© UnknownMethods for detecting natural gas emissions. Top-down methods take air samples from aircraft or tall towers to measure gas concentrations remote from sources. Bottom-up methods take measurements directly at facilities.
The federal government has underestimated methane emissions from the United States by 50 percent for the past 20 years, according to a comprehensive new study.
Methane, also called natural gas, is a powerful but short-lived
greenhouse gas. It lasts just nine years in Earth's atmosphere but is about 34 times more potent at trapping infrared radiation (the greenhouse effect) than carbon dioxide, which is more abundant and lasts longer. While methane spews into the sky from both natural sources, such as wetlands, and human activities, including oil and gas production, the government estimates only track manmade sources.
The review of scientific studies of
methane emissions suggests that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane counts are about 50 percent too low, though the underestimate could range from 25 percent to as much as 75 percent. That means the United States is pumping about 14 million tons more methane than thought into the atmosphere each year, according to the findings, published today (Feb. 13) in the
journal Science.
"Evidence from numerous studies consistently suggest that methane emissions are larger than those estimated by the EPA inventory," said Adam Brandt, lead study author and an energy resources engineer at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
The review analyzed the results of more than 200 studies that traced
methane emissions across the United States and were published in the past 20 years. The results were compared to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which records methane emissions and other climate-changing gases.
Comment: Charging and convicting a politician in the USA with taking bribes is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. A man in his position would be expected to accept bribes; failure to do so would have raised suspicion and flagged him for extra scrutiny. If anyone wants to do well for his community in the US, he must play the game. In fact, in today's America, for someone to be charged with taking bribes, it probably means they were diverting money in order to be able to do good with it.
So the question is; why Nagin? Could it be because he interfered with certain developers' plans for post-Katrina N.O.? Could it be because he was actually a rare case of a good politician that he has been sent down for more than most murderers get in the U.S.? Somebody clearly wanted to eliminate this man from the game.
Curiously, the evidence used against Nagin is 'secret' and won't be made public.... 'just temporarily', they say, but everyone will have forgotten about it once he begins rotting in prison.
From his Wiki page we learn that: ...and those "some businesspersons" are no doubt among those implicated in the deliberate sabotaging of the city's flood defenses during Hurricane Katrina, along with the deliberately delayed federal response and the barbaric handling of refugees in the city and across the country.
Despite all that, Nagin still managed to turn the city around for one of the fastest ever urban recoveries from a major disaster.
It seems to us that they put a decent man away because he wasn't a psychopath like them.
See also:
It was the levees, not the hurricane, that flooded New Orleans