THE VENUS SYNDROME?

This blog site has featured numerous postings comparing methane with carbon dioxide, so I won't here summarize them.  It is clear, though, that while the actual concentration of methane is much lower than carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, methane still is not insignificant, being responsible for 28% of global warming.  It is of concern that methane is increasing faster than carbon dioxide, and much of this effect is man-made.  The ultimate concern, however, is the cascading effect warming can affect methane in the ocean to cause life extinction.  That is the Venus Syndrome.

After decades of general neglect, methane has finally become a source of concern.  Today, I will report on some the latest developments.

Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times on Monday reported that the first satellite to continuously monitor the planet for methane leaks made a startling discovery last year:

•  A little known gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.

• Plus
• The scientists said the new findings reinforced the view that methane releases like these, which are difficult to predict, could be far more widespread than previously thought.
• The blowout, in February 2018 at a natural gas well run by an Exxon Mobil subsidiary in Belmont County, Ohio, released more methane than the entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year.
• Scientists also said the new findings reinforced the view that methane emissions from oil installations are far more widespread than previously thought.

• The European Space Agency just launched a satellite with a new monitoring instrument called Tropomi, designed to collect more accurate measurements of methane.
• When burned for electricity, natural gas is cleaner than coal, producing about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane escapes into the atmosphere before being burned, it can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
• Fracking natural-gas production, which accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, has been studied as one possible cause.

As you know, The Venus Syndrome is a methane leak concept I advanced in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth that could well be much more serious than global climate warming due to man-made carbon dioxide.  The global climate community has generally pooh-poohed my contention.

I remember back in 2005 at a gathering of world specialists on the subject at the East-West Center my advocacy of a satellite to measure methane emissions.  James Hansen himself indicated that methane was not a priority consideration relative to the problem with carbon dioxide.

Thus, almost fifteen years later I kind of feel validated that methane has actually become significant as a dangerous global gas.  To learn that the first methane measurement satellite was up there was still a revelation.  And two, no idea that European Union (left) has now come on board.

That first device, known as GHGSat-D or Claire (right), was launched in 2016.  Two more were schedule for operation this year, but the August 2019 date for GHGSat-C-1 had to be pushed back.   When Vega goes up early in 2020, C-1 will be on it.

Claire mostly measured carbon dioxide and methane at oil/gas facilities, power stations, coal mines, landfills and animal feedlots, but does also look at mud volcanoes and localized seeps.

Further, Claire:

• is the size of a microwave oven
• orbits every 90 minutes
• will operate for 5 years and will crash
• measures 1,000 sites/year, usually as determined by cash industrial customers
• is anticipating carbon trading becoming a reality, a $50 billion/year potential
• is licensed by the Government of Canada

Thus, Claire is focused on industrial carbon dioxide and methane pollution.  However, at this time, Claire is not a scientific tool for global climate research, as:

Researchers find global ocean Methane emissions dominated by shallow coast waters

Yet, this is the first comprehensive assessment of methane.  To quickly summarize:

• fracking and other standard natural gas and oil well emit a lot of methane, much more than originally thought until that first satellite measurement

• however, there remains little knowledge of methane seepage from the ocean

• coastal regions seem to be particularly prone to methane leaks, with 5% of the ocean area, contributes 50% the sea methane emission
• there is a fear that, like trees, plankton is the cause of coastal methane
• then, of course, there is the Arctic tundra, which has to be significant

But returning to the priority matter underscored by Hansen in 2005, guess which group of international climate scientists updates the methane budget every three years?  The Global CARBON Project.

Of course, we can't ignore all that carbon at the bottom of the ocean trapped as methane clathrates (hydrates):

As the evidence for warming climate became better established in the latter part of the 20th century (IPCC 2001), some scientists raised the alarm that large quantities of methane (CH₄) might be liberated by widespread destabilization of climate-sensitive gas hydrate deposits trapped in marine and permafrost-associated sediments (Bohannon 2008, Krey et al. 2009, Mascarelli 2009). Even if only a fraction of the liberated CH₄ were to reach the atmosphere, the potency of CH₄ as a greenhouse gas (GHG) and the persistence of its oxidative product (CO₂) heightened concerns that gas hydrate dissociation could represent a slow tipping point (Archer et al. 2009) for Earth's contemporary period of climate change.

Further:

Methane hydrate is an ice-like substance formed when CH4 and water combine at low temperature (up to ~25ºC) and moderate pressure (greater than 3-5 MPa, which corresponds to combined water and sediment depths of 300 to 500 m). Globally, an estimated 99% of gas hydrates occurs in the sediments of marine continental margins at saturations as high as 20% to 80% in some lithologies; the remaining 1% is mostly associated with sediments in and beneath areas of high-latitude, continuous permafrost (McIver 1981, Collett et al. 2009). Nominally, methane hydrate concentrates CH₄ by ~164 times on a volumetric basis compared to gas at standard pressure and temperature. Warming a small volume of gas hydrate could thus liberate large volumes of gas

Finally:

The present-day concentration of CH₄ in the atmosphere is ~200 times lower than that of CO₂, but CH₄ concentrations have risen by ~150% since pre-industrial times, compared to only ~40% for CO₂ (IPCC 2001).

The bottom line is that ocean methane probably caused all those specie extinctions for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, Triassic and other periods.  Or, THE VENUS SYNDROME.  Regarding that HuffPo, say I was off by a decade.  Then, watch out for October 21, 2022.  The Sixth Extinction could well include you.

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