This one U.S. hotspot produces the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane

boing
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taco bell headquarters

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My bet’s on a massive cattle farm. Methane seeps out of every bovine orifice.

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It’s the oil fields. The other big hotspot in California is the oil fields that are west of Bakersfield. That big hot spot at the four corners is a massive unending oil field around a few major reservations. Beautiful area
 lots of oil.

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Unlikely - this is not really prime cattle country, I’d expect to see bigger concentrations in the feedlots near Greely, CO, and in KS and TX.

I wonder if it’s a natural source because the geology of that area is quite complex. Fascinating.

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You can see the wells quite easily.

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It’s kinda hard to tell, but it’s right near the region containing the Grand Canyon, the Vermillion Cliffs national monument, and the Kaibab Reservation.

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Where the heck is the rest of the map? Why only show us North America?

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It looks close to here.

Waterflow lies between two coal-fired power plants and southwest of a large coal mine.[8][9] The area also has many oil wells.

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That’s coming from the Lewis and Mancos Shale formation. Heavy oil and natural gas production there.

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For some reason the Boing Boing summary doesn’t mention the apparent cause of the high methane emissions concentrated in this area. The answer, from the linked article: leaks in natural gas production and processing equipment in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin.

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QuĂ©? 

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Are there other important places? We didn’t go over that in high school.

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There be dragons.

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I’m wondering if that was edited in after the original post. Did Not RTFA is a common problem, but there usually aren’t quite so many people wildly speculating about a question that was answered in the second paragraph.

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But speculating is most of the fun!

I don’t remember the cause being mentioned originally, but I have been known to skip entire paragraphs before.

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I read it 33m after @slauson did. So if edited, it took a while.

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A global view helps put things into perspective.

xch4_sci_V1_2005.jpg1422×936 1.07 MB

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Good link for tons of other sat images of methane concentration:

http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/sciamachy/NIR_NADIR_WFM_DOAS/wfmd_image_gallery_ch4.html

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Not all American methane producers, eh?