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Washington's Exploding Manholes Explained?
sciencehabit writes "Researchers who mapped methane concentrations on the streets of the nation's capital found natural gas leaks everywhere, at concentrations of up to 50 times the normal background levels. The leaking gas wastes resources, enhances ozone production, and exacerbates global warming—not to mention powering the city's infamous exploding manholes. Most of the natural gas we burn for heat and on stovetops in the United States is methane, a simple carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogens. Carbon dioxide gets more press, but methane is the more powerful agent of global warming, 21 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. And methane levels are rising fast. Methane levels in the atmosphere were just 650 parts per billion a century ago, versus 1800 ppb today."
...so it kind of goes without saying that there would be a lot of methane.
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SHIT!
Fun fact: Water vapor makes up 98% of the greenhouse effect.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Far bigger than most most give attention to. And it isn't just gas lines; it's bridges/overpasses, roads, dams, levys, sewers, tunnls, heck even our data channels etc... People tend to forget that while there has been a lot of new construction, a lot of our infastructure is still decades old. Some of it going back at least 30 - 50 years and prohibitively expensive to replace/upgrade all at once. It doesn't help that there's so much expendeture on stupid things like wars on x and a hopelessly inefficient workforce. All the while the newer buildings, those things that only house prestige and drones, are being created purely by corporate entities.
There's no immediate ROI for fixing these things that don't kill people in droves.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Every time I turn on a ring on my gas stove, it's bleeding gas for a few seconds whilst the electric ignition goes "tickticktickticktick" then "whoosh" as the ring lights but by that time enough gas has escaped to make a noticeable smell from the added marker gas, even if briefly. multiply this by the total number of gas powered flames all over the place, and the level of methane in the air is going to be way higher than natural background levels.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
You don't want to drive to pick up groceries. OK, so how do you get them home? Horse? Somebody else drives? You just don't, because you eat out all the time?
I fill shopping carts top and bottom. I need about 4 overfilled carts per week. Even living right next door to a supermarket would be painful without a car. (outside the city, we can afford to have families)
Chickens would be sweet. They eat garden bugs and fertilize the plants. (outside your city, plants are not made of plastic, so they need a bit more care)
I commute less than a mile. It's easy: if you live in a suburb (or suburb-like tiny city) then you should work there. If you work there, then you should live there. Houses can be had for $60 thousand, maybe $400 thousand if you want half an acre in a super-nice (wealthy to be honest) neighborhood or 5 acres on the edge of town. Gridlock just doesn't exist; there aren't enough cars.
There's no immediate ROI for fixing these things that don't kill people in droves.
Its more of a big city thing. For example the gas lines that blew up in Boston, the cast iron lines laid down nearly 100 years ago, similar lines were laid down in small and medium sized towns all over the north east as well. However in many of these small to medium sized municipalities such lines were replaced in the 1960s-80s, they were considered old and hazardous back then.
Its not drones. Its bigger governments being less responsive to public concerns. In small and medium sized towns ignoring the gas lines running down the street might cause you to lose an election. Less so in DC, NY, Boston, etc.
The leaking gas [......] enhances ozone production
No such luck! The problem is that methane destroys ozone, it doesn't produce it.
Back in the day you had sewer gas destructor lamps. Seems those would work with leaked gas too. Plus, add some sensors and you can figure out where the gas is likely leaking, so you can do something about it.
Even so, lax maintenance is nothing new. I recall reading about a certain bollard in Amsterdam that had sported a nice little flame for ages. Until someone realised it must be from a gas leak. Then it got fixed in a panic.
Some jokes just write themselves....
I propose we give each member of Congress a cigarette lighter and send them into the sewers until all the gas leaks are round.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I watched a youtube video a while back from a leading researcher who outlined their methods of data collection and analysis. In the video he plotted atmospheric methane levels and showed how methane was steadily increasing until the collapse of the soviet union at which point levels fell dramatically. The explanation offered was that at that time, the gas pipelines to europe had become privately owned forcing accountants to discover that "gas in" was way less than "gas out" at the other end so there was a big campaign to fix the many pipeline leaks that were ignored during communist rule.
I shudder to think how many other gas pipelines around the world are leaking...