Slashdot Mirror
Undersea Deposits of Frozen Methane Found
geoswan writes "The CBC is running a story about large deposits of
Frozen methane off the
coast of Vancouver Island .
The deposits may be 850 meters deep. The story doesn't say how the methane came to be a
solid. Pressure? The story doesn't address what technology could be used to mine these deposits,
if the decision is made to develop these resources. The CBC showed pictures taken of the methane
hydrate. Sure enough, it looked like a big snowbank. It is an environmentally sensitive area. So, how about it, should it be exploited?"
Who owns the area where the deposit is? Is it owned by Canada, or is it in International waters? And how will they decide who gets to "exploit" if they decide to?
they found frozen farts, let's rejoice! And then let's post a story about it.
I saw this on tv; there's butt-loads of solid methane on the sea floor in the Bermuda Triangle area. One theory of the vanishing planes is that the gas bubbles up to the surface and creates a big area of methane gas above the surface. The planes flew into the gas, and their engines ignited the gas, blowing them up. Possibly the same scenario with vanishing boats. I forget how the layer of solid methane got there, but apparently this is common in many places around the world.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
...as if millions of trolls cried out with bad fart jokes for this topic... ;)
"Holy flammable gas Batman, did they just say methane on Slashdot?"
"Yes they did Robin, you know what that means."
"Links to goatse! Oh the horror!"
"Yes, and we haven't much time to lose. To the Batmobile!"
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
You know, we have something like 15 millian cows in the US alone, and we haven't even begun to milk that source yet, why go to the bottom of the ocean for it?
Other sources include:
1) Our office after Qdobo's 2 for $2 Thursday night burrito special.
2) My uncle Floyd.
3) The United States Congress.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Well, nobody strike a match.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
In a bid to silence the many critics of Slashdot's poor editorial team, the decision has been made to radically alter the editorial style of the articles. So, hyperlinks in the featured stories will now not only be underlined, as per usual with links, and italic, but will also be bold .
That'll shut 'em up.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
According to the french science magazine "Science et vie" who made a very interesting article about that last month, those methane banks are caused by high pressures and low temperatures. The article also speculates that it could cause a enviromental hazard if the water temperature rises and the methanes rises to the athmosphere thereby contributing to global warming.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
There's more of this stuff in the North Sea -- I've seen a cool film clip where a scientist takes a chunk of it and sets it on fire!
...by ENORMOUS, I mean quantities larger than gets released in decades of industrial/agricultural activity. Vast vast vast amounts.
However, the last time I heard of these deposits, some folks were worried that mining them would destabilise the mass, causing an uncontrolled release of ENORMOUS quantities of methane. Which would mean bad things for the environment, what with methane being a greenhouse gas, and all.
1) Frozen methane
2) Bruce Perens after he got fired from HPQ
3) The FreeBSD developers and their failed 5.0
It's not actually frozen methane as such. The freezing point of methane is much too cold for that. It's a clathrate essentially a form of ice with methane molecules trapped among the water molecules. It's stable at temperatures just above the normal freezing point of water, and high pressures. If the pressure is released (for example by bringing it to the surface) it decomposes into water and methane gas.
It seems intresting as to how it existed there in the first place, but imo I wouldnt touch it, because man are eating away at the Earth's resources and arnt stoping anytime soon. This is just another example. Find alternative sources for energy, else get a few thousand cow arse's lined up and wait for then to fart!
Most living things produce some methane. At depth, the pressure is high, the temp is about 4 degrees and methane will freeze solid just by the water pressure since its on the solid side of the triple point .
There is a huge amount of frozen methane over most of the ocean but only where its about 1000m deep. If you can find a way to get it out at lower cost than oil, you can put opec out of business.
I've heard in the past about methane hydrate deposits on or under the ocean floors around the world but the points i've heard made before revolved around the fact that the hydrate can become unstable and lead to the release of vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane being a very effective greenhouse gas means this is probably something we really want to avoid. So, no, we should not "exploit" it but we should probably look into ways of managing it?
Beware the methane hydrate. Crazy megalomaniacal Cossack tries to destroy east coast with tsunamis caused by exploding "Fire Ice" on sea floor. Clive Cussler wrote a book about this stuff, released this year.
1. Find frozen methane
...I'll leave the goatse link as an exercise to someone else.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Can you use methane to cook hot grits?
methane is dying.
I hope this doesn't kill any renewable energy projects that Canada has in the works. Yes, this will buy them more time but they, like the rest of the world will wake up one morning and discover that the fossil fuels are gone. Sooner than most people realize. No, I don't own a hybrid car, and no, my house isn't solar powered. But I do think that GM has the right idea (shockingly!)
Jumpin' Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas!
Someone claimed to have found a similar phenomenon off the coast of Florida, around where the fabled "Bermuda Triangle" was supposed to be. Theory went: every now and then, seismic activity would crack the methane crystal, releasing some methane gas in the process. This now-liberated methane bubble would rise to the surface, and everything was cool if its path toward the atmosphere was free of obstacles like boats or planes... however, on the off-chance that a ship might be passing right by where the methane was surfacing, that ship would become unable to maintain buoyancy--as it now rested on a bubble of gas instead of a blanket of seawater--and would go down. Same thing for the planes: if the methane bubble, which has become more of a loose cloud now that it's free of the ocean, happens to be in the path of an airplane, that plane will dramatically lose almost all lift from its wings (since they're made to be working lift from normal air, which is much heavier than methane), and it, too, hits the sea. Weird.
"Has frozen methane ever been released before? 55 million years ago, 20% of the world's frozen methane reserves melted. This sparked cataclysmic changes in the atmosphere: global temperatures rose by 13 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the ice cps and forcing many species to extinction. 80% of all deep-sea creatures became extinct, and there were severe consequences for land animals. If vast amounts of methane were released, the highly explosive gas would be ignited by lightning, scorching huge area in a fiery hell-on-earth."
