It’s a Gas!

Methane is 87% of an average sampling of natural gas, a fossil fuel with tons of energy found in ample supply in the United States. It also is locked into millions of square miles of frozen tundra – from Russian Siberian plains to the Canadian Arctic north. The methane from organic waste generated over millions of years has been safely stored in nature’s icebox… until recently. As global warming is melting that same frozen mass, it is also beginning to release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere, where it joins with the rising tide of carbon dioxide as one of the major greenhouse gasses that are responsible for the rather dramatic climate change we have witnessed in recent times. Methane, however, is even nastier than carbon dioxide when it comes to creating that barrier up in the atmosphere where greenh ouse gasses seal in heat-generating radiation that creates these phenomena.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Methane (CH₄) is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activities. In 2011, CH₄ accounted for about 9% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Methane is emitted by natural sources such as wetlands, as well as human activities such as leakage from natural gas systems and the raising of livestock. Natural processes in soil and chemical reactions in the atmosphere help remove CH₄ from the atmosphere. Methane's lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter [generally less than a decade] than carbon dioxide (CO₂), but CH₄ is more effic ient at trapping radiation than CO₂. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH₄ on climate change is over 20 times greater than CO₂ over a 100-year period.”

In those millions of square miles of tundra, hydrates, also called clathrates, are a frozen mixture of water and gas, mostly methane, and the methane molecules reside inside the lattice of water molecules. When the tundra defrosts from global warming, methane is released, often in very significant quantities, which creates a further acceleration of global warming (particularly since methane is more destructive than carbon dioxide as noted above), which releases more methane, and so on and so on.  The problem of this acceleration is probably going to be massive. Scientists predict the release of 50-metric gigatons of methane over the next decade.

“Scientists say that the release of large amounts of methane from thawing permafrost in the Arctic could have huge economic impacts for the world [particularly developing nations]… They worked out that this would increase climate impacts such as flooding, sea level rise, damage to agriculture and human health to the tune of $60 trillion [roughly the size of the entire global economy as of 2012].

“‘That's an economic time bomb that at this stage has not been recognized on the world stage," said Prof Gail Whiteman at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and one of authors [of a report published in Nature]… ‘We think it’s incredibly important for world leaders to really discuss what are the implications of this methane release and what could we indeed do about it to hopefully prevent the whole burst from happening.’… The researchers say their study is in marked contrast to other, more upbeat assessments of the economic benefits of warming in the Arctic region.

“It is thought that up to 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of undiscovered oil lie in the waters. Transport companies are looking to send increasing numbers of ships through these fast melting seas. According to Lloyds of London, investment in the Arctic could reach $100bn within ten years… [A]ccording to the new [research], these benefits would be a fraction of the likely costs of a large scale methane emission. The authors say a release of methane on this scale could bring forward the date when global temperatures increase by 2C by between 15 and 35 years.” BBC.co.uk, July 24^th.  

What this means for all of us, unfortunately, is that we probably have woefully underestimated both the timeline for massive alteration of our world based on climate change and the incredible damage that we face in the not-too-distant-future. But we keep blissfully ignoring the rather unambiguous signs and the litany of horrific consequences we have already experienced, hoping somehow we’ll either get used to it or the problem will just go away. We only seem to be able to learn lessons the hard way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as I have said before, nature really doesn’t care what we do… she’s started from scratched before!