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76 comments on Polar ice cap

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BOP on March 14, 2006 - 4:14am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
What a fantastic find Stuart. Thank you. The animations are a stunning waste of time and I mean that in the most positive sense. I can look at the snow cover margin and remember "Hey, I shoveled that!" Need to do the same animation for the Hubbert Linearization graphics so we can all run them backwards and wistfully remember "Hey, I burned that!!"

Another data point: Canada is reporting its warmest winter in recorded history. One caveat - the historical record in this instance only goes back to 1948.

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Oil CEO on March 14, 2006 - 5:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
We've got a sense of humor here, but we don't joke. Know what I mean, fella? What does BOP stand for anyway? You got a liitle irked when jokerboy called ya Bop the other day. What were you irked about?
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haggisbasher on March 14, 2006 - 9:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
An OIL CEO who does not know what a BOP is ?  Curious.

Blow Out Preventer.  The assembly of valves which sits on top of an oil well to control the fluid / gas pressures.

.http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/oilandgas/drilling/wellcontrol_bop.html

I guess many contributors use TOD as a BOP :-).

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Cherenkov on March 14, 2006 - 2:18pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Don't forget the melting tundra in Russia that equals an area the size of Germany and France combined. A huge quantity of methane is being released and, as we all know, methane as a greenhouse gas is ten times as effective as CO2.

Therein lies the positive feedback.

Sadly, rather than becoming alarmed, the world seems to think we need to figure out new technologies in order to continue our planet destroying ways.

But the planet will fight back, or rather, that is not quite right. The planet is more like an elephant infected with lice. It will simply roll over in annoyance and scrape the lice from its hide. The changing environment will take care of the pesky organism that is upsetting the balance of nature. The environment does not care. Humans? Schmumans.

We are like a frog sitting in the proverbial pan of water on a slowly increasing flame. Except we are a tech lovin' frog equipped with all manner of technology designed to increase the heat. And we KNOW this. Yet we do nothing. We will not started screaming and hopping until we are specifically harmed. Until we wake up with no food on the table, or the ocean encroaches onto our front step, or the plankton population collapses and suddenly, almost no fish remain in the ocean, we will keep thinking of new and better technologies, which can only exist with the petroleum base we have now, in order to keep the heat on.

I feel it is too late.

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Stuart Staniford on March 14, 2006 - 2:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The permafrost feedback thing does sound really scary. However, methane concentration in the atmosphere has actually been stabilizing in the last decade, not going up faster and faster. I haven't been able to determine why this is from the scientific literature yet:

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Sam Foucher on March 14, 2006 - 3:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's really hard to understand because methane emission is moslty Anthropogenic :
Anthropogenic sources (340 Tg/yr) predominate over natural sources (160 Tg/yr), and 80% of the total methane emission is of modern biogenic origin. Only 20% is due to fossil carbon sources (Wahlen et al. 1989)."

There are also natural methane sinks:

Woodland soils can act as effective sinks for both atmospheric methane, and for methane produced in deeper soil layers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate that soils represent a methane sink of around 30 million tonnes per year. The methane is predominantly used by bacteria in the soil (methanotrophs) which use the methane as a source of carbon in a process called methane oxidation
src: www.ghgonline.org
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odograph on March 14, 2006 - 4:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There has been a big change in the way landfills are used in the US.  More stuff is filtered out before it gets there (a higher portion of yard wastes are now composted), and care is made to keep moisture content (and therefore decomposition) down ... I don't know if this is the key, but it might be over the same timeframe.
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Whitehall on March 14, 2006 - 8:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Landfills in the US now have to include landfill gas collection equipment per EPA requirement.  This is a network of wellpoints to collect the methane and CO2 generated and deliver it to central treatment equipment.  Older and abandoned landfills have to retrofitted.

That equipment is either a flare, to burn the methane, or a small, low BTU-capable engine/generator set.  Of course, some landfills like in LA can generate MWs of electricity.

Not a huge source of anthrogenic methane but not trivial either.

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LevinK on March 14, 2006 - 5:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I suggest one possible explanantion:

The thinning ozone layer has increased the UV radiation reaching the lower layers of atmosphere. The UV rays cause the formation of more OH radicals in the atmosphere, which react with CH4 and oxidize it (via a chain of recations) to CO2 and H2O:

Photolysis of O3 to O(1D) in the troposphere is determined by a narrow band of radiation in the 290-330 nm range, reflecting the combined wavelength dependences of the actinic flux, O3 absorption cross-section, and O(1D) quantum yield ( Figure 1 ). Radiation in this wavelength range is strongly absorbed by overhead O3 and hence the production of O(1D) is strongly dependent on the thickness of the stratospheric O3 layer [Madronich and Granier, 1992].

http://www-as.harvard.edu/chemistry/trop/publications/jacob2000/text.html#77032

The atomic oxygen O(1D) is the cause of formation of OH radicals in the atmosphere via the reaction:

H2O + O(1D) -> 2OH

Thus the more UV light reaches troposphere, the shorter the CH4 lifetime.

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odograph on March 14, 2006 - 5:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
More seriously, here's a slide presentation on atmos. methane:

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/gallery/annual_meeting_2004_dlugokencky/Slide1?full=1

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dipchip on March 14, 2006 - 4:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Stuart:  One reason may be, I haven't read it anywhere, it is only my silly opinion, all the easy to find NG has been depleted to such an extent that the natural NG seepage has slowed. It may in the future, cause the atmospheric PPM of methane to decrease, or until the tundra replaces the seepage. BTW do you have a web site for the charts on gh gases I had them once but lost them, except for CO2.
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Twilight on March 14, 2006 - 11:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I heard a segment on NPR the other day about a discovery that plants may emit methane.  
Another point of view

Or maybe it all those cattle.

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SqueakyRat on March 14, 2006 - 3:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Gee, I thought it was the Boy's Own Paper.
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Dan Ur on March 14, 2006 - 4:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Haven't you heard that laughter is the best medicine.
having been sick a lot in the recent months, not mention a second devorce and moving and etc etc.  Laughter is the best medcine for what Ails us.  Including the End of our worlds as we know them.  Lighten up, burn some propane and go hot air Balloning,  Its great fun and you get to see the world from a bit of a different view.
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76 comments on Polar ice cap

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