Posted on 01/07/2011 2:20:13 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Last August, just two days into a research cruise to study methane gas spewed into the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon gusher, Texas A&M University oceanographer John Kessler turned to one of his colleagues and said, "Well, it looks like it might be gone. What do you think?"
The huge wallop of methane burped up from deep inside the earth was, in fact, missing.
Kessler and his colleagues now report in Science that a huge swarm of gas-gobbling bacteria swelled to consume nearly all of the estimated 200,000 tons of methane dumped into the gulf. .....
Besides providing some good news for the gulf region, the finding has potential implications for climate change science, too. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and, as the earth warms, climate scientists worry that much more methane will be released from the oceans. "What this tells us is that natural releases of methane from the seafloor with similar characteristics will not make it up to the atmosphere, will not influence climate," Kessler says.
While the gusher was still flowing, in June, a team sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had found intense concentrations of methane in the waters near the wellhead, ..........At the time, that team detected very few of the methane-eating bacteria that naturally live in the gulf. So Valentine and colleagues arrived at a grim - though early - conclusion. "Originally, we had expected that the methane would be consumed gradually," Valentine says. "We really thought it would be around for a year or more."
Instead, two to three months after engineers finally capped the well, the gas was gone. All of the evidence points to an explosion of methane-eating bacteria.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
[Excerpt] Schmitt: Geologist Against Climate Science
By the way, Schmitt is a geologist by education, getting his training so long ago that renewable energy wasn't even on the radar. So it's natural that he's attached to the old-fashioned habit of digging in the earth for energy -- damn the consequences -- as well as in the moon, where he once walked. He believes the moon's natural resources should be exploited by private industry, not explored for public benefit.
Showing his vehement climate-change-denier loyalties, Schmitt quit his post at the Planetary Society -- a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration -- in November 2008 over a number of policy differences, including the Society's "accelerating research into global climate change through more comprehensive Earth observations." In his resignation letter, Schmitt claimed that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision-making."
Commenting on the global warming debate, Schmitt said, "It's one of the few times you've seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it's coloring their objectivity." Here he is on Fox Business in December 2009 bagging the concept of man-made climate change, as well as the need to restrict greenhouse gases and implement cap and trade.
In the interview, he denies there is a "scientific consensus" on climate change, and says "the CO2 scare is a red herring." He states that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision-making," and that scientists who might otherwise challenge prevailing views on climate change dare not do so for fear of losing funding…..[End Excerpt]
This makes you wonder about these scientists who laying out this massive ‘worry’ about the methane here...and also in Siberia (the global warming worry). It would appear like that the Earth has various self-healing ways...that we still aren’t familiar with.
Oh, no!
My beloved spouse is going to want to know where she can buy some of that bacteria. I’m making chili again tonight.
But But - what has all that gorging on methane done to the poor bacteria?
The arrogance of these eviromental whackos is amazing. They believe man is a significant impact on the planet’s ecosystem, yet they refuse to recognize the recovery of Love Canal, Krakatow and Chernobl.
Man is like bateria to the earth, an annoyance but not lasting.
New microbe discovered eating Gulf oil spill
‘Great potential’ for dispersing oil in deep sea, researchers report
msnbc.com staff and news service reports - updated 8/24/2010 1:49:10 PM ET
A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe suddenly is flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico and gobbling up the BP spill at a much faster rate than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.
Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled since the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Also, the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers reported in the online journal Sciencexpress.
“Our findings ... suggest that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep-sea,” lead researcher Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California, said in a statement.
The data is also the first ever on microbial activity from a deep-water dispersed oil plume, Hazen said.
Environmentalists have raised fears about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile-long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets.
“Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea” cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.
Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deep-water sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.
This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 41 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf..... (snip)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38834330/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/
Seems Mother Earth takes care of her problems, if we won’t try to get in the way.
Environmentalists are arrogant idiots.
So,deforestation of the Amazon is a greater contributor to rising CO2 levels than fossil fuel burning? I’m not arguing for atmospheric CO2—> global warming, just that if biomass sucks up a huge amount of a rate limiting nutrient (CH4 in this case), why not CO2 as well ?
Great, now we have a bacteria obesity crisis.
This lays out an interesting option for future spills, which is to deliberately introduce both dispersant and cultured bacteria, even further accelerating the process. I doubt that the bacteria would survive if mixed directly with the dispersant, but introducing them as a second flow-stream is certainly possible.
I don’t care how people explain the situation, I thoroughly believe God provided the methane-eating bacteria to take care of it. Thank You, Lord God!
This is IMH-educated-O complete and utter JUNK SCIENCE.
“two to three months after engineers finally capped the well, the gas was gone. All of the evidence points to an explosion of methane-eating bacteria.” NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Methane is essentially INSOLUBLE in salt water. Methane GAS, originating from the busted well head or from sublimating methane hydrate(s) would NOT persist in the marine environment under ANY circumstances. The methane CH4 would either escape into the atmosphere or reform as crystalline methane hydrate.
The bacteria in the Gulf waters DID however ‘eat’ a lot of hydrocarbons — specifically CRUDE OIL and its fractions.
As a recovering Marine Scientist this kind of article (which I did NOT read in its entirety) just pi$$es me off so bad.
“Thank you, Lord God!”
Amen.
Glad for more information Blueflag.
As George Carlin so eloquently put it, “Mankind is like fleas to the earth; a nuisance that can be shaken off at any time.” or words to that effect...
I actually wrote a short story (fiction) about that WAY back in high school — using surfactants and chelating agents to emulsify oil and also creating genetically engineering bacteria to be facultative oil-eaters which form spores after eating in order to be NATURALLY available for the next oil spill.
In my short story however, the EVIL envirowhackos broke into the lab and stole a culture of the bacteria before they were ‘ready’ (ie the mutagen was still acting on the DNA) and when these aberrant bacteria were released into the environment to fight a small spill in Charleston harbour (near a “sensitive” area of course) they did in fact metabolize the oil. BUT!!! due to their incomplete genetic transformation the excreted a powerful carcinogen as they PARTIALLY metabolized the crude oil. The effect was that of a DEMON BUG released into the biome. The hero of the story had to rescue the world by continuing his genetic engineering work on a super bacteria to ‘fix’ what the envirowhackos had released — despite a firestorm of protest and opposition. Fun. This was back in 1973. I guess I was ahead of my time.
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