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Russian Scientist Discovers Giant Arctic Methane Plumes
thomst writes "Russian scientist Igor Semiletov of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska Fairbanks revealed in an interview with The Independent that his team discovered 'powerful and impressive seeping structures (of Methane gas) more than 1,000 metres in diameter' during their survey of the Arctic Ocean earlier this year. 'I was most impressed by the sheer scale and the high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them,' Semiletov told The Independent's Steve Connor. This finding is important because methane is estimated to be 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it could indicate that global warming is about to accelerate dramatically."
It was the dog!
In this case it seems that most of the methane is locked up far deeper than will be affected by rising temperatures for the foreseeable future.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011EO490014.shtml
So, not good, but maybe not as bad as appears at first blush, thankfully...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Now, the next question would be whether it'd be profitable for anyone to access this methane. I wouldn't think so, seeing as oil rigs burn it off when drilling, but would this be different?
""The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times,"
I'm OK with her statement, until this:
"...and this has never happened in the history of the planet," she added.
So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, she can measure the slope of the line (rate in rise over the run of time) precisely enough to say that the slope of the line over the last 200 years is steeper than it has been in any other 200 year period in the last 4 billion years? Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.
Thinking back to the trouble that they had capping the horizon well, I can't imagine capping a 1km diameter source and capturing the output will be particularly easy? or could it be "routed" into an appropriate catchment device?
It seems that methane has at least some intrinsic value, whether as a fuel source and/or feedstock to other chemical processes. Perhaps (crazy talk around here, I know) the free market might be able to do something about this now apparently abundant resource?
Hehehe.
Insert additional jokes here, such as:
- He's Russian? I thought he was Transylvanian or something.
- No no, Frankenstein was the scientist. Igor was just an assistant.
- Man, biology must be a tough field. The guy drops a brain and suddenly he's deported to the Arctic?
Mega-giant civilization destroying hurricanes next. We're doomed.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
I feel that this is an excuse to get around the ban to drill the Arctic for natural resources.
Where does methane come from? ... natural sources (principally wetlands, gas hydrates and permafrost, and termites).
Methane is emitted from a variety of both anthropogenic (human-influenced) and natural sources.
In soviet russia arctic methane plume discovers you
Who pulled Mother Nature's finger?
Nothing I see in that article suggests that this is a new phenomenon...aside from the hyperbolic statements of the scientists.
The author is astonishingly remiss in not asking the obvious question: did this just start? It could be that such methane plumes have existed forever, we just never detected them. This is the EIGHTH such cruise/survey. They should be able to conclusively say "we checked this area in at least one or two previous instances and such seeps weren't observed", no?
It seems logical that there must have been plumes like this for a while, to prompt (and justify) such a large-scale survey.
Yet both the scientists and article author seem to gloss over the fact that "never seen before" != "never happened before".
-Styopa
Problem solved.
This is a gold mine of resources. There are a lot of great things going on with methane studies, from fuel cells to low energy conversion methods.
Sen and postdoctoral associate Minren Lin announced a breakthrough. By dissolving a powder of rhodium chloride in water, along with carbon monoxide and oxygen, they had produced acetic acid from methane directly. The reaction took place at a relatively low temperature (100 degrees centigrade), required little energy, and left no environmentally harmful solvents to throw away. http://www.rps.psu.edu/sep98/methane.html
Colleagues of ours created a highly porous carbon-nitrogen polymer, which we realised had very similar structural motifs to the Periana catalyst,' Schüth says, 'so we wondered if we could incorporate platinum into the structure.
If the mixture is then pressurised in an autoclave with methane, the methane is consumed and methanol formed at conversion rates comparable to Periana-based systems but with the solid catalyst easily recoverable at the end of the reaction. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/August/10080902.asp
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Just lay out a giant tent and capture it. The methane goes up right and there's nothing of value in the way (the tent will get covered in snow and animals can just cross like usual). Instead of having to drill for fuel just let it come to us.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Very good, they went to a remote place and noticed something. Is this new, or has it always been taking place and nobody noticed? How long has someone been looking there?
Just light a match. (Oh, and stand back a bit.)
Tow it up to the Arctic and use it to encapsulate the methane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
Well, you'll have that thing here there, but I bet it's colder than a witch's tit in them Siberia, but you can put your boots in the oven, but that donâ(TM)t make 'em biscuits, I tell you, there ain't no Russian scientists. There were a couple, all they do is new vodka recipes.
What's Russia anywho, it's all made up to keep us running around like a blind dog in a meat house. I knew a Russian scientist, he don't know his ass from a hole in the ground, and that's what they'all looking at there.
Maybe a tipping point in global warming has just been passed...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
I'm sure this is an unpopular sentiment amongst the crowd here, but I'm stuck in the cold northeast and as a result of the poor economy it wouldn't make financial sense to take a paycut by not getting a job in my field and moving to a more pleasant (warm) part of the country, even though cost of living would be tens of thousands less. A little global warming can take the edge off and make life here just a bit less unpleasant. The earth is dynamic and has always been changing, warm swings, cold swings, and all sorts of changes. If a couple degrees warmer average temps mean a shorter winter and less snow, I don't mind.
