Yes, well, there is always “Global Warming Derangement Syndrome”, where all “reasoning” must be able to fit on a bumper-sticker. How many years did “global warming panic” involve pretty much just CO2? After a couple of decades, mere CO2 became boring, and so suddenly natural gas leaks became “a problem”. Any idea how much methane is generated naturally in the whole wide world, from everything from animals and fungii, to soil, swamps, oceans, volcanoes, and natural seeps? And CHAT GPT only “knows” what it can find on the panic-stricken internet. AI can often be nothing more than a stupidity-multiplier. Let’s also keep in mind, the supposed “severity” of the global warming impact of methane keeps “increasing”, as the bumper-sticker-level “reasoning” goes viral, and the relevant “facts” are repeated and multiplied.
Methane molecules started out as having somewhat more warming effect than CO2 molecules (even though the actual concentration was far less), but then someone decided to multiply that by the time it supposedly takes to be eliminated in the atmosphere, over CO2’s supposedly-shorter atmospheric longevity. Then that increase gets repeated by someone else, but multiplied again by the difference in atmospheric persistent longevity. They only stop re-multiplying it when the story sounds scary enough to get a reaction.
Meanwhile, other sources state that methane does NOT last as long in the atmosphere as hypothesized by the panic contingent. It’s almost like the CO2 story was getting old, so they needed a new “boogie-man” to blame.
Coincidentally, they could blame methane on “the evil oil companies” (that stopped deforestation and greened our planet).
To fixate on the hypothetically-leaked fraction of a comparatively tiny amount of contained methane that might be used for buoyant lift, while probably a million times as much is constantly leaking from pipes, tanks, and wells, intentionally released, and being flared (which produces a LOT of CO2) is misguided.
In fact, I’ll bet it’s similar to worries about wind turbines killing birds, while hi-rise buildings, cars and trucks, housecats, windows, and even radio towers, kill a million times as many birds. I’ll bet you all have found a dead bird outside after a mysterious “thunk” against a window, right?
Back to bumper-sticker “reasoning” - no it’s really NOT reasoning at all, it’s just what will fit into the pea-brains of the teeming masses, too busy with their daily lives to get truly up to speed on pretty much ANY issue.
A more realistic inquiry would look at how much methane would actually leak from a certain hypothetical number of balloons and blimps, and compare that with how much is produced from existing sources, including existing leaks, to find that using methane for lift would form a negligible fraction of total CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, discussions of the sins of using helium are as old as these AWE forums, and far older actually. It’s a topic that’s been beaten to death ever since Santos castigated me for “wasting helium” by using a couple of tanks in the back of my van to fill a few balloons to elevate my Popular Science Invention of the Year Sky Serpent at the first High Altitude Windpower Conference in Chico/Oroville, California in 2010. Since then, new sources for helium have been located.
Here’s a synopsis of one natural gas leak in California about a decade ago.
n 2015, a natural gas storage well in California experienced a catastrophic leak that released over 5 billion cubic feet of methane:
- When it happened
On October 23, 2015, the Southern California Gas Company’s (SoCalGas) Aliso Canyon Well SS25 failed, causing a sustained leak in Porter Ranch, Los Angeles.
- What happened
The leak was initially thought to be from the subsurface well casing. The leak lasted until February 2016, when SoCalGas crews were able to stop it and seal the well.
- The impact
The leak was a disaster for the environment, public health, and California’s energy supply. California Governor Jerry Brown declared the incident a state emergency, and over 5,000 households in the area were forced to relocate.
- The response
An interagency task force was formed to respond to the incident, including representatives from the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and more.
- The aftermath
CARB and SoCalGas developed an agreement to mitigate methane emissions.
California has 12 underground natural gas storage fields, which are used to store natural gas for a variety of purposes, including residential, commercial, industrial, and electrical power generation.
You never heard anyone say the Glorious State of California was causing global warming. But I’ll bet there was more methane release in this one incident than all the leaked methane you could expect from 1000 years of blimps, balloons, and dirigibles.
Yesterday, as my girlfriend and I were on our way to have breakfast, she pointed out a birthday balloon, still partially inflated, along the side of the road. I told her once again about how many of these celebratory balloons I pick up on a daily basis, saying; "You never realize how many of these balloons there are until you own some acreage of real estate, at which point you find yourself picking them up practically every day. Just then we passed another crashed balloon, probably purchased from a local discount store, and I said “See, there’s another one!” “Oh Yeah!” she said.
Again, you have the concern of a mind fixated on a pet issue in order to “make a point”, versus the overwhelming surrounding factors that make the concern actually quite irrelevant. But that doesn’t even slow down the “bumper-sticker-reasoning” crowd. They are too busy to actually think about things in the context of the big picture. They can only process a single thought at a time, usually one inserted into their brain by someone else. 