Not good news

[PS_RalphW]

http://www.epmag.com/Technology/US-Japa ... gies_99879

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today the completion of a successful, unprecedented test of technology in the North Slope of Alaska that was able to safely extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates – a vast, entirely untapped resource that holds enormous potential for U.S. economic and energy security. Building upon this initial, small-scale test, the Department is launching a new research effort to conduct a long-term production test in the Arctic as well as research to test additional technologies that could be used to locate, characterize and safely extract methane hydrates on a larger scale in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Wasn't it a 4% leakage rate that makes NG as potent a greenhouse gas source as coal?

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.epmag.com/Technology/US-Japa ... gies_99879

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today the completion of a successful, unprecedented test of technology in the North Slope of Alaska that was able to safely extract a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates – a vast, entirely untapped resource that holds enormous potential for U.S. economic and energy security. Building upon this initial, small-scale test, the Department is launching a new research effort to conduct a long-term production test in the Arctic as well as research to test additional technologies that could be used to locate, characterize and safely extract methane hydrates on a larger scale in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Wasn't it a 4% leakage rate that makes NG as potent a greenhouse gas source as coal?

Methane hydrates will in practice be worse than coal, because of the leakage. Burning it is just the same as burning any fossil fuel, but methane is much more potent a greenhouse gas (72 times as potent over a 20 year period) than CO2 and that is why leakage is so important.

Widespread extraction of clathrates pretty much guarantees we're going to make the Earth uninhabitably hot within a century. It would/will be an unmitigated catastrophe.

[emordnilap]

A friend responded with one word to news of this feckingness:

ecocide

[raspberry-blower]

Doesn't methane seepages from clathrates cause the ocean to lose its bouyancy? Methane burps and all that..
If that happens then ocean platforms could sink to the bottom without anyone realising what has happened..

All the time the planet is heating up

[RenewableCandy]

There's a theory that precisely that type of phenomenon is responsible for The Bermuda Triangle.

[emordnilap]

One comment was, "Surely it's better to burn this stuff than allow it to leak into the atmosphere?"

Discuss.

[PS_RalphW]

It depends on the leakage rate.

If the leakage rate is low and steady, of the order of 1%, it is better to leave it unburnt.

If the clathrates become unstable and risk large scale releases, then it is better to extract and burn them to CO2 - providing you can keep the leakage during extraction down to 1% or thereabouts. However, if the sources are unstable, there is a high risk of larger leakage being triggered by the extraction.

Better to leave it in the ground and pray to Giaia

[UndercoverElephant]

I have been convinced for some time that the only way we are going to stop catastrophic warming now is by geo-engineering. We're going to have to try to scrub some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere, or find a way to block out some of the sunlight arriving.

I am aware of all the drawbacks. It is the "final solution" when no other hope is left. Which is now.

[biffvernon]

Scrub the CO2 by all means but don't block the sunshine - it does nothing for ocean acidification and makes folk think it's ok to pollute. Don't even suggest it as a possibility as it just encourages those who say the next generation will be able to fix it.

[UndercoverElephant]

Scrub the CO2 by all means but don't block the sunshine - it does nothing for ocean acidification and makes folk think it's ok to pollute. Don't even suggest it as a possibility as it just encourages those who say the next generation will be able to fix it.

OK. We have to scrub some of the CO2. Somehow...

[RenewableCandy]

[UndercoverElephant]

Replanting forests is certainly moving in the right direction, but it's not going to be enough on its own. The Caledonian Forest was itself just a remnant. The whole of Europe was originally forest.

[emordnilap]

And, to quote yourself UE, why only CO2-negative industries should now be allowed:

It's not the same. Burning coal is returning carbon to the biosphere that was locked away during a period of evolution that can't be repeated. It was a one-off removal of carbon, the cause of which was co-incidentally explained during a BBC4 documentary this evening about decay. There was a 50 million year gap between the appearance of the first trees (the first wood) and the point when fungi figured out how to break down lignin (which is what makes wood tough.) That's why the trees didn't rot. So for 50 million years, carbon was being taken out of the system and buried - permanently, at least for most of it and until humans started digging it up in the form of coal and burning it.

By burning all that coal, humans are creating conditions that have never existed in the history of life on Earth. What we are doing is just as significant in terms of the evolution of the earth's ecosphere as the original process of carbon deposition during the carboniferous age.

I'll start a new thread on it, I think.

[biffvernon]

More methane detected:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/0 ... tic-ocean/