Compared to the fact that a few months ago, the extreme climate activists would have hit people using plastic straws or beef cattle with beheadings and punctured tires, they are watching the gas leaking from the Nord Stream quite quietly, receding into the background. Which is hardly good for our already rapidly warming planet.
The pipeline has already been damaged in four places, gas is bubbling up in an area several hundred meters in diameter. According to German data published by the Bloomberg news agency, about 300,000 tons of methane - one of the strongest greenhouse gases - may enter the atmosphere. This amount can have roughly the same effect on the climate over twenty years as approx. 5.5 million cars. There are no well-separated, sealable sections on the wires, so the entire contents of the pipes are likely to escape. Methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of global temperature rise, even though it is much less present in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. According to the Germans, the leakage of the Nord Stream corresponds to roughly one percent of the country's total annual emissions.
Source: MTI/AP/Danish Armed Forces
Officials on the Danish island of Bornholm said well over half of the gas in the pipelines had already escaped into the Baltic Sea, and they expected most of the remaining gas to leave the pipelines by next Sunday.
It is also difficult to estimate the exact amount of methane that escapes into the atmosphere. Significant amounts of methane emissions on land are recorded by satellites, but it is difficult to record data on water due to light reflection. A certain part of the methane is distributed in the water, but the sea cannot filter such a large amount.
According to estimates by Andrew Baxter, Energy Strategy Director of the US Environmental Protection Fund, approx. 115,000 tons of methane were released into the air in the Baltic region. The largest release known to date in the United States occurred at the Aliso Canyon repository in Los Angeles in 2015, where approx. 97,000 tons of methane were released into the atmosphere in a few months. By way of comparison: in the case of the Nord Stream, much more harmful substances went into the air in a few hours.
At last fall's climate summit held in Glasgow, Scotland, to the delight of Greta Thunberg, more than 100 countries undertook to drastically reduce methane emissions.
However, the gas leak has not yet reached the stimulus threshold of the otherwise strict Swedish climate activist.
Source: 888.hu
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