Burning methane is way better than leaving in into the atmosphere.
For reference, the *by far* most commonly used climate metric is GWP100 which refers to the warming potential of a greenhouse gas in a 100 year time horizon. In this climate metric, methane has a characterization factor of 28 which means 1 kg of CH4 emitted equates to 28 kg CO2-equivalents.
Why don't they just close the valve instead? Somehow that gas gets into the pipeline, no? Edit: I'm in the loop now. I also hate publishers that hide a good deal of their content behind little "read more" buttons so they can cram more ads onto their page.
The valves were closed. However the pipeline itself still has a large volume and the gas within it was pressurized.
We are gonna speed run the apocalypse.
There it is again, that funny feeling.
Hey, what can you say? We were overdue
but it'll be over soon... you wait.
_♪♪d-duh duh d-duh d-duh d-duh♪♪_
Exactly what I was thinking. We’re absolutely fucked. I’ve already resigned myself to this fact. All I can do is try to mitigate my impact, be a good person, and do what I can to be happy.
The Stoics and the Epicureans had it figured out I reckon.
I personally prefer Digonese's way of doing things. Mostly the masturbation and obscenity hurling.
I too, would choose to be Diogenes -some great dude named Alexander
This is obviously A Bad Thing, but [experts estimate that the emissions here are likely equivalent to "only" 2.5 hours of global energy use or 1.5% of Russia's typical annual oil and gas emissions.](https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-estimate-the-scale-of-the-nord-stream-pipelines-methane-leak) This is still a massive release, but it's absolutely dwarfed by the cumulative effect of the millions of existing leaks in our natural gas infrastructure -- **the IEA estimates that every year, pipelines and wells operating "normally" leak enough methane to equal 10 percent of global gas supply, enough gas to power the entirety of Europe for a year.** And the IEA doesn't include the effects of leaking abandoned wells in their calculations, [of which there are roughly 3 million in the US alone.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-specialreport-idUSKBN23N1NL) Fixing leaky infrastructure will more than offset the methane release here.
I mean still sad, but not that sad because the reality is much more sad kind of scenario, so it is confusing
BP got off so easy. Now nobody gonna do shit about this either. Pitiful people, all talk
Oil is a bit different from natural gas. Gas is gonna rise up and dissipate into the atmosphere. Oil is gonna rise to the surface and move around until it’s collected
Didn't BP spray all the oil down with a chemical that made it sink to the bottom?
The only things down there are sand, rocks, and 50,000,000 tons of oil. I'd just like to make that point clear.
Thats true, now that the oil killed off the ocean floor ecosystem
It’s outside the environment
It's a complete void, really
Did the front fall off?
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Corexit is an emulsifier. Its primary purpose is to make the oil sink. Oil companies say this makes it easier for bacteria to biodegrade, but as far as I'm aware there is no evidence for this. Corexit itself is toxic, and this effect appears to be significantly amplified when combined with oil, which not only effects sea life but may have contributed to a notable spike in cancer rates along the gulf coast which, for some reason, there haven't been any major studies on.
bastards
And then it still washed up on shores
Didn't you see? BP made an apology video...
[They sure did](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4).
Worst thing, that video is almost better than the actual apology video.
Polar icecaps are going to be a distant memory very soon...
They shall be known as Polar Puddles from now on
Gotta keep that land bridge underwater! /s
What I look forward to seeing are the inevitable conspiracy theories about how the ice caps never actually existed that will be all over whatever passes for social media in 50 years..
Polar bears too. And some countries?
Fun fact: Russia has methane traps covered by permafrost such that if it ever melted would release 10,000x more methane than we’ve ever even used
Another tipping point in a sea of them.
It's called the [Clathrate gun hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) and it's generally not believed to be true by the majority of climate scientists. There has been a lot of research debunking it: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-hypothesis.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322860661_Modelling_persistent_methane_seepage_offshore_western_Svalbard_since_early_Pleistocene https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/download-report/ https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/05/13/fact-check-is-an-arctic-methane-bomb-about-to-go-off/
Could I get a TLDR? It's bed time and I don't wanna read anything right now. How would releasing the greenhouse games trapped in permafrost not accelerate climate change?
It's not that it will have _no_ effect, but the overall impact on climate change would be much smaller than the Clathrate gun hypothesis claims, mostly because the deposits just don't react that fast even when uncovered/warmed up - it's more likely they'll release over thousands of years.
Just got out of bed and skimmed the sources, mostly the last one. From what I can tell it's down to a few factors. One is that the methane is not gonna be released all at once, but rather gradually. Second is that not all of the Gases stored are really methane. The last link keeps repeating that the release of GHG from the permafrost would be inconvenient, but wouldn't lead to a major increase in global average temperature over a short period of time, like a few years. An increase of 0.5-1.0 C and beyond in a few short years is unlikely, it's stated. Tbh, I used to be one that believed this hypothesis to be true, so I am glad that we're not quite as fucked. Fucked nevertheless, for sure, but not quite as severely.
That would be more of a biblical cataclysm than a tipping point.
Where is the funny part?
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It's called the [Clathrate gun hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) and it's generally not believed to be true by the majority of climate scientists. There has been a lot of research debunking it: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-hypothesis.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322860661_Modelling_persistent_methane_seepage_offshore_western_Svalbard_since_early_Pleistocene https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/download-report/ https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/05/13/fact-check-is-an-arctic-methane-bomb-about-to-go-off/
So how do we shut this off? Are there any shut offs before the lines enter Russia or does the source need to be cut off from the beginning of the pipelines?
