Global Climate Destabilization is Major Security & Economic Threat
Building the Green Economy, Crisis Policy Forum, Renewable Resources, Water Scarcity, Zero-combustion paradigm :: Comments (3)
9 March 2009 :: by J.E. Robertson
The new administration in Washington, DC, has taken notice: climate change is not about a mild 1º increase in temperature on any given day; it is about a sweeping destabilization of global climate patterns, which could undermine the entire layout of civilization across the world. Building the infrastructure necessary for implementing and sustaining a green energy economy is a security priority in this new environment.
Key to understanding the gravity of climate destabilization are the wide array of catastrophic irreversible impacts that could amplify damage. One such area of concern is what are known as methane hydrates. Real Climate explains that:
There is an enormous amount of methane (CH4) on earth frozen into a type of ice called methane hydrate. Hydrates can form with almost any gas and consist of a ‘cage’ of water molecules surrounding the gas. (The term ‘clathrate’ more generally describes solids consisting of gases are trapped within any kind of cage while hydrate is the specific term for when the cage is made of water molecules). There are CO2 hydrates on Mars, while on Earth most of the hydrates are filled with methane. Most of these are in sediments of the ocean, but some are associated with permafrost soils.
Methane hydrates can be destabilized by warming ocean temperatures. When they are destabilized, they release trapped methane into the oceans, and eventually into the atmosphere. Methane has 8 times the greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide, meaning a massive release would significantly accelerate climate change related to global warming.
In the 1990s, the administration of Pres. Bill Clinton devoted $50 million over five years to researching how to extract fuel for energy generation from methane hydrates and carbon dioxide hydrates. But today’s concern is more focused on the potential harm from allowing any of the methane trapped in methane hydrates to escape into the atmosphere, whether from burning or melt-induced release.
With evidence mounting that warming is happening far faster than any models predicted, concerns are also mounting that the release of massive amounts of hydrate-trapped methane into the atmosphere could have a radical effect on raising temperatures and destabilizing the Earth’s climate patterns, causing rapid acceleration of ice-melt in Greenland and Antarctica, leading to sea-level rises of up to 20 meters.
More than half the world’s population lives within the flood-zone for such a sea-level rise. But long before those billions of climate refugees would collapse the supply capacity of the remaining infrastructure of global society, disruptions to rain patterns could cause the failure of the African and/or Asian monsoons, depriving literally billions of clean water, irrigation and/or food supply.
A clean, renewable economic system that does not put added stress on global climate stability is now a moral, economic and security imperative. It is a matter of not just border security for wealth countries who may seek to limit the ease with which refugees from the most heavily affected impoverished countries can immigrate, but for the political stability of nations around the world.
Resource scarcity or resource collapse are the two most severe drivers of political instability or major cross-border conflict. Many countries saddled with chronic water or food scarcity are in a constant state of emergency, on the verge of devoving into civil war or cross-border conflicts, as desperate people struggle to meet their basic vital needs, wherever they can find the resources they require.
The Earth’s climate has made human civilization possible by providing an environment hospitable to our preferred way of doing things. Agriculture has been possible only since human beings recognized how to harness reliable climate systems in order to optimize the productivity of cultivated land. Without the Nile flood plane or the Sahel monsoon, agriculture in affected countries becomes impossible and the human food supply collapses.
3.6 billion people live in areas dependent on the Asian monsoons for the necessary quantity of rainfall to supply river systems and make agriculture possible. The collapse of the Asian monsoon could lead to chronic deprivation for most or all of these people.
The wholesale destabilization of the world’s most populous nations would be an economic, political and security crisis far beyond anything experienced in human history, especially considering that four nuclear-armed states are among those dependent on the monsoons.
While the USGS has noted the potential uses of methane hydrates as an energy resource, it has also warned that methane can be up to 10 times as “effective” as carbon dioxide in causing global average temperature to warm, and that its negative climate impact must be evaluated.
It also reports studies showing that natural seismic activity and other interference can destabilize hydrates with serious potential impact for the global climate. Current science suggests we need to treat the entire issue of how to harvest energy or deal with phenomena like hydrates with maximum caution, and look to the cleanest, zero-combustion, non-nuclear options for building a sustainable global economy not on course for catastrophic decay.
“Methane hydrates can be destabilized by warming ocean temperatures.”
See Reagan and Moridis (JGR, 2008) to learn just how unlikely that is, except for at high latitudes.
“When they are destabilized, they release trapped methane into the oceans, and eventually into the atmosphere.”
No, they primarily release methane into sediments. Quite often into sediments that are 100 to 200 or more meters below the sea-floor. From there, that methane has to find its way to the seafloor. Only a small fraction would ever make to the atmosphere, as much is oxidized by organisms in the sediment, at the seafloor, or in the water column. And then, much of the rest will simply dissolve in the seawater, which is highly undersaturated with respect to methane.
The rest of this is without much basis, but sure is entertaining reading. The links between hydrate and the catastrophes you envision have simply not been made. And while I agree that they must be evaluated, best of luck in convincing the Indians, Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese of that. You rightly bemoan the impacts of resource scarity. Perhaps the first of these, unfortunately, will be energy resource scarcity. What is your answer to those growing economies that need energy resources now? Just what is the “cleanest, zero-combustion, non-nuclear option” THAT CAN build “a sustainable global economy that is not on course for catastrophic decay?” Does it involve fairies??