Now, do you want them to touch it? :))
Sure enough, it looked like a big snowbank. It is an environmentally sensitive area. So, how about it, should it be exploited?"
In a word: No.
Why create new risk for environmental damage when CONSERVATION (a reduction in Western Consumption) would prolong our existing (already bad) sources of pollution?
I will never 'support' additional non-renewable energy creation (bc it causes more(any) pollution) while disposable toys/packaging comes with childrens meals, while everyone drives a SUV (that seats seven but never contains more than 1), while western consumer culture encourages disposable-worthless garbage be created (and wastes our existing 'energy' and 'pollutes needlessly')
Basically, until we learn to use what we have wisely - and reduce our consumption (pollution generation) to a more natural balance, we cannot continue to dig up more and more and more and more and more crap we dont *REALLY* need... unless we want to make the planet toxic beyond our ability to live on it... and btw, this is a finite limit, a real 'destination' we are straight on course for.. the question is when do we get there.
More information on Methane Hydrates on the continental shelves can be found at TECFLUX at Geomar. Find the photo galleries here.
The TECFLUX (TECtonically- induced FLUXes) project is a German-American effort dedicated to the long-term study of continental margin gas hydrates on Hydrate Ridge, Oregon. This multi-stage research project was based on more than a decade of research on the Oregon accretionary margin and on recent results from Sonne cruises 109 and 110. During these cruises massive hydrate deposits were recovered from nearsurface sediments; and sites where fresh water and methane gas from hydrate decomposition were documented. This newly discovered site lies less than 50 miles due west of Newport, OR, making it very accessible for detailed study. This setting is a perfect natural laboratory for the study hydrate formation and decomposition in continental margin.
Remember that scene in the movie "Paint Your Wagon" where, during a funeral service at a burial site in the Old West, gold was discovered at the bottom of the 6' hole? I vividly remember people jumping in with shovels and the corpse (wrapped in a sail) flying out. I thought that was pretty funny then. I still do. I think the chances of that area remaining pristine are directly and inversely proportional to the amount of money to be made from that deposit.
To seque a little, how should (or can ) one decide objectively/mathimatically between short-term and long-term benefits?
It is an environmentally sensitive area. So, how about it, should it be exploited?
Of course! That's what environmentally sensitive areas exist for.
--George W Bush
now thats how it got there....
In the book, an accidental massive nuking of clathrate deposits causes a runaway greenhouse effect. Not pretty...
I think he was talking about much larger deposits than this, though, and a heck of a big nuke (well, antimatter, I seem to recall. Details...).
In any case, it's a pretty good story for the weather effects, but there are some very disturbing sexual scenes, so you've been warned...
Oh, great idea!
... (or even the methane created by cattle...) and not on harvesting a stuff that's responsible for the greenhouse effect and that brurns to another stuff that's also responsible for the greenhouse effect.
Just burn all that methane and blast even more CO_2 into the atmosphere!
The greenhouse effect is already bad enough!
People should concentrate on using solar power, wind energy,
Well, I know that it's economical a very interesting alternative to oil, but...
This is a SF novel from 1994 which covers exactly this scenario. The long-term effects of global warming include the melting of the ice caps, as we know, but this book is about the shorter-term effects. An overall rise in the sea temperature, due to a huge release of clathrate methane, enlarges the hurricane-spawing areas of the ocean (areas above 27C). The result is larger and larger hurricanes, until, well, you can guess the rest from the title.
Reviews: here and here.
Ouch. Do you still want to touch those deposits?
(this is not a
Huh? What's supposed to have happened then?
Hey, I say it's a great idea. Why manufacture weapons of mass destruction, when we could just have nature do it for us? I say go for it! Kill the world and have it done with.
This is bad news for Canada... Bush is going to want the land now...
42 + 1 = 42
Just to be clear, the article states that the methane deposits are under 850 metres of water, not that the deposits themselves are 850 metres thick.
I used to work as a fi$herman on large trawlers in Ala$ka and I'll tell you first hand that anything that wasn't the fi$h we wanted was immediately thrown overboard, with rare exception- fi$h is where the money is. It's hard for me to believe that a deckhand would actually pay attention to something that must have resembled a rock or piece of ice, but then again I bet boats have been pulling this stuff up for a very long time and it went ignored just for that reason.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
We'll strip-mine the other planets later.
CowboyNeal after a night at taco bell.
Knowing human ingenuity (and greed factor), if there's a way to /e/x/p/l/o/i/t tap into it as an energy source, it will be done.
Then again, it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase....
Cap'n! She's gonna blow!
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
A site with more information is here.
Here is a paper about how frozen methane may offer hope as alternate fuel
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Methane deposits like this are everywhere.
Scientists are worried that if the ocean temperature continues to rise more methane will be released into the atmosphere. This will supposedly boost global warming, increase the overall sea temperature even more and release more methane. It is a vicious cycle thing in National Geographic a couple months ago.
Are there things we have to do to protect the environment? Sure. Smog in cities. Poison in the waters. This must indeedy be cleaned up. Strip mining, clear cutting these can all leave ugly scars on the landscape.
But this global warming stuff is just making a mountain out of a molehill. Climate change is going to happen whether we are here or not. Global warming or global cooling, glacial flow, heck even mass extinctions will occur no matter what human kind does. It happened long before we were around and it'll happen long after we are gone. The earth has gone through far more dramatic climate change then anything we are witnessing - multiple times.
Look at what happens all around us - our industrial output pales in comparison to the amount of green house gases emitted by the Mt. St. Helens eruption for example. Oil seeps up from the sea. And these methane deposits - ever think they may just make it up to the surface after particularily major events- storms, etc?
