Tag: Methane

Google Moves To Power New Data Center with Methane

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Remember when we thought Google was benign?

So much for “Net Zero” commitment.

The search engine and online advertising and AI behemoth with the adorable name is moving ahead to power at least one new AI data center with a 933 MW natural gas plant. This represents a step away from the company’s one time announcement that it would achieve 24/7 carbon free energy,. Of course, there is a difference between announcements and reality. Over the years, Google has managed to seem less evil than many of its tech monster brethren, but that is more or less an illusion. The company has the wherewithal to deploy renewal energy for this and other energy sucking projects, but has chosen not to. The power plant in Texas is the third known gas facility that Google has become involved in over the past few months.

According to the Guardian news platform, the Texas power plant would emit 4.5m tons of carbon dioxide per year, more than that of San Francisco

The new natural gas / methane plant is under construction by Crusoe Energy at Google’s Goodnight Campus in Texas. 

Gaslighting at its best: Why not just call it Methane? 

Natural gas sounds pretty organic man, but it’s 95% methane, along with smaller molecules of ethane, propane and butane. Natural gas is promoted as not as bad as coal as an energy source, but it is composed primarily of CH4. The increase of methane in the atmosphere over the past ten years has been stunning, with surprising consequences in the Arctic. Methane is about 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Read the full story in the Guardian.

 

The Pain of Methane In The Arctic Terrain

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

New CH4 sources contribute to another new methane emissions record in 2021.

CH4 is CO2’s meaner older brother, far more destructive but with a shorter attention span. Methane is indeed a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, rated anywhere from 20 to 30 times more potent than regular carbon dioxide. Carbon emissions show no signs of being actually reduced world wide and atmospheric levels continuing to set records, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is going to be there for eons. Pumping more methane into the skies at this moment in time is the worst thing that could happen to our lame efforts to mitigate the climate emergency. 

NEW METHANE LEAKS AND PLUMES:

There are two additional source of methane emissions to consider:

  • Seafloor blowout craters beneath the waters in the Northern oceans. More here.
  • New revelations that the fossil boys have been understating the quantities of methane leaking from gas wells. Shocking.

AS PERMAFROST THAWS LIFE IN THE ARCTIC CHANGES FAST

  • The terrain itself is transforming as long trapped gases cause land to sink, ponds to melt and new craters to form.
  • Infrastructure is literally collapsing as the ground beneath it sinks.

    See more.

The permafrost/methane cycle is climate feedback cycle #3, and inexorable process that feeds on itself and is already having amazing consequences. Who needs movies about dystopian futures?

More Climate Feedback Cycles

 

 

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Key Links On Rapid Climate Change

April 2022 Current Updates

  • Sydney Harbor smashed by sea-level driven tides.
  • Afghanistan historic drought
  • Antarctic ice shelf breaks away

Summary of 2022 Global Warming Shocks

Tough three months:

  • Freakishly high temps at both poles
  • West coast drought worsens
  • Great Barrier Reef another mass die-off
  • Texas wildfires
  • More Australian monster floods
  • Argentina wildfires
  • Worsening Rainforest Ecocide
  • Kenya desertification worsens
  • Great Salt Lake disappearing
  • Syrian famine/drought
  • Antarctic ice shelves melting from below

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Climate Feedback Cycles (Feedback loops)

The three simple but irreversible critical climate cycles explain clearly why we are in a crisis that will not go away.

#1 Disappearing Sea Ice reflects less solar energy, heating oceans, melting more sea ice.

#2 Global fires release massive quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere, causing more fires and deforestation.

#3 Methane escapes melting permafrost, causing more waming, causing more permafrost thaw.

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