Natural gas wells leakier than believed
Measurements at Colorado site show methane release higher than previous estimates
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338505/title/Natural_gas_wells_leakier_than_believed
I wonder if they will stop blaming cows and termites for the methane that might be the more proximal cause for the increase in global average temps? For those regular readers you no doubt understand that I figure that the more proximal cause for the observed increases in global temps blamed on the rise in CO2 is due to agriculture as opposed to burning of fossil fuels. However, this would seem a more rational explanation if you want to insist anthropogenic causes due to extraction of fossil fuels since methane is much more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 and is likely to persist in the atmosphere much longer as well.
While I am not advocating we turn away from fossil fuel use (actually, we can’t, see http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/) and I am an advocate for using so-called renewable fuels (so-called fossil fuels are, indeed, renewable, just not at the rate that we are extracting them), I am a firm believer in doing things economically and currently there are no economical alternatives to fossil fuels. I have engaged in a lot of research into bio-based alternatives (and nuclear-based ones as well) and pretty much exclusively I find that I can make at least 10x more money selling any bio- product I produce for other purposes (such as animal feed, for instance). As long as that is the case, there is no real incentive to bother with any alternative even if it can be made incrementally profitable (meaning it can itself produce a profit once tax incentives, etc. are removed). If I figure some way to make algae at the cost and scale needed to make fuel profitably, why the hell am I going to be stupid enough to sell it for fuel when I can sell it for animal food and go from just barely profitable to making millions? Until fuel costs reach the point where I can make the same (or better) profit than selling my product as food (keep in mind that there are plenty of better ways to make money off of algae (for instance) than food!) we are pretty much ‘stuck’ with fossil fuels. I suspect that in order for alternatives to finally become economic fossil fuels will need to approach about 25x their current prices (or a gallon of gas would have to cost $80-90). In order for our society to survive with those prices we are going to have to make some very serious changes to our behavior. Indeed if we want to keep the cost of transportation at the same proportion of the economy as it is today we will have to find some way to reduce fuel usage by 25 fold, or cut our current utilization by 96%. Think about that for a while and let it sink in. Since there is no way to make a vehicle 25 times more fuel efficient (the practical maximum is probably around 100 miles/gallon, or a whopping 3 fold improvement; only 22 more to go!) what that basically means is we car pool everywhere (or bus pool since we need to get probably about 40 people in the same vehicle).
This isn’t to say that it isn’t possible to produce enough bio-based fuel to meet our needs. Indeed I just redid some earlier numbers using duckweed and figure that with some theoretical yields based on my aquaponics research and subsequently extracting the oil for biodiesel and the starches for ethanol I could produce some 30K gallons of fuel per acre, per year. With the US currently using around 200 billion gallons of fuel for transportation (diesel and gasoline), we could produce the fuel we need (presuming my numbers are correct) with around 6 million acres. That sounds like a lot until you realize that Vermont is about that size. Having said that, if you have a choice of selling your product at $3 a gallon after extensive post processing (which loses around 70% of the raw material) or at 35 cents/pound for the raw material (which translates to around $12 for the equivalent amount) which would you do?