We think we are this all powerful force that is going to overrun the earth changing it in ways that it has never changed before. Bloody nonsense. We can do some damage sure and we must be at least a bit careful. But enough of this screaming bloody murder every time we even think about using an energy source.
Suppose there is this vast, tappable resource of methane. Let's dig it up and burn it - but replace or retrofit coal fired power stations to use methane...wouldn't that be an improvement? oh sure you want solar power and wind power - but guess what, it just isn't workable yet on any sort of large scale.
The cow's aren't happy about being exploited.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
the density of the surface water drops fast if milions of liters of gas bubbles up to the surface. if the density drops far enough, ships will sink into the ocean because the water pressure drops.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys." --P.J. O'Rourke
P.J. O'Rourke really should have said "irresponsible teenage boys". I knew several growing up, myself included, who if given car keys and whiskey would have returned both to their rightful owner.
How come it doesn't float when methane and frozen water are less dense than liquid water >
use it. Are we in the 21st century or are we still in the Stone Age? Maybe all you enviro-nazis want to live in a cave and crap in a hole in the ground - I do not.
BC
Playing armchair scientist for a moment (and damning the worms to worm-juice) - mine that baby! Aside from the immediate, relatively clean energy supply, the experience of undersea methane hydrate mining would be good to have for future space-based mining.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- James Klass
Jesus would win... He's hung like this
(hold arms outstreched like on cross)
anytime we stuble on bits of energy sources, I always have that same feeling that I get when I'm playing civilization and get free gold or find an area with a well stocked mountain to mine.
and thank goodness that it wasn't a rouge tribe hellbent on killing us.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
75 million years ago, after placing hundreds of millions of bodies near volcanoes around the world, and of course before he exploded all the nuclear bombs. Xenu had one hell of a huge dinner. I mean this guy ate like there was NO tomorrow. He ate and he ate. After he finished he went up on deck of his boat and felt a cramp coming on. Pretty soon the pain got so bad that he was having trouble seeing. Suddenly Xenu found himself in the water sinking like a scientologist. The ONLY thing that saved him was the massive amount of gas in his gut which when he farted propelled him from the bottom to the deck of his boat. Quite a miracle. I don't know if Xenu thanked LronHubbard or if he thanked himself but it was still a miracle. Soon the gas settled to the bottom and froze. There ya have it. Another natural phenomenon explained through the wonders of scientology.
There's been a series of stories about oil wells refilling themselves lately. One of the ideas is that our current source of oil is from methane that was trapped beneath the Earth's surface at the big bang, and from fosilized animals. This story could actually be further evidence of that idea.
t ml h tml 6 8/202-8329969-5193459 o p.html
An alternate theory is that their is a biomass layer bacteria below the surface of the Earth that is producing methane. That methane is then changed into oil by heat, preasure, and the filtration to the surface of the. Haven't you noticed that most oil well are dug where there is a large amount of sandstone and other porous rock?
<Useful links>
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/gold_pr.h
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/recharging/
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/Energy.html
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/origins.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/03879854
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/margins/seeps_worksh
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
hey, just saw this on my screen from div^H^H^H tv.
a great 'documentary' if i may say, if not intrested in history of species just look it for the cool effects(and to get perspective).
and i read about that methane from a science mag like ~4-5 years ago. dunno if nowadays, but back then they hadn't actually brought any ice up from the ocean floor(there weren't means yet, because of the high pressure required to keep it in ice), and stated that all the pics of scientists setting methane ice on fire were in fact made using lab made methane ice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
times more than the world's conventional natural gas preserves.
Fascinating article from the US
DOE says we've known about this stuff for a century: Methane hydrates
form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost
regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath
the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters where high
pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred
meters thick.
It has been known for years that methane hydrates on the ocean floor might provide more energy than conventional fossil fuels. There's an interesting article on them from the US Geological Survey here
The fact is that the earth contains virtually unlimited supplies of energy that can be tapped into by man. And that is apart from the truly huge reservoir of nuclear power we can tap into. There is no energy shortage - not even an oil shortage - on this planet.
BBC has an article about a possibly similar incident in the North Sea.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Huh huh
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You're forgetting one large source I can think of; garbage dumps. They burn it off a lot so the dump doesn't blow up ;0. As far as why the liquid's there, that's real easy. It's cold. Gases are liquid when they get cold enough, propane is -40 F, Butane is 5 F and methane should be somewhere in the neighborhood I suspect. Because temperature and pressure are intermingled in the gas laws, the pressure could have created the liquid as well however.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Do they really need it that bad? Why don't they just take ten thousand hoses to ten thousand cows and hook them up butt first? They'd have all the methane they could ever need and help preserve the ozone layer at the same time.
Methane is hydrophyllic under certain pressure and temperature regimes. It can easily form a slushy substance known as methane hydrates. These are not only a resource, but commonly a production problem in deepwater (5000') offshore environments where flowing temperatures are low. They can form in lines and plug things up. I am doing an undergrad project on these and I have friends doing grad work on them as well. It's neat stuff, and the vast quantities mean a tremendous future for good ole clean burning natural gas. Wanna see something really amazing? Check out the methane resources beleived to be associated with geothermal brines.
Sure. let us exploit this, burn if for fuel and Use up Oxygen we would normally use for breathing. This stuff will be enormously expensive to mine. A total dangerous experiment at 800 PLUS feet deep in the ocean. Sure, plants tend to replace Oxygen when they are able to get the necessary raw materials to extract the Oxygen, but how can we assure this will happen? Desertification is already in progress worldwide. Fouling the oceans will merely reduce the amount of sea borne plants that can help produce/liberate more oxygen for life processes. Anyone want to convert to a sulphur based existance?
"GM Cows that dont fart so much are being developed right now."
