Japan Extracts Natural Gas From Frozen Methane Hydrate

ixarux writes "For the first time ever, a Japanese company has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast. The Nankai Trough gas field, located a little more than 30 miles offshore, could provide an alternative energy source for the island nation, reducing its dependence on foreign imports. 'A Japanese study estimated that at least 1.1tn cubic meters of methane hydrate exist in offshore deposits. This is the equivalent of more than a decade of Japan's gas consumption. Japan has few natural resources and the cost of importing fuel has increased after a backlash against nuclear power following the Fukushima nuclear disaster two years ago.'"

Comments

Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But I don't understand why Japan doesn't perfect Deep water cooling technology, using heat exchanges and thermocouples to generate energy. Or is the Inland Sea not deep enough?

Re:Seems like a good step

[bluefoxlucid]

That seems better. "More than a decade" sounds too short term of an investment.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pixelpusher220]

Eh, depending on some variables maybe it isn't that bad.

1. Assuming that they'd burn coal if they didn't use the methane.
2. Assuming the energy released from burning the methane is similar to the energy released from burning coal (I don't know)

then burning something that is inherently unstable like the Methane Hydrates in the oceans is far better than burning the coal. The coal is a nice stable solid at every human habitable temperature. They Hydrates aren't. If the ocean warms too much, the hydrates will just bubble out and poof, LOTS more methane in the atmosphere that didn't provide us anything useful - and we have the CO2 released from burning the coal.

So the devil is in the details, and the best solution is burning neither methane nor coal, but if you have to pick, choose the one that isn't likely to spontaneously turn into another form thus making your situation much much worse.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pixelpusher220]

meh, choose the one that IS likely to...

Re:Seems like a good step

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, apparently Slashdot ate the part of your post where you backed your statement with some manner of logical discussion or something to make you not look like another boring troll. You're going to have to repost that part.

Re:Seems like a good step

[d34thm0nk3y]

If the ocean warms too much, the hydrates will just bubble out and poof, LOTS more methane in the atmosphere that didn't provide us anything useful...

Additionally, methane is 25 times more potent as a grennhouse gas. So converting that to energy and CO2 gives you energy and a net reduction in the greenhouse effect.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Anonymous Coward]

well the 2nd stupidest ides is a step better than the stupidest idea.

Re:Seems like a good step

[HunterZero]

The Inland Sea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seto_Inland_Sea) is not deep enough.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Anonymous Coward]

Globally, there is more than 250 times that quantity (~1,000,000 tcf). It's a virtually untapped resource that will disappear if not used soon. It's enough to run the whole planet for about 30 years if everyone had the consumption level of Japan.

Re:Seems like a good step

[nojayuk]

The Seto is not much more than a hundred metres across in places. The Onomichi ferry is 100 yen one way if you ever want to cross the Pacific on the cheap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAR69cmBEr4

Re:Seems like a good step

[DerekLyons]

But I don't understand why Japan doesn't perfect Deep water cooling technology

 
Because deep water cooling is an air conditioning system - not a power generation system. Anyhow, the problem with thermocouples (other than not being particularly efficient) is generally getting the hot leg hot enough, not cooling the cold leg.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You can fix that by planting a rain forest or six.

Re:Seems like a good step

[starless]

That seems better. "More than a decade" sounds too short term of an investment.

According to the NY Times, the overall gas available may be more like 100 years' worth:

Jogmec estimates that the surrounding area in the Nankai submarine trough holds at least 1.1 trillion cubic meters, or 39 trillion cubic feet, of methane hydrate, enough to meet 11 years’ worth of gas imports to Japan.

A separate, rough estimate by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has put the total amount of methane hydrate in the waters surrounding Japan at more than 7 trillion cubic meters, or what researchers have long said is closer to 100 years’ worth of Japan’s natural gas needs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/business/global/japan-says-it-is-first-to-tap-methane-hydrate-deposit.html?hp

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Converting Methane (a greenhouse gas 25 times as dense as CO2) to CO2 and energy is a bad idea how?

Especially given that global warming is now a runaway process.

Still, I'd say that deep water cooling would be a much better tech to develop for the long run.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Thank you, right information, just from wikipedia articles alone.

Yours:
"The average depth is 37.3 m (122 ft); the greatest depth is 105 m (344 ft)."

Mine:
"To obtain water in the 3 to 6 C (37 to 43 F) range, a depth of 66 m (217 ft) is required."

Looks like it is possible, but only certain cities could do it.

Re:Seems like a good step

[rpresser]

This only makes sense if the warming is unstoppable and there's no way to prevent the bubbling. Taking methane out from the continental shelf and burning it ADDS greenhouse gas. It only makes sense if doing nothing would allow all the methane to escape anyway.

Re:Seems like a good step

[rpresser]

Converting methane at the bottom of the ocean to CO2 in our air is a bad idea. The only way it's a good idea is if you assume the methane would end up in the air anyway, which is only true if warming is unstoppable (in which case the hydrates are doomed to melt by themselves). So, if you argue burning hydrates is a good idea, you've implicitly accepted that warming is real and unstoppable. Which is something most "drill, baby, drill" folks tend to deny.

Re:Seems like a good step

[dunkelfalke]

Well, it is actually strange. Japan ought to be the perfect place for geothermal, tidal and wind power.

Re:Seems like a good step

[jafac]

There was an article a few months back by an arctic scientist outlining a method using high-frequency radio waves to break-up released methane in the atmosphere. The end product was going to be water and carbon dioxide (of course). Both of those are greenhouse gasses, but not as bad as methane.

His take on it was that we're seeing catastrophic releases of methane NOW, so we need to take action to break this stuff up now, before too much floats too high into the atmosphere (out of range of the transmitters, which is only about 50 miles). I *do* support burning the stuff if only to prevent releasing it as methane - but only if we're going to use the energy to capture carbon and sequester it somehow. I don't know how we could possibly mine and burn enough of it on a large enough scale to make any kind of difference.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But that methane doesn't *stay* at the bottom of the ocean:
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/08/08/bermuda-triangle-mystery-solved/

Especially with global warming in process, this will only accelerate, and is in fact a navigational hazard.

And yes, I do accept that global warming is real, and unstoppable. I have some doubts that humans caused it entirely, but the facts that it is occurring and that we may well have played some role in making it worse are undeniable. But it's far too late for the blame game. The only real solution is to start planting more food.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some doubts that humans caused it entirely

You should, because no one has made that claim that I know of. The scientific consensus is that humans are the significant source of green house gasses and warming, not entirely, 100.0% the cause. For reasons that should be obvious, entirely causing warming is unlikely.

Re:Seems like a good step

[ShanghaiBill]

Taking methane out from the continental shelf and burning it ADDS greenhouse gas.

Not if it displaces burning coal. Per Kw, methane generates half as much CO2 as coal. Since AGW became an issue in the 1990's, the lion's share of CO2 reduction has been because of moving from coal to gas. Coal-to-gas isn't perfect, and it isn't a long term solution, but it works, it is cost effective, and it is actually happening in a big way . No other method of CO2 reduction even comes close. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.

Re:Seems like a good step

[dryeo]

The choices are currently limited. Coal which others have pointed out is stable where it is and when burnt releases much more carbon or methane. With methane we could get it out of the ground where it is currently stable and needs disgusting methods such as fragging to extract or from the continental shelf where it is not very stable and probably cleaner to extract.
Ideally is to have renewable energy supplying the bulk of energy but we're not there yet and there is likely to always be the odd time where the renewable sources aren't enough. Where I live close to a 100% of electricity comes from hydro-electric but there are still some natural gas generators that operate an average of a couple of days a year (cold-snaps mostly)

Re:Seems like a good step

[quenda]

Per Kw, methane generates half as much CO2 as coal.

Convention methane does, but non-conventional sources can be worse due to the energy needed for extraction, and leakage to methane to the atmosphere.
Unless they can find a cheap, efficient way to get this methane, it will be worse than coal.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

There's not enough oxygen in the atmosphere to make the atmosphere "nothing but carbon dioxide". Still, if the level of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches even 1% we will be well and truly screwed.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas but the water released by burning fossil fuels is not an issue. Because water can precipitate out of the atmosphere there is a balance between the liquid and gaseous states so any imbalance will quickly be corrected.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

We're adding carbon to the atmosphere (and carbon cycle) in a matter of a few centuries that took plants millions of years to capture. Planting rain forests will help but doesn't come close to being a complete solution.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

It would be more accurate to say that humans aren't the only cause of climate change. As for the amount of it that is anthropogenic a couple of years ago a knowledgeable climate scientist estimated human influences cause 80-120% of climate change.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pixelpusher220]

Since we're continuing to conduct business without much regard to Global Warming, I'd say it's pretty unstoppable.

