Slashdot Mirror
The Arctic Is Leaking Methane
registerShift and other readers sent in news that the Arctic Ocean seabed is leaking methane. "...climate experts familiar with the new research reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science that even though it does not suggest imminent climate catastrophe, it is important because of methane's role as a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is far more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat. ... [One scientist] estimated that annual methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf total about seven teragrams. (A teragram is 1.1 million tons.) By some estimates, global methane emissions total about 500 teragrams a year. ...about 40 percent is natural, including the decomposition of organic materials in wetlands and frozen wetlands like permafrost."
So can it be capped and used for fuel?
Somebody light a match!
It is 1 Million tonnes.
it is 1 Megaton
it is 10^12 gram
it is 10^9 Kilogram
it is very easy to multiply with 10 in a 10 digit-system, so learn to do it right?
Are we not able to bottle this up, and use it as a source of gas, for vehicles, it seems a waste that all this methane is being
seeped out, and yet we are not catching it, bottling it up and using it for ourselves...?
Yo' momma. ::rimshot:: ::in before the other yo momma jokes::
Living With a Nerd
It wasn't the Russians after all.
better out than in
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...past civilizations, possibly arctic such (today we have evidence of the poles once having a warm, tropic climate) emerging for us, as a form of price to pay for our ancestors' cimres; these past civilizations' crimes against Gaia. And we, in turn, are of course doing a great job of leaving nice presents behind for future civilizations to suffer from.
Seen already.
...but can we do something about it?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Methane being 25 times more hazardous to the climate than CO2 then surely even burning it in-situ would be ecologically sound byproduct is CO2 + 2H20
Researchers have measured methane in the region before. Of course, now you can't find those reports because they're buried by this press release.
"A teragram is 1.1 million tons."
This is US (short) tons. Of course it is simply 1 million (metric, real) tons.
Let the unit war begin! Soon we will have passenger jets and mars probes crashing left and right.
And it's reeking of methane!
Next task, ask Al Gore why it's so dam cold!
Man, it's just a shame global warming isn't real. Then this story may actually have some relevance.
Quick! Someone make an impassioned plea to the U.N. to write a strongly worded letter informing the Arctic that its actions are unacceptable and intolerable. We must not abide this clear violation of greenhouse gas limitation policy. Please, be sure the letter is *strongly worded*!!!
The ice cap is farting?
1 teragram is exactly 1 milion metric tons, but it's also approximately 1.1 million funny American tons.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
It should be noted that 100-year global warming potential is around 23 -- the 20-year GWP is actually about 72. So the effects of permafrost thawing and possible release of any clathrate methane and the real warming impact in the short-term will be more extreme.
7 teragrams = 7,000,000 metric tons.
Far easier to think about if you work in units people are used to.
To compare to something in human terms:
The British Emerald is the largest LNG carrier I can find and can carry somewhere in the region of 77500 metric tons of gas (155,000 cubic meters with LNG having a density of about 0.5 kg/L).
So this is something like approximate to the largest natural gas tanker in the world releasing it's entire load into the air about 90 times over.
any corrections to figures welcome.
The Arctic isn't leaking methane.
The Earth is farting.
Another myth blown. I thought Washington, DC was the Earth's rectum.
It's from the under ocean citys
What a bunch of stupid humans we are. We're killing our planet and yet we have to fight these stupid, selfish, self-serving idiots who want to pollute a little longer, so they can buy that Hummer or McMansion. There is going to be hell to pay and all the Sen James Inhofe's of the world will suddenly disappear into the shadows.
I wonder what exactly "natural" methane is. When it comes from decomposing matter in permafrost, it's "natural" methane, when it comes from the digestion process of human-bred ungulates it's "unnatural" methane? I find it interesting how nothing humans do is considered "natural" despite that we are born here, eat here, shit here, and die here. I wonder just what is so "unnatural" about the human race, especially considering that we now supposedly reject magical thinking that he is divinely created and now believe he is an advanced ape. Yet his impact on his environment is always "unnatural" and impure and somehow different than that of any other species.
am I.
Mother Earth!!! *shocked look* *holds nose in disgust*
Factoid: My captcha is "intimacy" - not something normally associated with passing gas.
Earth radiates at around 10 micrometers wavelength. As far as I can tell, methane has no absorption bands near there. So, why is it reckoned that methane is a potent greenhouse gas? Curious minds want to know.
Why don't you go do something about it and kill off everyone you see.