The downside is that if you let them get more than about four years old, they explode violently.
-- Terry
I saw a report on the global warming flash points within earth. Basically the idea traced the carbon output of rainforests. Geologically global warming was gradual but intensived at certain time periods. These time periods were centered around forest fires in the rain forest areas. The general map is this. Rain forests can only act as a carbon sink for so much carbon before the dead material created by the forest begins to add to carbon output instead of the plants breath cycle decreasing it. In natural historic global warming (without man made intervention) the increase of life on earth slowly moved carbon distribtion until the atmosphere warmed this slow warm hyper excelerated in the last phases. This caused quick changes in temperature followed by a dramatic cold period. The key was the current rain forest model. It appears rain forests hold more carbon than predicted. In tracing this carbon it was found that dead organic material was carried by the rivers and decayed producing methane. But instead of the gas being released in the atmosphere this material was pushed into the sea depths and froze. Methan ice packs have been hit by oil drilling before and than come up a boil. The theory is that this extra carbon sink accounts for the rapid period of global warming in the geological evidence. Slow global warming slowly raises the rates of forest fires releasing more carbon from the forests when temperatures hit a point of affectin sea temperatures the methane in the ocean becomes gas. These large storages are dumped almost instantly creating a dramatic and quick rise in temperature which melts the ice caps and glaciers. This changes the saline levels of the ocean changing the heat distribution of the currents and flipping into a cold period. So it is best to not bring up these carbon sinks but to leave them untouched. Again the drive should be to move away from carbon based fuel. Related links2 18_earthbelch.html
m l
/ 3_Methane.htm
a ges2/116.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-01k.ht
http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles
http://superstringtheory.com/forum/warmboard/mess
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
It's not frozen methane -- it's a cap on an undersea cave. If you take off the cap it will release the seamonsters! Run for your lives! aaaaaahhhhhh! ahhhhhhhh!
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
IOn fact these are treated as drilling hazards witht tendency to explode when penetrated. Only recently have drillers become more confident in technology to produce them. Transport of product is still a problem. Very few natural gas ships. Most is by pipeline.
Why on Earth would we need to spend millions of dollars to find out how to mine the stuff when we are already producing plenty of the stuff? Every rubbish dump on earth is producing methane as a side product from the decomposing waste. Surely it would be cheaper and more ecologicaly sound to use that as a source of methane? The frozen methane is best left where it is, otherwise who knows what additional environmental issues why might face?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Unless there is an environmentally safe way of removing the methane, and I seriously doubt there is, leave it alone.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
There is no global warming. We're still coming out of a very recent ice age, moron.
ppl in glass houses should not throw rocks. global warming is the act of the earth warming up which you state by saying that we are coming out of an ice age. Well, on the plus side, the neanderthal repulicans (read you) are at least acknowledging that the temperature is raising. Perhaps in the future, they will state that mankind is at least possible cuasing some of the rise (actually it has never risen this fast, so most likely we are cuasing it).
Environmentalists are really economic terrorists. They're out to bring down the evil US capitalist economy and replace it with a socialist paradise, and the environment can go to hell for all they care.
I tend to agree that some of the environmental groups can get in the way, but then again what exactly are they trying to stop? The logging of state or national lands? Or is that they want true accounting of numbers. Old growth is worth a lot of money. Far more than what Bush/Norton/Owen conies charge and probably a lot more than what the dems were charging as well.If it is such a big problem, then have the lumber companies buy their own lands, plant their own trees, and harvest them. In fact, being the liberatian that I am, I am very much in favor of this approach.
Rather than allow thinning in forests by evil capitalist logging companies, they tie them up in court until millions of acres of overgrown forests burn to the ground. Small fires == ok, and part of the natural way, but the massive, scorched-earth fires are ecologocal nightmares. And the "environmentalists" caused them.
Okay tex. let me clue you in. We in the west USA, the true west, do not really care much for your medling in our business/land. You call these fires the problems of environmentalist? no. They are the direct result of several things
1) too much over loggin in the old days, which caused:
2) the environmentalists to step in and try an stop all logging.
3) Lack of rain.
4) lack of rain.
5) lack of rain.
We in the real west, would appreciate your staying out of our lands and simple allow us to do the right things. What is right? well, some lands need to be burned. In fact, just plain scorched. Some thinning should occur in others.
and others should be allowed to keep growing (we do not want to look like texas).
The problem is that your fuher is looking to restart whole sale loggin again, not thinning.
Finally, global warming is occuring and it is reducing rain/snow here. Hopefully in the future, as the simulations show, the west will become lush and the east becomes arid.
I was interviewed for a PhD place (which I didn't get) in 1994 which would have been analysing "bottom simulating reflectors" in seismic reflection data from the Vancouver Island area. It was already known that these "reflectors" represented methyl hydrate deposits, and this was one of the reasons put forward on the grant applications.
Although the PhD really concerned geophysical techniques, the background methyl-hydrate argument supporting the project was actually concerned about global warming (warming seas -> destabilisation of methyl hydrate => might be a good idea to know how much and how stable the stuff is) rather than a future fuel source.
RB
We have plenty of methane that doesn't even need to be mined. Most public landfills have to vent methane properly to prevent explosions. With the right business model, I'm sure state & local governments could use income from selling off methane to be refined into an energy source Hell, even the EPA supports this course of action. Why bother with underwater mining, when it's practically in our own backyards?
More information can be found under methane hydrate in google or:
article
among other. It's really an interesting compound and future power source.
This news is several years old now.
Solar = destroy you planet faster... The process for making silicon solar cells is very very VERY nasty and pollutes worse than dumping raw gasoline directly into a lake
Not if you're using thin-film cells.
Also not if you're using concentrators and very small cells.
Especially not if you're doing both.
