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by ajross 814 days ago
> Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem.

Uh... yes it does? A fossil-fuel free fuel production process that loses 2% to the atmosphere is still fifty times lower-impact (when considering output energy -- obviously production costs are different) than one that pulls 100% out of the ground.
1 comments
Moto7451 814 days ago
See the video I linked or the other commenters with references that Methane is a higher contributor to global warming than CO2 by 30x. It’s not about the carbon removed, it’s about the methane leaked.
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ajross 814 days ago
Even granting that number (and the 2% loss above), Terraform still wins. It's just math, sorry.

I mean, sure: this might be bad on balance. But it's starting from a position of overwhelming assumed advantage. You need to come to the table with analysis actually showing it's bad, and all you have is "it's only about twice as good and not 50x better".

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Moto7451 813 days ago
Remember that “at least 2%” is what we know. We don’t know the real number because it’s self reported and reconnaissance show it’s over 2%. The EPA needs to actually audit and find the real values. It could be 3, 4, 5 percent, etc and work out just fine economically. LNG has a 5% overhead before you even ship it.

Working on the margins of climate improvement is not worthwhile when billions of dollars to change the means of production are on the line.

Also, this has nothing to do with this company. This is not their responsibility. They should definitely do what they’re doing, but it doesn’t solve the root problem here of leaking methane into the atmosphere.

The totality of leaked methane is not just the pipeline. There’s the last mile, LNG distribution, and accidents that are not part of that number.

Operating on “but it’s .5% better” is very shaky when past predictions of huge improvements in the climate, and then zero real oversight, is how we got here in the first place. See Obama term 1 embracing fracking vs Obama term 2 expressing concern vs Biden term 1 restricting further expansion due to the environmental impact.

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