1/ FRACKING THREAD. I’m here at the Ithaca Community School for Music and Arts to hear world methane expert @howarth_cornell present new science on #fracking and the climate crisis. Will try to live tweet. Full house! Lots of legendary grassroots leaders here.@MothersOutFront 
2/ Howarth introduced by local elected official Irene Weiser: we admire Bob’s activism as much as his science. His earlier work on the importance of methane in the climate story was at first ridiculed by industry but findings have held up and are now considered mainstream.
3/ we will hit 1.5 degrees warming in the 10 yes. To keep it there we MUST reduce methane. Methane has increased 170% due to human activity but with a half life of only 12 yrs in atmosphere, climate can response quickly to methane reductions. Not so CO2 which lasts a century.
4/ reductions in CO2 only wont keep us below 2 degrees because due to its long lifespan, atmosphere won’t respond to these reductions within the next 25 years. Which is critical.
5/ Ergo, the bridge fuel idea of natural gas is moot. That idea is now dead. Small leaks of this potent GH gas more than compensates for CO2 reductions if we shift from coal to gas. That science is clear.
6/ since 2011 we have known that small emissions of methane matter and suspected that shale gas may emit more than conventional drilling. But great need for better data. Industry leaked some material to Howarth and his colleagues bc some industry insiders were deeply worried.
7. By 2014 Howarth and colleagues discovered that lots of emissions arise during the drilling phase before the well is even fracked. These methane emissions were not being tallied by the EPA. Some shale gas wells were identified methane super emitters.
8/ By 2015 we knew that there is high variability of methane leaks from shale gas wells. Makes it hard to estimate total methane emissions from oil and gas operations. EDF has lots of data from field studies. Their researchers conclude that avg shale gas leakage rate = circa 1.9%
8/ Thise are just upstream losses. methane is also lost from pipelines and other downstream infrastructure. Also storage and local distribution leaks. If you add all upstream and downstream estimates: 3.4 % leakage rate. That’s conservative but defensible.
9/ 63 percent of the total increase in natural gas globally over 2005-2015 was from fracking operations in North America. Do the math—> At least 34 percent of the current increase in global methane levels are from North American fracking operations.
10/ now we are talking cows: isotopic analysis can help us distinguish shale gas methane from livestock and wetland sources. Some researchers think that this signal shows cows are the culprit but satellite data shows that 30-70 % of increase in methane is coming from the US
11/ And the number of cows are going down not up in the United States.
12/ spatial data and isotopic data don’t cohere. Why? How to reconcile?
Then a 2017 revaluation that included changes in biomass burning over this same time showed that is was fossil fuels that has been driving the methane emissions upwards.
Then a 2017 revaluation that included changes in biomass burning over this same time showed that is was fossil fuels that has been driving the methane emissions upwards.
13/. Now we are up to the present moment. Shale gas and conventional gas have a slightly different isotope fingerprint so Howarth separates the two and wexplicit inclusion of shale gas shows the importance of increased fracking in driving up global methane levels shines through.
14/ evidence from @TXsharon work using infrared photography shows huge amounts of methane silently streaming into the atmosphere. SHARON’s PHOTOS NOW ON DISPLAY AND THE AUDIENCE IS GASPING
15/“ we are concerned about climate over the next decade—and we must be—we must be concerned about methane”
One Tipping point: the great conveyer belt circulatory system in the ocean slowing down. When oceans made less salty by melting ice caps—> sluggish circulation.
One Tipping point: the great conveyer belt circulatory system in the ocean slowing down. When oceans made less salty by melting ice caps—> sluggish circulation.
16/ unpublished data now show melting permafrost in the Arctic is now adding to methane emissions. This is hugely dangerous
17/ most governments and institutions use outdated global warming potentials for methane even though IPCC has urged using updated numbers based on 20 year rather than 100 year time frame.
18/ institutions like universities need to take responsibility for upstream methane leakages that happen where natural gas is fracked out of the ground and transported and not just the greenhouse gases released at the point of combustion.
19/ high efficiency heat pumps versus gas fired himenfurnance and hot water heaters: 15-20 percent of natural gas in NYS is used to heat water in our homes.
20/ conclusion: we need to move v aggressively away from fossil fuels including natural gas and especially shale gas from fracking.
21/ Increased methane flux from oil and gas over past decade has a social cost of $600 BILLION ($60 billion/year). Most of this represents health impacts from resulting air position (methane makes smog) and and ag impacts (crop yields go down as smog goes up).
22/ ok that’s it. I’m exhausted.Caveat: I was tweeting quickly in the dark while also looking at slides of data and listening. I likely made typos and mistakes. There will be a video in days aheads. I will upload link when available.