Even if it isn't, I'd say that removing an unstable time bomb of methane hydrates is better than using a stable carbon store.

Re:Seems like a good step

[xclr8r]

The coal we are using today is literally shearing off mountain tops and and killing carbon traps e.g. Trees. Sourcing from ocean methane could help in limiting this effect. http://images.google.com/search?q=alberta+sands

Re:Seems like a good step

[rufty_tufty]

Thermocouples isn't the way to do it. Stirling engines are.
Efficiency is not a serious concern when your energy source is cost free.
The costs of this problem are all in your equipment to handle the fluids, there is no fuel as such so efficiency doesn't directly matter. What is important is how much your plant costs you to generate X watts. Of course if spending 1% more on the plant to improve efficiency gets you 10% more energy then that's a fine thing to do, but i see no problem with running these plants at 1% efficiency as long as they are cost effective. The worst case scenario is you pull more cold water to the surface
Not granted doing that on an infinitely large scale and without some management would doubtless cause problems but we're a _long_ way off that. Not forgetting though that the cold water will be very nutrient rich which is the limiting factor in most ocean ecosystems. Certainly if we did this stuff in the deep ocean there's massive potential here.
And I'd certainly rather they did this with low efficiency than burn any more fossils...

Re:Seems like a good step

[Anonymous Coward]

I, the Anonymous Coward, submit that methane hydrates remain solid as a function of temperature and pressure. Rising ocean temperatures will affect methane hydrates, but whether those hydrates turn to gas depends on the depth where they are found. But I am a Coward, and all I have is this handy and very generic phase diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Methane_Hydrate_phase_diagram.jpg

Re:Seems like a good step

[DerekLyons]

Efficiency is not a serious concern when your energy source is cost free.

Since there is no such thing as a 'cost free' energy source... then, by definition efficiency is always a concern.
 

The costs of this problem are all in your equipment to handle the fluids, there is no fuel as such so efficiency doesn't directly matter. What is important is how much your plant costs you to generate X watts.

Yes, efficiency matters - because along with efficiency, costs determine your price per kwH. And costs are more than "equipment to handle fluids"... There's the capital costs of the land, structure, equipment, and infrastructure. There's maintenance, which is a (very) significant ongoing cost for anything that touches seawater. There's insurance, and taxes, and wages, and... well, quite a laundry list that you seem blithely unaware of.

Re:Seems like a good step

[rufty_tufty]

And costs are more than "equipment to handle fluids"... There's the capital costs of the land, structure, equipment, and infrastructure.

Which is part of the equipment costs. Whether I use one cubic meter of water or a million doesn't matter because it is the equipment along with the implied land(if it exists, these could be floating platforms) and costs associated with that equipment that we are concerned about not the actual source of said energy that the equipment is using.

I am not in the slightest "blithely unaware" of these costs because they are irrelevant to the argument about efficiency vs equipment costs except that of course they are part of equipment costs. Unless you think that every discussion would be improved by listing every detail to the quantum level that impacts the outcome? Since this is a discussion about efficiency do you not know what efficiency is?
Efficiency is a measure of useful work extracted from input energy. It has nothing whatsoever to do with that list you gave.
Now as I said " if spending 1% more on the plant to improve efficiency gets you 10% more energy then that's a fine thing to do" acknowledging that by spending more money to improve thermal efficiency could result in a net gain, but what gave you the impression that in my plant costs I wasn't referring to the total plant costs?
My only explanation here is that either you are confusing thermal efficiency with some sort of economic efficiency concept or you just didn't try and comprehend what I wrote.
So let me try a different tack for the sake of this discussion. What is important is that such a plant is economically efficient. Thermal efficiency must serve that goal. Thermal efficiency should be increased to the point where it improves the profitability but no further.
I would argue that for a coal plant while technically the same argument applies (because you have to pay for the fuel not just collecting it, burning it, disposing of end products and the equipment and associated costs with all of that); that because of the costs to the environment it and other plants like it have a duty of care to ensure they are as efficient as reasonably feasible.

Unless you want to nitpick terms like reasonably feasible...

Re:Seems like a good step

[rufty_tufty]

Perhaps it will also help if I mention i was also considering another use of this effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy
Which might explain better some of the comments on efficiency and "free" source of energy

Re:Seems like a good step

[DerekLyons]

And costs are more than "equipment to handle fluids"... There's the capital costs of the land, structure, equipment, and infrastructure.

Which is part of the equipment costs

Not in ordinary English usage, no. Nor are the ongoing costs I mentioned and which you snipped.
 

I am not in the slightest "blithely unaware" of these costs because they are irrelevant to the argument about efficiency vs equipment costs

When you say things like "costs are irrelevant", then perhaps "blithely" is too weak a word to describe your ignorance. Doubly so since even after I explained the economics of the plant, you reply with more handwaving and hogwash that does nothing but demonstrate that such ignorance is seemingly willful.

Re:Seems like a good step

[rufty_tufty]

So let me get this straight.
Rather than saying "I bought the second hand Fiat because it was cheaper than the Ford" you say "I bought the second hand Fiat that is actually on its third owner not including the garage and distributor and Fiat themselves because even though it has significantly higher maintenance costs given the likely probability of breakdown and usage patterns for a typical but not necessary same demographic as myself; when you factor in the expected costs of depreciation on a new model and the relevant tax, servicing and inflationary costs together with the differences in insurance and fuel economy for predicted driving conditions for by planned lifestyle as anticipated for a car like the Ford it would have proved to be more expensive than the predicted benefits would merit"

I bet you're a lot of fun at social events.
Normal sane discussion allows one party to assume verbal shorthands. If you forbid their use as you are trying to do with me then sensible discussion is impossible.
I knew that equipment costs included more than the simple BOM. You knew that too. Where is the problem and why are you trying to dismiss the rest of my argument because of this pointless semantic squabbling?

Re:Seems like a good step

[pixelpusher220]

So...temps ARE rising and we have a Greenhouse gas time bomb, methane, that is only stable if temps DON'T rise...and we have another carbon store, coal, that is stable at any natural habitable environment temperature.

And somehow you'd argue the methane is more stable?

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I see what you did there. But of course, most "knowledgeable climate scientists" all seem to be politicians, not scientists. Their data is cherry picked to fit their prejudicial conclusions.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Planting enough rain forests (increasing the number of plants) will increase carbon absorption and end the hunger problem once and for all. The only reason you don't like it is because you aren't a scientist, you're a politician.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pupsocket]

Correct, but there are even more factors to weigh. Two examples:

The political entrenchment of the hydrocarbon industry (OPEC, etc.) crushes sensible policy deliberations everywhere. There must be recognition that the world has become a colony of the hydrocarbon oligopoly and oligarchy, and that the measures needed to break this political domination do not reflect what we would do once free.

There is a risk of mass extermination if the frozen underwater hydrocarbons start turning gaseous independently of human mining. Once the bubbling begins, the heating effect and the turbulence will accelerate it, then increase the rate of acceleration, until the atmosphere and the climate are toxic to our species. We are playing with fire, but we've been playing with fire for the duration of the industrial era.

Re:Seems like a good step

[pupsocket]

That was my first thought, too. Then I remembered something.

In the oil extraction business, there is a phenomenon known as the "gusher". It is the uncontrolled upward rush of oil and gas. It was quite common in the early days, when the techniques were new. It required a very messy and haphazard solution known as capping the well. Often, the gusher would catch fire, and very expensive specialists would have to fly in to regain control.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

My question to you is how could climate scientists expect to get away with falsifying their science? Any science that is based on the physical characteristics of nature as climate science is is subject to verification by other scientists. If what they are saying is politically motivated then sooner or later their deception will be found out and their scientific reputations trashed. I can't believe in the 25 years since the IPCC was formed that among all of the scientists around the world who are studying climate there aren't any who aren't willing and able to call them out on it if they found something fundamentally wrong. I know there are some contrarians like Lindzen and Spencer but they mostly just nibble around the edges and haven't produced anything that would overturn the fundamental findings of the mainstream. In the end any scientist worthy of the title has to follow where the evidence leads regardless of their own biases or they will lose their career.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

I didn't say that I don't like it, just that it's not enough by itself to fully mitigate the problem. Hunger is more of a political problem than a supply problem.

