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Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry
fracking well in the Eagle Ford Shale region, near Karnes City, Texas. (AP Photo / Aaron M. Sprecher)
Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.
There’s one greenhouse gas everyone knows about: carbon dioxide, which is what you get when you burn fossil fuels. We talk about a “price on carbon” or argue about a carbon tax; our leaders boast about modest “carbon reductions.” But in the last few weeks, CO2’s nasty little brother has gotten some serious press. Meet methane, otherwise known as CH4.
Snip
To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO2. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO2 emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO2. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. This error is the rough equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at 17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index fund actually stands at 11,000.
There’s one greenhouse gas everyone knows about: carbon dioxide, which is what you get when you burn fossil fuels. We talk about a “price on carbon” or argue about a carbon tax; our leaders boast about modest “carbon reductions.” But in the last few weeks, CO2’s nasty little brother has gotten some serious press. Meet methane, otherwise known as CH4.
Snip
To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO2. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO2 emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO2. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. This error is the rough equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange announcing tomorrow that the Dow Jones isn’t really at 17,000: Its computer program has been making a mistake, and your index fund actually stands at 11,000.
Snip
http://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/
32 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The greenhouse effect does not depend on the gas holding the heat. It only needs the gas to prevent re-radiation into space. Methane is very effective at that.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/methane-and-global-warming.htm
While methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, there is over 200 times more CO2 in the atmosphere. Eg - CO2 levels are 380 ppm (parts per million) while methane levels are 1.75ppm. Hence the amount of warming methane contributes is calculated at 28% of the warming CO2 contributes.
It doesn't take much methane emission to create a severe problem.
The flip side is that cutting back on methane emission is a good way to help reduce global warming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
The size of the oceanic methane clathrate reservoir is poorly known, and estimates of its size decreased by roughly an order of magnitude per decade since it was first recognized that clathrates could exist in the oceans during the 1960s and 1970s.[18] The highest estimates (e.g. 3×1018 m³)[19] were based on the assumption that fully dense clathrates could litter the entire floor of the deep ocean. Improvements in our understanding of clathrate chemistry and sedimentology have revealed that hydrates form in only a narrow range of depths (continental shelves), at only some locations in the range of depths where they could occur (10-30% of the Gas hydrate stability zone), and typically are found at low concentrations (0.9-1.5% by volume) at sites where they do occur. Recent estimates constrained by direct sampling suggest the global inventory occupies between 1×1015and 5×1015 m³ (0.24 to 1.2 million cubic miles).[18] This estimate, corresponding to 500-2500 gigatonnes carbon (Gt C), is smaller than the 5000 Gt C estimated for all other geo-organic fuel reserves but substantially larger than the ~230 Gt C estimated for other natural gas sources.[18][20] The permafrost reservoir has been estimated at about 400 Gt C in the Arctic,[21][citation needed] but no estimates have been made of possible Antarctic reservoirs. These are large amounts; for comparison the total carbon in the atmosphere is around 800 gigatons (see Carbon: Occurrence).
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 12 years, methane has a global warming potential of 86 over 20 years and 34 over 100 years (IPCC, 2013). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
Climate scientists like James E. Hansen predict that methane clathrates in the permafrost regions will be released because of global warming, unleashing powerful feedback forces which may cause runaway climate change that cannot be halted.
Research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic found millions of tonnes of methane being released[36][37][38][39][40] with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal.[41]
In their Correspondence in the September 2013 Nature Geoscience journal, Vonk and Gustafsson cautioned that the most probable mechanism to strengthen global warming is large-scale thawing of Arctic permafrost which will release methane clathrate into the atmosphere.[42] While performing research in July in plumes in the East Siberian Arctic Ocean, Gustafsson and Vonk were surprised by the high concentration of methane.[43]
and...
In mid-July 2014, a mysterious hole in permafrost, spotted by helicopter pilots in the Yamal region of northern Russia, captured the world’s attention. Reindeer herders reported a second hole some days later, and still later a third Siberian crater was found. Weird explanations ranged from meteorites to stray missiles to aliens, but by late July a team of scientists reported that they had measured unusually high concentrations of methane inside the first crater, which is now known as B1. The journal Nature published a story on its website on July 31, 2014 featuring those findings, and many accepted the unsettling idea that an explosive release of methane, related to global warming, caused the craters … until February 2015 when the Siberian Times reported more craters in Siberia. A Russian scientist speculated that there may be “20 to 30 craters more.” The report of more craters has led scientists to offer a different, simpler explanation for them, one that is still related to global warming, but does not involve a powerful and explosive methane release.
Siberian Times wrote on February 23, 2015 that:
Examination using satellite images has helped Russian experts understand that the craters are more widespread than was first realized, with one large hole surrounded by as many as 20 mini-craters …
The size of the oceanic methane clathrate reservoir is poorly known, and estimates of its size decreased by roughly an order of magnitude per decade since it was first recognized that clathrates could exist in the oceans during the 1960s and 1970s.[18] The highest estimates (e.g. 3×1018 m³)[19] were based on the assumption that fully dense clathrates could litter the entire floor of the deep ocean. Improvements in our understanding of clathrate chemistry and sedimentology have revealed that hydrates form in only a narrow range of depths (continental shelves), at only some locations in the range of depths where they could occur (10-30% of the Gas hydrate stability zone), and typically are found at low concentrations (0.9-1.5% by volume) at sites where they do occur. Recent estimates constrained by direct sampling suggest the global inventory occupies between 1×1015and 5×1015 m³ (0.24 to 1.2 million cubic miles).[18] This estimate, corresponding to 500-2500 gigatonnes carbon (Gt C), is smaller than the 5000 Gt C estimated for all other geo-organic fuel reserves but substantially larger than the ~230 Gt C estimated for other natural gas sources.[18][20] The permafrost reservoir has been estimated at about 400 Gt C in the Arctic,[21][citation needed] but no estimates have been made of possible Antarctic reservoirs. These are large amounts; for comparison the total carbon in the atmosphere is around 800 gigatons (see Carbon: Occurrence).
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 12 years, methane has a global warming potential of 86 over 20 years and 34 over 100 years (IPCC, 2013). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
Climate scientists like James E. Hansen predict that methane clathrates in the permafrost regions will be released because of global warming, unleashing powerful feedback forces which may cause runaway climate change that cannot be halted.
Research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic found millions of tonnes of methane being released[36][37][38][39][40] with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal.[41]
In their Correspondence in the September 2013 Nature Geoscience journal, Vonk and Gustafsson cautioned that the most probable mechanism to strengthen global warming is large-scale thawing of Arctic permafrost which will release methane clathrate into the atmosphere.[42] While performing research in July in plumes in the East Siberian Arctic Ocean, Gustafsson and Vonk were surprised by the high concentration of methane.[43]
and...
In mid-July 2014, a mysterious hole in permafrost, spotted by helicopter pilots in the Yamal region of northern Russia, captured the world’s attention. Reindeer herders reported a second hole some days later, and still later a third Siberian crater was found. Weird explanations ranged from meteorites to stray missiles to aliens, but by late July a team of scientists reported that they had measured unusually high concentrations of methane inside the first crater, which is now known as B1. The journal Nature published a story on its website on July 31, 2014 featuring those findings, and many accepted the unsettling idea that an explosive release of methane, related to global warming, caused the craters … until February 2015 when the Siberian Times reported more craters in Siberia. A Russian scientist speculated that there may be “20 to 30 craters more.” The report of more craters has led scientists to offer a different, simpler explanation for them, one that is still related to global warming, but does not involve a powerful and explosive methane release.
Siberian Times wrote on February 23, 2015 that:
Examination using satellite images has helped Russian experts understand that the craters are more widespread than was first realized, with one large hole surrounded by as many as 20 mini-craters …