The Earth will thank you for it...
Steinman, I know Medical Pavilion is your manor, but you might want to cogitate on this: ocean water is colder than a witch's tit. You don't heat the pipes, the pipes freeze; pipes freeze, pipes burst. Then Rapture leaks. Now, I realize you're a posh sort of geezer and, frankly, I don't give a toss if you piss or go fishing. But once Rapture starts leaking, the old girl's never gonna stop, and then I'll be sure to tell Ryan he's got you to thank.
-Bill McDonagh
/oblig
If I remember correctly, there was a story on here recently about cows that produce less methane and, thus, are better for the environment and won't cause global warming. So, is the fact that the Arctic releasing methane proof that it is suicidal? (Or maybe the Arctic is just Mother Nature farting a little...)
They failed to mention that another large source of methane is the digestive systems of all of the worlds bovine.
It is destroying our planet!
Bearded Dragon
we're all going to die...
Nature seeks states of equilibrium. The question is not whether we are a part of nature. The question is whether we are hurtling the earth's climate toward a state of equilibrium that destroys our civilization.
This does not require the entire earth to become inhospitable. But if there are enough strains on world resources, it will end up putting us through decades of misery which may result in catastrophic wars, food shortages, and the loss of all coastal communities.
Famines have killed millions in the past, and are still killing millions in Africa. Right now we have easily exploitable resources that allow us to enjoy a certain quality of life, but we are dangerously close to depleting a number of those resources to new low states of equilibrium. Add in unpredictable droughts, rising sea levels, and the loss of many glaciers that supply freshwater through natural processes, and you can see why people are worried.
I have teragram emissions every time I eat Taco Bell.
If I was a misanthrope who really wanted to piss in everybody's cornflakes, I'd take a trawler and a few dozen cases of dynamite and cruise along the Northern Canadian coast, blasting that methane loose from the sea floor. Talk about your low-budget ways to destroy^W ruin the world. I really don't see why the Dread Pirate Roberts, err, Osama hasn't tried this, I mean overlooking the whole being dead for nine years thing.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But I'm happy about it because I think it is important. Anyway since I spent a while putting my submission together, here it is for your (hopeful) enjoyment:
Will LIFE almost end AGAIN? Another Great Dying?
I've said it before (http://slashdot.org/submission/1066423/Another-Permian-extinction-on-the-way?art_pos=62, http://slashdot.org/submission/1056203/Global-Warming-Tipping-Point?art_pos=71) and I'll say it again: there may be a chance that we may be facing another Permian level extinction event. What is that you say? It was the greatest extinction event in earth's history (hence "The Great Dying") causing up to 96% of all marine organisms to go extinct and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. Remember, these are entire SPECIES that went extinct, individual population losses were obviously higher. The cause? Well according to Wikipedia: "only one sufficiently powerful cause has been proposed for the global 10 reduction in the 13C/12C ratio: the release of methane from methane clathrates;[7]"
So, as you can see, I keep saying this because the stakes are so high.
Well now there are reports (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=10010948) that the methane clathrates off of Eastern Siberia are releasing 8 million tons of methane a year. While currently "negligible" compared to global emissions of about 440 million tons: "The release of just a 'small fraction of the methane held in (the) East Siberian Arctic Shelf sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming,'" This WILL become more likely because: "If atmospheric temperatures rise, the hydrate stability zone will shift upward, leaving in its stead a layer of methane gas that has been freed from the hydrate cages. Pressure in that new layer of free gas would build, forcing the gas to shoot up." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902133637.htm. Of course what's driving this is the quick rise in temperatures in the Arctic/Antarctic, temperatures there are rising twice as fast as the global average (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane). So even if we manage to keep the temperature rise BEFORE counting in the additional methane release to a very optimistic 2 celsius (3.6 degrees for Americans) it will be twice that for the arctic regions. Remember also that these articles are talking about just a small part of the arctic methane clathrate reserve (which is itself just a tiny part of the global reserve in all the deep sea sediments) and that it is coming out of out of the sea bed in other places too. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902133637.htm).
If the temperature rises cause enough methane to come out to cause the temperature to rise even more we could be in for a very bad greenhouse effect. Methane is 20x more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2 and there are 500-2500 Gigatons of the stuff on the ocean floor compared to just 700 Gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere. So if just 5% of the stuff comes out, we've doubled the heat retained in this manner by the atmosphere!