Re:Seems like a good step

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Run the numbers. You find that even with very optimistic wave+wind+geothermal you going to a *lot* of money, its going to cost a *lot* to maintain (big seas are good for wave, and bad) and finally a *lot* of time to build. Well not finally because it is truly an enormous undertaking and even then. You still don't have enough energy *when* you need it.

Re:Seems like a good step

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Methanes mean life time in the atmosphere is something like 7 years. This is why its not that important in the models. Its also why fart tax and claims like " its X times worse than CO2" are political and propaganda statements. Not science ones.

Re:Seems like a good step

[dunkelfalke]

Eh, what can I say, most of these points are valid for any project. Look how difficult is to build a bloody airport in Berlin.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"My question to you is how could climate scientists expect to get away with falsifying their science?"

Simple. By coming to conclusions that are not supported by the real data.

"Any science that is based on the physical characteristics of nature as climate science is is subject to verification by other scientists. If what they are saying is politically motivated then sooner or later their deception will be found out and their scientific reputations trashed."

And some 12% of scientists do dissent on their data.

" I can't believe in the 25 years since the IPCC was formed that among all of the scientists around the world who are studying climate there aren't any who aren't willing and able to call them out on it if they found something fundamentally wrong."

There have been plenty. But of course, since they are in the minority and climate science is a democracy, it is THEIR reputations that get trashed.

" I know there are some contrarians like Lindzen and Spencer but they mostly just nibble around the edges and haven't produced anything that would overturn the fundamental findings of the mainstream."

Or rather, what they have found, has been utterly ignored and their reputations have been trashed for producing it.

" In the end any scientist worthy of the title has to follow where the evidence leads regardless of their own biases or they will lose their career."

The only way a scientist loses his career is by going against what those who fund the grants want to hear.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

The level of conspiracy required to support your suppositions is not credible.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It is when you consider the bigger political picture- and the fact that the media is *entirely* on the side of transferring more wealth from the many to the few, even if that means the wholesale slaughter of the many.

The current global warming proposals, which are all for trying to reduce the warming, are more about wealth transfer from the poor to the rich than anything else. Global Warming is just a convenient topic for the Mathusian Eugenicists to say "More white babies in Chicago and New York City, fewer brown babies born in the third world", because we all know industrialization of primitive peoples causes global warming, right?

Otherwise, we'd be taking advantage of this rise in atmospheric carbon to defeat the political problem of hunger- merely by planting food EVERYWHERE instead of continuing to transfer control of plant life on this planet to the few corporations that have been picked to make money at it.

Global Warming is a HUGE opportunity to create a food surplus that would easily feed several times our current population, and with our current technology, store that food for a quarter century or more- and they want to STOP IT? Of course they do- because that would loosen the oligarchy that controls the food supply, and thus, controls the world.

There's plenty of money to be made- and where there is money to be made, conspiracy isn't fringe anymore- it becomes inevitable. The amount of money the first world will make by throwing Big Oil to the hurricanes is many, many times what big oil will make in a future where oil is a dwindling resource.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

If you think that scientists are in it for the money and presenting false conclusions about climate change then how is it that most of the things they thought would happen are happening on schedule if not ahead of schedule? There's not much they've got wrong so far.

That's a pretty big assumption that global warming will increase food production. It may but there will probably be many years of adjustments to our agricultural system to get there. More likely as long as the climate system remains in a state of flux it will be more difficult to sustain the yields we're currently getting.

As I said, the level of conspiracy required to support your positions is not credible. When did the conspiracy start? After all the first person to state that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere would cause a rise it temperatures was Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Papers on the potential for global warming from the rise of CO2 were starting to be published in the 1950's. In 1967 the subject was presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson as something we would have to deal with eventually. Despite the supposed global cooling scare of the 1970's there were only 7 papers published on global cooling compared to 44 on global warming from 1965-1979. So when did this conspiracy get started?

I'm not saying there aren't people trying to take advantage of the situation but very few if any scientists are. It's just not credible that thousands of scientists around the world are all in on a conspiracy to falsify the evidence. They're smart enough to know that they couldn't get away with it forever. The reality of what happens on the ground would overtake their mendacious statements within 2 or 3 decades. So far they've been more right than wrong.

For me the primary question is scientific, not political. For you it seems the politics is informing your opinion of the science and that's backwards.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"If you think that scientists are in it for the money and presenting false conclusions about climate change then how is it that most of the things they thought would happen are happening on schedule if not ahead of schedule?"

Really? I don't see 20' of water covering downtown Manhattan yet. And I certainly don't see the ice age that was predicted for this time back in 1974.

"That's a pretty big assumption that global warming will increase food production."

Not much of one at all, if you have ever studied the effect of CO2 on plant growth.

" It may but there will probably be many years of adjustments to our agricultural system to get there. More likely as long as the climate system remains in a state of flux it will be more difficult to sustain the yields we're currently getting."

Only if we're not smart enough to take advantage of the increased growing season in the north.

"As I said, the level of conspiracy required to support your positions is not credible. When did the conspiracy start?"

When Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations".

"After all the first person to state that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere would cause a rise it temperatures was Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Papers on the potential for global warming from the rise of CO2 were starting to be published in the 1950's. In 1967 the subject was presented to President Lyndon B. Johnson as something we would have to deal with eventually. Despite the supposed global cooling scare of the 1970's there were only 7 papers published on global cooling compared to 44 on global warming from 1965-1979. So when did this conspiracy get started?"

With the elimination of the forests of England in 1596.

"I'm not saying there aren't people trying to take advantage of the situation but very few if any scientists are. "

Scientists are people too.

" It's just not credible that thousands of scientists around the world are all in on a conspiracy to falsify the evidence."

It's called capitalism and it has been around for about 400 years.

". They're smart enough to know that they couldn't get away with it forever."

They don't need to get away with it forever. They just have to get the grants now.

" The reality of what happens on the ground would overtake their mendacious statements within 2 or 3 decades. So far they've been more right than wrong."

Moving goalposts. Have they been 100% infallible or have they been more right than wrong?

"For me the primary question is scientific, not political. For you it seems the politics is informing your opinion of the science and that's backwards."

The effect on the human species MUST come before the science, or the science will become a factor in our extermination.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

Really? I don't see 20' of water covering downtown Manhattan yet. And I certainly don't see the ice age that was predicted for this time back in 1974.

That just shows how little you pay attention to what the climate scientists actually say. No scientist who is knowledgeable about cryology ever said Manhattan would be under water by now. And no, Al Gore didn't say that either. You need to pay attention to the time frame that they put on those statements. The last IPCC report in 2007 said sea level was expected to rise about 0.35 m (14") by the 2090-2099 time frame but more current estimates are for SLR by 2100 is about 1 m (3+ feet). At the rate we're going we might hit 20 feet of SLR around the year 2200.

They didn't predict an ice age for now either. At best it takes several hundred years for an ice age to develop. There was a lot of hoopla in the news about global cooling in the 1970's but if you look at scientific publications from 1965 to 1979 there were over 6 times as many papers on global warming as there were on cooling.

Not much of one at all, if you have ever studied the effect of CO2 on plant growth (and) Only if we're not smart enough to take advantage of the increased growing season in the north.

CO2 is far from the only factor in plant growth, in particular soil is important. The further north you go the poorer the soil is and it takes time to build up good soil. Climate change will change rainfall patterns which may or may not help. You probably never have been involved in farming. I have. It's not that simple.

When Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations".

LOL. If you want to say that our whole economic system is a conspiracy I'm not going to argue with you. In some ways I think it is.

But science is measured against the physical world. The physical world has characteristics that can't be faked and scientists know that. Do you think they want to be like the emperor with no clothes when their falsification is discovered? I believe very few scientists are willing to take that risk. I've seen no evidence that grants are biasing the science. It seems like if the case could be made for that it would have by now. You can cruise over to the National Science Foundation and browse all of the grants they make. Let me know if you find bias.

