Comments on: Maps revolutionize study of carbon dioxide emissions

Maps revolutionize study of carbon dioxide emissions

desjardins — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:03:40 -0800

New maps show US fossil fuel emissions aren't where we thought they were. The Vulcan Project collects more accurate data at a higher resolution than previous studies. Explanatory video. via

Other visualizations of CO2 emissions include NASA forecasts and plots, CARMA, which monitors power plant emissions, and the European Space Agency, which uses high resolution spectrometer data (video download). This Australian PSA offers an entirely different kind of visualization.

By: localroger

localroger — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:13:44 -0800

There is an oil refinery in Norco, about 20 miles west of New Orleans. I live in Mandeville, about 30 miles north of New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain. I commute to work on a trail of black balloons across that bridge every weekday. It frequently happens that the oil refinery has its flare operating, venting waste gasses and burning them so that they will be less polluty than if vented in their unburned methany state. It frequently happens that I can see that flare from the north toll plaza of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, nearly 40 miles away, not just as a point of light but as the brightest thing in the landscape beyond my own headlights. A pillar of flame over a hundred feet tall literally illuminates several hundred square miles brightly enough to read large type. If they're throwing away that kind of energy, it really makes me wonder about the amount they're selling to paying customers.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:21:55 -0800

Yeah, having driven past similar refineries in Gary a number of times, it's occurred to me to wonder why they don't, say, run a turbine off those flames. I guess if it was cost-effective they'd be doing it, but it seems odd that they're not.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:24:37 -0800

I don't quite understand the post. The final plot makes clear that CO2 emissions closely correlate to population density. Why is that a surprise? Where were you expecting them to be?

By: blacklite

blacklite — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:32:38 -0800

"Previous CO2 estimates that used population as a proxy for emissions overestimated the Northeast's greenhouse-gas generation, while underestimating the coal-heavy Southeast's contribution." "Total US fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2002 come to 1506 million metric tonnes of carbon/year. This is slightly lower than Energy Information Estimates (1580 MtC/year) due to the missing nonroad and aircraft emissions in the Vulcan inventory (they are coming soon!)." A graph of Vulcan Project vs EIA correlation. (r² = 0.98) The post here makes it sound like the Vulcan Project has come up with numbers that don't match up with EIA, but that isn't the case. The word "where" is ambiguous – I am pretty sure you meant "where" as in location, rather than "where" as in amount, desjardins, but I bet I wasn't the only one who was confused about it, so, I am just going to put these numbers here.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:38:27 -0800

we did already know that the Dirty South gets your your coal and refines your oil, right?

By: lekvar

lekvar — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:49:46 -0800

I must me missing something, because it looks to me like the largest concentrations of emissions center around major cities. Anybody care to tell me the what I'm overlooking?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:50:09 -0800

I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that the single blood-red pixels sprinkled throughout the western states in this map are most likely giant coal-fired power plants, like the IPA plant in Delta, UT, which sends 75% of its power to southern California.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:51:51 -0800

I blame my map-deficient upbringing for making me unable to comprehend this post.* *it really isn't obvious

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:55:39 -0800

Is carbon dioxide a pollutant? I thought there was a big legal discussion about this recently.

By: FuManchu

FuManchu — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:06:57 -0800

Okay, so are we really supposed to be focusing on these images? They show that the model overwieghted the NE and CA emissions, and underestimates the TX-to-LA and Chicago-to-Pittsburg emissions, right? Intersting, yet very small adjustments to the model's order of magnitude, neh?

By: eriko

eriko — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:16:53 -0800

(r2 = 0.98) In other words, we're not arguing orders of magnitude, we're arguing Δ vs. Ε. Sheesh and Furrfu.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:26:54 -0800

Pretty cool. The best thing about this is just being able to visualize what CO2 looks like. It's been said if CO2 was .. blue .. that everyone would see it coming out of tail pipes and there wouldn't be much public resistance to doing something about cleaning it up. When it's invisible it might as well not exist.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:32:24 -0800

It's been said if CO2 was .. blue Then everyone would see blue coming out of their mouth, and not much else.

By: Benway

Benway — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:44:49 -0800

Then everyone would see blue coming out of their mouth, and not much else MetaZombies! We are pretty much there.

By: intermod

intermod — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:51:33 -0800

What's going on in AZ at the UT border (Page?) and NM near Four Corners? There's big ugly CO2 sources there, but no big cities ... Coal power plants, I'm guessing ...

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:23:10 -0800

I'm pleased and relieved to see that Canada has no CO₂ emissions at all!

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:56:34 -0800

Intermod, those provide power to LA.

By: rhymer

rhymer — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:50:15 -0800

It's interesting. But it's also exactly what I expected. In next week's revelatory instalment, how the US and Western Europe emit more than Mongolia and Antarctica.

By: athenian

athenian — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:04:46 -0800

I'm surprised Americans still flare methane: there was a piece in the Economist the other week about how Nigeria has just banned the practice at its wells because it's so wasteful and bad for the environment. Or maybe at refineries is different. I'm a liberal arts major, can you tell?

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:42:54 -0800

Intermod - right you are, Ken!

Four Corners The five-unit, 2,040-megawatt Four Corners Power Plant, located on the Navajo Indian Reservation west of Farmington, New Mexico, is operated by APS. Fueled by low-sulfur coal from the nearby Navajo mine, the plant is owned by APS and five other utilities in the Southwest. APS' stake in Four Corners makes 782 megawatts of energy available to the APS system. Navajo The Navajo Power Plant is located in northern Arizona on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Page, and features three 750-megawatt coal-fueled, steam-electric generating units. An electric railroad delivers coal to the plant from a mine on the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations at Black Mesa in northern Arizona. The plant is operated by Salt River Project, and is owned by a partnership of five utility companies and the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation. APS owns 14 percent of the plant.

By: rlk

rlk — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:21:24 -0800

Those maps all have two Phoenixes.

By: Balisong

Balisong — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:28:27 -0800

What's happening at "Four Corners"? I've been through there many times, and really, there's nothing out there. Except major co2, I guess.

By: plastic_animals

plastic_animals — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:02:21 -0800

The press release from Purdue explains what the Vulcan Project is doing better than the project itself. Essentially, earlier efforts used the correlation between population distribution and carbon dioxide emissions to map the emissions distribution. However, the EPA measures carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide on an hourly basis (they are pre-cursors to ozone pollution events). Since CO and NOx concentrations are correlated with CO2 emissions, the Vulcan Project can track CO2 emissions at higher spatial and temporal resolutions than before. This will provide a good basis for comparison once the Orbiting Carbon Observatory instrument is launched (scheduled for December 2008).

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:57:24 -0800

Olympic Torch Relay Emits 5,500 Tons of CO2.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:22:32 -0800

I'm not sure what is so "revolutionary" about this. If you overlay a night satellite image, it correlates pretty closely. That's pretty much where I thought the carbon was, turns out I was right.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:47:39 -0800

There is an oil refinery in Norco New Orleans Refinery COmpany there is a town in NORCO, you mean.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:49:24 -0800

are offshore rigs not counted in this? there's a whole other third of the state off Louisiana's gulf coast made of oil rigs and pipelines.

By: intermod

intermod — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:42:14 -0800

Kirth Gerson, thanks! Balisong, scroll up.