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'Exploding Lake' Provides Electricity For Rwanda
reillymj writes "There are three known 'exploding lakes' in the world, where volcanic gases build up near the lake bottom until they suddenly fizz over, suffocating people with huge amounts of carbon dioxide. But the lakes also hold methane and one of them, Rwanda's Lake Kivu, is being actively tapped as a source of natural gas to fuel a power plant on the lake's shore. The government hopes that within two years, the plant will be covering a third of the country's needs. By siphoning off the gas, engineers simultaneously defuse a ticking time bomb in the lake and provide power to local communities."
This is why we have science. Good stuff all around, assuming it doesn't get corrupted.
Wrong, it's a net negative, the contribution has already been made, this would reduce it by the difference. And probably even more as you can always trap the CO2 and use it for soda instead of generating C02 for that purpose.
The problem here is that is will blow at some time in the future without help. It may be triggered by a volcano or some other random event. It will eventually go off all by itself.
If you ignore it the potential just gets larger.
Isn't it actually environmentally beneficial to burn it? Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Right, which is why there's very little drawback to it. You burn it or you capture it and you burn it in a generator or use it in furnaces. In all cases you're somewhat better off for the reason you cite. But, if you use it for heating homes or generating electricity that's somewhat less capacity that you need from elsewhere.