What makes you think I said scientists were infallible? I don't just start with the assumption that they failed. I think when they are wrong most of the time it's honest mistakes and not attempts to make the science something it isn't.

The effect on the human species MUST come before the science, or the science will become a factor in our extermination.

It's true that some technological development may be the downfall of the human race (I worry most about something out of some bio-lab) but it's also true that we ignore what science tells us about the physical world at our own risk.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

". Do you think they want to be like the emperor with no clothes when their falsification is discovered? "

Once they have the grant money, why would they care?

"What makes you think I said scientists were infallible? I don't just start with the assumption that they failed. I think when they are wrong most of the time it's honest mistakes and not attempts to make the science something it isn't."

I'm far more cynical. I think they're usually wrong most of the time. They have some models that are useful, but the model is NOT the reality, and mistaking it for such is always a mistake.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

Once they have the grant money, why would they care?

Do you think the researchers are paying themselves from the grants? No, they pay for instruments or instrument time to collect data, transportation to the data collection sites, research assistants to help collect the data, computer time to analyze the data and all other things necessary to their research . The researchers are for the most part paid by the institution that employes them and not from the grant. Do you think they're getting rich? PhD's are generally well paid in the low 6 figures but they're not really rich. If they wanted to get rich they're smart enough they could have gone into finance.

In some sense they are always wrong in that they're seldom precisely right. You paraphrase George Box's aphorism that "Models are always wrong but some are useful". You measure the success of a model by comparing it to reality and so far they're holding up pretty well. Climate models are far from perfect but I challenge you to find something that works better.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

" The researchers are for the most part paid by the institution that employes them and not from the grant."

And the institution gets the money to employ them from....Grants. A scientist who doesn't publish, who doesn't tickle the ears of his peers to get published (after all, what is peer review other than preaching to the choir?), is soon found out on his ear.

" Do you think they're getting rich? PhD's are generally well paid in the low 6 figures but they're not really rich."

I'd love to get paid low six figures to do research. That's pretty easy living compared with what 85% of America has to do to earn a living.

What makes you think a website called "realclimate.org" is going to have anything close to real data posted at all? Might as well believe Pravada on the good social works of Vladymir Putin.....Or the New York Times on the works of St. Obama.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

Well, since RealClimate is run by some of the leading climate scientists that you rail against you should read it more. Know thy enemy.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

" since RealClimate is run by some of the leading climate scientists"

Thus proving my point that it is biased. See, that's the problem with authority in general, and the reason why appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

The problem with appeal to authority as a fallacy, of course, becomes "If you can't trust the authorities, who can you trust"? and "How can you possibly have Knowledge without Direct Observation"?

The best models take the data in real time, but have very little predictive value- only reporting value. Our window into the future- and often our window into the past- is very dark indeed, even now.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

An appeal to authority is not a fallacy if the authorities are in fact experts on the subject. There is very little evidence that they are biased toward anything but good science. You can call them biased but the physical facts on the ground bear out what they are saying. When they don't I'll start disbelieving them.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"There is very little evidence that they are biased toward anything but good science."

Except for their constant appeals to politics to solve a problem that isn't a problem.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

I don't see them making constant appeals to politics, instead they are merely defending their science against political attacks. On top of that if they see a problem that is going to affect them and their children why shouldn't they speak up? What is this problem that isn't a problem to you? That CO2 increases in the atmosphere are not a problem? The simple physics of CO2 would say otherwise.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The drumbeat of Climate Change driving Malthusian Eugenics in governmental policy has been unrelenting for my entire life. Even during the 1970s when it was "pollution will cause a new ice age" for a few years, the co-opting of science for Malthusian Eugenics has been pretty darn steady, claiming we need to drastically reduce our population.

It isn't a problem because mammals existed in the Miocene Climatic Optimum 15 million years ago, when CO2 levels were much much higher and the Earth a good 10 degrees warmer, and sea levels were 80-120 feet higher. It is a matter for adaptation, not panic. Plant food (and take advantage of atmospheric CO2 fertilization to raise more food) further north, move the cities inland, fixes the "problem". It just isn't the catastrophe that so many have made it out to be.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1929238,00.html

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

The human population of the Earth has increased by about 2.7 times since I was born in 1952 (2.6 billion to 7 billion). That obviously can't continue. The Earth is finite so there has to be a limit. If we don't do something to limit population growth on our own the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will take care of it for us. What Malthusian eugenics? Other than China and the occasional laws in the past on forced sterilization for certain groups I'm not aware of any government restricting births. While there is a correlation between population growth and growth in anthropogenic causes of climate change the real link is to the increase in fossil fuel use for energy. Our technology has progressed to the point where we can get most of that energy now from non-fossil fuel sources. It'll take 30-40 years to build up that infrastructure but it's starting to happen right now. It's time to stop fouling our own nest with fossil fuels.

Interesting article. I don't think the author would agree with your interpretation of his article (I've read him before). The problem is not so much the amount of change that's occurred and will occur as the rate at which it's happening. If the change we've caused and will cause over the next couple hundred years were spread out over 5000 years it wouldn't be much of a problem. The natural systems that sustain all life on Earth including humans would have time to adapt without the kind of disruption that rapid climate change causes. CO2 fertilization is nice in theory but in the real world CO2 is not the only thing limiting plant growth. Water and soil are both more important than CO2. The further north you go the poorer the soil is generally and it takes a long time (on human terms) to build up good soil. The more chaotic the weather gets because of the rate of climate change the more difficult it is to raise crops and sustain yields. I don't think adaption is going to be nearly as easy as you seem to think.

Re:Seems like a good step

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"The human population of the Earth has increased by about 2.7 times since I was born in 1952 (2.6 billion to 7 billion). That obviously can't continue."

And it won't. By 2100, 2/3rds of the human population will be dead, of old age.

" The Earth is finite so there has to be a limit. If we don't do something to limit population growth on our own the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [wikipedia.org] will take care of it for us."

No need, the Eugenicists with their sterility programs have taken care of it for us.

"Other than China and the occasional laws in the past on forced sterilization for certain groups I'm not aware of any government restricting births. "

Oh, they switched to "voluntary"....if you can call pulling all the brown teenagers out of math class to listen to 12 hours of lectures on the wonderful help barrier contraception and permanent sterility is "voluntary".

" While there is a correlation between population growth and growth in anthropogenic causes of climate change the real link is to the increase in fossil fuel use for energy. Our technology has progressed to the point where we can get most of that energy now from non-fossil fuel sources. It'll take 30-40 years to build up that infrastructure but it's starting to happen right now. It's time to stop fouling our own nest with fossil fuels."

And it would happen even without your help- because we're running out of fossil fuels. So once again, this is a problem that isn't really a problem.

But the real trick is that it HAS happened rapidly before. Rapidly enough to cause extinction of some species. But mammals are more adaptable. And humans are WAY more adaptable. The tundra has wonderful soil- several thousand years of peat moss running several feet deep, with water sources currently frozen, but that will change with global warming.

And so I repeat, what is the problem? There is no need whatsoever to panic about any of it. Overpopulation- we already THROW AWAY enough food to feed twice the population of the planet, and strictly restrict food production currently to keep prices high. Water and soil, there's plenty of that locked up in the poles that global warming will free up.

But if you believe the lies of Malthus and haven't checked demographic data *recently*, I can see why you might be in a panic.

Re:Seems like a good step

[riverat1]

We're going to have to quit meeting like this ;) Meaning we could go back and forth forever and not resolve anything.

I think you're a bit over the top on the eugenics thing. There are elements of your argument that are true but I don't see some sort of vast worldwide conspiracy over it.

Panic is not a word I'd use to describe my feelings about anthropogenic climate change. I just think we can and should do better than we are. I think you are making a lot of assumptions about the ease of adaption to it without a lot of real world evidence to support your position. If your assumptions turn out to be wrong then where are we? Better to be cautious and try to limit the amount of change as much as possible.

Clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

For the first time ever, a Japanese company has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast.

Despite the crappy writing this isn't just the first time a Japanese company has done this, it's the first time anyone has.

Re:Clarity

[omnichad]

Couldn't have said it better myself, AC.

Re:Clarity

[K. S. Kyosuke]

For the first time ever, a Japanese company has successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate off its central coast.

Despite the crappy writing this isn't just the first time a Japanese company has done this, it's the first time anyone has.

On planet Earth, in recorded history, if you insist on being a stickler for accuracy.

