Slashdot Mirror
China Successfully Mines Gas From Methane Hydrate In Production Run (oilprice.com)
hackingbear writes from a report via OilPrice.com: In a world's first, China has successfully extracted gas from gas hydrates in production run in the northern part of the South China Sea. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), global estimates vary, but the energy content of methane in hydrates, also known as "fire ice" or "flammable ice," is "immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels." But no methane production other than small-scale field experiments has been documented so far. The China Geographical Survey said that it managed to collect samples from the Shenhu area in the South China Sea in a test that started last Wednesday. Every day some 16,000 cubic meters (565,000 cubic feet) of gas, almost all of which was methane, were extracted from the test field, exceeding goals for production mining. This is expected to help cut down China's coal-induced pollution greatly and reduce reliance on politically sensitive petroleum imports controlled by the US. "The production of gas hydrate will play a significant role in upgrading China's energy mixture and securing its energy security," Minister of Land and Resources Jiang Daming said on Thursday.
What does it matter to cut down on carbon emissions if all you are doing is replacing them with methane?
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Just how many doomsday scenarios / Malthusian Apocalypses failing before people stop accepting them ? *
*I have no doubt someone will always be screaming the end is nigh but you can hope for the bulk of humanity.
Me make gas
Me use coke
Me standard of living soon be joke
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So... more atmospheric pollution. We really are intent on turning Earth into the new Venus aren't we ?
That's great. Too bad China is a shit hole when it comes to human rights.
I am beginning to get concerned that a sizable number of innovations are coming from the "East." Not much from the "West" these days. I am afraid that we may become inconsequential in the next few decades.
Think...
High speed trains; latest mobile technologies; the public transit system in New York is [several] decades behind that in Shanghai; the Chinese recently flew their own manufactured passenger plane and have the AG600 - the world's largest amphibious aircraft.
But I am sure we can catch up if we dedicate resources appropriately.
they're mining Manganese Nodules from the sea floor like we did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSF_Explorer). There's more going on here folks.
Because we don't do science anymore, and technology only after every imaginable pressure group has been satisfied. The California high speed rail uses tech that is off-the-shelf in Europe and Asia.
China has more coal than the equivalent caloric value of all known uranium deposits. By the time the world will burn out all Uranium, Chinese will still have coal for many millenniums.
Last I checked, the Shanghai Maglev was German technology. But other than that, yes, anytime you empower a nation to build because they're the lowest cost supplier that can actually do the job in numbers, you will get an economic boom there. Eventually they become self-sufficient where they too start competing in high tech industries with the rest of the developed world. So the transition from a developing nation to one that is developed is a natural progression. It happened with the Roman Empire, spanning to Europe, across the Atlantic to the America, now back to China, and soon Africa. Now, it's important to note that having a functional government is key here. Pure anarchy and pure totalitarianism are far too extreme to be conducive to mass economic output.
Life is not for the lazy.
Relax. East is west and west is east. The world's a sphere, after all.
US (and EU) have specialized, since long, on financial scams and Ponzi schemes. And a bit of worthless Intellectual Poverty.
Enjoy the scammer's next-to-last show, called "Make Foo Great Again" while it lasts. I'm hoping it takes a few of those scammers down in the last show, so we'll have something nice to watch.
The extraction rate is equivalent to 7MW of thermal energy, so if this was a "test" it'll definitely scale to something commercially useful.
This development makes a political hot point (South China Sea), even hotter (look at their neighbors).
For the longest time earth was flooded with CO2 18 times higher than we have today, and it was colder.
We had more CO2 in the fucking ice age.
Stop spreading the CO2 global warming nonsense already.
I don't know why you idiots just don't do your own research but keep repeating nonsense just because someone else said so.
CO2/Temp Graph
There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today.
There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
The Global Warming Scam
Now then, looking at Carbon Dioxide, we find that only .117% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly attributable to human technology such as automobiles. .117% is a rather small amount. If we were to measure out .117% of a football field, it comes out to 4.212 inches, barely long enough to get off the touchdown line.
