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China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

bbc.com

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Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#31

Post by Schizotypy »

elefanten wrote: post #25
unchocked wrote: post #22

This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial claims. Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken Soviet submarine.

How does this serve to obscure the military basis? By implying they have an economic basis instead, or as well? I doubt that's much of a net PR win, because either way they would be facing the same charge of trying to claim territory that doesn't belong to them.

Claiming areas that don't belong to them is one of China's strong points, they do it all the time and there's a dispute in the China Sea that could tie into this

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#32

Post by vkou »

djrogers wrote: post #4

The 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.

> The 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 a westerner, you can only enjoy your 'environmentally-friendly' (It's really not) lifestyle, because you outsource all your manufacturing pollution to China.

If all the stuff you used were made domestically, your nation's carbon footprint would increase - massively. And China's would decrease.

The atmosphere doesn't care about these accounting tricks, though.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#33

Post by unchocked »

elefanten wrote: post #25
unchocked wrote: post #22

This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial claims. Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken Soviet submarine.

How does this serve to obscure the military basis? By implying they have an economic basis instead, or as well? I doubt that's much of a net PR win, because either way they would be facing the same charge of trying to claim territory that doesn't belong to them.

Chinese maritime claims have no basis in law, but they want to maximize their legitimacy anyhow. One avenue is through military dominance, which is very powerful but invites resistance/blowback. By adding claims of intended economic exploitaion, they get a rationale which is non-threatening, and can be used by anyone who wants to avoid conflict with China to say "see, their aims aren't so hostile after all."

They don't have to make the charge go away, they just need to FUD it.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#34

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

spenrose wrote: post #19
nullnilvoid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a valid concern. However, clathrates (mostly CH4) is actually much cleaner than coal, by far the biggest source of energy in China. If China can replace coal with clathrates, it would be an huge improvement for the environment.

China is already replacing coal with renewables and nuclear. It doesn't need a new source of CO2.

China is still building new coal. "65GW of new coal-fired units had started construction between January 2016 and January 2017, down 62% on the 170GW the year before. Most coal power stations are around 1GW or greater in capacity."

Consider that those coal plants could run for 40 years[3], it's probably better if those new plants were CCGT[2] rather than coal.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/coal-pow...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle

3. https://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement...

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#35

Post by wohlergehen »

stcredzero wrote: post #6
djrogers wrote: post #4

The 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…

"The Swarm" by Frank Schätzing has a semi-related plot circling around the clathrate gun hypothesis.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#36

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Schizotypy wrote: post #31
elefanten wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this serve to obscure the military basis? By implying they have an economic basis instead, or as well? I doubt that's much of a net PR win, because either way they would be facing the same charge of trying to claim territory that doesn't belong to them.

Claiming areas that don't belong to them is one of China's strong points, they do it all the time and there's a dispute in the China Sea that could tie into this

Politics. Claiming areas that don't belong to them is one of the human species persistent activities.

I'll never understand French Polynesia or the Falkland Islands, but there you go.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#37

Post by Turing_Machine »

unchocked wrote: post #22

This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial claims. Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken Soviet submarine.

"The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining"

Manganese nodules, actually.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#38

Post by aianus »

macmacaka wrote: post #24
aianus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

I don't get your point. Who are referring to are not being responsible here? The Chinese government or the Chinese people? If the former, they installed one-child policy with the sole purpose of population restriction, sounds pretty "responsible" to me. If the latter, are you suggesting as a people, maybe the Chinese shouldn't breed as many, to, say, leave space for other people?

If I choose to drive 1000km that I don't have to drive in a 35mpg Prius I am not more environmentally conscious than someone who drives 200km in a 10mpg Hummer.

Similarly if I have 10 kids instead of 2.

Anyways, I should have said "was irresponsible" since those decisions were made by their ancestors a while back and so there's not much more they can do about it now.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#39

Post by 0xfaded »

ams6110 wrote: post #26
dharma1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just CO2 - methane is about 25x as potent in terms of global warming as CO2

Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere for nearly as long however. It will break down upon exposure to oxygen, ozone, and UV sunlight.

The commonly cited 20-25 multiplier takes into account the half-life of methane. If the methane didn't beak down the multiplier would be 130-140.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#40

Post by rosser »

Robotbeat wrote: post #7

Tapping 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…

While completely true, this misses the crucial detail that burning the methane clathrates is pretty much the best case scenario for their release. They're coming out, one way or another. Right now, that means melting as methane, or burning to produce energy, yielding CO₂ — which, yes, would ideally be captured.

Which would you prefer?

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