Methane is released in huge quantities
For all those climate change deniers who have convinced themselves that greenhouse gases are not man-made, here’s a great big wake-up call.
As if CO2 (carbon dioxide) isn’t bad enough, we’re headlong into making the matter 100 times worse. It’s called methane. It’s trapped under ice at the poles. And it’s being released in huge quantities from shale gas drilling.
A January 2009 report by Dr. Al Armendariz, formerly of Southern Methodist University and now the director of EPA’s regional office in Dallas, estimated that the air pollution from shale gas drilling in the Dallas/Fort Worth area likely exceeds the emissions from all the cars and trucks in that area.
From May 31 to June 3, 2011, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation directed David Sawyer of Sawyer Infrared Inspection Services to examine 15 natural gas drilling and compressor sites in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia that are visible from public roads. Sawyer’s equipment detected methane and perhaps other hydrocarbon gases escaping from 11 of these 15 sites. The four sites with no emissions were not operating. CBF used a standard video camera to simultaneously record the same sites that Sawyer was taping with the “GasFindIR” camera.
Dr. Robert Howarth of Cornell University said CBF’s videotape shows significant emissions of methane and perhaps other hydrocarbon gases, and demonstrates why a comprehensive federal examination of pollution from shale gas drilling is needed.
Visit the link and see for yourself. The emissions look like colored smoke. Yet the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission keeps telling Colorado citizens that WE have no rights, only the mineral owners do.
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