Fire and Ice: Permafrost Melt Spews Combustible Methane
Could we not start to bottle it up, as we do propane, and then be able to either figure out how to use it as fuel source, or maybe use it out in space as a fuel source if it is toxic here on earth as fuel source....I mean I am not a scientist but I figure any pressurized gas could act as a great source of alignment control unit on a craft in space.....?
Bee do do doooo. Be do do do do!
"This finding is important because methane is estimated to be 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it could indicate that global warming is about to accelerate dramatically" Or, conveniently left out of the horror story, is that fact that since it was just discovered it could have been going on for a very long time and the effects are already covered in the temperature data and it makes no difference at all except as an interesting find. But balanced and thoughtful reportage wouldn't grab so much attention.
methane plumes
1. Capture methane.
2. Pipe to areas needing energy.
3. Burn in place of coal, gas, etc.
4. Profit!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Really? I'm the first one?
no text
Or are you too dumb to consider "moving out of the cold northeast"?
And will you welcome with open arms the Mexicans who will have to leave their country because for them warming is a bad thing?
No scientist, ever, anywhere, thinks that the Antarctic is going to melt completely. Ice mass and permafrost that happens to be in a sufficiently cold place (central Antarctic continent being the most obvious location) will stay frozen. The exact amount of permafrost today must necessarily be a delicate balance, so some warming must melt some permafrost (well, given that some landmass does exist at intermediate latitudes).
The increase of methane must be both the result, and a partial cause, of any warming. Causation can and does go both ways. No, it's not a runaway chain reaction, but it's a settling-to-some-new-balance, which might be disastrously different from the pre-industrial balence (for debatable values of "disastrous").
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/methane-time-bomb-in-arctic-seas-apocalypse-not/
we mine the methane and use it :)
I would assume there is money to be made on huge deposits of methane.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
They say it looks like torches, huge torces. Burn it, torch them. Looks like a duck, quack like duck, smells like duck, feel like duck, taste like duck, them it must be a duck. TORCH em, they must be torches.
Well the only thing we really have as of our technology is a thermonucular device large enough to act as a catalyst then it will just keep burning and burning. HUGE fart so huge everyone should laugh.
Funny how art imitates life... Typical classic science fiction movies (not modern movies:) the scientist(s) get dismissed or ignored by the antagonists who end up WRONG with big consequences... The problem is resolved with an "I told you so" moment(s) followed by application of the discovered truth(s) to save the day. Usually some heroic grunt does it and gets most the glory. Moral: be a heroic grunt who listens and applies science.
---
The negative projections and theories from the actual scientists largely have been ignored for the mild stuff because people can't handle the truth-- even the mild things are easily fought with industry propaganda in some nations.
Reality has been running closer to the more negative side of the theories and not in the middle. It makes one wonder that if cultural/human bias causes such dire science to be skewed towards a more positive, more conservative model for many reasons-- largest most likely being as not being dismissed as an alarmist (since prestige and credibility are the currency of professional science... Safer to underestimate and be in error than overestimate.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I realize this may be the wrong place to say this, but, who still finds Global Warming to be true?
I think there is some 'Climate Change' going on, no doubt, but you people are still talking about Global Warming? It has been total speculation for decades with no actual proof. But who are we to say the chicken came before the egg.
To support my claim, does everyone forget the leaks on climatology and the scientists that altered date for years to show that Global warming existed? It seems like mainstream media washed that up, or found no one wanted to listen to the truth.
Haha...I am sure the attacks will come now...
Ice dam. cataclysmic torrent. sabertooth squirrel. It's all there.
""The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times,"
I'm OK with her statement, until this:
"...and this has never happened in the history of the planet," she added.
So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, she can measure the slope of the line (rate in rise over the run of time) precisely enough to say that the slope of the line over the last 200 years is steeper than it has been in any other 200 year period in the last 4 billion years? Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.
This is a classic semantic disconnect: The difficulty you have with the author's statement revolves around the usage and meaning of of the word "history."
According to Wikipedia, "history is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events." Thus, by it's very nature history is a human construct, and constrained by the time period during which humans have been recording data.
When she uses the word "history" in the context of the article, the author is referring to all of the records that are known to exist from the beginning of human record keeping. And so far, in the human era, nothing like this event has ever before been recorded.
If the author had phrased it "in the past" rather than "in the history of the planet," her implication would jibe with the inference you have made about her meaning.
It might be helpful for you to think of the word "history" as equivalent to the phrase "recorded history." It is a redundant phrase as the word "history" denotes "recorded," but the mental exercise could help you to avoid this same semantic dilemma in the future.
Also for completeness: it is true that the word "history" is sometimes used in common language to connote simply "the past," and dictionaries will recognize this--however, in most contexts it is not used this way.
whale farts!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
"This finding is important because methane is estimated to be 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it could indicate that global warming is about to accelerate dramatically."
Hahaha. Not exactly. These things didn't start doing that yesterday. Which means they have been part of the EXISTING climate for a long time. They are not about to make things worse just because they were discovered. That's not the way it works.
The question is the answer. If the question is "How can we raise taxes?" is the answer: The problem is overpopulation; or, The problem is global warming.
Oh really?