frozen methane deposit found off coast of L.A.

[bananas]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1552545

Scientists Discover Frozen Methane Gas Deposit in Ocean Floor Off Southern California Coast

By ALICIA CHANG AP Science Writer

LOS ANGELES Jan 28, 2006 —
...
Scientists estimate that the methane trapped in previously known frozen reservoirs around the globe could power the world for centuries. But finding the technology to mine such deposits has proved elusive.

The newly discovered deposit, believed to be substantial in size, was found about 15 miles off the coast at a depth of about 2,600 feet, at the summit of an undersea mud volcano. Scientists were conducting an unrelated study when they came across the volcano, which sits on top of an active fault zone in the Santa Monica Basin.

The discovery is detailed in the February issue of the journal Geology.

The ecosystem surrounding the methane hydrate site was unlike any of the other vast hydrate deposits around the world. Scientists found seashells and clams with unique chemical characteristics, suggesting the area experiences an extreme flux of methane gas mixing with water, said Jim Hein, a marine geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.
...

[xchrom]

1. ya gotta love nature --

that stuff is just fascinating.

thanks.

[Peachhead22]

2. Prehistoric whale farts?

Talk about your "fossil fuels". :D

[NNadir]

3. There will be very little help left for us should we rely on these things.

Global climate change is already untenable.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Interesting twist on the story

Scientists estimate that the methane trapped in previously known frozen reservoirs around the globe could power the world for centuries.
...
Some scientists also worry about the environmental effects of such large-scale gas deposits.

To start with, I always worry when an article refers to "scientists". It summons up images of a bloke with a white coat and a pipe from some 50's B-movie: "Gosh, he's a scientist, he must know what caused the giant ants". He never turns around and says "Actually, I'm a gynecologist, and I wasn't planning on getting that close." Which scientists are saying what? I'll wager it's the oil-paid petrogeologists saying one thing and the ecologists, oceanographers, climatologists and meteorologists saying the other, not that an AP science writer would know the difference.

Which brings me to my main beef, the "Scientists"/"Some scientists" distinction: We're not going to give you any measure of the concern, but those wacky enviro-nuts are clearly in the minority. What are we waiting for? Digging up a trillion tons of unstable greenhouse gas is a great idea and will keep the SUV rolling for 300 years.

That nice chap with the white coat and the large forceps said so.

:grr:

[Nihil]

5. Yeah ...

> Some scientists also worry about the environmental effects of such
> large-scale gas deposits.

Drill into it to get your fuel for the next quarter.
Accidentally release a *big* bubble of methane.
Drilling rig sinks (due to zero buoyancy in gaseous bubble).
Large amounts of very efficient greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere.

The most you would see reported is a "slight oops ... lost $Mx of gear"
(forgetting about the people on the lost rig of course) but far more likely
is a total news blackout (under threat of severe legal action).

Hey, go for it! This race needs an end stop to run into ...

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Might be tricky to keep quiet

At least, it it's anything like this:
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/GO/dorritie/methane%20catastrophe.html

The total amount (in all three Storegga slides) of sediment that slid is estimated at about 5500 cubic kilometers (1340 cubic miles), enough to bury Manhattan Island to a depth of almost 95 kilometers (almost 60 miles!) or San Francisco or Boston to a depth of 45 kilometers (26 1/2 miles) deep. Some of this sediment slid as far as 800 kilometers (500 miles) down and across the adjacent ocean floor, presumably by hydroplaning on an incompressible slick of water (Elverkøi, 2004). The slides produced tsunamis whose debris is now found in coastal Norwegian lakes 18 meters (yards) above sea level.

An estimated 350 billion metric tons of methane was released in these slide events, both from dissociated methane hydrate and the free gas that lay below them. This amount of methane contains some 263 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to about 1/3 the total carbon in the atmosphere, making its release roughly equivalent to the amount of anthropogenic carbon released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age. (Had these events been part of a "slump cascade," with several similar slides in close succession, the consequences are likely to have been much more severe than the minor transient warming that probably ensued.)

What is known as the second Storegga Slide (about 7300 years ago) produced a tsunami along the coasts of both Norway and Scotland, pointing to an additional consequence of methane-related submarine landslides. (Tsunamis generally come in several waves, minutes apart, with the higher waves coming first. Here I use the single form, tsunami, though the plural form would also have been correct.) Geologists have found evidence for this tsunami in lake and pond tsunami deposits on nearby continental coasts. (These deposits are easily identified because they contain sand and chunks of rock swept and torn from the ocean bottom, rather than the mud and silt sediments that normally accumulate on the bottoms of small lakes and ponds.)

...

At the Shetland Islands, just over 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the northeast tip of Scotland ­ and about 300 km (180 miles) from the closest part of the Storegga slide ­ tsunami run-up height reached 20 to 25 meters (yards). The tsunami evidence is seen in lake deposits and peat outcrops, where a sand layer, ripped-up chunks of ancient peat, pieces of branches and tree trunks, and bowling ball sized rocks. Carbon dating of peat debris and sticks in and above the tsunami deposit has confirmed that the second Storegga slide took place about 7300 years before the present (Bondevik, 2003).

[bananas]

7. The methane hydrate is on an undersea volcano

and now I have this tune running through my head...

