More global warming (sigh) - Methane hydrates

Bill White · 2003-07-01 12:19:36

I saw this article today.

Any opinions about whether frozen methane hydrates can really threaten humanity with extinction?

clark · 2003-07-01 12:32:00

Umm, a little lite, no?

Neither model takes into account the possibility of a partial melting of the methane hydrate still present in vast quantities around the fringes of the polar seas.

How much is 'vast', and what are the possibilities of these actually being relaesed into the atmosphere in such quantities as to cause further global warming?

It also stated in the article that large volcano eruptions created acid rain, which contributed to the demise of the plant life, which affected the entire food chain. How does the methane hydrate's create a similar problem?

I've seen some other research related to the Permian era, and what caused the extinction. Some conclude that a meteroite caused massive tectonic damage, which led to the volcanic eruptions- the article seems to preclude this possibility. In my mind this makes the most sense since it would take a massive catalyst to cause the volcanic eruptions neccessary to produce the effects that wipe out 90% of life.

Yet even if global climes increase, how are we endangered by the methane hydrates? it seems most of the damge in Permian era came from the volcanoes carbon dioxide (which would choke the animals if they were active for a while), and the resulting Ice age from extra particles in the upper atmosphere.

Bill White · 2003-07-01 12:40:49

A link with more basic data.

The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.
This estimate is made with minimal information from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other studies. Extraction of methane from hydrates could provide an enormous energy and petroleum feedstock resource. Additionally, conventional gas resources appear to be trapped beneath methane hydrate layers in ocean sediments.

and this

Methane, a "greenhouse" gas, is 10 times more effective than carbon dioxide in causing climate warming.
Methane bound in hydrates amounts to approximately 3,000 times the volume of methane in the atmosphere. There is insufficient information to judge what geological processes might most affect the stability of hydrates in sediments and the possible release of methane into the atmosphere. Methane released as a result of landslides caused by a sea-level fall would warm the Earth, as would methane released from gas hydrates in Arctic sediments as they become warmed during a sea-level rise. This global warming might counteract cooling trends and thereby stabilize climatic fluctuation, or it could exacerbate climatic warming and thereby destabilize the climate.

The Guardian article cited earlier suggests that a 6C increase in polar water temperatures would release massive amounts of methane causing a very rapid run-away greenhouse. Venus?

That Siberian supervolcano from 251 million years ago caused exactly that, leading to a major extinction event, according to one interpretation of rock layer deposits.

Localized contemporary global warming and the release of methane from these hydrates could cause a new runaway greenhouse. Even if the total average temperature increase were quite small, the release of hydrate methane might activate a tipping point.

To return to William Calvin's thesis concerning the Gulf Stream - even if total average global temperature vary only slightly - adding heat to the wrong places can have nasty tipping point consequences.

How can we avoid being too sanguine and too alarmist?

clark · 2003-07-01 12:52:03

Okay, so it seems that they don't know what would happen if the hydrates were released... it says they need to study it more.

From my take on it though, we would be better served by trying to mine it and use it as an energy source. Am I way off or what?

I don't think there is enough information yet to positevly conclude one way or the other what might happen if this stuff were released.

After all, it's little more than concentrated cow-farts.

Bill White · 2003-07-01 12:53:24

This is also related to the "Rare Earth" hypothesis - the idea that planets having Goldilocks climates (not too "this" or too "that" but just right) are very very rare.

Terra-forming the Earth into something nasty maybe easier than we think. ???

Bill White · 2003-07-01 12:55:25

From my take on it though, we would be better served by trying to mine it and use it as an energy source. Am I way off or what?

Apparently the Japanese already are doing exactly that, so we will see. But being too sanguine about SUVs still makes me nervous.

Yet Jerry Falwell "knows" the Second Coming is nigh, so who cares anyways?

clark · 2003-07-01 12:56:58

http://www.fe.doe.gov/oil_gas/methanehydrates/

In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrates of the United States to range from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recovered gas resources and reserves in the United States.
Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrates approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,000 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently known gas reserves.
This huge potential, alone, warrants a new look at advanced technologies that might one day reliably and cost-effectively detect and produce natural gas from methane hydrates.

