More on methane – simpler solutions for a potent greenhouse gas?
methane gas capture – photo by meaduva (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
A new article in The Ecologist shines a light on methane, the often-ignored greenhouse gas that is produced from both natural and human sources. Methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is estimated to be about 18% compared to CO2’s 63%. Yet it is also 20-30 times more potent than CO2 and has only one tenth the atmospheric life span. This means that methane emission reduction could have a significantly more immediate effect on curbing climate change than cutting CO2, which hasn’t happened yet on a global level anyway.
Man made methane emissions can be reduced in among the following ways:
• Better waste disposal and methane capture from landfills
• Changing livestock diets (and human diets by consuming less livestock)
• Better management of rice cultivation
• Capturing methane released from mining
There are a number of ideas within the field of geo-engineering that deal with the problem of excessive naturally produced methane, which is mostly emitted by wetlands. However, none of the ’solutions’ sound that great. For example, sulfur pollution in acid rain actually reduces natural methane production. But then of course you have to make more acid rain.
The uncertainties about biomass and wetlands pale into relative insignificance when it comes to the vast methane reservoirs locked up in Arctic tundra – methane that scientists are convinced was a factor in previous de-glaciations.
–The Ecologist
Methane and carbon are both locked in permafrost in the Arctic regions. If warming temperatures melt the permafrost, this releases vast amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere in a short time, thereby theoretically contributing further to the greenhouse effect and global warming/climate change. This creates a positive feedback loop where continued warming causes more greenhouse gas emissions and vice versa.
For a clear explanation of how methane is emitted from wetlands and melting permafrost check out this video by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It’s pretty fun in a ’scientific research meets Bevis and Butthead’ kind of way.
Arctic Lake Methane Ignited by Katey Walter Anthony
by Graham Land
Additional resources:
Methane even worse greenhouse gas than we thought
Graham Land grew up in Washington, D.C., where he was part of the local hardcore punk scene. Through this unique musical movement he became involved in grass roots anti-racist activism, animal rights and Ecology. Since 2000 Graham has lived in Europe, earning an MA in history from Malmö University in Sweden and working as a musician, English teacher, sports therapist, customer service agent and writer. Graham has a podcast with author Saci Lloyd and is currently pretending to work on his first novel.
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Tags: acid rain, arctic, capture, carbon, climate change, co2, emissions, gas, global, greenhouse, livestock, methane, permafrost, warming, wetlands
Hi Brad. Thanks for that brainy comment! I didn’t know about the methane from under sea permafrost, so I did a bit of googling.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081219-methane-siberia.html
“Regions farther from the Equator generally are experiencing more warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of all.” 4x more warming than the global average since pre industrial times, according to the National Geographic article.
The problem of melting land permafrost is dwarfed by the little known phenomena of melting permafrost under the sea. For instance, a frozen peat bog in western Siberia the size of France and Germany put together contains about 500 billion tons of carbon.
Even more Siberian permafrost is under the ocean, an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing. The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.
“If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet’s atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming.” –”A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia,” Spiegel, 17 April ‘08