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Volcano-In-Album-Volcano-lyrics-Jimmy-Buffett/1062F98BC6D0EBDF482569A4000BF05F

Volcano ( In Album Volcano) Lyrics
Artist(Band):Jimmy Buffett
Review The Song (0)
Print the Lyrics


Volcano ( In Album Volcano) Lyrics


Volcano
By: Jimmy Buffett, Keith Sykes, Harry Dailey
1979
Chorus:
Now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

Chorus:
Let me say now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

Ground she's movin' under me
Tidal waves out on the sea
Sulphur smoke up in the sky
Pretty soon we learn to fly

Chorus:
Let me hear ya now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

Now my girl quickly say to me
Mon you better watch your feet
Lava come down soft and hot
You better lava me now or lava me not

Chorus:
Let me say now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

-- Spoken: "Mr Utley..."

No time to count what I'm worth
'Cause I just left the planet earth
Where I go I hope there's rum
Not to worry mon soon come

Chorus:
Now I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

Chorus:
One more now I don't know (ah he don't know)
I don't know (he don't know, mon)
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

But I don't want to land in New York City
Don't want to land in Mexico (no no no)
Don't want to land on no Three Mile Island
Don't want to see my skin aglow (no no no)

Don't want to land in Commanche Sky park
Or in Nashville, Tennessee (no no no)
Don't want to land in no San Juan airport
Or the Yukon Territory (no no no)

Don't want to land no San Diego
Don't want to land in no Buzzards Bay (no no no)
Don't want to land on no Ayotollah
I got nothing more to say

Chorus:
I don't know
I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

Chorus:
Just a one more, I don't know (he don't know)
I don't know (I don't know, man)
I don't know where I'm a gonna go
When the volcano blow

[Dead_Parrot]

8. lol. Didn't know that one...

Does Yellowstone park have a theme song, I wonder... :D

[megatherium]

14. Very interesting observation.

We have a geologist at my university who simply doesn't believe in global warming, he thinks it's just natural solar cycles and the like. Recently we had another petroleum geologist come and give a talk at my school. Very slick presentation, presenting the same message that global warming is nonsense and in five years it will be disproven. Another colleague of mine, a biologist, was fit to be tied -- he smelled a rat, this guy just happens to have all these nice professionally-drawn powerpoint slides, when he's just a retired petrogeologist from Kansas?

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Well there's a coincidence...

:eyes:

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Isn't methane a greenhouse gas?

And when you burn it, doesn't it release heat by turning into CO2?

And CO2 is another greenhouse gas -- Greenhouse Gas Classic.

(Of course, so is water vapor, but you need heat to increase the amount of water vapor in the atmo ... oops!)

AFAIK, oceanic methane clathrates are usually linked to volcanoes, fault lines/plate subduction zones, and other geologically active features. They aren't stable at all. In fact, there is growing evidence that aircraft and ship losses in the "Bermuda Triangle" come from methane releases that choke engines, swamp ships, and disorient pilots and captains.

--p!
Coming soon from Touchstone Pictures: Lindsay Lohan and Don Knotts in "The Ghost and the Great Oceanic Fart".

[phantom power]

10. Methane is 20 times more powerful as a GHG, than CO2.

[OKthatsIT]

13. ITS DIRTIER THAN OIL

[Oerdin]

16. No.

No it isn't. It is still a GHG releasing agent when used as an energy source but it is much less polluting then oil or coal. Nuclear or hydro is muc bettter but of the fossil fuels natural gas is the best.

[htuttle]

11. I wonder just HOW big the deposit is?

Being 15 miles offshore is probably far enough for LA to avoid this sort of disaster, but in the 80's, some lakes in Africa (Lakes Kivu, Nyos, and Monoun, IIRC) 'degassed' a bunch of methane and CO2 and the ensuing cloud killed thousands living on the lake shore in one case.

Being around the top of an undersea volcano would seem to make the eventual explosive release of this gas more likely, I'd think -- probably at the same time the San Andreas really lets loose...making what will be a really bad day, even worse.

[phantom power]

12. As long as we're speaking of methane deposits...

Here's a web site devoted to an on-line book about methane catastrophes, with the reassuring title "killer in our midst" (maybe because "Clusterfuck Climate" was a copyright violation?)

http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

[Dogmudgeon]

17. You just killed several readers' sleep for the next week, you know

Man, that is one frightening website. I was aware of the problem, and know that some of the methane beds have been releasing gas bubbles, but Dorritie's analysis is much more grim than I had thought.

For those who have not visited the site, basically, AGW (anthropogenic global warming) also warms the oceans. At a certain point, large amounts of trapped methane in seabed clathrate ices (molecular ice "cages") will be released when the temperature melts the ices. (The gas, ices, and water form types of mud, which Dorritie explains.) Since there a many different kinds of clathrate ices, it's impossible to determine the exact moment when any deposit of seabed methane is let loose. But we DO know that some of the areas are very close to being in the temperature zone where most of the known critical temperatures cluster. Undersea landslides, which would become more common in a warmer ocean, can release enormous amounts of methane within a few hours. This is the "Methane Catastrophe" of which Dorritie writes.

The Preface is on the home page. Just click on the link phantom power provided, and scroll down a little. The entire book is on-line, and includes considerable data on the much-discussed Thermohaline Current system.

--p!