Re:Clarity

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

Not quite. This is the first offshore demonstration of extraction, but it's been carried out successfully onshore before.
Methane Hydrates and the Future of Natural Gas - MIT Energy.

To date, these permafrost-associated deposits are the only places
where production of gas from verifiable dissociation of gas hydrates has ever been documented.
Short-term (i.e., several days) production tests were carried out at the Mallik well in the
Mackenzie Delta area of Canada in 2002 and 2007 (Dallimore and Collett, 2005; Hancock et al.,
2005; Takahisa, 2005; Kurihara et al., 2008) and at the Mt. Elbert (Milne Point) site on the
Alaskan North Slope in 2008 (e.g., Hunter et al., 2011).

Offshore extraction of NG from hydrates for Japan will be a tough pill to swallow for people whose country was recently trashed by tsunamis, as hydrates are associated with prehistoric massive seabed slumping. Read more here: DOE Meeting Summary: Catastrophic Methane Hydrate Release

Re:Clarity

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I should clarify that you were perhaps specifying that this is the first successful offshore test of hydrate extraction.

Re:Clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh... we're not supposed to talk about the Permian-era extractions. Let the talking monkeys have their moment - they'll find out soon enough that this is a bad idea.

Re:Clarity

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless Japan convinces a lot of other countries around the world (third world countries) to sell off their frozen methane deposit mining rights, just like they did with fishing rights.

Re:Clarity

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Don't encourage him.

Re:Clarity

[flayzernax]

Really nice link, its almost enough to make the argument that nature is going to do it for us eventually anyway though. Might as well harness it and put it to good use.

Re:Clarity

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Madame Vastra, you're being mean!

Re:Clarity

[c0lo]

Offshore extraction of NG from hydrates for Japan will be a tough pill to swallow for people whose country was recently trashed by tsunamis, as hydrates are associated with prehistoric massive seabed slumping. Read more here: DOE Meeting Summary: Catastrophic Methane Hydrate Release

Also known as Clathrate gun

Re:Clarity

[don depresor]

reply to undo wrong moderation

Re:Clarity

[anagama]

It's either crappy writing, bad googlefu on my part, or plain old ignorance on my part, but I just don't understand this:

1.1tn cubic meters

For "tn" I get:

terraNewtons
tons
and a bunch of stuff about Tennessee

But not a lot of stuff directly related to volume.

Re:Clarity

[MiniMike]

Trillion.

1.1 trillion cubic meters

See this list for a sense of how this compares to known reserves.

The Duh Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

I live within eight miles of a nuclear reactor and for the life of me I can not understand putting a nuke on a beach just as we have done here. Areas that have earth quakes, high energy storms and beaches need to not have nuclear reactors as they are now designed. In addition large population areas are also not a great idea as wars do occur and terror attacks can and have taken place. I am aware that the concrete domes are built to take quite a hit but to me that is about like saying that bank vaults are secure against burglars. Obviously even multimillion dollar vaults get penetrated from time to time.
                        I do wonder why safety is such a lost notion on our leaders.

Re:The Duh Factor

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Are now designed or were designed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

There are a LOT of better designs out there now that in a really severe earthquake or storm, would self-compartmentalize.

Re:The Duh Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, we simply do not have enough safe nuclear reactors. Enough with the rhetoric that nuclear power is the bane of all evil. After all we drive automobiles which kill hundreds of people daily and we're perfectly ok with that. We consume fossil fuels as if we are expecting to breathe CO2 in a few hundred years. We're just not going to evolve fast enough.

Clearly there's a petroleum industry bias feeding the negativity of alternative power sources, including nuclear. Let's not buy into this. Safe, sustainable and cost effective nuclear power is not only possible but should be our priority!

Re:The Duh Factor

[bobbied]

Obviously even multimillion dollar vaults get penetrated from time to time.

I don't think your comparison is valid. What is inside (say money or gold) is desirable enough somebody will risk life and limb break in. Breaking into a Nuclear reactor containment structure, while possible, is not going to contain much in the way of desirable things to take and the risks to life will be pretty high. How many folks would want to break into one, hit their lifetime radiation exposure limits in seconds, and attempt to steal what's inside? And what will they get? Miles of radio active copper wire? Radiation sources which are extremely easy to track along with the people carrying them? My point is that nobody really wants to break into a containment structure, while a bank vault has stuff they want.

So the real question is how often will the containment structure be compromised though accidental means? So far, out of thousands of years worth of reactor operating experience, we've only seen two contaminant structure failures. One killed a handful of people (between 100 and 200) and released quite a bit of radiation in Russia and eastern Europe and was caused by a seriously stupid operational error compounded by a reactor design that was nearly as stupid. The two stupids added up to one big stupid mess. The second containment breach event was caused by an extraordinary natural disaster which was outside of the design limits coupled with some seriously poor contingency plans, but hasn't killed anybody. All in all this doesn't seem too bad of a record to me.

It's safer per operating hour than riding in an automobile, or going on a commercial fight.

Re:The Duh Factor

[Medievalist]

Are now designed or were designed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor

I think the other poster was looking for designs that actually work in practice, not theories that haven't panned out yet or tests that were shut down due to failure to perform.

There are a LOT of better designs out there now that in a really severe earthquake or storm, would self-compartmentalize.

Perhaps someday one of them will be economically feasible. At the moment, it would have to be cheaper than coal, since we idiot humans seem to be unable to stop burning the stuff.

Re:The Duh Factor

[bobbied]

Safe, sustainable and cost effective nuclear power is not only possible but should be our priority!

I'm not suggesting we not use Nuclear power more, we should, but I think there are limits to what Nuclear can do for us at this point. Electricity is not easily stored, in fact, it must be generated the instant it is used. Our electrical consumption varies a lot by the time of day, the season, and location. But Nuclear reactors are not easily throttled up and down on such short cycles. Usually it takes days to plan for and bring a nuclear plant from a low power output up to full power and days to efficiently throttle back down. During some phases of the fuel cycle (towards the end mostly) this is the most trouble and more than one reactor has been unexpectedly out of service for refueling due to throttling down to fast (as in a SCRAM event).

I bring this up to simply point out that you will still need fossil fueled plants to handle the peak loads, because nuclear plants have their limits.

Re:The Duh Factor

[gewalker]

A better nuke design would allow for much faster adjustments to the power, but since nuke plants are typically run as base load (as they are cheap to run if you consider fuels costs only) it really does not matter until you get to very high percentages of your electricity from nukes. If you went hog wild with nukes, you would still need demand power via natural gas turbines, hydro, or pumped-water storage, etc.

Coal plants are not good choices for demand load, and oil-fuel plants use very expensive fuel compared to natural gas.

Look at the recent power plant choices, Mostly natural gas, a small amount of wind, just a little nuke and that is about all. I.e., Just about all of the recent fossil fuel electric grid additions are natural gas.

Re:The Duh Factor

[quenda]

I can not understand putting a nuke on a beach just as we have done here.

For cooling water, duh!
If there is a nasty leak, as at Fukushima, the isotopes in the water will quickly be dispersed to safe levels.
If the power station had been on a lake or river and suffered a similar loss of cooling incident, the contamination would have been much m ore of a problem.
Further, much of the atmospheric release was blown out to sea.

The coast is not a bad place for a reactor, you just need to make sure the cooling system is as protected from earthquake and innundation as the reactor dome itself.

Reactors are not normally built near large population centres - its not because that would kill lots of people, so much as the cost of the evacuation and relocation in a worst-case event.

Re:The Duh Factor

[dbIII]

The nuclear lobby ate it's children - thus TMI painted green is about the only available new option in the USA instead of thorium which threatened the status quo. Startups based on military technology and stuff from offshore are the only hope.

Re:The Duh Factor

[bobbied]

Just about all of the recent fossil fuel electric grid additions are natural gas.

These plants are being built mainly because NG prices continue to fall as fracking technology allows the production of more domestic supply. NG is cheap and easy to burn clean. It is also flexible and fairly easy to throttle for peak load if you design your plant for that.

I'm not sure you can build nuclear plants that throttle on 12 - 24 hour cycles very well. Early in the fuel cycle, you can do that kind of thing some and not get yourself in trouble, but as you approach the end of your cycle, power changes are increasingly difficult to manage. I'm not sure how you can design out such issues because they are caused by the byproducts of fission building up in the fuel as it is used. Perhaps the new designs where the fuel is in liquid form can better deal with this?