CO2 Is Not Causing Global Warming
The Possessive Belief
CO2 (carbon dioxide) is not causing global warming or climate change. I canâ(TM)t say it more boldly, but it doesnâ(TM)t seem to matter; the belief persists that CO2 is the cause and therefore a problem. The belief is enhanced by government policies and plans, which spawn businesses to exploit the opportunities they create. A majority of the mainstream media pushes the belief because of political bias rather than understanding of the science. Evidence continues to show what is wrong with the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but it is complex and so most donâ(TM)t understand. The fact they hold definitive positions without understanding is disturbing. However, ignoring the fact that IPCC predictions are always wrong doesnâ(TM)t require the understanding that the science is completely unacceptable and proof of the political bias.
Contradictory Evidence
I need to point out the fact that leftists hate America. They oppose our freedoms and seek to take them away, alleging racism or climate change. The fact is, there's enough carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere to make it opaque in the wavelengths that those gases absorb. Adding more carbon dioxide or methane will not cause more warming for that reason. Leftists continue to promote these alternative facts like a perverted religion. With Memorial Day coming up, we should keep in mind that our troops have fought and died to protect us from everything that the left stands for. The left wants to restrict your freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and your ability to run a business and make a living for yourself.
So the transition from a developing nation to one that is developed is a natural progression.
LOL tell that to India.
Most television reporters are lucky to get through a newscast without mispronouncing common words or town names. They have no clue about the issue.
More important, they're responding to a demand for a high-price item. Who's demanded Musk's hyper-sonic transport system? Hell, who's offered a competing bid? Transportation is a monopoly so there is no incentive to innovate and build better, more expensive infrastructure. This is why the job is assumed by government.
Extremism is extremely effective; the rise of religious fundamentalism wouldn't be a problem if you were correct. As religious fundamentalism demonstrates, the leaders have a monopoly over the workforce; thus they increase the cost of education, self-expression and self-interest. Which is to say, they deprive the workforce totally of those things. The result is a workforce that is ignorant, apathetic and obedient. It's a workforce that makes the simplest tools, as quickly as possible. That, is why totalitarianism is bad for civilization.
Pure anarchy ...
Pure anarchy, meaning violent self-interest, results in a subsistence lifestyle where everybody has nothing. Thankfully that is rare; someone always has more. He then needs to employ people to protect/operate his land and tools. He is now a business. Since no-one else owns has much as him, he has to pay for protecting his employees. That involves hiring more people to provide education, healthcare and law enforcement for all those people. He is now a government, although this simple model will most likely label him as a lord, dictator or warlord.
Why the above is a bunch of bullshit:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
https://skepticalscience.com/c...
The greenhouse effect is a real thing. Deal with it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Just how many doomsday scenarios / Malthusian Apocalypses failing before people stop accepting them ? *
According to Murphy's Law, one less than the one that actually proves correct.
The odds favor. Whether you'd like an old-fashioned religious apocalypse or the Heat Death of the Universe, we're definitely doomed, so it's just a matter of when.
On the other hand, the problem with AGW is that when you have a reasonable suspicion of Cause and Effect, it's probably not a good idea to keep pumping the Cause side of the equation just because all the previous apocalypses turned out to be duds.
why you idiots just don't do your own research
Perhaps you are a climate scientist. I'm not, and my educated layman's opinion about climate science is pretty worthless. Indeed, for topics like climate science, invertebrate neurogenetics, quantum chromodynamics, and brain surgery I feel safer deferring to actual credentialed peer-reviewed scientists who know what they're doing.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you are not a climate scientist since your main reference for the topic is a veritable cesspool of nut-job conspiracy theories.
Since you are cut-and-paste reposting what you already posted, I will cut-and-post what I already replied:
The difficulty here is that you are mixing up stuff that's correct, and stuff that isn't.
For the longest time earth was flooded with CO2 18 times higher than we have today,
That part is true. The Earth has had more carbon dioxide in the past,
and it was colder.
This part is not true. In general, when there's more carbon dioxide it's warmer, and when there's less it's colder.
