Emissions of Methane are known to be 20 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, far exceeding estimates for gas drilling and production, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study, focused in Weld County, Colorado, is home to 20,000 gas wells. Four percent of the methane produced by these wells is lost to the atmosphere. That’s double what was originally thought. Methane accounts for roughly 10% of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide. Leaks during the drilling, production and transmission of natural gas are the greatest source accounting for about a third of all man-made methane emissions. Researchers also found surprisingly high emissions of benzene, a carcinogen, and other pollutants.

In January 2010 I wrote in these pages that we were exporting our emissions to China and that China was beginning to chafe over this fact. Of course the United States was not a signer of the Kyoto protocol in 1990 whereby countries that did sign agreed to limit their emissions of green house gases. Our reasons for not signing? Our administration was concerned that the signing and adherence to a specific emissions goal would stifle business and industry and cause the loss of millions of jobs. Another reason was of course that we were the biggest polluter on the planet. And we lost the jobs anyway.

In its first session the 112TH CONGRESS has crafted a bill to amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas due to concerns regarding possible climate change, and for "other" purposes. That "other" is so vague as to be laughable if the rest of this proposal weren't so ridiculous. If it becomes law the country stands to set back the passage of a rational energy policy many years.

The journal Nature, in it's recent issue, tells us that air pollution from Asia is showing up over the western states in the skies over California, Oregon and Washington. It comes as no surprise and it has likely been going on for a long time...