Posted on 07/31/2009 9:56:27 PM PDT by neverdem
News in Brief
NOAA
While testing equipment off the Californian coast last month, a newly refitted research vessel stumbled across plumes of methane gas rising 1,400 metres from the sea floor.
The Okeanos Explorer, commissioned last year by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after a US$20-million refit, was testing a new multi-beam sonar system in the Mendocino fracture zone (see sonar image, above). On 15 July the ship returned to the site to capture plume material for analysis in the coming weeks.
The plumes, which measure up to 1 kilometre across, typically dissipate about 600 metres below the surface. Cruise scientist Stephen Hammond of the NOAA office in Newport, Oregon, suspects this is because ice with methane gas trapped in its crystal structure melts at the combination of pressure and temperature at that depth. Similar methane plumes have been discovered from the Oregon coast to the Black Sea, but not this large or numerous.
Fish are farting and destroying this planet!
Half mile wide plumes of methane?
Vast energy being wasted.
Too bad Obama and the democrats don’t want us to have any cheap energy.
Its the devils triangle ! or at least I think its believed to cause both ship and airplane losses...
Gore-bull warming alert.
Heh... maybe it’s not whale “song”, after all! :-)
LOL, and the lefty loonies are breathlessly panting about cows. God, in His infinite wisdom must look down and the left with pity. Actually He may pity us having to suffer them.
Well it’s a find, but what is it that makes it “lucky”. Can we retire the National Debt now? Will it force Obama to retire?
I don’t really think it was lucky, I think it was inadvertent.
x2
I believe I have read that the amount of energy in methane on the ocean floor exceeds ALL other hydrocarbon energy forms like a thousand-fold.
TAX THAT!
This can’t be true. We all know that women (Mother Nature/planet) don’t fart!
They need to pass legislation to STOP this methane release immediately! Methane causes GLOBAL WARMING!!!!
This is the biggest threat to the planet since the uncontrolled release of Dihydrogen Monoxide.
/Grin
In all seriousness, this is in fact the true logical explanation for every bit of the “Bermuda Triangle” lore.
Methane becomes over time as vegetation decays from river runoff, held in huge amounts below tons of undersea sediment, on a steep huge ocean chasm which drops quite severely from just off the Eastern coast of Florida.
Every once in a while an undersea “avalanche” of that ever-accumulating sediment, releases huge amounts of that captured methane - which bubbles up to the surface. The bubbles reduce the weight which can be supported by the water - and promptly sink any ship in the cone.
But there’s more. The methane then continues upward.
And immediately - interferes with all internal combustion engines.
Such as ... Avenger propeller planes.
Just saying.
Sue it for polluting the atmosphere. Put it in jail. Condemn it before the US. Let Al Gore berate it.
Nature farts; Democrats depart.
Sounds illegal to me!
If one believes the abiotic theory of hydrocarbon formation (which I do) this is no surprise.
Methane is one of the most common substances in the Universe and there is no reason not to believe that it is a major component of the Earth as well.
Drill here, drill now!
I have a book circa 1850 which tells all about the undersea methane. Touting it as something new is a farce.
1)Potential vast new energy source, 2)new proof that what "global warming" has occurred is due to natural causes, and 3)capturing and using this methane will reduce global warming.
It's a win, win, win situation, so yes, I'd call it "lucky".
Where did I say it was new?
If it’s “new”, that’s only because the mega-scale technology that would be needed to extract it hasn’t been perfected yet.
1) So add it to the list of vast new energy sources that remain untapped; fusion, methane ice, zero-point energy, oil shale: need I go on?
2) This is not proof of that.
3) Burning methane creates water vapor and CO2, both “greenhouse gases;” burning methane will not have any effect on “global warming” but it will drive Al Gore nuts - more than he is already.
Now, that’s a plus in my book!
Does this work in the bathtub too?
But its off the coast of California, so that's a lose.
True, but it's a lot easier to drill for nat. gas, than the others you cited.
"2) This is not proof of that."
Yes it is. Methane is a FAR more "efficient" greenhouse gas than CO2 (by a factor of 12). If large amounts of methane are being released into the ocean (and then into the air, which is the inevitable consequence of ocean release), then the global warming models are proved wrong, since they obviously do not include that warming gas source correctly.
"3) Burning methane creates water vapor and CO2, both “greenhouse gases;” burning methane will not have any effect on “global warming” but it will drive Al Gore nuts - more than he is already."
Since methane is a stronger greenhouse gas, burning it to CO2 WILL reduce the overall warming tendency, despite the increase in CO2.
Ah, but this makes selling offshore drilling to the Greenies a lot easier. Reducing the emission of such a potent greenhouse gas as methane would be a "global warming good thing" (for those that believe in anthropogenic global warming). And obviously, drilling for nat. gas won't put oil on their precious beaches (of course, they're so ignorant they probably don't know that).
What about the water vapor?
That’s half in jest, of course.
Finders - keepers! I don't have a problem.
Allergy Drugs Fight Obesity and Diabetes in Mice
Creating Fat That Makes You Fit
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Did Mr. Methane get thrown overboard on a cruise ship?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC5pSuzldzs
(thanks for the ping, neverdem. Interesting.)
I dunno about that.
When we were cruising off of the coast of Somalia back in ‘94, we hit a methane pocket. Turned the sea as white as milk for as far as the eye could see in the middle of the night. We never sank, though.
Thanks for the ping.
Well, of course, that's another reason that the AGW models are wrong, but since those models "do" recognize methane (after all, they're about to regulate cow farts) as an important greenhouse villian, while completely ignoring water vapor, there's no reason NOT to use the reduction of it to justify drilling for nat. gas.
.......off the Californian coast .......
Where specifically? Is LA smog the result of off shore methane evaporating from the water?
Makes a lot of sense. Instant density change, the ocean just drops out from underneath a ship.
I don't know if methane contributes to it, but IIRC, temperature inversion is the driving force behind fog and smog.
Also consider that cold Atlantic arctic waters dissolve CO_2 and carry it at depth to the Bermuda area where after about 300 years the warming of the water causes the CO_2 to effervesce.
Recognizing water vapor in a AGW model changes the sign of the forecast.
Methane, of course, does not accumulate in the atmosphere since it oxidizes. Ask some self appointed expert what the half life of methane is and you will get a blank stare back.
In reality, neither does CO2 (it circulates among the atmosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere, as does methane). But until methane DOES oxidize, it contributes more to the greenhouse effect than CO2.
But the folks building the math models are certainly aware of the half-life of methane. The problem is that, as is the case with CO2, they do NOT know either all the sources, or all the "sinks" of either methane OR CO2. So their models can only be bad approximations of the real world.
I know, the temperature inversion traps the smog producing gasses under the thermal layer.
The question would be, is there a methane componant wafted in from off shore?
I doubt it, but if so, it would destroy many enviro arguments
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