3 days

[Sparticus789]

Before a environmentalist article is posted on Slashdot, telling us that children, baby seals, puppies, and rainbows will all perish if we extract this natural gas.

Re:3 days

[KiloByte]

Because they will perish. ANY source of energy other than fossil combustibles deserves to be promoted.

The fossil fuel mafia is second only to big finance, so the amount of propaganda and misinformation against nuclear or geothermal energy is astounding, and these are the two cleanest and most realistic sources we currently have.

Re:3 days

[Sparticus789]

How do fossil fuels cause rainbows to perish? All you need is humidity and a light source.
I can make a rainbow in a cave 3,000 feet underground.
I can make a rainbow on Mars.
I can make a rainbow while eating green eggs and ham said Sam I Am

Re:3 days

[Ukab the Great]

Frozen methane is already melting due to global warming and is theorized to greatly accelerate the global warming process. Making using of the stuff and burning it is probably more environmentally friendly than just leaving it there.

Re:3 days

[j00r0m4nc3r]

ANY source of energy other than fossil combustibles deserves to be promoted

How is combusting methane better than combusting other hydrocarbons?

Re:3 days

[KiloByte]

That's what I meant.

I see I used a wrong word, though - it turns out in English "fossil fuel" is narrower than what I thought, referring to long-dead organisms only rather than any historic deposits. That's a consequence of learning stuff in a different translation, my bad :/

Re:3 days

[c0lo]

How do fossil fuels cause rainbows to perish? All you need is humidity and a light source.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
(what good would it be the rainbow if we're not going to see it?)

Re:3 days

[Sparticus789]

Arguing philosophy and perceptions of reality is a very poor fallback argument in this case. Did the universe exist before you were born?

Re:3 days

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the universe exist before you were born?

It's even more recent than that.

Re:3 days

[IdolizingStewie]

How is combusting methane better than combusting other hydrocarbons?

Apparently not what the gp meant, but combusting methane (CH4) is, in fact, better than ethane (C2H6), which is better than propane (C3H8), etc. As the chain gets longer, the ratio of C/H gets higher, resulting in more CO2 being released for the same amount of energy produced.

Re:3 days

[c0lo]

(ummm, perception you say.... A funny thing this perception...)
My point wasn't at all philosophical: I was just pointing out that a potential catastrophic release of methane from the sea bed could mean every human may have totally other priorities than to admire rainbows (if they'd be able to have priorities at all, I imagine that a dead person couldn't care less about either rainbows or survival).

Here's an analogy: suppose you have a glass of water slowly warming in the sun. Everything is nice and dandy, the system is close to a thermal equilibrium at any moment; would you live inside the glass, you'd have time to adapt to the warming
Now, imagine that you drop a red-hot piece of metal inside the glass. Suddenly, for a good period of time what happens inside the glass is catastrophically far from an equilibrium even if, eventually, a new equilibrium would be reached.

Do you think you would be able to survive the transient chaotic period? Even if you do, would you be inclined to have aesthetic feelings caused by eventual rainbows? (highly likely a rainbow may be a sign of a super-storm that just passed, or is about to begin or you're just in the storm's eye).
You have a better perception on my point now?

(BTW: Mother of Storms made an enjoyable reading for me).

Re:3 days

[wierd_w]

Make a rainbow under an impenetrable cloud canopy that causes massive light ray diffraction before interacting with your mist layer?

Eg, what will happen to earth once enough CO2 is in the atmosphere, since a good deal of water vapor will join it as global temps rise, until cloud cover reaches such a density that the albedo of the clouds causes temps to drop.

Eg, during the ensuing iceage, your rainbows will be a very very rare thing.

OH NOES THE ENVRONMENT!!!!11

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought I'd get that out of the way.

I methaned.

[Anonymous Coward]

I methaned.

Article sucked

[gurps_npc]

The article says Japan "extracted" the methane. But it says nothing about how they extracted it. By extraction they could simply mean melting the ice. Which is worthless. What we need is a way to transport it from the frozen bottom of the sea to the room temperature power plants

The problem is transporting it. Transporting liquids (oil) is easy, you pump it through pipes to tanks. Transporting gas is slightly harder as you pump it in air-tight pipes to air-tight tanks.

Transporting room temperature solids is a moderately hard, you shovel it and truck it.

But frozen methane is the worst. It is solid when left alone, but turns to gas at room temperature. Worse, it is almost always at the bottom of the ocean.

If they solved this problem, great. But we don;t know they did that, because they were not very clear at all.

In my experience there is a simple explanation for that lack of information - very bad translation from a foreign language. Someone probably solved a rather minor technical issue about removing the frozen water, leaving the gas, but it probably did NOT solve the major 'do it underwater, at huge depths, at freezing cold temperatures, by robot' problem.

Instead of explaining that it was a minor technical victory, they left out all the details and claimed translation issues.

Re:Article sucked

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not extracting methane from ice or mining it at the bottom of the ocean. The problem is that these deposits are highly unstable, prone to spontaneous emissions and landslides. It is extremely unstable terrain.

You can't even put a ship above a major deposit and just start digging whatever you want. If you screw up and methane bubbles up, the bubbles will sink the ship - Bermuda Triangle and all that is prime example of how ships can just "disappear" because of methane releases from these "fire ice" deposits. One minute your ship is buoyant, the next it sinks..

Everyone knows how to extract this methane. Dig up the ice, melt it/mash it, and boom, you have gas. The problem is that when you start digging, you can cause a major problems, including tsunamis from underwater landslides and loss of equipment as it gets buried under a few million tons of rock.

As for deposits on land, they are spread out over large areas. It is like mining a garbage dump for gas - you don't get much gas from it before you have to move on.

Re:Article sucked

[bored_engineer]

The article really sucked, so I went looking for another, even though it was only slightly better.

The major improvement is in depressurizing the hydrate so that the gas will boil off. They don't have a robot at those depths, the work is done at the end of a drill string

Re:Article sucked

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Transporting liquids (oil) is easy, you pump it through pipes to tanks.

Note political issues getting in the way, with the exact same result as technological ones: nothing happens (save a different set of pockets being lined).

Memes adopting the cloak of real engineering difficulties.

Re:Article sucked

[bobbied]

By my reading of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate one can extract the gas by heating the stuff to a specific point at which point the ice melts. You can also lower the pressure enough and the methane will exit on its own. I'm guessing they will do a little bit of both, some fracking followed by pumping out the fluid. Then nature will take its course and gas will rise to the top. The trick will be trying to control the pressure in the well because I understand the liberation of the gas can happen quickly and be hard to stop at times.

Watch out for Nankai megathrust earthquakes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd proceed very cautiously, given that the area has a history of earthquakes and we've already seen how oil/gas extraction can give raise to earthquakes or other movement of geological structures.

Are They CRAZY????

[Anonymous Coward]

They are sure to awaken Godzilla.

This is madness! Madness, I tell you.

Re:Are They CRAZY????

[Anonymous Coward]

Johnny Socko and his Giant Robot, or Ultra-Man, will handle that.

Re:Are They CRAZY????

[Anonymous Coward]

They are sure to awaken Godzilla.

This is madness! Madness, I tell you.

Look, the nuke plant didn't do it, and there was a tsunami with that one to boot! Dude's a heavier sleeper than you think.

Re:Are They CRAZY????

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean, Zilla1, don't you? (and yes, there is a Zilla2); also kinda makes you wonder how the methane hydrate got there in the first place, droppings perhaps?

Totally

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool

What they aren't telling you ...

[sunking2]

They are using a new substance called Oxygen Destroyer to extract it.

Re:What they aren't telling you ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oxygen Destroyer

That, and puppy grindings.

Could be a death blow for vast areas of the ocean

[Grayhand]

Everyone ignores the obvious downside of hydrates. The are stored in the sands at the bottom of the ocean so it means effectively strip mining huge tracks of the ocean to recover them. The ecosystem of the ocean is dependent on the ocean floor and reefs both of which would be devastated by this kind of exploitation. There's also the issue of the dirt thrown into the water column choking fish. The oceans are badly stressed as it is so dredging most of the remaining ocean could be what collapses what's left of the fisheries.

