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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?
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
Uhhh, 1 teragram is 1,102,311.31 tons. How is that not 1.1 million tons? And how is that shoddy journalism again? Or are you pissed because they're not expressing it with the correct number of sigfigs or something?
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.
Sure. Give them millions of dollars of grant money to do more research while we pass legislation to make manufacturing even more difficult in America so we can export the rest of our jobs to China where they can ignore all environmental laws. Of course, at present rate, the world-wide economy will soon be completely shot, so after we kill off a couple billion people from the resulting unrest, diseases, and famines, our human contribution will be greatly reduced... to negligible effect.
So no. Not really.
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
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.
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.
Having to worry about short tons vs long tons mean that the US system is bizarre.
Parent is insightful, +5.
We have, as a nation, in the name of Corporate Greed and the Maximization of Profit, destroyed our manufacturing sector, which was the world's greatest after WW2. We have ceased to create real Wealth, and now we produce only imaginary Wealth. Not everyone can be a Doctor or a Lawyer or an Engineer. We need actual jobs that actually produce things.
Our entire system is based on a redistribution of wealth; we take it from the many and concentrate it into the hands of the few.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
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.
Poseidon? Cthulhu need so lay off his Poseidon Masala! ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You know what's funny - if the story were about metric vs. U.S. vs. Imperial measurements, the conversation would devolve into a global warming flame-fest.
Dark Reflection
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 Arctic Is Leaking Methane, as predicted by Global Warming."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on