Also especially not if you're using a non-photovoltaic system, like concentrators and a heat engine.
Of the "alternative" energy production schemes proposed, I find solar farms to be the most plausible as a real solution. (Not the solution I'd choose, but at least a potentially practical alternative.)
You can use solar energy to heat water and run turbines, If you use parabolic collectors. You can also use it to heat phase-changing liquids, that can be used to heat homes or power tubines. You do not have to use solar cells.
Actually, the gas molecules get trapped within a cage of water molecules. Depending on pressure, this can happen above the usual temperature where water freezes. In deep sea drilling, this can cause things to ice up, even in fairly warm water, if the pressure is high enough.
The result can be costly in terms of money (processing equipment not working or hydrates clogging up pipelines, for example), or costly in terms of human lives. Blow-out preventer valves can freeze in the "open" position, giving a false sense of security, or hydrate plugs can clog up pipes, until they shoot off down the pipe as the pressure builds up on one side, eventually arriving like a projectile at the other end. The Piper Alpha fire in the North Sea was caused partially by gas hydrates preventing safety valves from closing.
Gas hydrates can be very problematic, and chemicals such as methanol (called inhibitors) are routinely added to the oil/water/gas mix that is pumped up to prevent the buildup of gas hydrates.
On the other hand, they can also be used to store gas. One volume unit of gas hydrate can be separated into 179 volume units of gas and 0.8 volume units of water.
Gas hydrates are fairly common in the ocean floor. In fact, the largest land/mud/ocean floor slide known to man, off the coast of Norway about 7000 years ago, is suspected to have been caused by melting gas hydrates releasing their "grip" on the sand.
Maybe they could use torches to cut large chunks of the methane apart and then bring it to the surface :)
Chris
A year or two ago, a submersible exploring a methane hydrite ice deposit (might have the name a little off) were amazed to find "worms" swimming around and apparently living in tunnels they burrowed/ate into the solid methane hydrite. They brought some up for study, that's the last I've heard of them. Anyone else have any info? By the way, they looked more like swimming millipedes in the video clip I saw.
Wait until they dig it up and find the massive deposit of frozen MANURE underneath that created the methane. That'll be the real environmental disaster, oh yeah. :P
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
<daft>So it's obvious how these methane deposits were formed - they're carbon-sequestration caches, established by a reptillian civilisation during the silurian period, in their attempt to avoid their global warming problem - but they were too effective, and caused the ice-age that begins the devonian, and did away with the silly silurians' civilisation.</daft>
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Can we mine this resource without any impact on the surrounding sea/coastal environment? As with every other mining operation I can think of - the answer to this question is a most definite "NO". The Pacific ocean/coast already has enough environmentally hazardous activities occuring there. How many species/strains of endangered fish, waterfowl, and other sea life does the area have already? Too many.
I saw that show as well (Discovery?)...and the video of the upwelling by that oil rig was incredible....you don't often see fire in and below water. :)
However, as I recall it wasn't frozen methane, it was large amounts of methane trapped in rock....so much that the rocks could actually be ignited and burn. I don't know if that really changes anything...but it wasn't actually frozen methane.
The anti-salmon
according to this article http://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html they did try to create Hydrates with other gasses. Namely with carbon dioxide. Wouldn't this method be a cost effective way of removing the "green house" gasses from the athmosphere? Could someone with chemist background provide some more info plz.?
You oil crazy yanks keep away from Vancouver Island and it's shores. I not interested in some Amereican Mega Corp raping the land here, so bugger off.
Scientific American has had several articles on these compounds. See:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009EC CC-3F88-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=4
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E0 257-B855-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID= 2
"Somewhere there is a car that gets 150 miles per gallon" This car is being witheld from the public by a major corporation."
"Cutting down trees is bad. "
"Increases in CO2 caused the trees to grow faster, which created more undergrowth, which is why we are having more forest fires"
"Everyone should be forced to live in cities." Fight sprawl.
Anything the Earth Liberation Front says.
-
Sorry but listening to environmentalists can be bad for your health. Now being a reasonable person I know you did not mean to shut down the economies of the world. I know that. If you are talking about conserving energy and conserving resources then we can agree. Before oil runs out, another fuel will be found to run our vehicles.
To prevent villages being destroyed again, right now there is at least one self-powered fountain by the lake. Scientists dropped a pipe to the bottom, pumped up a little water, and as the water charged with carbon dioxide rose...it bubbled and pushed itself up and out of the top of the pipe.
Now that it started, the frothing is pumping more water up and it will keep doing that until the amount of carbon dioxide gets very low. Several fountains are scheduled to be installed there.
I will note that a methane bubble is one possible reason for that airliner which blew up just off the New York coastline a few years ago. It certainly explains the big fireball.
However, ignition is never certain and it is also possible that the shock of passing through a methane bubble is enough to destroy an aircraft. Methane, you see, is of different density than normal air. The airplane is happy in normal air, but then it hits an area of less density which also is moving rapidly upward. The airplane suddenly loses lift, the engines go out, there might be an upward push (first on the nose), the plane will tilt sideways if it doesn't enter head-on...and then the plane passes through and slams into the normal air on the other side.
Remember that the nose of that 747 off NY had broken off?
(quoted from Thomas Gold)
When this happens on the ocean floor the methane may combine with water under high pressure and low temperatures to make "methane ice" and chemosynthetic bacteria and methane ice worms live in it!
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Gas just wants to be free...
Only about 30% have methane in their farts. It depends on the bacteria living in your guts. The rest of us pass CO2, hydrogen and small amounts of hydrogen sulfide than accounts for most of the smell.
"It is an environmentally sensitive area. So, how about it, should it be exploited?"
