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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?"
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
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.
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.
"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? :))
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?
Yes this a major concern in case of global warming, trapped methane can buble to the surface and cause a major disater, and even further enhance greenhouse effect. There is a lot of this methane all around the ocean.
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
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
I challenge you to find ANY study that "all the academics and industries can agree with." Doesn't have to be earth-shattering or anything. Just one. In a real (printed) journal. Go on, we'll wait...
Yeah, right.
People should concentrate on using solar power, wind energy,
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 (Which by the way 1 gallon of gasoline will pollute 1,000,000 gallons of water to undrinkable levels) as for wind power, you need to get the idiots and morons who sit on boards of light and power, and city/county/state governments to pull their heads out of their butts long enough so that you dont have to spend a year fighting to get a tower erected to put your windmill up and THEN spend another year getting permission to tie into the electrical grid so that the excess power you create goes to benefit mankind.
until people start voting in smart politicians we will be doomed that way.... and I have never EVER met a politican that wasn't as dumb as a stump, but though he was a genius...
The only other resourse is to do gurella alternative power... you just do it and hook up without permission or permits... something that is happening quite alot lately... just pick up a copy of home power magazine.. or look at their website here
and you can make your own high efficiency wind power generation systems from crap and junk from here
but the absolute best thing to do is to figure out how to reduce consumption.. over-insulate your home.. change all lighting to compact flouresent... buy all appliances that are energy star compliant and at the very top of the efficiency graph. (Note: instead of spending $45,000.00 onm your beloved yukon that get's 4-12 miles per gallon... buy an aztek WITHOUT 4wd that get's on average 25-27 Miles per gallon if you need big for carrying things... or get a honda insight for the highest fuel efficiency.)
I agree, america = spend BIG and screw everyone else.. I live here.. I watch the masses of idiots who refuse to obey the speed limits and further reduce the MPG of their gas guzzlers, still throw trash out the windows and leave their homes with every light in the house on. It wont change until it's required, or energy gest's so expensive that it forces people to change... as they will not change willingly it must be forced.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
"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
It doesn't matter who owns it right now...because with current mining and salvage technology, that deposit of hydrates is a liability and nothing more. Right now, there's no way of safely and efficiently getting all that gas from the bottom of the ocean. If you went down there and hit a big chunk of that stuff with a pick axe, you'd risk setting off a chain reaction that could lead to a catastrophic explosion (no kidding...I wrote a research paper on methane hydrates for my degree) that could spell disaster for the whole world...(methane is about 50 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2)...or at the very least kill everyone at the site either by suffocation or fireball. Even if you gently try to scoop the stuff up and bring it to the surface, it will decompose on the way up and either suffocate everyone at the site or ignite and burn everyone to death. There's been several times already where an oil derrick was engulfed in flames because the hydrates around the site became unstable, bubbled to the surface and met up with a happy spark.
The point of all this informative rant: hydrates hold the world's most ginourmous amount of natural gas--but if you mess with it with current technology, you can release it all at once and really screw the earth up.
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?
Besides the article it has also been broadcasted in BBC series on global warming. Few notes: 1. It is not frozen - it is gaz-hidrate. Which is natural under the pressure+temperature conditions in question. It is though that there is a humongous quantity of methane tied in gas-hidrate on the ocean floor especially where rivers bring out organic matter into the ocean. 2. If you look into the global warming models - half of them do not account for this methane and methane has higher greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide. The ones that take into account this methane in general predict hell on earth. Basically once the ocean has warmed up enough the methane starts to come out which speeds up global warming and more methane comes out. Classic chain reaction. 3. There is some geological evidence that these methane eruption global warming events have happened in the past. It was presented on the BBC program in question. 4. Forgot how the show was called but it is possible that you may find some of the data on bbc web site (not news, the proper www.bbc.co.uk).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The leading cause of death on the planet today is good ol' malaria. Mosquito control with DDT could solve that problem - and no, it wouldn't require spraying massive amounts of tens of millions of pounds on food crops, just a few hundred thousand pounds a year.
"B-b-b-ut DDT is bad! The enviros said so!" - really? The evidence for that is highly questionable.
DDT also help with another up-and-coming disease, too.
> In my opinion listening to the environmentalists causes no harm; but if they are right we're fucked. So whether or not I agree with them or with you - I'm going to modify my behaviour based on what they tell me. I'll buy a more efficient car, I'll steer clear of GM foods, and I'll try to avoid creating vast quantities of waste. And where I can I'll also support them in their efforts.
Dude - WTF kind of logic is that? Believing the earth is flat is also harmless. (And if the earth is flat, we're fucked because someday someone's gonna sail off the edge! ) So even if I don't agree with flat-earthers, I'll avoid cruise ships and support the flat-earthers in their efforts.
How about trying something revolutionary, like the idea that "the d00d who makes the statement has the burden of proof". If the enviros make a claim, it's up to them to prove their case to you.
If, after listening to their argument, you still agree with them, modify your behavior. But if you don't agree with them, don't modify your behavior.
Avoiding GM foods because there's no harm there? You mean, like rice that could provide folks with beta-carotene and vitamin A, preventing millions of cases of blindness and about two million deaths every year? Yeah, no harm there.
Now I dig that we might not need the carotene-advanced rice, and as such, we're quite free to stick with regular rice if we so choose. But to support the environmentalist agenda to deny everyone access to this technology is going too far. So I choose to support GM foods (and most genetic engineering in general), and I'll eat the GM foods if they taste good.
And sometimes the enviro arguments do make sense. F'rinstance, I choose efficient cars because, umm, well, they're more efficient. Unless I'm hauling freight (which I ain't), I'm interested in getting from "A" to "B" in a reasonable timeframe, preferably with a minimum of expense. Hmm, the econobox costs $10K and $0.10 per mile, and the SUV costs $30K and $0.20 per mile, and the hybrid $20K and $0.05 per mile.
If I expect to keep a car for 10 years and I drive 5000 miles a year, I buy the $10K car. (I could save $2500 by spending an extra $10000 for the hybrid, losing $7500 - almost enough to buy another car!) If I drive 20000 miles per year, I save $7500 out of $10000 and hybrid starts to look pretty good - assuming I can get 10 years out of the batteries. The SUV sux azz and isn't in contention for me. But even though I think they're a poor choice, I wouldn't deny someone else the right to buy one. They may simply have different transportation needs than I do.
> And when the oil runs out and you're left with a rusting pile of useless metal on your drive remember to blame the government because "they should have done something".
Long before the oil runs out, it'll run low. Supply and demand will increase the price of oil. When it's $0.50 per mile for the shitbox, $2.00 per mile for the SUV, and still $0.05 per mile for the electric vehicle, everyone will have an incentive to switch. (...well, assuming we have nuclear power, which is the only way we'll be able to generate enough electricity to power all the cars when the internal combustion engine dies.
(Or would you prefer to burn more coal or natural gas - same amount of CO2 released - to get the electric current to recharge the batteries... or to electrolyze the water for the hydrogen in the fuel cells? Don't forget, you didn't mine the methane hydrates in the eco-sensitive offshore shallows, and you also helped the enviros ban genetic engineering, so you can't grow acres of sugar cane in the desert for ethanol, or genetically-engineer a batch of superbugs to crack water :-)
Well, dahling, if you put on a little lipstick, they'll probably let you live.
Um. Or did you mean rogue tribe?
Never mind.
"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.
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