We had more CO2 in THE FUCKING ICE AGE.
First, to be pedantic, let me remind you that we are in an ice age right now: there are permanent ice caps on the planet that don't disappear in the summers. The detailed place we are in the cycle is that we are in an "interglacial" period, but overall, yes, we're still in an ice age.
It's quite well accepted that the glaciation cycle is driven by Milankovitch variations, the pattern of solar insolation (short for "incident solar radiation," by the way) across the northern and southern hemisphere. Carbon dioxide and water vapor, however-- the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere-- are the amplifiers that turn the relatively small insolation changes into global temperature changes.
As the cycle of increase of glacial and interglacial periods go, the record is very clear: glacier advance correlate with reduced carbon dioxide, and glacier retreat trends with increased carbon dioxide. So, no, your statement is backwards-- if by "in the fucking ice age" you mean "during the ice covered periods of the current cycle", then, no, we had less CO2 in the atmosphere in the fucking ice age.
The graph you link, with a minimum increment on the time axis of 100 million years, doesn't show the ice age cycle (with time periods three orders of magnitude shorter than that). Here's a graph of temperature and carbon dioxide over the last four glaciation cycles:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/VostokIceCore.html">http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/VostokIceCore.html
The rest of your post seems to have equivalent random mixing up of facts. You write:
I don't know why you idiots just don't do your own research but keep repeating nonsense just because someone else said so.
But that seems to be exactly what you are doing-- posting a scrapbook of random unrelated stuff without, as far as I can tell, making any attempt to understand it. Here are some links:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-thawed-the-last-ice-age/
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_2.shtml
China has more coal than the equivalent caloric value of all known uranium deposits. By the time the world will burn out all Uranium, Chinese will still have coal for many millenniums.
It is not cost effective to search for new uranium deposits.
It is not cost effective to build new nuclear reactors.
If you have to pay the cost of emissions, instead of externalizing it, it is not cost effective to burn the coal.
Since you have now cut-and-paste reposted this twice already in the same thread. I'm getting tired of reposting my reply, so this time I will just repost the links
graph of temperature and carbon dioxide over the last four glaciation cycles:
https://simpleclimate.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/edc.jpg
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/VostokIceCore.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-thawed-the-last-ice-age/
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_2.shtml
Methane released unburned by itself, not only turns the world's temperature up. It does it on steroids! Burning methane does add carbon to the atmosphere; but it's a closed loop. (Every full grown tree absorbs 40 LBS of carbon a year.) Since the ice is going to melt anyways because of our stupidity with fossil fuels. Taking the burning option will slow things down. Because if we don't the ice will melt under the polar caps and be released in one big burp - jumping the world average temperature level to heights never perceived!!
It never fails. I read an interesting article, then scan the comments for some insight from people who know far more than I do about the subject, and it doesn't take long for all of it to devolve into heated name-calling, because a bunch of grown children can't disagree politely.
You post a lot of crap but it doesn't answer the simple question:
So where was the OMG CO2 = FLOOD!!!! 1 more degree and we all fucking die!!!!?!?!!?11/11 one.
These fuckers are claiming a few more degree would kill everyone. When earth was loaded with CO2 for ages.
Ever hear of a 787? The C919 is a 1980's aircraft.
Fuckbag
We're already well past the point where the planet can safely absorb the byproducts of fossil fuel burning. So the Malthusian issues are just as severe as people have been saying all along.
"It turns out falling CO2 levels was the cause of late Ordovician glaciation."
"Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years"
Nuclear energy doesn't emit any CO2 at all. China will make the most of this new resource, using it to enable construction of advanced nuclear and other low-CO2 generators, or profit by sales to foolish or desperate nations. This is a sustainable and thoughtful plan, which will leave them well equipped to handle any threats posed by a changing climate.
Meanwhile in the west, "environmentalists" continue waging war on our largest source of clean energy, and cementing gas as a permanent piece of the renewable plan, where it invariably provides the reliable energy needed to power modern society. This precious resource is being squandered on the production of short-lived renewables, which itself depends on a cheap form of reliable energy. Some CO2 is avoided in the near term, but the gas will not last, nor will it remain cheap, and it certainly isn't low-carbon.
