Category: Greenhouse_Gases_MN Technology_CN

An orbital NASA instrument designed mainly to advance studies of airborne dust and its effects on climate change has proven adept at another key Earth-science function – detecting large, worldwide emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Leaks of unburned gas from stoves can contain benzene concentrations comparable to secondhand tobacco smoke, according to new research from PSE Healthy Energy. The indoor leaks of benzene, a carcinogen, and other hazardous air pollutants pose health risks to humans and in some cases exceed safe exposure levels.

Shell’s ethane cracker is scheduled to come online soon, producing up to 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets a year. The plant will produce this plastic by processing ethane, a component of the natural gas found in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations nearby.

In about a month, the global climate community will descend upon Egypt for the next round of annual climate change talks convened by the United Nations. At the same time, much of Europe will be bearing up in the face of a very tough winter for energy security.

The oil and gas industry may be seriously undercounting its greenhouse gas emissions. A technique used to burn off methane during production may be getting rid of less of the greenhouse gas than previously thought, a new study finds—which could mean that emissions from flaring could be as much as five times higher than previous estimates.

What if the Senate passed an international climate treaty—a pact so powerful that it could avert nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit of global warming—and nobody noticed?

The Senate ratified its first international climate treaty in three decades on Wednesday, approving an agreement worked out in 2016 that will phase down refrigerant chemicals that are among the most potent climate pollutants.
While the Senate is badly divided on most climate issues, strong backing from the business community to eliminate hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, aligned with environmentalists’ agenda to help secure enough Republican support to meet the Constitution’s requirement of two-thirds support.

Scientists detected a massive methane release in the Gulf of Mexico using satellites, potentially charting a path for monitoring offshore pollution. The study, conducted by the Polytechnic University of Valencia and published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, used satellite technology to trace a methane plume to an offshore oil and gas production platform belonging to Petroleos Mexicanos, the Mexican state-owned oil and gas company known as Pemex.

A major climate and energy package passed by Congress on Friday would put the United States much closer to its goal of cutting global warming pollution in half by 2030, several independent analyses have concluded.

Landfills are releasing a significant amount of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere from the decomposition of waste, a study suggests.
Scientists used satellite data from four major cities worldwide – Delhi and Mumbai in India, Lahore in Pakistan and Buenos Aires in Argentina – and found that city-level emissions in 2018 and 2019 were 1.4 to 2.6 times higher than earlier estimates.