Am I the only person who thinks this stinks? I think that this is one of the major problems in the world today. We humans see something that looks good, and we exploit the hell out of it without a moments thought to the repercusions. We are constantly thinking about money and self intersts. This has to stop. There will always be more money, but there is only one Earth, and I for one happen to like living here.
How does methane actually cause greenhouse effect? It's not the burning of the methane, which creates only a small quantity of CO2 per KJoule. It's the methane itself, which, during the course of extraction, distribution and usage, will inevitable escape into the atmosphere. And methane is a MUCH more effective greenhouse gas than CO2!
BTW, that's why the cows in US and India do, in fact, contribute to the greenhouse effect quite considerably.
Sigged!
Methane is a green house gas, plain and simple. Environmentalists and native groups get so stressed about "offshore oil and gas exploration" that they forget what they are talking about. Leaving this to melt into the ocean and bubble up is plain lousy...it is bad for sea life and bad for air quality...bad for ozone. Mining this (properly) is the best thing we can do for the environment.
Mmmmmm, powdered frozen methanesicles.
Many landfills may vent methane, but many don't vent enough to make it worthwhile to generate power from it. Some of them do though, and the states or corporations that run them are already using it for power generation.
-beme
1971
Yes, the gas-in-the lake phenomenon is knows as 'lake overturn'. I think the principles are the same. Gas is kept under pressure at the bottom of the lake (not enough pressure to solidify it but enough to keep it from rising). The gas comes from underwater vents in the sides of volcanos.
When a tremor or landslide dislodges rocks from the banks of the lake into the water, they disturb the gas when the reach the bottom. The gas rises to the top of the lake and (since it is heavier than air) creeps over the water and ground at floor level suffocating animals and humans. Whole African villages have been decimated overnight by this phenomenon - leading to many myths being taken into local folklore.
Survivors have been the subject of fierce chemical burns as the gas reacts with the skin, and those who survive often tell of hallucenagenic experiences. Lake overturn has been recorded at at least two African mountain lakes - one of which the previous comment refers to. The problem is that the villagers have been crudely extracting the gas with hollow tubing to help fires burn (and possibly to kill fish?!) for years. But as the gas levels at the bottom of the lake rise, so does the chance of a disturbance releasing deadly quantaties of the gas.
There is a theory - i think still unproven - that should a volcanic eruption throw some hot magma into a lake with tonnes of flammable gas at the bottom... well you can imagine the rest.
This is why scientists are slowly syphoning out the gas from the lake. I forget its name but it is large enough that hundreds, if not thousands of people live on its shores.
You say they can't do anything? You obviously don't know about the agressive actions taken by Canadian fisherman when they barricaded our state's (Alaska) ferries!
... ... I got betta
They're viscous I tell ya! They turned me into a NEWT!
My SIG is a SG-552 Commando
Greg Bear used the methane deposits as an important plot element in Mother of All Storms. It's an interesting read considering about the possible consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
People are actually already doing this. In my home town, the fairgrounds are built on top of the old city dump. They use the methane taken from wells to heat the various buildings on the site (show barns, offices, ect...). The technology to do it isn't that complex; all you have to do is filter it properly.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
because those skinny European cows don't fart right?
Forget the corks for cows. Just equip them all with pilot lights!!!
Solid methane on the oceans floor is nothing new, and it shouldn't be suprising that they found some up north. Here's the deal: Plants and animals die, sink to the bottom, get covered in silt, mud, whatever. They rot, giving off methane, but the methane is trapped, supercooled and under pressure. So, it forms ice crystals. One of the coolist things I've ever seen is where scientists would pull methyl ice out of cores, and set it on fire: burning ice.
Now picture this...an undersea quake or current shift uncovers a large deposity of methyl ice. The water immediately melts it, releasing large quanties of it in gaseous form. As these bubbles rise and depressurize, they may glow from certain electrical phenomena. When the surface, if some unlucky boat happens to be in the area - well, boats don't float in air, and they may fall intact below the waters surface, leaving little or no flotsam. As the gasses continue to rise, they gain more static charge, and this tends to draw compasses away from magnetic north. Sound familiar? Radios experience interference, magnetic navigation aids are fouled, planes fly thousands of miles off course, run out of gas, and crash. Even more fun, planes which fly through the gas clouds ignite explosions.
This was all in someones book, and it almost perfectly explain the wierdness of the bermuda triangle for me.
we now know that cows evolved from sea creatures.
This is the kind of news story that always appears at the beginning of a Gozilla movie.
Save Tokyo!
Do not disturb the frozen methane!
Z. http://www.play.net Your games, my job. C'est la vie!
SunLab's website demontrates one effective way being applied in a few different ways.
It could be rocks saturated with methane, similar to those found under the North Sea - but if that's the case, the deposit itself is practically worthless (how much rock would have to be brought to the surface and crushed/heated/whatever in order to release the methane?)
More likely, these are just (again as in the North Sea) just an indicator that there are deeper reserves of oil and/or gas below the seafloor, and little to do with methane hydrates.
For that matter, althought he article says 'in about 850 metres of water', the text on the picture shows '850 metres below the ocean floor' - NOT the same thing.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
This press release from July 29, 1997 documents the discovery of some Weird Worms that LIVE in mounds of methane ice on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, about 150 miles south of New Orleans. http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/iceworms.htm So very, very weird.
"We think we are this all powerful force that is going to overrun the earth changing it in ways that it has never changed before."
Well, actually I think the issue is that we are powerful enough to change the Earth in ways that it has been changed before.
So rather than get all political about it, a smarter idea would be to figure out just how our actions do change the Earth, and then avoid changing it in ways we don't want to.
Anyone saying anything at all was "trapped on Earth at the Big Bang" needs to go back to his/her Geology books for a few years. Hint: BB = current theory of formation of the _Universe_. Formation of Earth = several billion years later...
