Very interesting! This technology is also being used here and it holds a lot of promise for the future. Recycling is a great way to protect the environment and improve our supply of energy.

Here is a link to an article about a biogas plant in Texas. I can't see any downside to this and the economics are favorable.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/state_energy_program/project_brief_detail.cfm/pb_id=1160

The great dream of the left is that everyone (else) should live in equal squalor and harmony with nature.

How about using CO2 as a fuel?
CARS Research Project....
http://www.arc.ab.ca/Index.aspx/ARC/8703

Video summary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx3qonMjrnU

Off topic, again. But, I couldn't let this one pass.

China is #1!!

Yep!! China is now producing more CO2 than the good ol' USofA. Be sure to check out Figure 2. While the US has been producing CO2 at a fairly even rate, China has been steadily increasing its CO2 production and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon.

Katie,

This is happening here in the United States also. In fact there are 15 to 20 different farms right here in Pennsylvania that are using manure to make methane and that methane is used to generate electricity. Here's a couple of links:

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-12022007-1449879.html

http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2007/02/17/news/sunday/news01.txt

Science and ingenuity. Gotta love it! It's what makes this country great.

Reply: Thanks Gary!

Two years ago I vacationed in Nashville. I took a tour of the old Andrew Jackson Plantation. The main house had gas lights and the gas came from pig manure.

This is 'natural gas' in every sense of the word.

Like the gas from manure, underground natural gas deposits are mostly methane. We have nearly unlimited methane deposits off our coasts, in the form of methane hydrate. These deposits could power our country for hundreds of years to come.

Every winter we make a trip to central america and help a community set up bio-digestors and small scale solar electrical stations for health clinics and the like. I guess if that's what PH means by "living in squalor" so be it.
Sounds like a very elitist sentiment to me. I know it makes a difference in the lives of the people we work with.

Of all the bs I've read on here, this bs might actually be a good investment for some. Methane is everywhere and is renewable, but again we still need and use oil, so lets fire up the drills, build some new refineries and live happily ever after. For the ones who think we should stop using oil and who say we are out, please do so, that way it leaves more for me. This message is the opinion of the host and his guest and not necessarily those of Headline earth or their advertisers.

Many years ago, oil drillers used to vent natural gas as they drilled for oil.

Harvesting methane gas from all sources, whether from oil wells, coal mines, or dung, are becoming both economically and environmentally smart for developed countries. For these people, it obviously makes a big difference in their quality of life.

Thank you for doing this interesting piece.

A substantial source of natural gas is readily available by investing in infrastructure to collect it. From an article in the Boston Globe last summer-

"In all, the emissions from global gas flaring send 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year -- equivalent to the emissions from all the vehicles in Great Britain, France, and Germany.

The World Bank is convening a meeting today in Rome to discuss the 108-page report's findings. Experts estimate that the amount of gas released and burned at oil installations is equivalent to a quarter of the US natural gas market, potentially worth $69 billion annually at current prices."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/06/21/russia_top_offender_in_gas_flare_emissions/

Paul,

Speaking of China, here's a link about weather modification projects going on in 40 countries.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_9019726

Also:

Harnessing methane is a great idea, although it won't replace oil by a long stretch, except for heating and such, as oil is a required ingredient for 500,000 of our daily items and 90 percent of the chemical industry's needs.

There's absolutely no reason not to do stuff like this when you have the "raw materials" and it makes sense economically.

I only object when stuff like this is presented along with wind, solar, etc. as if they all combined could replace fossil fuels as our future energy solution. It would be nice, but the truth is that all the so called "green" solutions combined cannot produce anywhere near all the energy we need.

Living in the sunny Mid South, I would be very happy to put solar cells on my roof and produce some of my own electricity if the return on investment made sense. Unfortunately the technology is not yet efficient enough to produce electricity at a rate competitive with the nuclear, natural gas, and coal fired power plants in our State.

Not that I buy the AGW story, but nothing would make me happier than to drive a decent electric to work every day that is recharged every night from the electricy generated by the nuclear plant already in existence just a few miles up the road. Then I would no longer be a part of sending $billions every year to the unstable regions of the world who happen to have lots of oil.

DC

paminator,

A substantial source of natural gas is readily available by investing in infrastructure to collect it.

And the gas from those wells, at least in the United States, is not of sufficient quantity to warrant the expense of connecting pipelines to each and every well.

If I remember correctly, Chevron wanted to collect the natural gas that was currently being flared in Nigeria and Kazakhstan. I am not aware of the status of those projects at this time.

When I worked for a major oil company back in the 80s, we working a field in western Wyoming where we would capture the sulfur-laden natural gas from the oil wells, strip the sulfur from it, mix nitrogen with it, and reinject it to maintain reservoir pressure. Then, at a later date, extract the natural gas after oil production had declined to the point where producing the oil was no longer economical.