Yeah, I mean really who wants to live on a greener more fertile planet
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...
This is what happens. You get CO2 and water vapor.
Much better solution as you're outputting far less CO2 versus burning coal.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Similarly, 9/11 was great because the new World Trade Center building looks much more attractive than the blocky old towers.
China has more coal than the equivalent caloric value of all known uranium deposits. By the time the world will burn out all Uranium, Chinese will still have coal for many millenniums.
It is not cost effective to search for new uranium deposits.
It is not cost effective to build new nuclear reactors.
Because of unlimited lawsuits and overbearing regulations, same as with coal-burning power plants.
As President Obama said: "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them."
Okay I'll bite.
If someone tells your that we are running out of (insert fossil fuel here), what they are most likely talking about is economically viable (insert fossil fuel here) not absolute values. This planet has a ton of trapped energy, it's just ridiculous to think of the sheer amount of energy that has been stored in this planet over it's billions of years of existence. It's a ton of flipping energy and unless something significantly changes about how human's exist, there's just no hope in us ever extracting 100% of all of that energy from the planet, ever. Put bluntly, we will never ever reach a point where humans have extracted absolutely every single bit of energy stored in this planet. Be it coal, oil, natural gas, or whatever else, there's just simply too much of it that we'll never get *all* of it. There is a limited supply of economically viable fossil fuels. We are indeed getting more creative with things like fracking (invented in 2006) that's helped us extend our reach. But at some point even that too will not be enough and we will need another innovation to extend our reach further. Some industries, just haven't had any of those *break through* innovations and it really makes you wonder about their economic viability. We're pretty good as a species at innovating so we're going to always come up with new and interesting ways to extract energy form the planet. The question is less, will we be able to extract the energy and more will there be any buyers? If this technology can be made to be cheap and reliable, then China's sitting on gold here. If it's only going to save them a buck or two,
then they'll just sit on the technology until energy prices in the other industries go up enough to make this gold. If it's never going to save them money, then this might very well be the last time we all hear about it. But again, it all comes down to less about how awesome we can innovate and more so to market pressures.
The doomsday scenarios, unless you're talking about climate change which is a different topic altogether, is basically what happens if we run into a period of time where we've not yet hit the next innovation and energy prices are flying through the roof? It's not unrealistic to think that we might be in the middle of researching the next big thing and then poof (and by poof I mean over the course of several years), we're running low on X-Y-Z fuel that we can extract at $5 a unit. We've got at least ten years of X-Y-Z fuel but we extracted it at $23 a unit and we've got at least three decades worth of X-Y-Z fuel but it was extracted at $78 a unit. That's a doomsday scenario. If we don't find a way to get that $23/unit X-Y-Z fuel somewhere close to $5/unit X-Y-Z fuel, a lot of industries that rely on X-Y-Z are going to be hurting. Heaven forbid we have to tap into that $78/unit fuel. We have technically forty years worth of fuel but all at prices that either no one will want to pay, or at prices that will drastically change industries. Sometimes governments subsidize things to help get the price as close to something that will keep demand up, but that can only go so far. The point being, there's no physical shortage, we're not absolutely out of X-Y-Z, but we are running out of X-Y-Z that the majority of people will pay for.
Absolute terms are silly to talk about. I think in the Asia-Pacific there's like enough coal to keep everyone in Japan, China, etc warm till 4000 or 5000 AD. But the majority of it is impure and would require an insane amount of processing before it actually became "fuel" grade coal. That's not also mentioning that a lot of it is difficult to get to, being trapped in complicated geological structures are aren't exactly the easiest thing to just drill through and have a stable tunnel running through it. Those are obviously things that eventually we'll have technical solutions for, but not right now. Also, if anyone wants to talk absolute terms. The sun is the way to go. It's got enough energy to power us for the next billio
.......... The fact is, there's enough carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere to make it opaque in the wavelengths that those gases absorb. ........