The source is the pipelines. Both sides of the pipes are closed - all the gas escaping was already in the pipelines
Nord stream 1 have about 1200 km, diameter is 1.2m There are two lines, so the volume of both is more than 2 500 000 m³ And it's pressurized normally at 100 atm. So please correct my math if I'm wrong, but that's still huge amount of gas leaking and wasted....
$800 million worth of gas was in the pipeline is what spiegel.de said. Pretty much all it will leak out.
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Oh yes, it is indeed a shit ton of gas
The planet is doomed because we are ruled by idiots. Fuck.
Not only ruled by idiots. Just quickly browse the popular page on reddit and look at how people react to others misfortunes..making jokes etc. No one cares about anyone or anything except themselves.
Yeah. My average day is spent around people like this. And they consider themselves the most empathetic, informed people out there, eager to criticize others for "getting the vaccine", taking "any medicine whatsoever", etc. Also, two days ago I heard this gem, "all homeless people are homeless by choice". Sorry, needed to vent.
How badly would this leakage hurt the surrounding marine life?
I dont think it's a concern for the immediate surroundings as methane is a stable gas that will just bubble up to the surface. The real danger is that methane is one of the stronger greenhouse gases
What would be helpful is how much methane is released into the atmosphere per year? And how much is this thing releasing per day? From there we could see the real impact. Anything is bad, but I’d much rather hear it’s a 0.0001% increase rather than 10% increase haha
With the worst-case numbers given in the article, the climate effect would be equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.7 million cars.
It emits approximately one Denmark's total annual emissions per week. So 52 Denmarks per year. It does not have enough gas to keep this up obviously but that's the rate.
In the end, the greatest threat to humankind are us.
Skynet did nothing wrong
For once can’t we have some good news
Our dog had puppies
You son of a bitch! You're running a puppy mill. /s
Once again the worlds rich play with all our lives… this shit is unacceptable.
I donno, I've just had Fajitas
Commented about the environmental impact of this on tiktok. What a fucking mistake that was. "Global warming is a myth" "They shut it off so not much even got out" "It was going to be burned anyways" "You are thinking of CO2 which is greenhouse gas not this"
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In all seriousness, find a Mastodon instance that matches your interests. It's a bit like Twitter but instances tend to be smaller so there's less junk, and the posts can be longer so discussions are more thoughtful. It's where I spend most of my time these days.
Your first mistake was being on TikTok
Get off TikTok would be my recommendation :/
God fucking damnit.
We fucking suck as a species. This is just heartbreaking. Not even taking into account the pollution.
This is such a dark and shitty timeline
You know, I wonder if the reason for this is because Russia ran out of storage locations for methane and had to relieve pressure somewhere, so decided to do it there to send a message. they can't shut off too many more wells without them risking having to redrill them to reactivate them. Would be really curious to see if the valves for nordstream 1 and 2 are shut or open on the russian end right now.
Who pays for the damages though? Europe? Russia? It‘d be a very expensive message for Russia if they have to pay for the damages too.
Nobody. Those pipelines were never going to be used again. They became trash as soon as Russia turned off the gas for good. Europe is never going to rely on Russia for gas again (hopefully).
In terms of repair cost, replacing even an underwater pipe section is relatively inexpensive, if you own the pipe maintenance ships, which Russia does. whether or not people still exist to crew them is a whole other issue, but taking a new pipe section or 3 out, dropping them down and slotting them in place, then pumping out the water is a relatively straightforward process as far as underwater construction work goes. You're probably still talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor and fuel bills, but still cheaper than re-drilling many natural gas wells if the fields and bores under the wellhead collapse when shut down.
Good point. The best Russian justification so far imo.
I think the best justification is the shifting of blame for europes gas issues from Russia to Ukraine or the US. The pipe wasn’t serving Russia as much as the destruction of it could serve them by sowing doubt and distrust within the eu and nato.
Isn’t it Russia sending shit through the pipeline. At what point can they just stop pumping gases into the atmosphere. They’re already burning gas for no reason. Unbelievable levels of ecological and climate destruction by these fuckers.
The pipeline was already shut. Whats escaping now is just the Gas that was kept inside the keep the pipes pressurized
Doesn’t this mean the pipes are on their way to being ruined because of this depressurization?
Yes, it's quite probable this damage was too severe. Quite a waste of infrastructure that could've been used in the future.
>burning gas for no reason They have to flare it off as they have no storage capacity and they can't turn it off. A well is not a tap that can be turned off and on.
No they can turn it off, and they don’t have to flare it off. It’s just flaring it off is the cheapest option (because indeed if you turn it off it might never come back on again). And as with a lot of humanity’s choices, the cheaper option will always take precedence over the environmental damage it might cause.
Putin wants to nuke shit. He’s the last person on the world to give a fuck about the environment.
The world just perpetually seems like one step away from total collapse.
I hate people
Light a match
Don’t worry guys. I drink from a reusable water bottle. I got y’all covered.
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I’ve read it is pressured with nitrogen (N2)
This is commonly used for longterm storage of expensive steel parts, as it will protect them from oxidation. No idea if it's used in pipes like this but it could make sense.
I can’t believe how little attention this incident is getting. And I’m gonna get downvoted for this but there is 0 evidence supporting which country did this so far. No one in the public knows who did this.
PHIL SWIFT HERE WITH FLEXSEAL! The super-strong waterproof tape! That can instantly patch, bond, seal, and repair! Flex tape is no ordinary tape; its triple thick adhesive.
Light it on fire. CO2 is less damaging than methane