Similetov added:
We are aware that our results showing that the permafrost is no longer an
impermeable barrier to methane release have not been duplicated by
other researchers at this time. But it is high time to warn people.
He stopped for an instant and smiled, before adding, “We can do nothing about it, of course.”
???
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Arctic methane Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:54:32 -0700 From: David Appell <david....@gmail.com> Reply-To: david....@gmail.com To: johnnis...@gmail.com
John,
Hi. On the Google geoengineering group you wrote (Apr 28):
> "Significant quantities of methane are already appearing in the Arctic atmosphere."
I was wondering what scientific data you were basing this statement on.
Thanks,
David
-- David Appell, independent science journalist e: david....@gmail.com w: http://www.davidappell.com b: http://davidappell.blogspot.com p: (001) 503-975-5614 m: St. Helens, OR USA
I agree entirely with your analysis of how we have got into this
critical situation with the methane. And I agree that the challenge of
stopping the methane and halting the sea ice retreat is daunting. But
this challenge does not even seem to be recognised by the scientific
establishment! If the challenge were recognised for what it is, then
surely all governments would demand scientists and engineers came up
with a plan of action to meet the challenge, and they'd treat this as an
all-out war effort, as if our lives and the lives of future generations
depend on it - which they do!
I am not so pessimistic about finding a solution, because many good
ideas are coming forward. Anyhow I cannot face the prospect of failure,
because it would be so horrendous to witness the start of an unstoppable
process - the abrupt climate change - the "quantum jump that is about to
happen", as you put it. I cannot bear to think of my children suffering
the consequences - being caught up in the "climate-driven collapse of
our entire global civilisation" as you put it. Failure is not an option!
Of course, it would have been much easier if we'd started with our
geoengineering years ago, and prevented the sea ice retreat, permafrost
melt and resulting methane problem. Better still to have curbed CO2
emissions decades ago, and eliminated the cause of these problems and
more. But history shows us that civilised societies tend to postpone
action as long as possible - waiting for a catastrophic event to spur
action. Unfortunately, by the time there is such an event, it will be
too late. We have to act within months, not years, to give ourselves a
reasonable chance of success. Please contribute to the brainstorming,
and help in producing a plan of action.
Best wishes,
John
---
On 08/05/2011 13:46, P. Wadhams wrote:
> Dear John, I agree with your diagnosis of the serious role that
> methane is going to play in the next phase of global warming, but fear
> that Semiletov is right in his statement that we can do nothing (so
> long as stupidity and greed prevail in the world of course, but
> unfortunately that seems to be a given). The unfortunate fact is that
> two big factors are driving Arctic methane release: (1) The general
> increase in global temperatures (enhanced by a factor of 2-3 in the
> Arctic) as a product of our CO2 emissions, which is causing permafrost
> to melt on land, (2) the summer retreat of sea ice from continental
> shelves, which allows the shallow shelf seas to warm by up to 5C right
> down to the seabed in summer, causing offshore permafrost to melt and
> release trapped methane. The sea ice retreat is itself a result of
> global warming via mechanisms involving both air temperature and ocean
> heat transport. Therefore what is causing methane emission, both on
> land and at sea, is our heating of the atmosphere due to CO2
> emissions. The dangerous difference about today is that the heating
> has just become enough to trigger massive releases (eg the seabed
> warming) while in the past it was not. A quantum jump is about to happen.
> There seems to be no prospect of reducing our CO2 emissions, or
> even of reducing the rate of rise in our CO2 emissions. The greens may
> think they have won some battles in building wind farms and making us
> sort our rubbish, but this is pitiful deckchair-rearrangement compared
> with the fact that China is building four coal-fired power stations
> per week and is set to continue to do this ad infinitum since they
> have plenty of coal and have taken over the world's manufacturing
> industry. Greed and blindness continue to govern our stewardship of
> the planet, and I fear there is no solution except the climate-driven
> collapse of our entire global civilisation.
> If geoengineering can do something to slow this, then great. My own
> fears for any technique involve (a) unknown side effects, (b) the fact
> that it is like putting a sticking plaster on a gigantic wound, in
> that it is slowing the temperature rise while doing nothing about the
> driving force, the CO2 content of the atmosphere. Processes that
> depend only on CO2 rather than temperature will continue apace, e.g.
> acidification of the ocean, leading to loss of the marine ecosystem.
> CO2 sequestration would seem to be the only geoengineering that would
> be really safe and productive in the long term. However the energy
> required to get rid of CO2 itself has to be generated, and this has to
> be by non-emissive methods like nuclear or renewable. But if you are
> going to do this you have solved the problem anyway since you are no
> longer emitting the CO2 that is causing the problem!
