John’s Blog/Newsletter: SEA LEVEL RISE NOW

Natural gas is a popular form of energy and even a topic of conversation related to energy policy and climate change. Methane is the more scientific term, but essentially the same thing as natural gas. Methane in its raw form, before combustion, can have over a hundred times greater global warming effect than carbon dioxide. It enters the atmosphere from several different sources, including:

• Leakage during drilling and fracturing processes – “fracking” – to tap it as an energy supply. Additional leakage happens as it’s distributed, stored and transferred to points of use such as power plants, trucks, buses, etc.
• Methane also enters the atmosphere directly, particularly as the planet warms. As in the second image above there is now a vast string of gigantic craters across Siberia where methane from the thawing permafrost has exploded.
• The largest amount of methane is just beneath the seabed in the form of slushy ice. Just one degree of warming will cause these methane hydrates to turn to gas, now seen bubbling up in Arctic waters.
• Methane is also a significant by-product of cows, both for meat and dairy consumption.

My focus here is on the first item, specifically the “fracking industry” due to a great article published this weekend, “Fracking Firms Fail, Rewarding Executives and Raising Climate Fears.” Sunday’s New York Times published the stunning piece by Hiroko Tabuchi.  Masterfully, she connects the swarm of oil and gas companies hurtling towards bankruptcy, due to the global price war and the pandemic, with the abandonment of millions of fracking wells leaking methane. As many now understand, fracking is a fairly recent technology, whereby lubricants and solvents are forced underground. Using very high pressure it fractures rock layers, releasing far more natural gas than traditional wells produce. It’s now associated with damage to ground water supplies, tremors, earthquakes, and even health problems. Tabuchi’s eye-opening points include:

• By the Federal governments own figures, there are already more than three million abandoned oil and gas wells across the United States, two million of which are unplugged, releasing the methane equivalent of 1.5 million cars annually.
• By law, companies are required to set aside funds for clean up, securing the well heads, and restoration, but often the funds are grossly inadequate.
• Before declaring bankruptcy several firms including Chesapeake Energy, MDC Energy, Diamond Offshore have paid their CEO’s and top executives as much as $8.5 million dollars. At least one of the companies secured a $9.7 million relief package from the Covid-19 recovery funds, then gave executive bonuses, before declaring bankruptcy.
• The Trump administration is finalizing a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks.

My readers will recognize methane as a fairly frequent topic due to its extraordinary power to add to planetary warming, which melts the ice and will raise global sea level. Searching on my blog for ‘methane’ yields many entries. Five items in particular help to understand the depth and importance of this issue.

1. Methane is rated 85 times more potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. See my blog post “Methane is a Major Danger – And Misunderstood”
2. “Methane Levels Reach an All-Time High” – Scientific American
3. “NASA Scientists Have Found Millions of Arctic Methane Hotspots”
4. “Russian scientists say they’ve found the highest-ever ‘flares’ of methane in Arctic waters”
5. “Fracking Boom Tied to Methane Spike in Earth’s Atmosphere”

Though some of this methane is natural and difficult to control, the contribution by the millions of fracking wells is fully due to human action. For the past decade the boon in U.S. domestic energy production has been a financial bright spot in the eyes of many. (By the way, fracking is not at all limited to the United States.) With energy prices collapsing and the fossil fuel industry seeming to have lost its investment glory, we need to recognize the new realities and the need for responsible corporate action and government policy. What we are seeing is the opposite. Amid the economic effects of Covid-19, it is particularly sinister that well-intended funds are used to reward greedy opportunistic leaders of the industry who will take their money and leave it to the public to deal with the millions of abandoned wells leaking methane.

The warming should be a warning. Methane is turning up the heat. As we approach election season in the U.S. this might be a fair topic to share with those asking for your vote. One of the encouraging trends of the last four years is the dramatic increase in the electorate in the U.S. and internationally, in terms of those who list the “climate emergency” as a high priority for public policy. The New York Times article cited at top puts our insane policies, politics, and practice in full view.

Consider this as one more warning about the warming. It is urgent that we change course.