Chart Of The Decade - Atmospheric Methane Concentrations Over Time - Energy Bulletin

[hatrack]

As we reported two years ago, an international group of scientists, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group has been sailing into the Arctic waters around Norway and Russia to take samples of methane bubbling from ocean clathrates — frozen methane deposits on the sea floor. Some of their findings, very preliminary, are now making their way into the blogosphere, but like many, we await peer-review published articles or discussion in the next IPCC report — AR5 — due in 2014, before we draw hard conclusions.

EDIT

Some arctic sea regions as large as one kilometer in diameter are indeed “frothing” from massive gas releases from previously frozen CH4 deposits. Beginning in 2010, Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences said his research team discovered more than 100 plumes, and estimates there are “thousands” over a wider area, extending from Russian mainland to East Siberian Arctic Shelf. “Earlier we found torch-like structures, but only tens of meters in diameter. This is the first time we found continuous, powerful, impressive seeps more than 1,000 meters in diameter. It’s amazing. We carried out checks at 115 stationary points and discovered methane of a fantastic scale—on a scale not seen before,” Semiletov said.

In our March 2010 post, “Various Bubblings,” we wrote: "Of course, as we have noted here before, warmer oceans, methane from permafrost and clathrate bubblings are all tipping points that accelerate climate change and are multiplicative - 2 or 3 orders of magnitude times anthropogenic emissions, once their threshold is crossed. Earth, meet Venus. The toxic gas fireballs rolling across Kansas, destroying and poisoning everything in their path, are described in Peter Ward’s book, Under a Green Sky. As Wallace Broecker says, “The climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.” Atmospheric CH4 concentrations have risen more in the past 4 years than in the previous 20. Methane has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than CO2, but it is 50 to 70 times (in the short term 100x) more potent as greenhouse gas. It doesn’t go away when it decays, either. It oxidizes into CO2.

EDIT

A recent item from New Scientist highlighted the clathrate issue but unfortunately provided more smoke than light. The August 17 report described research led by Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham and Tim Minshull of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2009GL039191). Their team sailed into the west of the Svalbard archipelago, which lies north of Norway, where they found CH4 plumes being heated by the West Spitsbergen current, which has warmed 1 °C over the past 30 years. The methane being released from hydrates in the 600 km2 area added up to 27 kilotons/year, which suggests that the entire hydrate deposit around Svalbard could be releasing 20 megatonnes a year. Globally, extrapolating to all shallow, cold ocean areas, that translates to around 0.5-0.6 GtC/yr, or about 10% of fossil fuel emissions.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-04/game-over-or-overtime

Link to Arctic Methane Emergency Group: http://www.ameg.me/index.php

Link to Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (w. current CH4 data): http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

[pscot]

1. This wll pasteurize the planet

I'll bet even James Inhofe would be impressed by a methane firestorm. Or maybe not.

[a geek named Bob]

2. How about

1.) using the methane as lifting gas, in balloons that have the tops painted in IR reflective paint
2.) cycle: create greenhouses (preferrably on the balloons)->grow buffalo green in the greenhouses->process the buffalo grass with glacial acetic acid (Basically, seriously concentrated vinegar)->this makes plastic (one of the ehtyls)->use the plastic for other building structures.
3.) cycle: chill the CO2 down to dry ice->process seawater for magnesium->burning the magnesium on the dry ice->this creates Grapheme, a buckytube material->use to replace building materials and wire.

Place these above the arctic and the antarctic, as shade, and an incredibly green industry. This should have a very large negative carbon footprint.

Maybe I'll sketch this out. It'll give me something to do...

[NickB79]

3. Every idea about utilizing the methane runs into the same problem

It's a very, very diffuse source. The methane is outgassing from thousands of square miles of tundra AND from undersea sources as well.

How do you capture the methane to use it in the first place? A 1000-square kilometer tent?

[a geek named Bob]

5. I was thinking

of either water bubbling, which traps methane and CO2, or just going brute force and chilling it down. Near each balloon, you'd get carbon sinks/methane sinks. Each single balloon wouldn't be much, except that this idea could replicate itself over time.

-Call each balloon roughly 200 feet in diameter. V=(roughly) 4.189*R^3
-200^3 = 8E6. 8E6*4.189 = 3.35E7 cubic feet = 33 million cubic feet.
-Using methane as the lift gas removes (roughly) 300 tons of methane out of the picture.
lifting bouyancy gives us about 904 tons to play with
-have the majority of the structure built from carbon-carbon = (roughly) 50 tons
that leaves about 850 tons to work with.
-At that point, you could use lightweight solar furnaces and an electric chiller (we only need to get down to -89F to get the methane.)
-Run the thing flat out, save to siphon off the liquid methane.
-Get the temp down to -109F, and we have dry ice.
-The total heat difference should provide enough potential power to run a solar still, for ballast, magnesium, and some electric power

1 acre sized balloon rids the air of (at least) 300 tons. 850 tons cargo.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/575993139/Liquid_Nitrogen_Freezer_Carbon_Dioxide_Freezer.html
gives us a tonnage of 6 tons weight, producing 6 tons/day (more, but we have to conserve power)
it needs 4500 watts, which the cheesiest of PV systems can power, via 4500 sq feet of panel
A source of salt, magnesium, and iron will give us thermocouples

THEREFORE: 647 balloons will use up some 224 kilotons of carbon start up investment, and process up to 1.4 megatons CO2 and or CH4 per year.
THEREFORE: 5.45E11/1.4E6 = 390,000 balloon-years
Use one balloon to make 2, two to make 4, etc (using an artificial telomere system to short circuit run-away growth.)
stop at 14 years of building (assuming one blimp by one blimp per year...)
545 gigatons of CO2 removed after 24 years of full processing, assuming only one chiller per balloon.
Add a sea anchor, and you've got a floating island...