> Sorry to seem pessimistic but I do fear the worst. I suspect that
> in 20 years time we will be seeing a range of serious impacts making
> the world a quite different (and nastier) place than it is now. One of
> them will be the loss of summer sea ice (I think this will happen in
> less than 10 years). At my age I will, sadly, be seeing just the
> beginning of the collapse of our planetary civilisation, but I fear
> that our grandchildren will live (or not love) through the whole
> thing, Best wishes Peter Wadhams
>
>
>
> . On May 8 2011, John Nissen wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> Apparently this concern about the "methane time bomb" goes back a few
>> years
>> [1]. But Similetov is defeatist:
>>
>> *Similetov added:*
>>
>> *We are aware that our results showing that the permafrost is no
>> longer an
>> impermeable barrier to methane release have not been duplicated by
>> other researchers at this time. But it is high time to warn people.*
>>
>> *He stopped for an instant and smiled, before adding, "We can do nothing
>> about it, of course."*
>>
>> However one of the comments does mention geoengineering:
>>
>> *Soon CH4 emissions will overwhelm any cuts
>>
>> Frankly, I wonder how long it will take for people to understand that
>> soon
>> methane (CH4) emissions from melting permafrost (both under the sea
>> and on
>> land) will overwhelm any greenhouse gas emission cuts mankind makes.
>>
>> Instead, the Greens are chasing their tails demanding politically
>> unrealistic gigantic emission cuts. Not only would those emissions
>> cuts, if implimented, waste resources better spent on a feasible
>> solution, but the Greens are wasting whatever political capital they
>> have on a lost cause.
>>
>> Don't you understand that the permafrost will already emit gigantic
>> amounts
>> of CH4 regardless, because of the thermal inertia of the climate system,
>> because of the emissions from machines already built and agriculture,
>> and
>> because of feedback loops like natural methane emissions and albedo
>> flips?
>>
>> Obviously, it is a simple choice between a massive cull of mankind and
>> implimentation of a geoengineering scheme (I suggest using an engineered
>> aerosol to dim the sun a little). Really, the only question is will we
>> impliment a sun dimming scheme before or after the ecosystems rapidly
>> collapse from record heatwaves. www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod *[2]*
>> *
>>> <david....@gmail.com><david....@gmail.com> Reply-To:
the email exchange seems to me to have significantly stepped up a gear.
John, you're doing a great job gathering momentum.
I like the 'ice-makers' phrase especially too. And Prof Wadhams, thank
you so much for your years of dedicated research which have brougth the
Arctic sea ice to our attention. And also for your willingness to speak
out openly about your concerns. This is rare and vital.
Perhaps it'd be useful to set up a document for a brain storm, then we
could rate and rank the key and possible options for approaching the
methane and arctic problems, which need to / copuld be deployed along
side the normal mitigation approach of cutting ghg emissions etc.
then we could cost out feasibility studies, look at legislation etc. We
can also run our ideas through the various geo-eng groups for comments
later in the stage. It'd be good to pull it together as a report and
send a summary to several key players. Would you each like to be
involved as co-authors?
here is the opening chapter heading with a few of the ideas I mentioned
a previously - please add in your thoughts for options of technologies
which may help stop methane from leaking out of the Arctic.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dN4OXpp0rYVrj0Xifu88RGXXoLvA4xHLuniTSv440q0/edit?hl=en&authkey=CN3tyqoE
I also attach a schematic diagram, which I will put onto google docs for
comments, which outlines a few of the feedback mechanisms in the Arctic
which have come to my attention. I did this to communicate the domino
effect to colleagues when I was at wwf and also to seek points of
intervention to prevent the dominoes falling.
thoughts welcome,
thanks,
Emily.
www.lewis-brown.net
Dear John, I'm very ready to contribute to the brainstorming if I can. I guess the thrust of my last message - which was not intended to be completely despairing, though that's how it turned out - was that Arctic methane emission cannot be viewed in isolation. It's a product of Arctic heating. Permafrost melt on land can only be stopped if Arctic air temperatures stop rising. The best way to do that is to cut back on CO2 emissions, but I fear that the human race is not mature enough to do that. That does leave some kind of Arctic aerosol deployment, i.e. geoengineering, as a way of stopping or slowing the warming. Permafrost melt under the sea is largely due to the open water which now exists over shelf areas in summer, allowing the shallow waters to warm. So it is a consequence of sea ice retreat. Direct interventions to preserve sea ice, as various people have proposed, may be an answer, but I have grave doubts as to whether any of the methods would be effective, given (a) the scale of the problem, (b) the fact that the sea ice is responding to a complex of factors, including increased heat transport from changed ocean currents, so there may not be a simple fix. The idea of spreading liquid air, for instance, just will not work. You only have to look at the magnitude of the latent heat that has to be extracted. Given that methane has a climatic impact for 7 years after emission, while for CO2 it is 100, perhaps we should be looking at methane sequestration techniques (if there are any) to cope with the huge blip of methane input that will happen when all the seabed permafrost and a lot of the terrestrial permafrost melts within a comparatively few years. There may be some chemistry here that makes it easier than CO2 sequestration, Best wishes Peter
I've studied methane geoengineering extensively, so here's my tuppence
If you're going to use liquid air, just pump it into the sea bed where there are leaks in the permafrost clathrate cap.