Re: No... you can't read

[Anonymous Coward]

It specifically says they used the "Engineers used a depressurisation method that turns methane hydrate into methane gas."... google it... and find: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_hydrate

"Japan Extracts Natural Gas From Natural Gas"

[NEDHead]

Hmmm...

Re:"Japan Extracts Natural Gas From Natural Gas"

[Beorytis]

How about: "Japan releases imprisoned natural gas from its icy jail."

Good News Bad News

[DumbSwede]

We seem to be having an unprecedented set of advances in extracting hydrocarbon based fuel sources other than conventional oil (and all that implies for the environment).

I support clean energy and would really like to see research expanded into fusion energy. However not a week goes by I don’t see someone preaching doom and gloom about Peak Oil. Even if these methane hydrate deposits don’t pan out (which actually they probably will) Oil Shale deposits have proven reserves of over 1 Trillion Barrels equivalent using current technology (and an insane potential with future advances) and the U.S. has the largest reserves worldwide. This is equivalent to approximately to all the known reserves for conventional oil and we have hardly begun to exploit it. Check out this link on Wikipedia for the numbers : Oil Shale Reserves.

Energy may become (slightly) more expensive in the future, there may temporary shocks from transition periods as we go to new hydrocarbon sources, but in the long run usable energy is there for the extraction in an economically viable fashion. If anything all this PEEK-OIL talk over inflates the value of energy. One has to wonder about agendas here. The only thing PEEK-OIL is doing is selling a lot of books for scare-mongers.

Perhaps we should go slow on utilizing these sources because of the environment, but even so I don’t see why prices are so high when every indicator seems to suggest there are massive new sources at hand. On the other hand if prices where low would we continue our slow march toward efficient use of what we have (LED replacement bulbs for instance and better insulated houses).

Re:Good News Bad News

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Wake up earth hugger. Hydrocarbons are the most readily and cheapest available source of energy an compared to all other alternatives.

It would be nice to go all alternative, but for a country like Japan its just not an option. Even if all they did was build solar and wind farms for the next 20 years they still wouldn't have enough.

I tire of the knee jerk reaction from green alarmists that any non-ideal form of energy must instantly be boycotted and just spout off diatribes like "lets all use solar power and just, like, hug the world". There are never any real solutions presented, just senseless idealism. If only we could power the world off green idealism then we would have a million times the energy we need.

Also there is no conspiracy or agenda here, sheesh. You can be rest assured that once it is no longer cost effective or viable to get energy from fossil fuels, people will turn to alternatives. But price per watt output of fossil fuels is still significantly cheaper then all alternatives. You have to spend billions on alternative energy to get a fraction of the power from hydrocarbons.

Bottom line is the world's energy crisis isn't going to be solved just by better insulating homes and using LED bulbs and plugging into a wind farm. Why not wiki up the national requirements for energy of a country like Japan and then wonder why they choose to research into hydrocarbon based energy or use nuclear power in the first place.

BTW, plants and trees fucking love our use of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions.

Re:Good News Bad News

[EmperorArthur]

Supply and demand. It's the same reason why we will never run out of oil.

As oil and other hydrocarbon sources become more rare, the price goes up. As the price goes up, more exotic extraction methods go from too expensive to financially viable. You'll even see an occasional dip in prices as someone discovers a way to preform the extraction cheaper. In the long run, hydrocarbon prices will continue to increase though.

There will never be a day* when everyone stops using gasoline all at once. Instead it will become more expensive, while alternatives become more accessible. People didn't all switch to the car from horses overnight. I mean, it's not like there was a gas station in every town, and you could feed your horse anywhere. /*Insert rant about anti-nuclear people preventing new safer plants from being built here.*/

*I know, never say never and all that.

Re:Good News Bad News

[vm146j2]

The reason prices are so high is because the "massive" new sources come with massive new costs to extract. Oil Shale (kerogen) is a great case in point; it is essentially rock with heavy, like waxy heavy, hydrocarbons embedded in it. In theory there is a lot of it, in practice almost no one uses it, because the amount of energy and water needed to dig the rock, cook out the kerogen, crack it into a form usable by the current infrastructure, and transport it to a useful place are extremely high. Every other grand announcement you've been reading follows suit, as does the idea of mining methane hydrates. It is pretty basic math to calculate the amount of recoverable, usable energy from these sources, and you won't be running anything like a developed nation off of it. We will be continuing to move toward less energy use, and there will be nothing slow about it. Less a march than a free-fall.

Re:Good News Bad News

[vm146j2]

As the price goes up, all of your more exotic extraction methods, which desperately depend on oil, also get more expensive. "Financially viable" requires profit, but more expensive energy just sucks up more resources. You just start shedding infrastructure, and going from cars to horses (or feet) will be a lot faster than the other way around. Things can fall a long time, but the stop is still sudden.

Re:Good News Bad News

[Anonymous Coward]

"Perhaps we should go slow on utilizing these sources because of the environment, but even so I don’t see why prices are so high when every indicator seems to suggest there are massive new sources at hand."

Because it's a myth that these "vast" reserves are easily extractable. The recovery factor (portion recovered versus how much is left in the ground) is worse and the infrastructure investment necessary to extract them is much higher. This is not merely increased prices due to inflation we're talking about, but because it actually does cost more energy and equipment to get a given amount of hydrocarbons out of the ground. To make matters worse, in the case of shale gas there are some signs that each well drilled won't produce as long as a conventional one at useful rates. In a real sense, the energy and material cost has gone up because the easily-flowable conventional reserves are slowly being depleted, and the supply is being backfilled with the more difficult/expensive stuff. It helps, but companies don't start drilling $100 million dollar wells in the deep offshore, processing oil sands, or developing oil shales, shale gas, or other unconventional sources because it's easy. They develop them because the price climbs high enough that these marginal deposits become economic, and because the cheap conventional stuff is already at its max production or dwindling away, or because demand keeps on climbing. In other words, no, we aren't at the peak production yet, but it's obviously on its way soon and the system is struggling to keep up with demand. There are shorter-term market speculation effects, but the fundamentals are ordinary supply and demand. Put massive new deposits on tap? That's great, but that's mostly just treading water. The real difference in the last few years has been the slowdown of the economy since 2008, which gives supply a chance to catch up.

Don't be impressed by vast reserves that are several times more expensive to extract. A reserve means little if you can't efficiently and economically get it out of the ground, and all that extra expense will show up in the price you pay. It's a temporary measure before production really does go into its inevitable long-term decline. That higher price should be as much an incentive to switch to alternatives as it is an incentive to extract hydrocarbons that people wouldn't have bothered with 30 years ago. Taping into oil shale deposits is a *sign* that the cheap stuff is gone.

Re:Good News Bad News

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, here is the practical solution you asked for. It is being installed in Japan right now, with roll out on-going.

First you save energy. It is cheaper than adding new capacity and improves quality of life. Smart appliances, better insulation. Many new buildings have smart LED lighting that adjusts to keep light levels constant as the sun goes down and turns itself off when no-one is in the room. Similarly aircon units sense people and can cool just the areas where they are, even within a single room. Blinds adjust to automatically regulate light and temperature.

Next you install a smart grid. Give the house a few kwh of battery storage (or use the owners EV) so that energy from roof mounted solar can be used in the evenings. The system signals to appliances when it is best to use energy, si for example the fridge might go a few degrees cooler when energy is cheap/plentiful so it has a buffer when it is desirable to save power.

Then you build up renewable energy. Japan has a lot of offshore wind that is now quite competitively priced thanks to fukushima. Of course it is getting cheaper all the time. Being spread out intermittency isn't a big problem and the smart grid helps too. Small scale solar is good too, but in Japan geothermal is the big one. Geo could power the whole country alone.

This is all proven, working technology. Quality of life is improved, no-one is walking around in the dark or unable to have a hot electric shower when they want. In fact it costs them less because the system is set up to reward energy efficiency, so they have more disposable income.

Re:Could be a death blow for vast areas of the oce

[bored_engineer]

. . .so it means effectively strip mining huge tracks of the ocean. . .

I don't think that they could recover their investment, if this is even technically possible. The extraction is done underground at the end of a drill string. The Nankai Trough is as much as 4000M deep, and the deposits that they're tapping are as much as 7000M below the sea floor. According the Wikipedia article on the Nankai Trough, there's a huge influx of sediment, which would make "strip mining" still more difficult.