HaHa, now there's money to be made in the development of a Portable Cow-dung Energy Extractor so we all need to go out and buy ourselves a couple of cows, never mind that the cost of feeding the cows will offset any energy savings, in addition to that second mortgage you took out to buy the 'energy extractor' in the first place.

I have been here at Hilton Head for the past two weeks doing renovations for illegals, and will be here two more, and have been looking at some of the 'eco-friendly' stores. Went into a shoe store a few days ago all with eco friendly foot coverings. Lord help us, a pair of sandles running for $240.00 simply because they are eco/bio friendly (average cost is about $160.00). Well, they ain't friendly to no pocketbooks, but you shoulda seen all those lemmings in the store. Seemed like everyone was mentally comparing each other as to who was the 'greenest'. Disgusting.

I actually felt guilty walking out of the store as I had failed to do my green imitation for the day.

Gas flaring in Siberia is a primary cause of soot and snow melt in the region. It is not economically feasible to transport the gas because it can't be put in an oil pipeline - so they just burn it.

BTW - I figured out one reason why GISS March data is so out of whack with UAH and RSS. They have zero coverage in most of Canada - which was cold. They also got the Alaska data inverted - should be cold, not hot.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
http://climate.uah.edu/

GISS appears to have gone completely incompetent and useless. They are supposed to be doing serious science, not a sloppy high school science project.

Patrick,

Don't forget to use the same base periods. For UAH it's 1979-1998. UAH seems to use a fairly large smoothing radius, so I included the 1200km smoothing radius for the GISS map:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1979&base2=1998&radius=1200&pol=reg

We still a few differences between the UAH and GISS analyses, though fewer than the map you generated. In all it amounts to about a 0.27C discrepancy. Add in missing data and the fact that one uses surface data, one uses satellite data, and both sets are adjusted to overcome difficulties with the data, we can reasonably say that the 0.27C difference lies within the (rather large) margin of uncertainty.

While the individual monthly data from any dataset may seem drastically different from other datasets, it is important to note that the analyses from UAH, RSS, GISS, HadCRU, and NCDC all show an increasing trend of +.14 to +.19 degrees Celsius per decade since 1979 (and that's a best-fit trend, not a two-point trend).

We'll see in the next week or so what they all say about April.

Patrick Henry,

How would natural gas in Siberia produce soot when up to 98% of the gas is methane and the remaining is condensate that is basically the light ends found in gasoline? I could see it if for some strange reason the gas had large quantities of heavier hydrocarbons in it, such as those found in kerosene or diesel. However, methane and the light ends should not produce soot from flaring.

Great piece Katie! Bret, I guess my last post was spam filtered, it related to this piece coincidentally. Biogas stoves are an inovation used in Asia for thousands of years. Korea being a place where simply made hand built from local materials composting tanks with a simple collection dome and pipe to gas stove provides cooking fuel for a small family twice a day. Ancient technology still works fine. My post was a responce about what solutions I might suggest since I continue to be critical of big oil and globalist corporations and my claims that clean cheap technologies are diliberately unimplemented. I say bring back the family farm for those who like farming, have a national farm family friendly policies and encourage a concept I have mentioned before, Appropriate Technology, a policy that India adopted in the 1970's. Modern plows drawn by draft animals is one apllication. Harvesting biogas is another. But more significant is the proportion of food production profession (farm families) to service industry. Everyone needs to eat, and we have failed as a civilization when 90 percent of the population is not involved in food and fuel production. Utilitarian arts are the building blocks of sustainable civilization. Textiles, pottery, metalurgy, and construction all employ the many with meaningfull and essial work. The solutions are right there in front of us and man power and man inteligence is nothing to demean or diminish.

I've pointed out this problem on a few occaisons. Since when are climate scientists involved in making seasonal let alone intra-decadal predictions? I've even read that there is some expectations that the GCMs will eventually replace the forecast models that meterologists use to make 12-128hr forecasts.

It wasn't too long ago that climatologists were concerned with long term (100+ year trends) and not annual or intra-decadal trends. In thier quest for relevancy they wish to have it both ways. In the meantime they are making fools of themselves by delving into areas where they lack the expertise and perspective needed to make very short term forecasts. Climate scientists are just now beginning to see how utterly difficult it is to make a simple 30 day forecast for a particular region.

Steve Rowland,

It is interesting that you feel the need to criticize people who are making a "choice" to buy those shoes. It's your "choice" to NOT buy them and to NOT go to a store like that. What's your point?

As far as the cow dung technology, it is being used, in this country, where it makes the most sense - at FARMS! No one says that you "need" to buy anything. As far as spending money goes, I'm sure that you spent a few hundred dollars buying a washer and dryer and you're not beating your clothes against a rock down by the river. I'm sure that you have a microwave and an indoor stove or range, and you're not cooking over an open flame like many people in third world countries do. My point? You've already spent thoudands of dollars on modern conviences/appliances. So what's your point?

