Gizmos to Measure Emissions

With so much talk about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, how do we actually know if we're doing it?

We can't count on companies to self-report, particularly if those companies are feedlots: How on earth would they measure their animals' flatulence?

Why, with this handy gizmo, a monitor about the size of a personal computer that can measure emissions within a 200-mile radius.

California has begun using a handful of the $50,000 gadgets as part of the state's implementation of its groundbreaking emissions reductions legislation.

The analyzers are especially useful for measure mobile-source emissions — hence one monitor's placement near Los Angeles — and oft-forgotten methane emissions — accounting for another in the heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley.

Use of the gizmos will add accountability to cap-and-trade schemes by ensuring that they don't result in increased emissions, as some critics fear. California's climate plan also includes a cap-and-trade scheme.

If agribusinesses' full-out assault on federal emissions reductions efforts, I'm betting that California's substantial ag interests are not going to like the analyzers, particularly when they result in Google map images like this one of the methane plumes coming of their feedlots.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons