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The release of methane from coal production, storage and transit accounts for less than 8% of total methane emissions in the US. 24% comes from natural gas production, storage and transit. The tanks and pipe lines are far from “air tight”, even if they meet industry defined standards for the term. Source for EPA numbers on emissions if you are curious
The idea of gas power plants as a supplementary system to pick up the slack is a sham, the vast majority of gas generator capacity being built does not shut down when non-emitting systems can meet demand. Especially in the context of replacing coal plants with gas plants. These are base load plants, not peaker plants.
Every time we build a new base load gas plant to replace a coal plant, we’re locking our selves into burning and leaking methane for another 30 years. Something we can not afford to be doing given that we can not wait 30 years to reach net zero emissions, even 20 years is a catastrophe.
It’s bad faith to try and move the goal post and act like this conversation was about anything but heating effect and climate change.
It is a fact that natural gas (read methane) infrastructure and power generation has a greater heating impact than coal.
Edit: want to be very clear here, I’m not sayin coal is clean. I’m not saying it is good to live next to a coal plant. I’m not saying build more coal plants.
I’m saying, don’t replace coal with natural gas. Put in solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal, hydro electric, ANYTHING but natural gas. If none of that is possible, then leave the damn coal plant until it is possible. Locking our selves in to 20~30 years of gas is basically guaranteeing a catastrophic climate disaster.
Natural gas is 95% methane. Coal is a fraction of a fraction of a percent methane. When coal leaks, it ends up as a bunch of rocks on the side of a rail track. When natural gas infrastructure leaks, it dumps Megatons of methane into the atmosphere. The research and reporting on this topic are clear, natural gas has a significantly higher heating impact than coal, with no doubt.
Natural gas as a “bridge fuel” was just as much a lie as “clean coal”, a PR campaign to support lobbyists in their efforts to prevent regulation.
Natural gas can never be clean ether, and the cost of sealing up the supply chain is more expensive than just drilling more, some states have tried to put in laws to set a minimum leak rate and natural gas companies lobbied to prevent the bills from passing. Far from the first example of natural gas companies lobbying against laws that would cut in to their profits.
Natural gas as a bridge fuel was a distraction to divert the public away from actual solutions. It’s worse for climate change than coal is and plenty of in-depth reports, papers, and research bear this out.
Honestly, better than gas. Like, yah, natural gas has lower co2 per unit of power at the power plant, but there’s methane leaking all along the supply chain, a green house gas 40 times more potent than Co2.
between 5-10% of the methane that comes out of a well ends up leaking somewhere along the line. To make the heating effect even break even with coal the leak rate would have to be closer to 1%.
Not advocating to keep burning coal, just saying that what we’ve been replacing it with is worse. I’d rather we keep a coal plant open and wait for an opportunity to replace with with a non-carbon emitting power source than build a shiny new gas plant that’s going to be kept around for at least 20 years.
10·2 days agoEh, maybe not ban, but like, remind them that this a community space, and that they should moderate and remove commenters/posters who are being actively toxic or harassing people for disagreeing.
Like, I’m not fan of Biden or the neoliberal order, but what is going on there isn’t doing anything constructive. Even if they don’t intend it, the way that space is moderated, it’s a potential harbor for bad faith trolls.
It is all spite, no solutions or discussions of means of action. Just “we sure do hate this particular side of the two ruling parties.”
8·7 days agooh yah, I remember the absolute torrent of crypto shills that started spamming the place when crypto shill posts from other subs started getting posted there.
They were proper angry that they got called out.
Companies definitely astroturf on Reddit, but, they do it through third or even fourth parties. There is a whole micro industry of vote buying and comment spamming, ad firms or companies will pay such groups to add certain messaging to their comment spam. You can actually make a quick buck by selling any old Reddit accounts to such groups.
8·12 days agoMad Maximillian: the slope warrior. He can only go down hill for so long before he must fight his way up the lift.
2·13 days agoMost menus are fixed paper with back lighting not changing displays, most of the places that have the new displays added them at the same time as the touch screen stations.
Lmao, they use solid tires. Probably because of how hard it is to replace a punctured tube on a wheel like this. Solid tires have no bounce, so in turn with a rigid wheel you get a rigid tire. So no cushioning. You get every bump and bounce of the road right in to the frame.
Corporate/marketing decision making is basically just a slow moving AI. It takes in a huge amount of data, process it through a black box of processing and decision making, and spits out a decision that is pure hallucination.
The menu is 6 foot across, above the counter where you order, glowing, with pictures of each item and number next to it. Even someone who couldn’t read could order food using the normal system.
I’ve literally ordered by signing a number with my fingers to indicate the item I wanted in a country where I don’t speak the language at a fast food franchise I’d never been to before.
They do work, but are basically worse in every way.
Bearings are really impressive pieces of engineering that require really tight tolerances to reduce wear and friction. On a traditional bike you have a small bearing at the center that is a standard mass manufactured commodity part.
On these they’re turning the whole wheel in to a giant speciality bearing. It has to spin faster, has to deal with force being applied to a small section rather than the whole bearing, and has way more surface area where dirt could get in and grind against the surfaces.
So these are more expensive, way heavier, higher friction, less reliable, harder to repair, and faster to wear out.
But they look futuristic don’t they?
I prefer just saying “can I get a medium #2 combo, please.” And being done with it.
I suspect that even if they were abandoning future plans for AI drive through ordering, they wouldn’t say they were. Saying you’re not doing anything with AI might actually hurt a companies share price right now.
1·18 days agoThem existing and Google being able to enforce people turn them on, and consistently blocking everyone who doesn’t, is a whole other problem that is a lot more complex.
The tech exist but enforcing that people use it is another matter. They cannot even properly paywall Picture in Picture and background play on IOS.
Gas turbines base load still take time to spin up and have lengthy shut down and start up procedures, even if they can be shut down. They are faster than a steam plant, but are not designed shut down and start up repeatedly over the course of a day.
The real question is why we are building any fossil fuel plants at all, and the answer is simple, they have immense lobbying power and vast full spectrum media campaigns that they use to prevent entirely viable existing alternatives from being built.