Methane and global warming "Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period and is emitted from a variety of natural and human-influenced sources."
Climatically driven emissions of hydrocarbons from marine sediments during deglaciation PNAS abstract
Deep trouble.
Methane bubbles from a tar-covered oil seep in the Santa Barbara Channel.
Credit: David Valentine
How nice.
interesting - global warming/methane ping.
Abiogenic Gas DebateThis paper, written by J.F. Kenney of Gas Resources Corp. in Houston and three Russian co-authors... present an evaluation of the chemical potentials and related thermodynamic affinities for n-alkanes... They also briefly describe the experimental production of petroleum hydrocarbons using only wetted marble (CaCO3) and solid iron oxide (FeO), in an apparatus allowing investigation at pressures up to 50 kbar and temperatures up to 1,500° Celsius. Kenney said there is no real debate about petroleum origination. "There has not been any 'debate' about the origin of hydrocarbons for over a century," he stated. "Competent physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and men knowledgeable of thermodynamics have known that natural petroleum does not evolve from biological material since the last quarter of the 19th century." ...No one in the United States has been more associated with the theory of abiogenic petroleum than Thomas Gold, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, now retired. "The only real opponents to this story (of abiogenic origin) are in Western Europe and in the United States, and they are the professional petroleum geologists," he said.
by David Brown
November 2002
