Thread
Thanks for writing this Lorenzo. I have some thoughts on your article. Here goes... I'm going to live tweet this thread to avoid an accident where I lose the thread before I can publish it. So please wait for the "/end" to know when I'm done. 🧵
You are correct that if you claim carbon negative you are being somewhat specious. As I told @DSBatten, it is important to be clear that you are talking about CO2eq reductions. All greenhouse gases have a heating effect, including water vapor.
Again, you are correct that within the US o&g sourced methane is smaller than in other parts of the world. In particular, Russia topped with CH4 from oil, US for gas, and China for coal. (2016 data) 
I also agree that a sunset clause is important. But I also demand that we estimate the return on profit from mining w/stranded gas in comparison to the overall net profit of the o&g industry. So far, only @DSBatten has made an attempt at this. We need to move beyond speculation.
I think you are conflating two sources of greenhouse gas emissions when you talk about the ag industry. In fact, in Jackson et al (2020), they found that anthropogenic methane emissions arise equally from ag and fossil fuel sources.
You reference an IEA website about fossil versus biogenic CO2 emissions, but of course, you are ignoring the very crux of the problem with is methane, not CO2. CO2 and methane are not the same thing but both have heating effects on the planet.
Your conclusion that you are harming the natural carbon cycle doesn't completely make sense to me because the end result of methane in the atmosphere is CO2 and water vapor. So that methane's end result as CO2 is already accounted for in the natural carbon cycle.
You are incorrect to say that methane only lasts a decade. The atmosphere has a natural cleaning agent called, hydroxyl radicals that oxidize methane over a series of steps into CO2 and H2O.
This is a slow process which is why over a decade CH4 is ~84 times worse than CO2 and ~27 times worse than CO2 over 100 years. This reduction in heating effect is because CH4 is slowly being broken down into constituent parts.
In addition, we have seen a weakening in our hydroxyl radicals to be able to oxidize CH4 effectively, and I've tweeted about these already in a few threads.
I won't really address the claims regarding the cattle industry as they seem to be entirely sourced from one paper. The IPCC report is based off of a review of 1000s of papers and concluded that the majority of CH4 emissions come from the animal ag sector.
Another paper that does cite yours did come to this conclusion though.
"We show that, even in the absence of any other emission reductions, persistent drops in atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels, and slower carbon dioxide accumulation, following a phaseout of..."
"We show that, even in the absence of any other emission reductions, persistent drops in atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels, and slower carbon dioxide accumulation, following a phaseout of..."
"... livestock production would, through the end of the century, have the same cumulative effect on the warming potential of the atmosphere as a 25 gigaton per year reduction in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, providing half of the net emission reductions necessary..."
"... to limit warming to 2°C. The magnitude and rapidity of these potential effects should place the reduction or elimination of animal agriculture at the forefront of strategies for averting disastrous climate change."
"I haven’t found any estimates on the economics of bitcoin mining powered by biogas from landfills and other waste management sectors." Maybe chat with @Vespene_Energy for some numbers.
" methane emissions are also biogenic and the same general considerations apply to them as emissions from animal farming."
Incredible claim that doesn't pan out. In 2012, 30% of global methane emissions came from landfills. (El-Fadel et al, 2012)
Incredible claim that doesn't pan out. In 2012, 30% of global methane emissions came from landfills. (El-Fadel et al, 2012)
In terms of the effect of converting methane to CO2, I too was a little concerned about this. But, I recently read a paper on atmospheric methane that leads me to think that the net effect is minor compared to the over the overall impact of CO2 emissions.
Please refer to, "Perspectives on removal of atmospheric methane" Ming, et al (2022) for a pretty good analysis of the subject.
"By returning to CH4 pre-industrial levels, the increase in CO2 resulting from CH4 oxidation is small compared to global Co2 annual emissions, while the reduction of the radiative forcing could be significant. Net warming could be reduced by about 0.5C"
This is talking about reducing existing atmospheric CH4, it should then be an obvious extrapolation that the comparable effect of methane combustion to CO2 from the bitcoin mining network would have a similar effect should it reach it's theoretical maximum potential.
Which is what I think you also miss in @DSBatten's report, which is that what Daniel provided is a theoretical maximum. I personally do not believe we will achieve that much.
You also go on to address issues with the efficiency claim. I can't directly address that number that is used. But what I can say is that there aren't many studies on this but the one that I did find should at least alleviate some of your concerns.
In Nezhadfard et al (2020), they had a similar idea that we do. They wanted to use power generation as a way to recover flared gas.
My key takeaway is that it depends on the generator model. I did ask someone who works in the o&g fields about the type of generators they use, and it sounds like they are using RICE, which ranked the best in this paper.
You can see that in comparison to the flared stack (green) RICE generators performed much better at reductions. 
"In other words, even if emissions are higher than previously estimated, not all those extra emissions can necessarily be used to power bitcoin mining."
@DSBatten does not deny this. In fact, his estimation is based on a smaller percentage of total sources.
@DSBatten does not deny this. In fact, his estimation is based on a smaller percentage of total sources.
I want to also note on that previous graph, that CO from megafires is possibly the cause of the inability of hydroxyl radicals to oxidize methane effectively. Reducing CO would also alleviate the burden on the atmosphere.
Overall, I commend Lorenzo for putting so much effort into thinking about this problem. In the end, I agree that the reality that we will capture all the emissions detailed in @DSBatten's paper to be unlikely in practice. However, I don't agree with the biogenic argument.
Landfills and ag are responsible for a big portion of anthropogenic methane emissions and if bitcoin mining can pay even a small part in reducing these emissions, along side other possible approaches (see the atmospheric methane paper), then this is a net win for everyone.
We are living through an emergency, we need to use all available tools to solve this crisis and bitcoin mining can be part of the solution. Sunset clauses are a great idea and I support this, too. This requires policy work, so I recommend you contact @SatoshiActFund for that.
OK, I guess that's it, thanks for reading. /end
Here's a shared folder that contains the papers I referenced in this thread. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bmE-0crBgnUA_-FPhLNIU7_g0mNo3gkS?usp=sharing