Josh Brenneman - Are you really that selfish or are you just trying to get someone to respond to you?

By the way - these comments are neither condescending or demeaning, they are strictly the opinions/musings of the typer.

Warmest regards,

Gary

Gary B.,
I really do try to get responses and opinions back most of the time, but really if someone believes they can go with out using oil or gas that is great because that saves more for the ones who still enjoy things that "require" them. I believed you mentioned before you like Nascar, well Nascar wouldn't be all that fun watching cars that run on something other than fuel, Bring her in " Little E" gotta change the solar roof panel your battery is not recharging. Them guys out there are blowing past you, they are going 72mph. Somethings just need to be left alone. This opinion is that of me, and to me that is a fact.

Gary B.,

I confess, yes I do write stuff sometimes just to get an opinion back. But that is normally inteneded to further my opinion. Anyhow though, it would be great if people that think we are out of oil or need to stop using it would stop and that would help the ones who still enjoy using it for the enjoyment it brings {ex..vacation, 4-wheeler, chain saw, snowmobile, mowing grass not that that is enjoyable, etc,etc,} and also as you mentioned you before you like Nascar, well it would not be to exciting watching nascar without fuel, real fuel that is. Dale Jr, bring her on in, we need to make an air pressure adjustment and replace the solar roof panels, your battery is dying out, you should not get lapped as the leader is only going 71 mph. Again though it is a free country and if you can live with other means of fuel/energy, that is great and maybe some can but those who can should not gripe at the ones who continue to go about their own daily lives with their current choice of fuel, because in reality we are not about even close to being out of oil, no matter what some claim. And being an opinionated person that you are I can't wait to see your blog for the next one that Brett does about all the different predictions of the global warming hoax. This message approved and paid for by Josh and the Republican commitee. Have a nice day. Really!

Hey Josh - You're opinions are what make this country great. I'm sure that you are well aware of the predictions of future cost of oil. Do you believe them? After all they are just predictions. I hope you have lots and lots of money! Here's some info:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i5TtajgUpSm7KY5jf-lCJGHBB-tAD90FOE8O4

If you can afford a couple hundred bucks a week for gas then that is great. Congratulations. You've finally made it!

Attention class, we have a math lesson...you too Josh, listen up. ANWR has an estimated 10.3 billion barrels of oil under it. The US uses 20 million barrels of oil per day. 10.3 bil divided by 20 mil = Josh? the answer is? About 500 days supply. The answer is: drilling ANWR is not the answer to our oil problems. We will still need OPEC oil. We will still need to buy oil from Iran and Venezuela - who, last time I checked, have proclaimed themselves enemies of the U.S. So, the price of oil will not go down, even if we do drill ANWR. The reason? If we pump ANWR oil into the system, and the price of oil goes down enough, OPEC cuts production and the price goes back up. So the alternative answer is: No Josh, not give up all of your modern conveniences, the answer is, be more fuel efficient, so that we can drive the same amount of miles using less gas. DUH!

You still paying attention Josh? Conserving energy resources, using nuclear, wind, solar and even the methane that this thread talks about helps make the oil last longer. Which means? Lower prices maybe? More oil farther into the future? Controlling our own energy?

Yes, Josh I like Nascar. I like to drive too. I enjoy dumping gas on piles of tree limbs, lighting it on fire and dancing around it, just as much as the next guy. What I don't like is the prospect of paying $5,$6,$8 or $10 a gallon for gasoline, which, if it happens would take that much more money away from something else, like entertainment or food or gambling or whatever. So yes, I want alternatives. I want to keep my hard earned money. Do you get it? Kirk to Enterprise, come in please. Is this thing on? Oh never mind.

Speaking of NASCAR and fuel efficiency...

I have often wondered on my many commutes to school, how much fuel efficiency is lost due to speeding.

I see a lot of ads for slowing down in highway construction, maybe they could use AGW to encourage people to go 45 through work zones.

I've seen ads that say if everyone used certain kinds of light bulbs, it would be like taking "x" amount of cars off the road. I wonder how many "cars" we could take off the road if everyone drove the speed limit?

I don't have the first clue how to calculate this, maybe someone else here would be able to?

But Triple C, enforcing the speed limit is "big government" and "draconian." Enforcing seat belt laws is a step towards Stalinism! How dare you suggest such a thing?

Anonymous, Dumping gas on tree limbs is awesome, but I don't dance. If they drill for oil you will keep some of your hard earned money. Scotty we have imposters down here, beam us up.

Triple C,

It depends greatly on the make of the car, but one could probably come up with a generalization t