[credit_guy]

It's not massive. NASA did a study to find methane leaks. The top such leaks will be labeled by journalists as massive, but are they really?

The Permian leak is listed at 55 tons per hour; that's less than a half a megaton per year. The EPA says one ton of CH4 is equivalent to about 30 tons of CO2, so the Permian leak is equivalent to 15 megatons CO2 per year. It sounds like a large number, but annually the world emits about 50 billion CO2-equivalent tons. That means the Permian methane leak contributes by 0.03% to the total worldwide greenhouse gas emission.

[matthewdgreen]

The problem is not a single human-caused methane leak. The problem is that global methane levels are increasing, and they're increasing at an increasing rate. Current theory is that some of this is caused by human emissions, but most is a feedback effect of climate change where wetlands produce more methane. There are also big, terrifying methane feedback loops in the arctic (permafrost and undersea clathrates) that may or may not be in play. Methane is very, very bad news for humans.