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Damage Report: LA Methane Leak Is One of the Worst Disasters In US History (inhabitat.com)
MikeChino writes: A week after the ruptured natural gas well in Aliso Canyon was finally declared sealed, we have a full account of the damage — and it doesn't look good. In total, 97,100 metric tons of methane were released into the atmosphere over the course of 112 days — the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of over half a million cars.
It used to happen all the time but we are worrying more about uncapped wells now. So while a bit of a disaster, avoidable and not a good thing to happen at all I don't think it deserves the hype.
Can we PLEASE stop using these radicalized leftist enviro-whackjob websites for "news?"
the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of over half a million cars.
Is half a million cars a lot in a nation that has over 230 million cars on the road? LA County alone has over 7 million cars and trucks registered.
Having more cars than licensed drivers in the USA sounds like more of an environmental disaster... and worse yet, China already has more drivers than the entire population of the USA, and the numbers are still climbing.
Worst disasters in US history? Bull Shit.
How many died? How much property damage?
This doesn't even rank in the top thousand by any objective measure.
Every last bit of that methane was due to be burned. It was at the last step before retail use. You only get to count the extra from being unburned and if this was really such a fucking disaster it could have been flared.
When I first heard about it last Nov/Dec, my first few thoughts where "wow, that's a lot of gas". "They don't plan to cap it for 6 months? wtf?". "Dang, must be costing them a lot of money to relocate all those households", and "dang, the company just doesn't seem to care".
Then the media picked up on it, and suddenly the company decided "uh oh, this is really bad PR for us we better fix it".
Kinda eye-opening how they didn't really give a shit until the media picked it up. That's a lot of lost gas, and a lot of affected people, and a ton of bad PR.
Coal Oil Point off of Santa Barbara, a NATURAL methane/oil seep, leaks 40 tons per day. Been doing it for hundreds of years. And will continue doing so. And that's just one natural seep in California - there are hundreds of them off-shore.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is not only not the worst disaster in US history, it's not ever in the top 25.
That "enviro-left" you speak of has been gradually vindicated every year on the mattee of climare change, so i'm not seeing much credibility loss. But leave it to a shill to claim that seeking responsibility as to what we put into the atmosphere just makes you a "tripping hippie"
That math seems reasonable but, it doesn't change the fact that a company released an enormous amount of gas into the atmosphere for no other reason than incompetence. It's a small percentage of the overall pollution produced by the US but, generally, that pollution at least has some purpose other than, "Ooops". Ignoring or dismissing this as a minor incident just tips the risk/reward scale for corporations further towards "Fuck it. Who cares if it leaks".
"In a short fraction of my lifetime, I've not been able to see with my own eyes, in my own small part of the world, a problem that is understood to be global in nature, inter-generational in its timeframes, and where the major signs of its coming such as species die-off and farmland degradation aren't readily observable by an urban first worlder."
It's spoiled entitled brats like you that are so used to externalizing the costs of your profligate lifestyles to poor communities in other parts of the world that are the real underlying problem. If only shit like the Bhopal disaster happened in the first world and killed off you low lives, then perhaps those of us with intelligence and foresight might stand a chance.