Posted on 05/04/2008 11:11:18 AM PDT by gleeaikin
Researchers have found alarming evidence that the frozen Arctic floor has started to thaw and release long-stored methane gas. The results could be a catastrophic warming of the earth, since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But can the methane also be used as fuel?
AP
It's always been a disturbing what-if scenario for climate researchers: Gas hydrates -- hard clumps of ice and methane, conserved by freezing temperatures and high pressure -- could grow unstable and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, the result would be a drastic acceleration of global warming. Until now this idea was mostly academic. Now it seems more likely that it will.
Russian polar scientists have strong evidence that the first stages of melting are underway. They've studied the largest shelf sea in the world, an underwater area six times the size of Germany. The scientists are presenting their data at the European Geosciences Union this week in Vienna.
REPRINTS n the permafrost bottom of the 200-meter-deep sea, enormous stores of gas hydrates lie dormant in mighty frozen layers of sediment. The carbon content of the ice-and-methane mixture here is estimated at 540 billion tons. "This submarine hydrate was considered stable until now," says the Russian biogeochemist Natalia Shakhova, a member of the Pacific Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok.
The Russian scientists have estimated what might happen when this Siberian permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes. They believe the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelvefold. "The result would be catastrophic global warming," say the scientists. The greenhouse-gas potential of methane is 20 times that of carbon dioxide, as measured by the effects of a single molecule.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
A scary scenario this, if true. Recommend reading the entire article for complete details.
Well, geez!
The solution is obvious.
Cap the methane source and pipe it over to a power plant. Then generate electricity from it!
That way... we save the world from the Eeeeevil ‘Gore-bull’ Warming, and lower our energy costs at the same time.
A scary scenario this, if true. Recommend reading the entire article for complete details.
They have known about and dealt with methane hydrate for as long as drilling has been in existence.
This story is just the hysterical rantings of a reporter who just found out about it. They can’t sell papers with some hysteria to push.
Everything that comes from Spiegel is scary.
Nuke it. Seriously. That’d be cool.
Could this mean that global warming and greenhouse gas are un controlable by man?
A tax increase on Americans should solve this problem.
I predict cooling.
If warming the earth one degree was enough to melt all the methane, wouldn’t it have alredy all melted in previous warming episodes? Just asking.
Seaworms colonizing methane hydrate:
The last warming period was a time of plenty of food and leaps and bounds of advancement and posterity - the ensuing Little Age brought on starvation and disaster...
I'm hoping the idiots don't interfere with earth's self-correction mechanisms and plunge us into a cooling we couldn't recover from.
Nature has been taking care of the earth for billions of years...in conjunction with sun cycles, etc.
I trust the natural mechanisms far more than man - especially since the goracles know themselves that they're lying through their evil, greedy, power hungry teeth...
But they know, from history, that they will always find gullible people to follow them right off the wharf...If it is indeed going to be a choice between a warming and a cooling - I'll take the warming...
You are right. See this:
Officials seek key to unlock frozen gas
Slope test well yields ‘gold mine of data’ on huge hydrate deposits
By WESLEY LOY
Anchorage Daily News
Published: February 20, 2007
Last Modified: February 20, 2007 at 06:42 AM
BP teamed with government agencies to drill an exploratory well this month that could help unlock a fabulous new supply of North Slope natural gas.
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The well probed a layer of material just beneath the permafrost, called gas hydrate. The hydrate is a solid, crystalline form of gas, usually methane, mixed in sandstone and water. A combination of cold and pressure keeps the gas as a solid.
Hydrates exist in many locations around the world, including under seabeds. On the North Slope, government geologists estimate there are 450 trillion cubic feet of gas hydrate. That’s a staggering volume — more than 12 times the amount of conventional gas known to exist within Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope oil fields.
For now, however, the hydrate is little more than tantalizing. The industry and government scientists say they first must figure out how to get the frozen gas to the surface, and it’s likely to be several more years at least before any is produced commercially.http://dwb.adn.com/front/story/8655247p-8547092c.html
Of course not. Hidden deep in the agenda of the left, they wouldn’t mind killing off the millions of unbelievers to save Gaia.
Like to note that if it could happen it would have happend 2 million years ago when there was no appreciable accumulation of ice anywhere in the world.
That's the blink of an eye by geologic standards.
Better question is why, with a warmer ocean and no ice the hydrates didn't melt.
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