Draining bogs will help. Dry material doesn't emit methane
Shelling methane vents with incendiary shells will limit major releases.
On a more personal note, I think it worth a mention that I am waking up after methane nightmares at present. Am I alone in this? I feel like Sarah Connor from the terminator films
A
For years, I have been trying to get more people to brainstorm on ways
to deal with Arctic methane.
Last month, I added a post on this, discussing ways to ignite methane
or produce hydroxyl, at:
http://geoengineering.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979240772
where I received some interesting comments.
Air capture of methane is another method that deserves more attention.
All such methods could benefit from further research and testing,
which should be high on the agenda of any scientist working in this
area.
Cheers!
Sam Carana
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Using liquid air to seal methane vents may well work. Using it for general cooling of the sea or land surface will not.
Oxides of nitrogen are critical in the formation of hydroxyl radicals. They therefore play a key role in the breakdown of methane. Although greenhouse gases in their own right, it's vital to accurately judge the effect of manipulations. An increase may paradoxically treat warming very effectively.
There's no credible technology of which I'm aware which could capture methane from air
A
"NOx reacts with ammonia, moisture, and other compounds to form nitric acid vapor and related particles. Small particles can penetrate deeply into sensitive lung tissue and damage it, causing premature death in extreme cases. Inhalation of such particles may cause or worsen respiratory diseases such as emphysema, bronchitis it may also aggravate existing heart disease.[7]
NOx reacts with volatile organic compounds in the presence sunlight to form Ozone. Ozone can cause adverse effects such as damage to lung tissue and reduction in lung function mostly in susceptible populations (children, elderly, asthmatics). Ozone can be transported by wind currents and cause health impacts far from the original sources. The American Lung Association estimates that nearly 50 percent of United States inhabitants live in counties that are not in ozone compliance.[8]
NOx destroys ozone in the stratosphere.[9] Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to life on earth.[10] NOx from combustion sources does not reach the stratosphere; instead, NOx is formed in the stratosphere from photolysis of nitrous oxide.[9]
NOx also readily reacts with common organic chemicals, and even ozone, to form a wide variety of toxic products: nitroarenes, nitrosamines and also the nitrate radical some of which may cause biologicalmutations. Recently another pathway, via NOx, to ozone has been found that predominantly occurs in coastal areas via formation of nitryl chloride when NOx comes into contact with salt mist." [1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx
Production of NOx does require high temperatures or strong UV exposure. Open air release of LN2 would not entail heat, but, the Arctic Ozone Hole does migrate over the ESAS and thus, the volume of released LN2 would potentially be exposed to a strong enough UV energy to produce significant amounts of NOx. I could be wrong on this.
Finding a way to use NOx to neutralize GHGs without open air release would seem optimal.
Efficient high volume air movement through the system would be a key factor (as it is in all air capture concepts). High volume air contact systems stationed in remote areas is even more challenging.
I have a few thoughts on how to approach the technical side of the issue which are not far removed from what I have already brought to this forum in past posts. A much larger version of this tethered system could provide a base structure for a GHG "Scrubber". http://www.flickr.com/photos/14529376@N00/2730542642/ A Salter Tether Ship wold be a good base for this approach.
Hearing concepts on remote area high volume air contact means/methods from others would be helpful.
Albert, I found this article on N2O which was a real eye opener for me. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090827_ozone.html
You should be able to detect methane release using gas samplers on buoys or the sea bed. Hydrophones may also detect bubbles. Autonomous ships could also be used, or data could be collected from any existing marine traffic. Aerial imaging could detect larger releases.
Putting liquid air into the sea is a non starter. Injecting it into the sea bed might help, but it would be energy intensive. Venting would be a problem, so a closed system using cooling pipes may work better. It's only going to be practical with a small leak in a large reservoir.
In my personal opinion, this issue is make or break for our society.
A