There's a much larger concern that should be addressed: Being underwater, it's fairly safe from melting, partly due to pressure from surrounding seawater... But now that it's known to be there, it would be more in their interest to remove it... I'm not too sure of whether or not it would float if somehow it broke free of the seabed, but in the event of a sizable earthquake in the area (as it appears to lie on a major faultline)... Could it be dislodged, resulting in it's breaking free, rising to the surface and evaporating into gaseous form, adding to the abundance of already existing greenhouse gasses?
Secondly, there are ways to mine the material without disrupting the surrounding environment... In fact, it has the potential be the first deep sea industry... A hypothetical scenario could involve deep sea submersables designed to saw away at the ice, stowing the material in cargo carriers that could then be lifted to the surface for later processing on land, complete with a smallish base for crew, management and control systems... With enough effort, it could even be automated for safety's sake...
Just my 3.4 cents (adjusted for Canadian dollar)...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
...it is methane hydrate. That is methane associated with water; the water and methane molecules are entangled in a weird fashion, but it's solid and stable under conditions that are not quite exotic.
Global warming is happening on Mars right now too...
The simulations are rigged - there's also a simulation out there that shows that as things warm up, more water is evaporated, which produces more clouds, which reflect more sunlight and cool things off, it's self-regulating.
Oooh, the arctic ice cap is thinning - that's a sign of a coming ice age. The arctic ocean was ice-free during the last one.
Oooh, the antarctic glaciers are spawning huge ice bergs. That's because antarctica is cooling, the weight of the increased ice is making the glaciers flow faster.
If anybody is really concerned with pollution, and greenhouse gases, and the destruction of the environment:
well now that every terrorist on earth knows about it ,osama will put a diving bell over his turban and go smack it with a camelprod.fullfilling the prophets and making their camels fertile.praise allah.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"The shouting is a temporary side affect of the unfreezing process"
"Yes I'm having difficulty controlling the volume of my voice!!!!!! "
I should have known it was the methane
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
...no deal. And we don't want Celine Dion back, either. But we're glad Joni Mitchell still visits, even if it's not back on the Canadian prairies, where she was born. ...could you take Farley Mowat, though?
I'll bet you're a million laughs at parties.
Firstly, *every* place is environmentally sensitive.
Sensitivity to strategic perturbation is one of the
definitive aspects of complex systems. The reason
utilization of natural resources becomes controversial
is that what *aspects* of any given environment are
worthy of protection is a subjective value judgement.
In this case, failing to exploit the resource will
result in a future ecological catastrophe which
extends far beyond the region of Vancouver Island:
Methane is a primary greenhouse gas. It is crucially
important that we should extract the bulk of the
undersea methane deposits (which extend to many,
many other regions of the world as well) before
the ocean temperature raises enough to vaporize
those deposits. Otherwise, they will create a
global warming catastrophe.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
They have been researching this effect for years in the Gulf of Mexico. It's really no big deal and is found all over the ocean floors. If you want to learn more check this site: http://oceanography.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD5.3/sas sen.html
It has some good info about its structure and creation. Just read..
I don't know where you're from, but over here, they DO extract methane from the landfill, and they use it to run a generator, and generate electricity for a small town whose main industry is a Foster Farms chicken plant.
If they had a website, I'd link it for you.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Collection of Methane from old landfills is quite common in NW Europe.
Often (usually) it is used to drive a generator via a Diesel engine.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
"I'd like to see a weighted tax on fuel consumption and emission rate."
Actually those substantial gasoline taxes are a weighted tax on consumption and emission.
What I would prefer to see, as a midsized-car driver who is tired of seeing giant trucks with their bumpers at my eye level, is a different, more expensive, more strict drivers license for vehicles over something like 4600 pounds. Some people need big trucks that can tow and carry things, and they should be able to get them, but I want it to be inconvenient to use one for commuting. And a fedral regulation to lower the bumper height of new cars and trucks would be nice too. As it is, trucks are far too deadly to other vehicles on the road. The sad thing is that all the safety "advantages" of a big truck go away when everyone else has one too, and leaves the streets less safe on the whole.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
The National Post covered this story and mentioned that similiar deposits exist in the US North. These deposits would give the US a 2000 (yes, 2000) year supply of energy. Someday the rest of the world will wake up and discover that the fossil fuels are gone, but that day is far away.
PS: "fossil" fuel is a misnomer. We don't know how the hydrocarbons were created but it was not from a decaying biomass, the deposits are simply too large.
The planes flew into the gas, and their engines ignited the gas, blowing them up. Possibly the same scenario with vanishing boats.
That's not it, if you're referring to the Discovery Channel's recurring special.
The theory is that methane as a gas has such a low density that the planes loose lift, effectively stalling at their current velocity. Boats loose their displacement of water, and sink.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Anything that lurks in the soil that long can't be nice stuff.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't watch the Discovery Channel, but if they didn't have anyone on staff with enough knowledge to rule out such obviously impossible failure modes you should not be using them as a source of information (at least not on a more trusted level than the National Enquirer).
Unfortunately, a pilot in the midst of a huge bubble of methane might not be able to manage that, plus the engine quitting or backfiring (and if the methane was mixed with enough air to be flammable, BOOM!), and even if neither of those things happened the pilot would be breathing toxic amounts of methane and might not be able to control the aircraft.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I sense a disturbance in the force as if millions of trolls cried out with bad fart jokes for this topic... ;)
A troll (in net terms) is not someone replying to a straight line with lame jokes.
From The the Subtle art of Trolling:
"In Usenet usage, a troll is not a grumpy monster that lives beneath a bridge accosting passers-by, but rather a provocative posting to a newsgroup intended to produce a large volume of frivolous responses. The content of a "troll posting generally falls into several areas. It may consist of an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the readers of a newsgroup, or a broad request for trivial follow-up postings."
