For years anti-fossil fuel agitators have been making noise about so-called fugitive methane. According to antis, methane (CH4) is a zillion times more “potent” than carbon dioxide (CO2) in making Mom Earth toast (i.e. global warming, which isn’t happening). If only we could capture every last molecule of methane so it couldn’t escape, life would be better, according to antis. We’ve written countless stories dealing with fugitive methane, because both the federal and state governments try to regulate it from time to time (see MDN’s fugitive methane stories here). The big, gaping hole in the antis search for fugitive methane and fixing it is that agriculture (farting and burping cows) emit far more methane into the atmosphere than oil and gas operations. From time to time we note the bizarre behavior of antis in strapping devices on cows to try and control methane emissions (no lie, they do it, driven insane by global warming hysteria). One of the most recent efforts to sniff out fugitive methane has been to use Google Street View cars, strapping on equipment that can “sniff” methane and report leaks (see Google’s Privacy-Invading Cars Map “Methane Leaks” in Pittsburgh). Google’s methane-sniffing skunk works project has now become an official scientific study–published in the “peer reviewed” journal Environmental Science & Technology. No doubt the publication of the study is an attempt to give methane-sniffing efforts gravitas, authenticity, and aura of scientific objectivity. We think it’s kind of fishy…