[GliderGuider]

6. That wasn't the question.

The question is, how do you catch the methane in the first place as it seeps out of thousands and thousands of square miles of tundra and seafloor, all of it in extremely inhospitable places?

What you're demonstrating here is a classic example of Kubler-Ross "bargaining" behaviour. "Maybe we could just do this, and everything would be OK..."

[a geek named Bob]

7. GliderGuider

It's my off-the-top-of-my-head attempt to fix a problem.

I tend to look down on those that show "it can't be helped" behavior.

A mthane trap like I just sketched out will work. As for continued collection of the Methane and CO2, moving that much air will cause a current...


Bob, who lights candles, instead of cursing darkness.

[GliderGuider]

9. Fill your boots!

You have a long road in front of you. Best of luck in your journey.

[a geek named Bob]

10. Like I said

I really needed a hobby...

Think this would get my geek brag rights?

Once I get settled into this semester, I'll start pricing out the basic model.

What the hell, maybe I'll work into the weight budget a few co-houses...

Bob, Designer and Flight Leader of the Flying Island commune cooperative...

[pscot]

26. Condos in the air

Location might be an issue.

[a geek named Bob]

27. I hadn't thought of it as condos

I was thinking groups of people, working on using up as much CO2 as possible.... All of it floating about 12 miles off the coast. You could probably "sail" these with the wind currents...

[joshcryer]

12. The idea was chilling the methane from the air.

Happily you'd only have to chill it about 50 degrees or so less so it's not terribly daunting. I'm not confident that you'd have the energy to do this though.

[a geek named Bob]

28. Most of the chillers

need about 5 KW for operation.

At 1 watt/square foot (which is almost criminally incompetent solar power design), you'd need 5,000 square feet of panel/solar furnace.

The balloon I'm sketching out would have something like 120,000 square feet of flat plate surface area.

We've got room to negotiate...

[joshcryer]

11. I like it.

Get to work.

Not much time left.

[a geek named Bob]

13. the main problem

is going to be setting up a flexible automation system.

Getting a crew would be easier to work with...

know anybody who wants to live on a floating balloon, outside of GOP influence?

[joshcryer]

15. Precisely. The whole idea of Von Neumann or hive replication...

...is a problem solver. It solves lots of problems.

I mean with the right types of systems you could literally take carbon out of the air!

But it's such a hard problem that I don't think it's going to be solved.

Yeah, it's fun to think about. Exponential growth is brilliant. 2*2*2*2, etc.

"Hey, this is a big problem but we can solve it if we just double our production each generation!"

[a geek named Bob]

18. With the right headspace...

I should be able to design a KISS system to do most of the work.

There's an old phrase: "Hug the Monster..."

I'll go one better... I'll take hte monster out to dinner, a movie, and then have a wild "session" with the monster, and it's three best friends.

...some run away from problems. I run AT problems.

[a geek named Bob]

22. maybe it's time for more people to have geek soul food...

Chinese food and a double espresso

[Speck Tater]

4. "we await...published articles...due in 2014..."

"...before we draw hard conclusions".

IF, that is, there is still a civilization to publish those articles by then.

Yes, I know, that's a gross exaggeration on my part, BUT one problem is very real, and that is this:

The pace of climate change is beginning to be faster than the pace of research and publication about climate change.

At this rate, by the time we discover some new danger and get it peer reviewed and published it will be too late to implement any solution to address that new danger.

[GliderGuider]

8. You put your finger on it.

The pace of climate change is beginning to be faster than the pace of research and publication about climate change.

Climate change is outrunning research on climate change, which in turn is outrunning action on climate change. Even the doomers who don't need peer reviews to know whether the ice is melting are behind the curve.

It feels like we're on the leading edge of the shock wave of what will turn out in hindsight to be an explosive change to the planet. Decades are eyeblinks in the natural world, and in just eight decades (say from 1950 to 2030) human activity will have triggered a web of interlocked changes that will end up with the planet being a Very Different Place. Will it still be hospitable to human life? Many of us alive today will have a chance to see for ourselves.

This is such an amazing time to be alive!

[joshcryer]

14. Your celebration of the end of the world is noted.

[GliderGuider]

16. No way man, I'm celebrating the beginning of the next one.

"Hi. I'm GliderGuider, and I'm a changeaholic."

"Boo!"
"Fuck off, ya prat!"
"We want our old ways back!"


Feelin' the love...

[XemaSab]

17. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=22763

[hatrack]

19. Not to quibble (especially when I now apparently have a principle, uh, sorry, a Principle) . . .

But may I rephrase it a bit?

Humans will protect the environment, unless it costs money, or causes any inconvenience whatsoever.

[XemaSab]

20. You'll have to take it up with Phantom Power

[phantom power]

21. he's right, it's 'or cause any inconvenience whatsoever'

[XemaSab]

23. I copypastad directly from teh original quote

but I will go change it.

Hatrack's principle needs to be as accurate as possible.

[Nihil]

24. That's science for ya ...

... always "refine the theoretical model to fit the real-world data" ...

[XemaSab]

25. .