Re:Could be a death blow for vast areas of the oce

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrates are very rarely exposed on the seafloor, more commonly they are several hundred meters below it. Producing them without suicide means capturing the methane in the subsurface & delivering it to shore. Uncontrolled release, as in "strip mining" would allow methane to come to the surface & (a) kill you with the first spark, (b) make no money. You pick the motivation, both work.

Better article

[gurps_npc]

Here is a link to a NYTIMES article (cookie based wall to block users).

It explains that the Japanese found a way to send a pipeline down to the hydrates and depressurize them. This caused some of the released methane to travel up the pipeline they had dropped to the surface, where it could be captured as a gas.

Note it does not say how much of the gas is wasted/escapes into the ocean (which might have some very serious effects). On the other hand, they left most of the ocean pressurized (obviously) so it should hopefully re-sublimate back down to a methane hydrate.

It is actually a real breakthrough, rather than a mere translation problem. That said, a lot matters about efficiency. Merely getting a gallon of methane to the surface is not a huge deal if they have to burn 3/4 of a gallon to get it up (let alone transport it to someplace useful via a pressurized gas transport ship/pipeline).

Re: Better article

[iq145]

You better know the japanese DO NOT CARE how much this (or anything else) pollutes the ocean! The only thing they will take into consideration is, how much money there is to be made! Example: The japanese kill 1000 whales per year and sell the meat as a high-priced delicacy. If the meat is found to be too high in mercury content and they can't sell it, they donate those batches to schools to be used as lunches for the children. What doesn't get sold goes bad in their warehouse and gets dumped. The whalers then go out to re-stock. Killing whales is not allowed, as per the International Whaling Commission, so the japanese are claiming they are only killing the whales they need for "scientific research" (which is allowable). Their whaling faction has a set quota of bringing in one thousand whales every year. Does that sound like science?

here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, here come the environmental wackos off the sidelines to defend mother earth and her precious ocean. Don't worry Grayhand, nobody is collapsing fisheries by choking fish with dirt.

The problem with your fear is that nobody is talking about digging up anything. Scary calls about strip mining the ocean floor (gasp!) are nothing but nonsense. The methane hydrate is frozen in the water not the soil.

Elon Musk says lol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

That is all.

methane has shorter lifetime

[peter303]

Methane is less stable than CO2. Its lifetime in normal atmoshperic sunlight is about two decades. CO2 stays for thousands of years.

Re:methane has shorter lifetime

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, But what do think happens to the carbon and hydrogen in methane? It converts to C02 and H20, so better to to that today and get energy while avoiding to decades of Green House Gas 10x

Re:methane has shorter lifetime

[MightyYar]

TIL my flatulence lasts for 20 years? That's awesome...

Re:methane has shorter lifetime

[d34thm0nk3y]

Methane is less stable than CO2. Its lifetime in normal atmoshperic sunlight is about two decades. CO2 stays for thousands of years.

True to a point, the global warming potential of methane for 100 years is 25 and for 500 years is 7.6. So even after 500 years the methane is still 7.6 times as bad.

Methane Hydrate highly pressurized

[peter303]

Drillers intentionally avoid it because it blows up wells and catches fire. Thats what happened three years ago for the Mocando Deep Horizon Well. (regular overpressured methane, not hydrate)

Scientists have a pretty good idea now how to detect it on a conventional seismic section, whether they want to avoid it or drill for it. Its seems to be in continental shelves over much of the world.

Peak Oil is now in 2030s

[peter303]

According to USGS and most oil companies. Especially with the production of tight hydrocarbons (fracked). Hydrates could delay the peak another decade, two or three. BUT THERE WILL STILL BE A PEAK. Buys time for alternative energy and efficiency.

Only a decade?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Japanese study estimated that at least 1.1tn cubic metres of methane hydrate exist in offshore deposits. This is the equivalent of more than a decade of Japan's gas consumption.

What then? Strap buttered toast to dancing unicorns?

Either we get serious about nuclear energy or we're going to turn the skies grey burning coal.

Re:Could be a death blow for vast areas of the oce

[pk001i]

I am not sure there is a sentence of this post that is even remotely correct. Hydrates are not strip mined. With a drill ship, they drill the formation, then apply a vacuum to the drill string. The hydrate dissociates, leaving behind methane gas (which is sucked up the drill string), and a little fresh water. For every cm^3 of hydrate, you get ~164 cm^3 of gas at STP. A drill string, and bottom hole assemble of the research ship Chukyu is not very large, and will likely have no impact on the ocean floor, reefs, etc. There is very little "dirt" being thrown anywhere. Also, there is no dredging.

Re:11 years or 100 years

[helobugz]

Huge difference between looking at estimated recoverable vs. estimated total quantity. Just because we know an energy source exists doesn't mean it will ever be worthwhile to spend the energy required to recover it. eg, Helium-3.

Shall beds are geographically huge, but note how they have so far only been drilled in the thickest portions and only the shallowest formations have been actively pursued (marcellus vs. utica). It takes a lot of energy to get a gas well to produce, sometimes more than it will ever be capable of producing.

Thorium is the answer

[SampleFish]

If we converted all of our nuclear sites to run on Thorium it would become a non-issue. Nuclear energy could be clean and safe but it would be harder to make atomic weapons.

http://energyfromthorium.com/

You require more Vespene gas

[SampleFish]

Send out the SCV. We can't finish the global command center without more Vespene gas.

Re:Could be a death blow for vast areas of the oce

[radtea]

The ecosystem of the ocean is dependent on the ocean floor and reefs both of which would be devastated by this kind of exploitation.

I appreciate your mention of "reefs", as they are completely irrelevant to the depths in question, and make it easy to completely dismiss your cavil as what it is: the persistent whine of the naysayer, who is opposed to everything.

It's really useful for people with the courage to take risks with the future, and therefore make things better, to be able to spot the naysayers, and concern for "reefs" at thousands of feet below the ocean surface is a good way to do so in this case, like concern for "birds killed by windmills" allows us to spot anti-wind trolls and concern for "polar bears on melting ice" allows us to spot climate change trolls.

There are valid concerns on all these topics, but people like you, who contribute only noise to the conversation, need to be screened out if we are to have the conversations that matter. Thanks for making that easy!

Necessity, the Mum of Invention... again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say, if the process to be used to release all the methane is -more- CO2-efficient
than -costly- & -dirty- extracting Coal Seam Gas (CSG),eg, in Canada... ...perhaps CSG production will stop... which would be a VERY GOOD THING.

Historic Events with Calthrates

[netkgb]

Some historic events from the past due to the mass release of this stuff...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

Re:Could be a death blow for vast areas of the oce

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your analysis. I would like to play devils advocate and poi t out that deep water carbonates exist and are often protected. Ironically there seems to be a correlation between these carbonates and gas seeps which I guess provide the energy for the organisms, look up west of Shetland deep water carbonates.

Only a decade worth

[gravis777]

could provide an alternative energy source for the island nation... This is the equivalent of more than a decade of Japan's gas consumption.

So, let's get this straight, the deposit is equivilant to a little over 10 years of Japan's CURRENT gas consumption, and this is being touted as an alternative energy source, especially to combat the loss of energy from loosing two nuclear power plants? Um, okay, not sure how much gas it takes to generate electricity, and not sure how much electricity a gas plant produces compared to a nuclear power plant, but it seems to me that they go through all the trouble to build these plants for only a couple of years worth of energy. This doesn't seem economically viable to me.

Maybe someone can explain it better, or can provide information as to how much gas it takes to power a gas plant, and how much power a gas plant produces compared to a nuclear plant.

CO2? Methane? What about water vapor?

[Anonymous Coward]

All this talk of CO2 and methane ignores the elephant in the room, water vapor. Depending on which scientist you ask water vapor is somewhere between 70-95% of the greenhouse effect on earth.

There is no positive feedback from CO2 to water vapor. It is neutral or slightly negative.

There has been no warming for 15+ years despite CO2 increasing 8-10% in that time.

The highest resolution CO2 records show rising temperatures precede CO2 release.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958

So back to the story at hand. If you thought the gas glut was big due to shale just wait until this starts coming online. I predict that nothing will be able to compete with natural gas cost wise or pollution wise unless there are serious developments in LENR or fusion, thorium etc.

It's simple...

[iq145]

Just call up "Ewing Energies"...