methane
dblum | April 8, 2010
Almost 200 years ago, methane gas ignited in a coal mine in England, setting off an explosion that killed 92 miners. These were not miners as we think of them today - in the pre-child-labor-law world almost half were children, as young as eight years old.
So that one can make an argument - regarding last Thursday's methane gas explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, that killed 25 adult miners and left another four so far missing - that we've made some progress in protecting children from mine disasters. Our track record in protecting adults is less impressive - that is they…
sastyk | March 7, 2010Real Climate has an analysis of the methane release paper up, which is at least partly reassuring - partly.
CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the…
illconsidered | March 5, 2010From up north, we have some more troubling news. Actually very troubling. Catastophic release of methane hydrates is a prime suspect in a few events dramatic enough to show in the earth's geological records, coarse and obscured as that record may be. (Our actions today will be featured prominently in that record for anyone looking back a million years from now.) It has been a worry for many years that humanity is running the risk of triggering such a release again, which would truly pile disaster on top of calamity.
New research coming out in Science today indicates that this most dire of…
sastyk | March 4, 2010I haven't had a chance to read the original paper - I'm getting ready to head out of town and probably won't get to it until next week, but I just got a press release from U Alaska Fairbanks about a recent paper in this month's issue of Science that suggests that we've got bigger methane problems than we knew about.
From the UAK press release:
The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of…
tlambert | January 15, 2009Today's Australian included a double feature in its war on science. And they were both news stories, not opinion pieces. First up is John Stapleton. Last month Stapleton wrote a story arguing that winter was evidence against global warming. So how does Stapleton write a story about a heat wave here in Australia. Well, it's evidence against global warming:
It's a scorcher, but 70-year record stands
Much of inland Australia sweltered as towns from Ivanhoe and Pooncarie in far-western NSW to Onslow in the Pilbara, Kerang in Victoria and Marree in South Australia hit 45C yesterday.
But even…