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Burning Ice Drilled from Alaska's Slope
bagboy writes to tell us that as sources of renewable energy are being sought, BP has announced a new method of extracting natural gas from ice underneath Alaska's North Slope drilling fields. "Scientists with the federal Energy Department paid $4.6 million to drill for the hot ice just below the surface of the Milne Point well, which is situated northwest of Prudhoe Bay. [...] Now, scientists from around the world are waiting for pieces of this strange ice to conduct their own tests and determine whether Alaska's frozen grounds contain untapped, clean-burning energy."
a snowball's chance in hell of ever working.
Do you even know what the hell you are talking about?
Of course it's renewable. All you gotta do is:
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This mixture forms all over the contenental shelves. And, as pointed out here, in Alaska as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_hydrate.
s -selling-solar.html
There has been an ongoing effort, especially by the Navy, to figure out ways to exploit these deposits. The rapid release of the methane may be a hazard to drilling and shipping and is also considered a possible cause for rapid climate change in the past.
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Solar really is clean. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
"the few remaining bit of ice left on the planet"
are you for real? there is litterally billions of tons of ice on this planet. i'm going to just assume you've never even been outside your own little burb on this one.
i think i know whats going on here, your one of these people who needs to feel self rightgeous about something, but because the world you live in is really quite good, you make up this imaginary enemy to attack. your own confusion is eveident in the fact you advertise an anti war demonstation in a thread about drilling for methane trapped in ice
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No. Only releasing CO2 that has been locked out of the ecosystem for an extended period of time affects climate change. All the rest is already factored into the system, and simple cycles around between plants and animals.
That's the standard line from the pro-oil PR companies, yes. But it's absurd. The CO2 already in the ecosystem, as I pointed out above, is not contributing to climate change. It's in balance already. The old 'cows farting' line is quite warn out, and completely discredited. Only *new* sources of CO2, such as those locked up in fossil fuels, and which therefore add substantially to the atmosphere when burned, contribute to climate change.
This is a key point that people unsure on climate change are being fooled by. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between plants, animals and CO2.
In hydrocarbons burning the hydrogen provides most of the energy. Burning the carbon provides some, but the carbon is mainly useful for packing the hydrogen in a form more dense than H2 gas for convenient storage and handling.
As hydrocarbons go, CH4 has a higher ratio of hydrogen to carbon than any other molecule: Every bond on every carbon holds a hydrogen, none are "wasted" connecting to other carbons.
So if you're going to burn hydrocarbons for energy, methane releases the least CO2 for a given amount of energy produced.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So now instead of burning fuel which causes global warming and in turn melts the ice, we'll have cleaner fuel which doesn't melt the ice, and all we have to do is melt the ice to get it!
I love it when a plan comes together.