Now I probably lost the climate-denialists/creationists/young-earthian/Republicans a while ago but to those of you still reading please consider that this is an EXISTENTIAL threat, that is it threatens our (humankind's) very existance. Maybe if temperatures soar into the mid-one hundreds, people will still be able to walk outside/in the winter/in Antarctica and exist in air-conditioned caves elsewhere but I think you'll agree we will have made our own hell on earth. So even if the chance of a semi-runaway greenhouse effect is very small we should really REALLY be careful. (To see the effect of a full runaway greenhouse effect, just visit Venus, hot enough to melt lead!).
Sure prediction, especially about the future, is hard. But the vast majority of climate scientists think we are headed for a cliff in the fog, fast. They may dis
Unless your american then everything is a ton.
If converting Methane (CH4) to carbon dioxide (CO2) reduces its greenhouse effect by a factor of 25, while at the same time providing heat, electricity, or locomotion, then this seems like a no-brainer of a win-win situation.
I have been leaking methane for some years now. Friends and co-workers have made the argument that I alone, contribute significantly to global warming and localized pollution, however, I am applying for a stimulus grant for research into myself as a viable energy source.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Too bad we can't simply hook this methane up to a Bloombox or fuelcell generator. Wish we could do the same for the cows...and maybe some friends of mine too.
The world changed, has always changed, and will continue to change. Be it by our hand, or natures. One would argue it's one in the same. So would argue that extra CO2 and heat will *increase* vegetation and improve bio diversity that goes along with it. Meanwhile, Humans continue to become the most adaptable mammal on the planet. This did not happen over night.
Sit back, take a chill-pill, and relax. Oh, and burn some oil. Life thrives on carbon and CO2, for you are the LIFE GIVER!
Life is not for the lazy.
Blame Canada
For a while atmospheric mehane was increasing. Then it stopped increasing a few years ago. No one really understands why.
Now I can blame the dog OR the arctic ocean!
Was that you?!?
Could we not just light a match? Seems to work wonders on the unusual methane levels in the lavatory.....
"The Arctic Is Leaking Methane, as predicted by Global Warming."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does anyone know how much "green house" gasses are contributed by volcanic activity?
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
There's a lot of it being done small scale in places like India and Pakistan, a lot of households run on biogas, but in areas with stacks of regulations, etc, it is not quite as popular. The hoop jumping requirements are Olympic caliber. On big scales it takes good quality expensive materials,as it tends to eat up steel. I've done it on a small scale, made some test runs using junk plumbing parts and tubs and old barrels, that's it. You do get good burnable gas relatively easy, it's those fine picky points of engineering that need to be sorted out and where the big costs lie.
In the US, the most common biogas harvesting is methane extraction from old dumps. On farms so far there are some examples, but it's just too expensive for most guys to build. There's a lot of interest to be sure, but once they look at the costs and regs, the enthusiasm drops fast. Even just composting on large scales is expensive and has some serious regs associated with it, and the fines for non compliance are bankruptcy class quickly.
We have three large scale litter composting sheds here, large scale as in hundreds of tons total at any given time being composted, and they have to be approved design, covered buildings, and once you jump through those expensive hoops to get that built, then you have new buildings that just add to your local taxes. Oh, then you need a hundred grand and up big loader, and one or two smaller bob cat loaders just to rearrange the composting litter. Then some spreader trucks, which ain't cheap either. More expense, more taxes and insurance, etc. So you try to do good, and they charge you more for that effort.
The government makes it almost a no win situation with that in other words. We've looked into shifting to biogas..ain't happening right now.
Start paying farmers more for their products than the wall street speculators get for server entry shuffling and flash trades, etc. on commodities....we'll talk. We'd have the re$ource$ then to do stuff like this more, and most farmers would love to go for it, because energy costs are killer, and farmers just love building *neat shit*. We are outdoor and equipment nerds. Our gadgets are big and expensive, so that means they have to pay, else you can't afford them. Nothing is pocket change, nothing. Everything is always "man this just sucks" expensive just to purchase or build, then ongoing maintenance, which is a huge set of overlapping projects all the time and repairs, etc.. Our farm has medium beefy data center energy costs, some thousands of bucks a week depending on weather extremes for electricity and propane. And you really can't chance, nor do they like to offer, any huge loans for this stuff, as one bad season, etc, could wipe you out completely. Ain't worth the risk, you most likely couldn't get the loan anyway, catch 22 and a half there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas
" Life thrives on carbon and CO2,"
No. CO2 it important to the cycle, but too much has effects that make the planet less habitable for humans.
While humans are adaptable, the Global warming changes are happening very fast compared to out evolution.
Too much CO2 will kill humans.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What is it? Ice caps cause global warming. The coldest part of the world is now responsible for the earth getting warmer.
It's ironic how all of these natural sources of methane/CO2 have existed for thousands of years before industrialization or we had anyone telling us that global warming existed, but now all these naturally occurring phenomenons are serious problems which are destroying earth's climate.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. If all these naturally occurring phenomena are responsible for negative changes in earth's climate the earth would have become inhabitable long ago.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
but in all seriousness ... I see a lot of neat scientific ideas for many things, but I've never really seen much about "farming" our skies. Sure - Cloud City will more than likely be non-manned and mostly just equipment - but hey - it's a start
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Maybe, but just a bit more will make the world a better place (assuming those models are correct--I don't think they are, as the effect of CO2 on atmospheric heat capacity is net negative when you include atmospheric H2O in your equations), opening up more direct shipping lanes (ie reducing fuel needed for transportation), opening huge swaths of farmland in Canada and Siberia, increasing rainfall in numerous places.
Remember, civilization THRIVED during the Medieval Warm Period, and just barely hung on during the Little Ice Age.
The planet would have to reach a level of heat never before seen on the surface of the planet to make life worse for us than it is now. The real problem is if the Earth COOLS, which has been shown throughout history to coincide with civilization collapse as agricultural production shuts down. THAT is not fun.
Yeah and so's my ass. The arctic has probably been leaking methane for thousands of years. The only NEW s is that somebody's been sniffing ( pun intended ) around up there and measuring the quantity. Come back in ten or twenty years and see if the flow rate has changed.
I cant help but wonder if this is incredibly common, just that we've never looked for it. Sophisticated sonar capable of detecting "non-visible methane bubbles" hasn't been cheap enough for anyone but the millitary until very recently (maybe fiften years), which is about the same time they started detecting this.
moox. for a new generation.
Look, I didn't want to get into an argument about the science of Global Warming. Too much heat and not enough light has been wasted for me to go there. Besides, I am not a climatologist, are you?
Rather I wanted to point out something. The only way for the conclusions (and by and large all I've seen from these guys are estimates and probabilities, not certainties), to be way off would be if there was a huge CONSPIRACY within the scientific community on this subject. Sort of like how the creationists think all of the biologists must be going off somewhere to work on a master plan to deceive everyone that evolution is true. Having known some professional, tenured scientists myself I just don't buy it; the reason why scientists get into a field that pays little, poor recognition, insane amounts of work (teaching and publishing) is because many (most?) are driven by the highest of motives. That's why I mentioned investment bankers; when times are really rough like when the U.S. cancelled the SCC (super conducting collider) some physicists no longer had prospects in doing research. So they went over to "the Dark Side" (which is how they invariably put working in investment banking). Working at a tech startup, a very bright guy I knew wanted, once he made his millions, to become an astro-physicist. For fame or fortune? Of course not, he loved science.
So I find it impossible to believe that the vast majority of all these climatologists are willfully deceiving us (or themselves). Sure there is peer pressure, sure they make mistakes. But they ARE TRAINED SCIENTISTS and they know more than almost any of us the limits of their models and their evidence. (Just going through your oral defense of your thesis will teach you that). Also you seem to think that models are the ONLY thing these guys have going; after decades of research there is a gigantic body of knowledge that is growing. And you know what? By and large it supports the general consensus.
Finally there is the fact that if one, or a group of them, could really make a good case that Global Warming won't happen they would become (scientifically) IMMORTAL. Remember, it is not the followers who become written up in textbooks, it is the ones who make BOLD (meaning contrary to orthodoxy) predictions and WHO ARE PROVEN RIGHT. Ultimately remember popularity counts for NOTHING in Science. Science is not politics or law or history; your peers don't decide NATURE is the ultimate decider.
In this case it'll be EASY we won't have to wait long. If someone were to make a scientifically plausible claim that GW is not gonna happen well we will know in probably well less than a human lifetime. It doesn't even matter if they are still alive ~ Mendel published his results on genetics and it was ignored well after his death. However, when it was determined that he was RIGHT and that he was the FIRST to come up with his laws on heredity, well now he's in every Biology textbook in every country in the world (well excepting some places I guess in the U.S.). This is the kind of immortality every true scientist craves, maybe you don't understand it but I'm sure a lot of the climatologists do.
Can anyone convert teragrams of carbon to burning congress libraries units?
"self-serving idiots who want to pollute a little longer, so they can buy that Hummer or McMansion."
Except the ones doing the polluting are too often the smaller guys.
Every nasty ass, fuel spilling crappy car on the road is owned by some shithead that thinks it's cool he's got a tuner that's slow and makes noise because he's ignorant, or some joe who drives a 30 year old pickup that puts out more gasoline in it's exhaust than my compact injects into the piston chamber. That Hummer driver puts out less crap exhaust and gets better mileage than the crappy ass early 1990s pickup, and with less side products in the exhaust too, despite his vehicle probably weighing half a ton more.
And most rich people, they don't drive Hummers anyways. Most are driving Q5s or G class Mercedes, some are even going to clean diesel.
I'd argue too that there are more crappy ass semis and black smoke spewing dump truck diesels than Hummers on the road, and more miles put on the former.
The McMansion probably runs on geothermal, and if not, has better fuel economy and less soot production with it's cleaner boiler or propane than the circa 1985 fuel oil boilers that still predominate in much of the US. Most large home are modern and recently built in the US, and have great fuel economy compared to the tract of real estate that was put up that were uninsulated pieces of crap that have barely been updated and weren't lived in by the class of people you are railing against. There are more wrongly insulated homes built it the last 30 years than the Tyvek wrapped ones in the last 15. I live in a well sealed but old home that is half the size of my parents' but easily burns 2x the fuel cost, and they've got a 15 year old heating/cooling unit that they're replacing this year; the newer units are easily 50% more efficient.
You want to save people energy? Run gas lines out to old neighborhoods, so people convert from oil tog gas. That alone will save more energy and get more efficient burners into an area than your wannabe green energy economy, at a fraction of the cost, and with far less government subsidy involvement.
Your anger is simply stupid and misdirected. Maybe the McMansion owner got rich selling fuel to meet demand, but it's the sum total of the smaller guy's consumption that is the problem. Call it a mini-China if you will; each person's per capita use is probably less, but the sheer number negates any argument that the predominate fuel users are the "lower" classes. *WE* have a large middle class, isn't that part of the point of your anger anyways, that against the rich "few?".
You can direct your anger at class warfare all you want, but the fact still remains, most green energy in the consumer world is consumed by the rich, not the poor. Of course, you'll argue that you have to take from the rich to give to the poor to improve the situation, but that overlooks the sheer simple fact that the greatest energy consuming producers are not the ones you are pointing the finger at.
And I'll say this--I've run into people like you many times in real life. I always ask where they get their energy from, what they drive, etc. Not one has solar panels or wind turbines where they live. Not one who has an option to choose their electrical producer has done so on the basis of greenness; they do so on price. Most are against nuclear. Most still drive drive a vehicle, most of them SUVs too. Most live in cities, yet drive miles to go on a hike, and think it's quaint to rent out a place where they burn wood (and if you are a energy circle person, you know that is worse than using wood as building material).
When Obama went green, I doubt he had a roof packed with turbines and solar shingles or panels on his Chicago home.
In nay case, you want someone else to pay for stuff you ought to be doing right now for yourself. That's robbery, not being green.
The fact still remains that I see more wind powered pumps, farms, and buildings in rural and suburban areas than urban.
the Global warming changes are happening very fast compared to out evolution.
No.
You might want to start verifying the hyperbole vs scientific facts when it comes to AGW. Most headlines are flat out wrong, and that includes the IPCC "for policymakers"-report. WG1 is barely acceptable, the rest is just non-scientific propaganda.
it's in my head
Careful - there is disagreement on the numbers. Methane contributes to the production of ozone in the tropsphere. Methane (with a half-life of 8.4 years) is 1/4096th of its original concentration after 100 years. The relatively high GWP after 100 years includes the secondary effects and we don't yet know how those will grow (or shrink). Check out http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/items/3825.php
Civilisation in Europe may have done well during the MWP. However, the MWP was a local phenomenon not a global one. This means that if it was warmer in Europe it was colder somewhere else. This is also true with regard to the LIA which also was not global. AGW is a global phenomenon. It is warming, on average (over time and space) everywhere on the Earth.
Just because land previously unusable for crops due to being frozen now thaws doesn't mean it becomes farmland. Available water at the right time of year, light levels and types of soil are also important. Some extra CO2 may indeed fertilise growth in existing croplands if there are sufficient water and nutrients available. Is that going to be case? What if warming also results in drying of existing croplands? Don't forget that the change from non-cropland to cropland may come with significant local albedo changes.
Finally, global warming has nothing to do with the heat capacity of the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere is not a problem because of heat capacity. It is a problem because it changes the radiative equilibrium. The heat capacity of the ocean is important (it is a vast sink for heat at the moment) and is one of the main reasons for the reduced warming signal that we are already seeing. If it weren't for the ability of the ocean to absorb heat from the atmosphere we would see a much greater warming response than we are.
None of this is simple. Every system is tied by feedback loops to many other processes. Just as an example, methane released from permafrost or underwater methane hydrates is involved in (at least) these processes: radiative equilibrium, atmospheric carbon chemistry, soils and soil processes, microbes in the soils, plant growth and decomposition, mineral weathering, absorption in the ocean (with simple temperature and concentration dependence) where there are biological and inorganic carbon cycles with their own nested interrelationships. All of these are taking place at all time and space scales. Nothing is changing in isolation.
Very Interesting. So the chart you reference seems to be mostly inline with Wikipedia's numbers 56/20 compared to 70/20.
What I wonder is the caveat you point out that the values for methane takes into account the 2ndary effects...that seems to really make it an apples to oranges comparison no? Wouldn't it need to also take into account the 2ndary effects for every other substance in the chart to be useful?
Stuff like that type of chart seems to give science a bad name. Saying the effects over time for this one thing will be measured differently but we'll put it in a chart and it ends up seeming to be a side by side comparison. Yes there's a caveat, but still.
Thoughts?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Let me point out that in order to "adapt" you have to change, not keep doing the same damn thing and hoping it'll all get better, somehow.
Just like the United States could refer to the USA or to United States of Mexico, America can refer to the USA or to the two continents. Which is to say, only an idiot would use the latter meaning.
IANAAS (atmospheric scientist) - I waste way too much time puzzling over this stuff. It's probably covered in atmostpheric science 101. I answered because I remembered different numbers than yours; I had to go search for that site. I agree about the bad name thing - too much simplification without enough surrounding explanations. Know any good (non-political) books?
"The Arctic Ocean -- Earth's icehole!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Sold a lot of those things back during the first big energy crisis then tax credits deal back in the 80s. They were basically *free* then if you had enough taxes taken out, so it was an easy sell. Carter sucked on most issues, but for energy, he was our top prez ever, and IF we had followed through with those goals from back then, we'd be doing a lot better today.
Ya, they work well. There's a lot of nice solar thermal stuff that people forget about it, only thinking about solar PV. In fact, my first solar project was a swimming pool heater in the 60s. How about solar ovens for cooking and water purification? I have some of that stuff, too, along with my PV.
The graph shows upward irradiance at 20 kM altitude. It doesn't show attenuation. Higher on the y axis means more radiation is leaving the earth through the atmosphere.
Of the black body radiation available, methane removes a bit at wavenumber 700 and wavenumber 1050. It doesn't even remove all the radiation at those wavenumbers.
In theory, methane might be a super greenhouse gas. In practice ....
The methane molecule is tetrahedral, but carbon dioxide is a linear O=C=O chain. There are many more ways to bend, stretch and twist the bonds in methane than in carbon dioxide, which can only bend and stretch asymmetrically (the symmetric stretch doesn't change the dipole moment and so it isn't infrared active). These additional bending modes correspond to more energy levels and more absorption peaks. The result is that given a reasonably smooth distribution - like that of solar and terrestial infrared - there is simply more energy absorbed to the peaks of methane than to the few peaks of carbon dioxide.
You can build a small scale methane digester out of an old barrel & some plumbing supplies. There is bugger all to a digester. a big barrel, maybe an h2s scrubber, co2 scrubber. There are videos on youtube. You don't have to use animal dung. Newspaper, kitchen leftovers, garden waste will all digest. What's left can go on the garden. Think of it as higher tech composting. As to the efficiency, how much useful fuel you get. Pass, never tried it.
Farmers on the other hand have a problem with animal waste. You buy 100 tonnes of animal feed your animals. You're going to get all that and more back as shit and you have to do something with it. Digesting it may be a convenient way of processing/disposing of at least some of that, while producing useful byproducts; methane, plus nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium rich liquid and solid fertilisers.
Deleted
...and I thought it was just me.
I'll just point out that humans as well as animals produce vast amounts of shit. It's expensive and energy consuming to treat.
Deleted
These polar bears are farting waaaaaay too mcuh
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Time to stop blaming livestock farmers.
First, eat pastured meat, not CAFO products.
2nd, petro is a far greater contributor of methane.
3rd, natural methane sources are bigger than both of the above.
The largest, by far, most effective, by far, greenhouse gas is water vapor.
Humans are not the source of water vapor.
Breath in. Breath out. CO2, H2O.
Now go grow a tomato.
Of course. However, we "adapt" because our environment makes us. Again, it always has, and will always do so. We've evolved to deal with global change. It's not an easy thing, and people die in the process. But by and large, our species is very good at adapting to whatever change comes our way.
I think the reason AGW is so popular is because people want to feel like they're in control. The idea being that if we cause GW, we can stop it. But what if GW is natural in whole or in part? That's a very scary concept because it means....we can't do diddly-squat to stop it.
Life is not for the lazy.
Global Warming Potential is bogus; you simply can't mix half-life and heating in a single number like that because the consequences of a long half life and high radiative forcing are entirely different.
Past history suggests that if GW is not anthropogenic, it probably won't run out of bounds - the biosphere is pretty good at regulating itself when we're not mucking it up (see Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis).
However, you seem to be under the impression that "we shall overcome" as a species. There is no inevitable course of human history - extinction is a very real possibility. The fact that we have, so far, surmounted all obstacles that came upon us does not mean we can survive everything. We've had a pretty easy going. No comets have hit our planet, for example (Tunguska aside). Yes, we're incredibly powerful. We're also incredibly stupid and full of hubris. And the hubris gets us every time.
Our politicians should make this behavior of the Arctic Ocean illegal, which is a politicians' usual approach to such things. Please think of the children, however, and don't make their methane gas emissions illegal.
I agree that we need to get rid of all the crappy cars. We need to get rid of this dirty shit called petroleum. We ALSO need to get rid of the damned McMansions. People need to learn that they don't need so much stuff. Recall on "Star Trek The Next Generation" that people had much less crap around them? It was futurist because the idea of not defining yourself by your geothermal, indefensibly-sized uber-house is what the future is all about.
Define yourself by the size of your brain pan not the square feet of the cage you inhabit.
You idiot.
Earth's vegetation evolved to fit the current weather pattern. We are causing a temperature change in 200 years that used to take 1 Million years. This is not a trivial thing like it getting slightly warmer. This is a catastrophe. You are the most stupid person I have encountered in years. You are a total and absolute fool. This climate change is the worst calamity that could have happened. If even 1% of the scientific problems that are expected actually happen, it will not be possible for us to live in any way shapeor form like we do now. This climate change thing includes catastrophic floods in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Houston to name just the American cities. Every plant will be screwed up and will die. Permafrost that has gathered CO2 and methane will melt, as is just now being seen in the Arctic as methane bubbles up.
And head in the sand morons will stand back quietly, not drawing to everyone's attention that they were against pouring water on the fire, having counseled to let that fire just "burn itself out."
Business just wants to profit a little longer by being free to continue polluting.
The world changes due to natural forces, we're one with nature, so anything that happens is ultimately natural? And we should just go along with whatever's natural? That seems to be your argument. If your house was set alight by a lightning strike, would you sit there and let it burn? It was a natural occurrence, after all.
Improved biodiversity? You expect new species to evolve faster than they disappear, under conditions that are changing far more rapidly than those under which they evolved?
Yeah, we're adaptable. But not being photosynthetic, we depend on other species. Our existence probably isn't a big deal to the universe, but I'd like to ensure that future humans have the chance to live a reasonably comfortable existence, and putting pressure on a lot of other species won't help that. You know what other things are pretty adaptable? Cockroaches. And crocodiles. Personally, I'd prefer that some less adaptable species stay around too.
Ahhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhh WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! Ahhhhhhhh, SAVE US! Ahhhhh, Humans are so EVIL. AHHHHHHhhhhh.....
Happy now?
Life is not for the lazy.
Yes, idiot, you have performed your role. Now go drown yourself in a 5-gallon bucket.
Okay, we'll start with you. Where exactly is it that you're staying? We'll send someone right on over to squash you like a blood-engorged tick.