China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#2Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#3Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.
Probably though it depends on how much CO2 it takes to mine / transport / refine etc.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#4The real concern here is that the country that's furthest along in extracting the methane is also pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns. As the article points out, the biggest danger with this as a NG source is that a lot of methane can escape before you've extracted it, and the methane that escapes is a huge concern as a greenhouse gas.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#5Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.
MAYBE. Methane leaks are incredibly destructive as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. And mining this stuff could cause leaks.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#6The real concern here is that the country that's furthest along in extracting the methane is also pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns. As the article points out, the biggest danger with this as a NG source is that a lot of methane can escape before you've extracted it, and the methane that escapes is a huge concern as a greenhouse gas.
Tom Clancy movie plot: Apocalyptic extremist group gets hold of a nuclear weapon and plots to use it to release a large amount of methane. However, it doesn't stop there. They also ignite the methane to create an ongoing reaction heat the hydrate deposit to release additional billions of tons of methane.
Slightly more sophisticated movie plot: Market forces accomplish basically the same thing over the period of a few decades, which still results in a runaway positive feedback loop causing more methane hydrates to release, making it warmer, etc.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#7Tapping clathrates is a whole new vast source of carbon. If this becomes economical and drastic measures aren't taken to capture and store the emissions, the climate is basically toast.
In the last few years, it has become quite obvious to me we're not going to ever run out of carbon before we, say, octuple (or more) the CO2 in the atmosphere. And the technology to get these fossil fuel sources improves just about as fast as other energy technologies (and sometimes faster). We have to rely on measures other than scarcity if we want to keep our atmospheric CO2 levels anywhere even remotely similar to what homo sapiens have experienced since we've been a species.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#8Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.
MAYBE. Methane leaks are incredibly destructive as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. And mining this stuff could cause leaks.
Allthough you could also argue that because of warming these gasses might escape if we don't mine them before that.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#9Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.
MAYBE. Methane leaks are incredibly destructive as methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. And mining this stuff could cause leaks.
All you need is for someone to come up with a way to capture a lot of methane very cheaply but very inefficiently. Then a swarm of marginal operators will go in with that technique and release gigafktons of methane.
Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
#10Clathrates are one possible positive feedback mechanism that could quickly (i.e. human lifespan) increase the Earth's temperature in response to an initial (human-caused) smaller heat pulse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis