Turkmenistan

[victor]

When is St. Greta gonna go and berate the Leaders of this country to put out the fire that has been burning for DECADES ! in the desert

[Workingman]

It's a tricky one, Vic.

In Soviet times an exploratory rig punctured a gas pocket and the ground gave way forming the crater - the rig fell in. There was no way to cap the crater and it was feared that the gas would escape and poison the surrounding area so it was set alight.

I suppose that with modern technology the fire could be put out and the crater capped in some way, but there does not appear to be the will to do so. In any case the gas would probably be extracted and sold on the open market to be burned somewhere else. There would be money to be made.... and not much Greta Thunderbird could do about it

[cromwell]

This is interesting. I had no idea about this.

[AliasAggers]

It's the first time I've heard about this, too.

It's hard to think of an answer to the problem.

[TheOstrich]

It does have its uses …..

In April 2010, the President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, visited the site and ordered that the hole should be closed. In 2013, he declared the part of the Karakum Desert with the crater a nature reserve. In 2019, he appeared on state television doing doughnuts around the crater to disprove rumours of his death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYiYi8-wCx0

[Workingman]

In the grand scheme of things it is no worse than oil wells flaring off natural gas, which is 23 worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. They have been doing that for hundreds of years on thousands of wells because, apparently, there is no safe way of transporting and storing it.

[victor]

Meanwhile we are told to cut our Carbon footprint. Laughable isn't it

[Workingman]

Sort of, Vic.

The carbon footprint and methods to reduce it, such as offsetting, are a bit of a con and a distraction.

What we have begun to recognise over the past few years is that destruction of various environments, and not just CO2 in the atmosphere, are likely to get to us long before climate change does.

Yes, CC is playing its part in destroying the environment, but it is us and our ever increasing need for 'things' that are doing the most immediate damage.

The UK might, or might not, become a nett zero CO2 economy, for accounting purposes, but we will not ever become self-sufficient in food or be able to go like-for-like on clothes, furniture etc. We will still use up finite resources at an ever increasing rate and then throw them away without any attempt to recover or recycle them.