You are quite right. Well done!!!
You have just told us in effect that the greenhouse effect caused by these gases is real. Though I suspect you didn't understand the science you just quoted. When you have worked out just what wavelengths these gases are transparent to and what wavelengths they are opaque to, and which direction the energy at these various wavelengths are going, and the consequences of this, and all the other boring actual science, please come back and explain to the other deniers in a bit more detail.
So I went to oilprice.com, who linked to http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/China-says-succeeded-in-extracting-gas-hydrates-in-South-China-Sea,
which has no links, but says "...about 200 meters below the seabed at a depth of 1,266 meters".
So apparently they just drilled a 200 meter hole and burned what came out. Easy. But it's going
to decline rapidly, and how to get it ashore and to a market? 330km pipeline? This is a long way
from any commercial project.
Your post overall isn't bad. It's considerably better than the stuff that comes from people that mod anything that challenges their preconceptions down so let me ask
Just when have you heard anyone not frame fuel exhaustion in anything but apocalyptic terms ? It's overwhelmingly the case.
I don't even want to talk about just how many Greens are closet disciples of Malthus/Ehrlic, that just know better than to proclaim in public.
Good analogy
Oh wait Powering the civilization is in no way the same as terrorism. That's a lousy analogy.
The analogy is about being a myopic ignoramus and focusing on one tiny positive while ignoring a huge surrounding catastrophe. Since this is exactly what you did, the analogy is 100% spot-on.
Do you have a link to a site that is actually, youknow, good?
Could you please learn to form correct plurals? There's no apostrophe in humans. Also, it's means it is.
If we could power our civilization with extra apostrophes, we'd have colonized Jupiter by now.
565 MCF of gas per day from this experimental field is nothing, pick any random shale well drilled in the last year and it's making at least that, from ONE WELL. My feeling is the effort to mine this methane ice is going to far exceed that of drilling for gas.
Global Warming Cooling. I don't understand why people get in such an uproar over it.
This explains the real reason behind the US-China conflict over the South China Sea... The billionaires in both super powers want to get their greedy hands on all the fossil fuels there. The US is already fighting pipeline wars against Russia in Ukraine and Syria. How soon until we see open warfare between the US and China in the South China Sea? Of course, the *casus belli* will be disguised as something other than methane.
Sure, CO2 emission reduction is highly desirable now. But since methane has more greenhouse effect than CO2, and since climate warming sets underwater methane hydrate deposits free, it is better to capture and burn it rather than leave it escape to the atmosphere.
You're saying the Industrial revolution was a tiny positive ?
BTW Haansen and Mann(the teedle dee and dum of this) were predicting doom before congress going back to the 80s. Where is this huge catastrophe that's supposed to be here by now.
You're confusing yourself. The tiny positive you mentioned "more green plants".
The industrial revolution was in the past. We're talking about the future.
You're confusing yourself. The tiny positive you mentioned "more green plants".
The industrial revolution was in the past. We're talking about the future.
Please if you are going to be ignorant try not to demonstrate it quite so forcefully.
Greening the planet is hardly a tiny positive if you are starving. The industrial revolution is ongoing and still being powered overwhelmingly by fossil fuels, Where and how do you think the computer you type this one was made ?
Uranium is stupidly expensive and a pain in the rear to refine and burn as a nuclear fuel. It's good for proving the cycle, but thorium is a better long-term fuel - and we have 50-500,000 years' supply of it.
The best part is that thorium is pretty much going begging as rare earth mines can't give it away. There are hundreds of thousands of tons of the stuff already mined and ready to be used.
If that were a conventional gas well onshore, it would be pretty marginal for commercial viability - it would all depend on the availability of infrastructure to get it to market. For a well in deep water (it must be deep to have a low enough seabed temperature for methane hydrates to be stable), it would be an economic failure, because of those self-same infrastructure costs.
This one project, no. If scaled up a lot (10^5 if not more), it might be significant. Which will take a considerable period of time because of the need to build that infrastructure. There are only so many deep water pipelay barges in the world.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"