For the climate Nord Stream gas leaks may be a new disaster

In the Baltic Sea the 700-meter wide pool of bubbling water caused a climate disaster by the rupture of the Nord Stream gas pipelines points.

From the pipelines connecting Russia to Germany it’s the most visible of three major gas leaks emanating. One of the most powerful greenhouse gasses has escaped into the atmosphere, scientists are scrambling to work out just how much methane. It could be one of the worst releases ever.

German and U.S. officials said the incident looked like sabotage but the cause of the three near-simultaneous pipeline ruptures hasn’t been confirmed.

They all contained pressurized natural gas, the vast majority of which is methane while the Nord Stream 1 pipelines were halted and Nordstream 2 had never even started.

David McCabe, senior scientist at Clean Air Task Force, a climate non-profit said “Given that, over twenty years, the potential for a massive and highly damaging emission event is very worrisome, more than 80 times that of CO2 a ton of methane has a climate impact”. 

“If these pipelines fail, there are a number of uncertainties but, the impact to the climate will be disastrous and could even be unprecedented.”

Into the atmosphere is an extremely challenging task estimating the precise amount of methane that has escaped. By satellite imagery over land-based pipelines or fossil-fuel production sites many so-called super-emitting events, large continuous discharges of methane, are captured. But capturing accurate data over water is far more challenging given the light that reflects off the surface.

Just how big the size of the rupture in the pipes was and what temperature and pressure it was being held at, there are a number of other key uncertainties, such as how much gas was in the pipelines at the time. 

Some is likely to have dissipated into the water, but that also depends on the density of microbial life, as well as the depth, even when the gas escapes. A plane would probably have to take measurements from the air, to obtain accurate readings.

To do some back-of-the envelope calculations into just how much methane might have escaped despite that, on social media scientists were quick. 

At the Environmental Defense Fund Director of energy strategy, Andrew Baxter, estimated that equivalent to around 9.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, around 115,000 metric tons of methane escaped. 

As the emissions from 2 million gasoline cars over the course of a year, or two-and-a-half coal-fired power stations, in real terms, that’s the same climate impact.

Potentially as much as 30 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent Greenpeace’s European Union unit put the figure even higher. It would be one of the biggest methane leaks ever, if those estimates are close to being accurate. 

At a gas storage facility where an estimated 97,100 metric tons of methane was emitted over several months in Aliso Canyon, Los Angeles, in 2015, the largest known release in the U.S., happened. By comparison, over the course of several hours the Nord Stream leaks may have happened.

The breaches of the Nord Stream pipelines may have resulted in 500 metric tons of methane escaping per hour 10 times more than the Aliso leak at its peak, GHGSat, a satellite emissions monitoring company, said.

According to Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics from the University of Leeds in the UK other scientists said that they still pale in comparison to daily discharges from gas infrastructure globally, while the Nord Stream leaks were a disaster for the climate, where around a tenth of the fossil fuel’s supply is leaked into the atmosphere.

Executive director of Edinburgh Climate Change Institute, Dave Reay,  said “Of these gas leaks the most direct effect on climate is the extra dollop of the powerful greenhouse gas methane”.  

“To the huge amounts of so-called ‘fugitive methane’  that is said, this is a wee bubble in the ocean compared to that emitted every day around the world due to things like fracking, coal mining and oil extraction.”

The German Environment Ministry said in response to a request for comment, highlighting previous cases where the gas was discharged due to drilling in the North Sea, while methane leaks are harmful to the climate, they do not pose a significant threat to the marine environment. With experts from Denmark and Sweden it added that they were exchanging information.

Its effects on the climate, the expulsion of methane, comes amid growing public consciousness. Over 100 countries pledged to drastically curb emissions at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland. 

The E.U. is also in the process of legislation that would raise the obligation on companies to reduce flaring of the gas, conduct regular inspections to stem leaks and boost transparency of leaks associated with imports.

At an event in the European Parliament on Tuesday evening to launch “methane week,” lawmakers, scientists and environmentalists discussed how to measure the scale of the leak, but were united on one thing: it is likely to be an environmental disaster. 

Jutta Paulus, The Green group’s co-lead negotiator for the bloc’s methane regulation, pointed the finger firmly toward Russia, coming the same week as the Baltic Pipeline connecting Norway to Poland was opened.

At the event Paulus said that “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened on the day the Baltic pipeline was opened”. President Vladimir Putin is telling us “be sure you know what you’re doing when you’re applying more sanctions on us. We have to use all possibilities to apply energy efficiency and ramp up renewables.”

Source:- https://livenewzus.com/for-the-climate-nord-stream-gas-leaks-may-be-a-new-disaster/