The region of Waterloo, Ontario does - read it in a local rag last year. They sell the methane to some company that uses it to fire their furnaces.
Methane is oderless. An oderant is added so people will notice a leak. So that stench is there to save lives.
If we were trying to do our best to avoid global warming, what we'd do is harvest the undersea methane, crack it into hydrogen gas and carbon compounds (such as CO2, but graphite would be preferable), and bury the carbon in a form which prevents it from being released for a very long time. We could do whatever we wanted with the hydrogen without worrying about climate change.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
its coating the alien space craft at the bottom of the ocean
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The University of Victoria has some more info on these deposits here.
I'm surprised no one has made this point yet, but you don't want to mine those huge reserves for methane, even if you have technology to do it safely. The methane that will be brought up will be burnt as fuel, and release all that stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide may not be as bad a greenhouse gas, but in the quantities mentioned, its bad enough. So you really want to be looking for a better alternative to carbon based fuels -aks
I saw a couple seminars about this several years ago. Why the news splash now? I think there are other deposits elsewhere as well. Also interesting is that methane is a green house gas, and that sure is a big sink that most people have not put in to their calculations. Wonder if we missed anything else?
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
... that shit doesn't sublime. If the sea temperaturewere to rise (locally, even) enough to turn these methane ices back into gas then you've got a butt-load more greenhouse gas, thus exacerbating the problem. Can you say "positive feedback"? (I don't think Dubya can...)
According to my geology classes, it's believed that the clathrates help to regulate the global temperature. When the seas are deep, and the amount of ice at the poles is low, then methane is sequested in the clathrates deep in the ocean. When an ice age comes and the ice at the poles grows so large as to lower the sea level and pressure enough the clathrates release the methane. Since methane is a greenhouse gas, it helps to end the ice age and start the cycle again.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Trash dump methane also contains plenty of corrosive gasses, which can cause problems with certain kinds of metering equipment.
Actually, Gold's Deep Hot Biosphere says that the petroleum deposits which we harvest are already the result of underground bacteria feeding on hydrocarbons. The rotting-plants origin is a myth -- look up where it came from. If there were more heat down there the methane hydrates would be getting eaten.
I saw the same program. The theory on the vanishing ships was that the gas release from the seafloor was large enough that the local density of the water is lowered, and the ship can no longer maintain bouyancy. It made sense if there were so much gas in one release, that the only water around was that contained in the space between the bubbles. Testing with models in tanks demonstrated the effect, but the researchers were not totally convinced the effect would be the same on the sea.
As for energy, current (very preliminary) estimates indicate there could be more energy locked up in methane hydrates in the sea floor than in all the coal and crude oil extracted from the earth's crust to date.
There was some speculation about the danger of extracting the methane. On another TV program run on TLC, a researcher was concerned that extracting the methane hydrate could accidentally trigger the stuff to undergo the conversion from solid to gas spontaneously, on a very massive scale. The resulting release of gas could be large enough to further upset world climate.
I say, let's investigate. Until we achieve greenhouse-gas free fusion, it could be an excellent energy source, if it can be safely extracted. It's so abundant, we could all drive Toyota Prius-es (or Priuii?) for like $0.01/mile (versus $0.07/mile on a typical 26MPG car at today's fuel prices)
USNG: 14TPU4605
I fucking hate them!
Actually, this has been done. There are a few prototype farms that use the cow-produced methane to generate electricity and heat the house, etc.
But however much methane is in a frozen lump at the bottom of the ocean, I see little point in mining that til we stop burning off millions of cubic feet of methane (natural gas) from oil drilling and coal mining operations. If we can't find a way to use what's now being wasted, why spend lots of money to bring up yet more surplus??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
this is too funny...........ha ha.
For a considerably more detailed and thorough discussion of clathrates or "gas hydrates," the following page Clathrates at Weslyan is handy.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
The public landfill near the city I used to live just straight-out burned the gas, for no other purpose than to prevent uncontrolled explosions later.
It's good to know it's being utilized elsewhere, at least.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
OK, so first of all, the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew. There are Greek copies of it (although not originals) which appear to be simple copies of the original (not translated at all). Revelation was a letter written by John, so the events there were not even recorded from Hebrew oral tradition. So you need no math to transcribe it, just copy the words as they appear. Innumerate scribes would have been more likely to leave the numbers the same, having no knowledge of what to change them to.
Secondly, the old testament is written in Hebrew, not Greek, and there many Hebrew copies, which agree pretty well with each other (Hebrew scribes were very meticulous about copying scripture, copied everything letter for letter even if they thought it contained errors, etc) and with the Septuagint, a very early Greek translation of the Old Testament. The bible only says pi==3 if you assume that the 10 and 30 are exact measurements (not rounded at all: even if the 30 were exact, the 10 could be rounded from 30/pi, about 9.55) and that they were measured on the outside of the bowl (instead of the circumference being around the inside). Unlikely.
Now, it seems that John could multiply because the 144,000 was broken into 12 groups of 12,000. Also, he does not need to square 10,000 for three reasons: first, the product does not have a name in Greek, just as you said. Secondly, it was written as two myriads of myriads, and only as 200 million upon translation into English. Third, he did not count them or compute their number: he heard it, presumably from his guide or from God. Revelation was a vision, remember?
In any case, the bible may contain some innacuracies, but it seems to me that these numbers were probably at least transcribed accurately.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/meth27.shtm l
Global warming will get that methane out for us, and we'll get to enjoy it without all that drilling!
(article: Ocean methane played role in extinctions)
Even an airframe failure would probably leave wreckage in the water (e.g. foam seat cushions), giving a hint as to what happened. That's why I discount things like this; there are too many ways for "normal" errors to account for the observations without having to posit methane bubbles or ET.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist