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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?
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?
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.
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.
Low concentrations over a substantial area, much of it dissolved in seawater.
Unless Maxwell's demon would be willing to take the job, it'd probably take more energy to collect than it would produce when burned. It isn't even concentrated enough to just burn off on site(which, given the relative efficacy of methane and carbon dioxide as greenhouse gasses, would be desireable).
If there were just a single hole in the ground somewhere, leaking methane, this would be an opportunity. Low but alarming concentrations over a substantial area of ocean are completely useless as an energy source; but still a potentially massive emitter.
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.
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.
Three responses come to mind:
1) Earth radiates across a range of wavelengths, not at a sharp 10 micron peak.
2) Methane is supposed to have 25x the radiative forcing of CO2 per unit mass. A methane molecule has a mass 16/44 that of carbon dioxide, so a kg of methane produces almost 3x the molecules produced by a kg of carbon dioxide.
3) A particular absorption peak or the peak emission wavelength doesn't matter. The important thing is the power change caused by the integral over all wavelengths of absorption multiplied by emission energy at each wavelength. Here that is for methane.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
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.
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
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.
Global warming is disastrous to cities only, and changing for many regions, some for better some for worse. It is not suicidal for the Nature, just opposite, it may grant it some relief from the human problem...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"The Arctic Is Leaking Methane, as predicted by Global Warming."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
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.
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.