Methane Busting Out All Over
posted 5th March 2010 in Environment, Legislation by The Green Man
The Earth appears to be rushing toward a tipping point of releases of methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane releases from undersea sources in the Russian Arctic have just been measured at a rate that’s much higher than had been previously estimated. As the Arctic Ocean warms, frozen underwater methane is erupting, and methane in the not-so-perma-frost is coming undone as well. As this methane enters the atmosphere, it can increase warming, thereby increasing the rate at which methane is released.
You could think of it as a snowball effect, only in reverse.
Methane doesn’t just come from the Arctic, of course. Methane releases are also associated with coal mining. Methane builds up in underground coal mines, and while some of it vents out at the surface, patches of it can remain, just waiting for a spark, and then it really heats up. In recent weeks, coal miners were killed in a mine in Turkey and in the Republic of Georgia as well.
Here in the United States, methane emissions from coal mines have been at the center of another kind of problem: Fraudulent reports by the Patriot Coal mining company claiming safe levels of methane its mines, when in fact methane was building up toward explosive levels. The problem hasn’t kept the coal industry from claiming that coal is clean, of course. On behalf of Big Coal, Senator John Rockefeller the Fourth has introduced S. 3072, legislation that would delay any action to regulate methane emissions for 2 years. In the House of Representatives, Nick Rahall, Alan Mollohan and Rick Boucher, all Democrats from coal mining states, have introduced H.R. 4753, a bill similar to Rockefeller’s.
Tags: alan mollohan, arctic, climate change, coal, congress, energy, global warming, greenhouse gas, John Rockefeller, methane, nick rahall, rick boucher, senate
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Nothing to see here, just keep going and don’t look back. . . .
All of this has been predicted but nobody’s listening or doing anything about it, so i guess we’ll all just happily commit species-cide, blithely ignorant of the on-going problems and our lack of concern, just keep chasing the dollar everyone.
Where’s Tomas??
He’s going to say that this is all a part of the Earth’s natural climatic cycle.
Except it isn’t.
Yes it is. Long before mining there was natural gas bursts. And global warming….
Tomas, once again you fail to acknowledge distinctions of degree. The question is not whether there ever have been natural methane melts before. No one disputes that there have been. The question is whether the rate of methane melt is increasing, and could enter into a self-reinforcing loop.
Yes, it could be increasing, sure. But no matter what we do, it won’t stop…
maybe the oil companies can have the U.S. taxpayer pay for a study on how to harness this released methane gas. then they can capture it, sell it and make a profit off it. all the while claiming any climate change occurring is a part of natures cycle or they can claim obama lied about potential risks of methane gas produced by melting glaciers and his lack of veracity has caused them to overlook the droughts and floods and monsoons that accompany the newly contained methane bonanza.