silly question: burning it / these is not an option? it produces co2, but that is far less worse than ch4.
Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
191–200 of 384 posts
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.
Maybe my math is simplistic, but a half life of 5 years gives a life expectancy of ~7 years (5 years / ln 2). If 50x current methane levels are released over 100 years, then at steady state you have added 0.5x/year * 7 years, or 3.5x current methane levels, bringing the total to 4.5x.
That's a bit too simplistic for my taste, but I think you're on the right track.
Exponential decay implies that the rate at which methane disappears is equal to the total amount divided by the average lifetime, so with an additional 0.5 / year, you reach a steady state when (total amount / average lifetime) = (0.5 / year), hence when the total amount is 3.5. Assuming we already were in a steady state initially there should be an additional 1/7 / year from natural sources bringing the total to 4.5.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about just spreading a bunch of methane consuming bacteria over there? Not quite suited to the environment - how about breeding some that are?
I don't see that working real well. After the methane bubbles pop, the methane spreads out widely. Before the bubbles pop, the bacteria would not quickly / easily get to where the methane is actually concentrated. They don't just dig for resources, they have to ride along with some other process (like water flow).
So maybe in the ocean for the clathrate.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
CO2 concentrations went from 280,000 to ~404,000ppb CH4 concentrations went from 700 to 1,850. So if you use 34x that 1,000ppb is only 39,000 vs 124,000 meaning it's significantly less important overall contribution. It would need to reach ~4,347ppb to cause as much impact as CO2 has which is in nobody's projections that I have seen. PS: "Methane has a large effect (24 times as strong as carbon dioxide per unit mole)…
Okay, the half-life of methane is 7-9 years. Not the lifetime. The 34x potential I gave is for methane over a hundred years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential It's incredibly potent stuff, so much that despite the relatively quick breakdown, an initial mass of methane will have a warming effect that is 20-35x that of an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide over a century. GWP numbers take the brief…
The risk is from 100s's of Gigatons which is a extremely massive quantity. How much of that is going to be liberated and how soon has a massive impact on estimates.
Anyway, your first link says " In the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, methane has a lifetime of 12.4 years" (If that's X ln(2) for half life it's 8.6 years)
"This means that a methane emission will have 28 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
PS: As to small quantities, we are talking about billions of tons of a gas.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does somebody have climatology models reliable enough to determine a favorable location? AFAIK, anything can go wrong anywhere.
Maybe so, but I'm sure that good guesses are possible. Basically, further from the equator, away from oceans, and higher altitude. And away from large cities. I wonder about some of those "useless" Chinese cities, for example.
> I wonder about some of those "useless" Chinese cities, for example.
Never attribute to forethought that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our grandchildren are in for tough times. Unless a political miracle occurs. Even then, it might be too late.
More likely our models will turn out to be slightly wrong and it won't be as apocalyptic as we thought and we'll adjust according to our observed reality.
What's the relative expected utility of assuming your best model is actually not as good as speculation?
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does somebody have climatology models reliable enough to determine a favorable location? AFAIK, anything can go wrong anywhere.
Maybe so, but I'm sure that good guesses are possible. Basically, further from the equator, away from oceans, and higher altitude. And away from large cities. I wonder about some of those "useless" Chinese cities, for example.
Most of those "useless" chinese cities are filling up now. All of those stories were like looking at a brand new housing estate before any of the houses were on sale.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
New Zealand could be in trouble if ocean acidification happens or weather patterns cause more drought (~80% hydro for energy generation and the arable land relies upon high rainfall).
Can there even be non-localised drought on a small island the size of New Zealand? The only significant geographical feature in the North Island (where most people live) is 3 mountains right in the middle.
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Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Source? Wikipedia says: "an estimated lifetime of 8.9±0.6 years in the atmosphere." Which suggests a half life of 1/2 that.
A half-life describes an asymptotic curve. You don't just divide a "lifetime" by 2.
1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16... = 2 so it's not that far off as an approximation but yea 1/LN(2) = 1.44 so the low number is 5 point something years and the high is 6 point something years.
Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic
#200If we can't fix, if we can't prevent, and if we cannot prepare either, then maybe we could at least preserve? • Digitize all human knowledge and as much art/literature as you can gather (books, music, movies, shows, games, even porn and random YouTube videos and discussions on online forums :) Most of that work has already been done. • Store it on the most resilient (and simple/repairable) storage media you can, • Bu…
We've constructed a society which is incapable of responding effectively to even ultimate crisis, and faced with that realization all we can think to do is devise a way to preserve the leavings of that dead-end paradigm. Very nice.