Home > Oil and Gas R&D > Methane Hydrates
Methane Hydrates

A methane hydrate is a cage-like lattice of ice, inside of which are trapped molecules of methane (the chief constituent of natural gas). In fact, the name for its parent class of compounds, "clathrates," comes from the Latin word meaning "to enclose with bars."
Methane hydrates form in generally two types of geologic settings: (1) on land in permafrost regions where cold temperatures persist in shallow sediments, and (2) beneath the ocean floor at water depths greater than about 500 meters where high pressures dominate. The hydrate deposits themselves may be several hundred meters thick.
Scientists have known about methane hydrates for a century or more. French scientists studied hydrates in 1890. In the 1930s, as natural gas pipelines were extended into colder climates, engineers discovered that hydrates, rather than ice, would form in the lines, often plugging the flow of gas.
These crystals, although unmistakably a combination of both water and natural gas, would often form at temperatures well above the freezing point of ordinary ice. Yet, for the next three decades, methane hydrates were considered only a nuisance, or at best, a laboratory oddity.
That viewpoint changed in 1964. In a northern Siberian gas field named Messoyakha, a Russian drilling crew discovered natural gas in the "frozen state," or in other words, methane hydrates occurring naturally. Subsequent reports of potentially vast deposits of "solid" natural gas in the former Soviet Union intensified interest and sent geologists worldwide on a search for how -- and where else -- methane hydrates might occur in nature. In the 1970s, hydrates were found in ocean sediments.
In late 1981, the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger, assigned by the National Science Foundation to explore off the coast of Guatemala, unexpectedly bored into a methane hydrate deposit. Unlike previous drilling operations which had encountered evidence of hydrates, researchers onboard the Challenger were able to recover a sample intact.
Today, methane hydrates have been detected around most continental margins. Around the United States, large deposits have been identified and studied in Alaska, the west coast from California to Washington, the east coast, including the Blake Ridge offshore of the Carolinas, and in the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrates of the United States to range from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recovered gas resources and reserves in the United States.
Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrates approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,000 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently known gas reserves.
This huge potential, alone, warrants a new look at advanced technologies that might one day reliably and cost-effectively detect and produce natural gas from methane hydrates.
Why the new interest?
If only 1 percent of the methane hydrate resource could be made technically and economically recoverable, the United States could more than double its domestic natural gas resource base.
The United States will consume increasing volumes of natural gas well into the 21st century. U.S. gas consumption is expected to increase from almost 23 trillion cubic feet in 1996 to more than 32 trillion cubic feet in 2020 -- a projected increase of 40 percent.
Natural gas is expected to take on a greater role in power generation, largely because of increasing pressure for clean fuels and the relatively low capital costs of building new natural gas-fired power equipment. Also, gas demand is expected to grow because of its expanded use as a transportation fuel and potentially, in the longer-term, as a source of alternative liquid fuels (gas-to-liquids conversion) and hydrogen for fuel cells. Should the nation move to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as part of our commitment to greenhouse gas reduction, the use natural gas potentially could increase even more.
Given the growing demand for natural gas, the development of new, cost-effective supplies can play a major role in moderating price increases and assuring consumer confidence in the long-term availability of reliable, affordable fuel. Yet, today, the potential to extract commercially-relevant quantities of natural gas from hydrates is speculative at best. With no immediate economic payoff, the private sector is not vigorously pursuing research that could make methane hydrates technically and economically viable. Therefore, federal R&D is the primary way the United States can begin exploring the future viability of a high-risk resource whose long-range possibilities might one day dramatically change the world's energy portfolio.

Palomar · 2003-07-01 13:02:27

I saw this article today.
Any opinions about whether frozen methane hydrates can really threaten humanity with extinction?

*Ah-hahahaha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Humanity is already threatened by extinction...we just need to look a little more closely INTO THE MIRROR to see who (not what) is going to do us all in.

Sorry, I'm in a mood today.

--Cindy

clark · 2003-07-01 13:04:21

I always new Cindy was going to be the end of Humanity...

clark · 2003-07-01 13:09:05

You know, the more I look into the methane hydrates, the more I realize that the US, adn the world, dosen't have a very serious energy crisis.

Estimates range anywhere from 350 years to 3500 years worth of methane hydrates as an energy source.

The US, and indeed the Western Hemisphere is literaly surrounded by deposits of this stuff. And I know that most new power facilities are for natural gas, which is what this methane hydrate stuff can be converted too.

Interesting...

Bill White · 2003-07-01 13:25:20

Google trawling is rather easy yet this article from December 2002 is succinct and easily read.

Using a tiny underwater rover called ROPOS, with the support of Canada?s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the U.S. Naval Research Lab and the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility, Chapman and his colleagues followed the track that the fisherman and his crew had traveled two years before. The rover traveled on the seafloor, about 850 meters deep. ?Eventually we found a little plateau, with a series of what you have to call hydrate glaciers,? Chapman says. Scattered over about 2 square kilometers, the glacier-like mounds were surrounded by clam beds, although no vents were visible. ?One mound was the size of a Volkswagen,? he says.
Researchers estimate that this extensive field of hydrates at the bottom of submarine Barkley Canyon off the British Columbia coast, could provide enough methane to power Canada for four decades. But, they say it is too soon to tell exactly how much is in Barkley Canyon.

rustyplanet · 2003-07-07 12:48:43

I didn't read any of that, but if we have the technology to terraform Mars then we can terraform Earth too.

clark · 2003-07-07 13:09:31

I didn't read any of that, but if we have the technology to terraform Mars then we can terraform Earth too.

And if you listen carefully, you will hear the collective hush of 6 and a half billion people all holding their breaths in anticipation of the end of the world.

"Well, Gallee Mr. Scientist. You mean to tell me that you can make it all cooler by slamming a mountain sized ice ball into our at-mo-sphere? What un happnes if'n ya miss?"

Terraforming Earth would entail terraforming it to a point that makes everyone happy with the end results. I think it's a task worthy of God, not man. ???

We shouldn't try to change the Earth one way of another. Let's just try not to get to the point where we have to decide to 'terraform' Terra.

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-07 17:12:13

Humanity is already threatened by extinction...we just need to look a little more closely INTO THE MIRROR to see who (not what) is going to do us all in.
Sorry, I'm in a mood today.

Its gonna take more than a little (or maybe a lot) of global warming to wipe out humanity. man, with providence, has survived the black death (which was worse than aids in % of population dead) and has survived inumerable natural diasters along with famine. Anyone ever hear of the little ice age? Europe and the americas had winter for 2-3 years without break to farm. . .the world survived pretty well through that although it was pretty castatrophic. I'm sure we can survive a nuclear winter and fallout. Why? Maybe its just me, but most "experts" on the subject of nuclear warfare are rather mcuh like doomsayers and don't know what they are talking about. As I know it right now, the method to detrime the death rate in nuclear war is to use data from hirshoma and nagaski. The biggest problem is that those citys were largely wooden slums filled with hundreds of thousands of refugees from the surrounding citys. the building that is now the survivors muesuem was very close to the ground zero, but it was built using western standards in building and survived largely intact. Further, it is not the radiation that kills outright (nuetron bombs are bs, not one working model was actually built to my knowledge) but the blast that is produced by the intense heat of the nuclear reaction. So the deck was stacked against the hirshoma to begin with, with shoddy buildings and refugees crowding those buildings way beyond their respective design limits. . .Most city buildings in the western world are built with reinforced concreate and are built to withstand earthquakes. Radiation did not kill the majority of the dead at hirshoma, building collaspes did. I in no way wish to disrespect the dead, but that is the reality of nuclear war, that the bombs are designed to destroy buildings. most of the surivors got a sunburn and may or may not have gotten cancer much later in life. Even the cancer issue is problemetic, as carcogeins released during the collaspe of these buildings (abtestos, lead, coal tar) could be more problemetic then the radiation. I have never seen any article specifically refering the carcogiens but after sept 11 many articles pointed out that the ash from the wtc was rather toxic. . .maybe I sidetracked a little.
The standard warhead in use by the usa and russia is 10-20 megatons, which might sound devastationally more powerfull than the 21 kilos used in hirshoma. Truth is, given volumes of space, it is not too much more powerful or even as radioactive as the hirshoma bomb was. (russia and the usa wanted to ocupy the land that was bombed. . .why do think both nations kept large standing armys? They DID have a reason for that) Just having more explosive does not transulate into a significant increase in actual destructivness.

Shaun Barrett · 2003-07-07 18:59:32

But always remember, Prometheusunbound, just one little nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day!

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-09 09:06:20

But always remember, Prometheusunbound, just one little nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day!

I agree wholeheartedly. . .even though nukes are overated, they are still pretty nasty stuff.

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Re: More global warming (sigh) - Methane hydrates

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