I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero, it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality.
There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states quickly clear out all regulatory law to make place for the new boom, and when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.
Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2.
If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use.
There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity, then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is never pumped up in the first place.
We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came from, but that really is not practical.
The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't like what is going on in North Dakota.
> Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the
> atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive
> reasons still produces that same CO2.
True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale.
There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly the same.
"Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale."
I assume that either way, we are going to eventually burn it until depletion. We can't keep it up forever, we will need to switch to renewable energy at some point and that renewable energy will be carbon neutral.
It's a shame that it is being wasted instead of used for something productive, but I am just not convinced that it is some sort of environmental disaster.
I don't think we will run out of gas before we switch to renewables. The supply of gas (as in, the amount of gas that can be produced per month) is limited and the demand for energy is always increasing, so prices are always going to go up. As new technology develops, and with economies of scale, renewables are getting cheaper. I think we'll get past the tipping point where renewable generation + storage is cheaper than fossil fuels well before we actually run out of gas. Being inefficient with our resources (like burning gas like this) means we'll be much worse off when that happens.
Comments
I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero, it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality.
There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states quickly clear out all regulatory law to make place for the new boom, and when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.
Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2.
If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use.
There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity, then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is never pumped up in the first place.
We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came from, but that really is not practical.
The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't like what is going on in North Dakota.
There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly the same.
I assume that either way, we are going to eventually burn it until depletion. We can't keep it up forever, we will need to switch to renewable energy at some point and that renewable energy will be carbon neutral.
It's a shame that it is being wasted instead of used for something productive, but I am just not convinced that it is some sort of environmental disaster.
I don't think we will run out of gas before we switch to renewables. The supply of gas (as in, the amount of gas that can be produced per month) is limited and the demand for energy is always increasing, so prices are always going to go up. As new technology develops, and with economies of scale, renewables are getting cheaper. I think we'll get past the tipping point where renewable generation + storage is cheaper than fossil fuels well before we actually run out of gas. Being inefficient with our resources (like burning gas like this) means we'll be much worse off when that happens.
Thats a reduction to absurdity. Gas will be burned, entropy will increase.
If methane is being released, it should be burned. Methane is a more potent green house gas than CO2.
As a pinko commie treehugger (aka realist), I'm unenthusiastic about adding any more CO2 to our atmosphere.