You say that methane has a) 8 times the effect of CO2 and then a little later b) that it has 10 times the effect.
I am afraid that both figures are incorrect and low by a factor of about 10 times.
In fact methane has a 100 year GWE of about 23 and a 20 year GWE of about 73.
In fact even these figures are low as methane only has a lifetime in the atmosphere of roughly 10 to 12 years and based on it’s actual lifetime it has o GWE of more than 80 when compared with CO2. You should also be aware that methane oxidises to form CO2, each tonne of methane in the atmosphere breaks down to form 2 3/4 tonnes of CO2.
At the moment methane forms only 1.75 ppm of the atmosphere (compared with 387 ppm of CO2) yet it produces almost 20% of the GW that is occurring.
The present atmospheric quantity of methane is 2 1/2 times what it was 250 years ago and as global temperatures continue to rise, so will methane emissions continue to rise (a positive feed back loop).
By releasing so much CO2 from fossil fuel combustion we are unleashing natural methane emissions at an ever increasing rate and no amount of political posing is going to solve the problem.
It is already a self sustaining process and I dont see anyone working on finding solutions.
There are several scientific comments that I would like to make about “Global
Warming” and “Global Climate Change”. There is a basic principal involved that has been overlooked by most of the non-scientific media.
Every statement in this paper is covered in detail in the references presented at the
conclusion of this discussion.
FIRST — is that Global Warming is NOT a new effect. It has occurred five times
during the past 500,000 years! The basic cause is Methane (CH4) and
NOT man-made Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The present global warming
cycle began about the time man was crossing the frozen land bridge
from Siberia to North America.
We need to understand the sources and mechanics of Methane that
are actually the basic cause of our global warming. Anything that has
grown, ranging from yard clippings to a decaying body, produces
methane as it decomposes. Methane gas from permafrost is a decay
product. Methane gas from the deep ocean (methane hydrate) is totally different.
Methane gas from oil wells is yet a very different composition. These
must all be recognized as such and understood as to their manner of
existence, production, and/or release.
Deep Sea Methane appears to be the waste product of a bacteriological
process and is therefore a renewable resource! ( See Reference 2).
It is a relative clean product of our environment. It has recently been
produced (as clean natural gas) in continuous commercial quantities
by Japanese & American scientists in Canada in 2008. It is this Methane
gas that has been bubbling up, for eons,from the continental shelfs
around the world that is the real culprit
and basic cause of our present situation.
Oil well Methane gas is a very dirty gas mixture — it is methane with
huge amounts of sulfur and other noxious gases mixed with it. The
Methane often mentioned in the media as “Bubbling up from Undersea
Permafrost” is a decay product. It is NOT from a Hydrate!
NEXT — Drastic Global Climate Change has taken place at least FIVE
different times during the last 500,000 years. Our present cycle is
the only one during which man has been a factor! (Ref. 1 & 2). Methane
gas which bubbles up continuously from the deep ocean sources (and
which in turn disassociates into CO2) is the true source of the “Greenhouse
Gas” that has operated in the previous five interglacial cycles — all
of which have been extinction cycles! As will this one!
These five previous cycles are NOT man made effects, nor is the
present cycle, and it IS TOO LATE to change our present cycle, we
may actually now be past the peak. We can only learn to adapt!
We cannot STOP the process although we might slow
it down for a few years, which in geological time is nothing.
The Vostok Ice Core tests made in Antartica PROVE that there
has been a huge upwelling and release of CH4 associated with
every one of these five interglacial episodes! (Ref.2)
We MUST ADAPT to survive! ADAPT! ADAPT ! ADAPT !
REFERENCES
There are several prime references associated with the material that I
have covered, if ever so briefly.
(1) EARTH’s CHANGING CLIMATE. Lecture Series by Dr. Richard
Wolfson, the Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics at Middlebury
College. This is a six hour lecture series (12 segments of 30 minutes
each) on two DVDs produced by The Teaching Company of Chantilly VA
20151-1232. http://www.TEACH12.com
This series covers in-depth detail of the science and methodology of
climate change. It is not an advocacy program. Interestingly, Dr.
Wolfson does not even mention Methane-Clatherate in this lecture
series — knowledge on that subject is almost too new to have been
included. It was first discovered on a moon of Venus by NASA about
1985. At the time we did not even know that it existed on Earth!
(2) FIRE IN THE ICE. Quarterly Journal , U.S.Department of Energy,
Office of Fossil Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory. Also
known as Methane Hydrate Newsletter. Recommended reading is all
issues to current issue from about 2000 forward. This is the best of
several technical journals devoted to the science of Methane
Clatherates. http://www.netl.doe.gov/about/index.html
(3) HIGH TIDE by Mark Lynas. Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.
10010. ISBN 0-312-30365-3. This well written book clarifies the problems
of Global Warming “… The American People have been subjected to one
of the most pervasive misinformation campaigns ever undertaken … “ http://www.picadorusa.com
(4) WITH SPEED AND VIOLENCE [Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
Climate Change] by Fred Pearce. Beacon Press; 25 Beacon Street;
Boston, MA 02108. © 2007. “We are on the precipice of climate system
tipping points beyond which there is no redemption”
http://www.beacon.org
(5) Natural Gas Hydrate Studies in Canada; Hyndman & Dallimore from
The Recorder, 26,11-20, 2001, Canadian Society of Exploration
Geophysicists.
JCSpilman, P.E. (Ret.) Huntsville, AL