War against methane emissions?

During the Cold War, the West supported and exploited local jihadists in various countries as shock troops to weaken the communist strongmen. The most practical and violent use of Jihad was when the United States was eagerly trying to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

While terrorism may or may not stop, emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and its more potent cousin called methane never stopped. Both terrorism and global warming are the result of the selfish and short-term, profit-driven mindset of strong nations. The funny thing about carbon and methane is that methane needs half the time that carbon dioxide would need to do the same damage to the environment but methane stays in the atmosphere for a relatively shorter time than carbon does. Furthermore, carbon emissions happen when fossil fuel is being burnt in fuel combustion engines of vehicles. Methane, however, from oil and gas is released into the atmosphere through leaks at wells, pipelines, and production facilities. It is quite interesting that the waste is produced before the usage.

Controlling the leaks of methane is one powerful way to control planetary warming. But the major problem toward that end is detecting the methane emissions. Until recently, methane emissions were detected using remote sensing through airplanes, drones, and so forth. While that method provided some data as to where the methane emissions were happening more than in other places, the problem was that it only covered a small area of the planet. This method showed in 2019 large methane emissions from the Permian Basin in West Texas.

Satellites can cover a much larger area. However, the problem that scientists ran into with satellite data collection of methane emissions was that it was lower resolution and accurate source of emissions was hard to pinpoint. Nevertheless, the European satellite called Sentinel 5 enabled the scientists to locate the ‘ultra emitters’, chiefly among them were the United States, Russia, Turkmenistan, the Middle East, and Algeria. The total methane emissions from these sites was calculated to be 9 million tons per year. This amount, however, does not include methane emissions from the Permian Basin, Canada, and China. While the Sentinel 5 is helpful, the emission plumes are too high to pinpoint an exact location of the source.

Let us swing back to terrorism just a little bit. When the United States conducted drone strikes around the world particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, the intelligence gathering was done on ground for confirming targets. Ground-based intelligence provided the target list for the pilots of the armed drones to hit.

Scientists are suggesting a similar method, which would enable them to put their finger on the accurate source of the emissions. However, the multiple data reporting is in reverse in this case. The Sentinel 5 or other similar satellites would provide intelligence about a certain area of ultra methane emissions and the on-ground sensors would then be told to focus on that area to further defog the source. Scientists are making the case that reducing the methane emissions would make a major dent in global warming and would help us buy some time before reaching catastrophic levels of warming.

Terrorism threatened the world and the West launched a global war to defeat it. Climate change is threatening the world with more severity. Ironically, there is no urge to wage a global war against this much graver threat. There are many reasons behind this inaction but one that stands out is that the ultra emitters are some of the strongest nations on earth and there is nobody that can wage a war against them. If poor nations were responsible for these emissions, then we just might have seen the launch of a war. Pre-empting the ‘suspected militants’ might have been easier than pre-empting the methane leaks. Making leaks into the international law was easier than closing the methane leaks.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2022.

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