Oil and Gas May Be a Far Bigger Climate Threat Than We Knew

Oil and gas production may be responsible for a far larger share of the soaring levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the earth’s atmosphere than previously thought, new research has found.

Emissions from human activity like the burning of
 fossil fuels may have been sharply underestimated.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, add urgency to efforts to rein in methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry, which routinely leaks or intentionally releases the gas into air.

“We’ve identified a gigantic discrepancy that shows the industry needs to, at the very least, improve their monitoring,” said Benjamin Hmiel, a researcher at the University of Rochester and the study’s lead author. “If these emissions are truly coming from oil, gas extraction, production use, the industry isn’t even reporting or seeing that right now.”

Read the story from The New York Times by Horoko Tabuchi - “Oil and Gas May Be a Far Bigger Climate Threat Than We Knew.”

Methane, Climate Change, and Our Uncertain Future

The greenhouse gas, methane, is produced by both natural processes and human activities. While there has been much attention paid to curbing anthropogenic emissions, a changing climate will likely increase the production of natural methane. In an open access article recently published in Reviews of Geophysics, Dean et al. [2018] describe the ways in which biological, geochemical, and physical systems influence methane concentrations and explore how methane levels in natural systems may alter in a warming climate. Here the authors answer some questions about the sources and significance of methane, and indicate some future research directions.

Flooded permafrost tundra in northeast Siberia.
Hydrology is a key control on methane emissions
in wetland and permafrost ecosystems.
Credit: Joshua Dean

How does methane effect the Earth’s climate?

Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that is much stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2), 34 times stronger if compared over a 100-year period. While concentrations of methane in the atmosphere are about 200 times lower than carbon dioxide, methane was responsible for 60% of the equivalent radiative forcing caused by carbon dioxide since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Methane’s presence in the atmosphere can also affect the abundance of other greenhouse gases, such as ozone (O3), water vapor (H2O), and carbon dioxide.

Read the story from Earth and Space Science News by Joshua Dean - “Methane, Climate Change, and Our Uncertain Future.”

This environmental group is launching its own satellite to learn more about greenhouse gas leaks

When the Environmental Defense Fund told commercial space guru Tom Ingersoll that it wanted to launch a satellite to measure methane from oil and gas operations, he says his reaction was “Whoa! You guys want to do what?”

A rendering by the Environmental Defense
Fund of a methane-detecting satellite. 

Yet that’s what the EDF is doing. It is well on its way toward raising about $40 million. It has tapped into the work of Harvard University researchers to fine tune sensors. And it has reached out to Ingersoll and others in the commercial space business to create a device that will be able to measure methane emissions on a 125-mile wide swath with pixel resolution of less than  five-eighths of a mile.

EDF will also get support from TED Talks, which hopes to spur fundraising for a variety of causes through its “Audacious Project.”

Read Steven Mufson’s story from The Washington Post - “This environmental group is launching its own satellite to learn more about greenhouse gas leaks.”

Subsea permafrost on east Siberian arctic shelf now in accelerated decline

A new scientific paper published in Nature Communication Journal demonstrates that the mechanisms of destabilisation of subsea permafrost, contrary to previous claims, provide new insights into increased emissions from the worlds largest deposits of methane, that exists in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).

The East Siberian Artic Ice Shelf.

The subsea permafrost has for thousands of years acted as a seal, restricting the flow of gas through the water column to the atmosphere. This paper clearly shows that permafrost degradation and the occurrence of gas migration pathways are key factors in controlling the emissions.  

Read the Envisonation story - “Subsea permafrost on east Siberian arctic shelf now in accelerated decline."

Why are we being such idiots about climate change?

Veteran environment writer John Carey looks at the reasons we don’t seem to make meaningful progress on climate change — and issues a rousing call to arms for us all to step up and play our part.

When I started covering climate change more than thirty years ago, the underlying science was already clear. Heat from the sun warms the Earth. Gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then act like a snuggly blanket or greenhouse to trap much of that warmth, keeping much of the heat from radiating back out to space.

For humans, this greenhouse effect is a vital — and fortuitous — physical phenomenon. Without it, the Earth would be in a deep freeze. Life as we know it couldn’t exist. We would have no mighty civilizations, no vast fields covered with amber waves of grain. No smart phones or keeping up with the Kardashians.

But like most good things, we can have too much of this greenhouse effect. Spew extra carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, as humans have been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Age, and it’s like pulling an extra cozy comforter over the planet. We get warmer. Ice sheets and glaciers melt. Sea levels rise. The extra energy in the atmosphere means more powerful and extreme storms, bringing tempests that wash away Vermont towns and send walls of water into subway tunnels in Manhattan. “Suddenly, climate change isn’t about the polar bears or the distant Sea levels anymore,” a Nashville, TN, flood victim told me for a story I wrote for Scientific American on the growing number of droughts, floods and other Sea levels events, “It’s about the mold on your baby’s crib.”

Read the Ideas.Ted.com story - “Why are we being such idiots about climate change?”

Converting food waste into useful energy

In California, one county is converting food waste into useful energy.

When food scraps break down in a traditional landfill, they release methane, a potent heat-trapping gas. So Sacramento County now requires food manufacturers, cafeterias, and other large producers to separate food waste from the rest of their trash.

The food scraps are then sent to a digester – a sealed environment where the methane can be captured as the food breaks down.

The methane is then used to create renewable electricity or fuel that can power diesel vehicles. What’s left is compost that is sold to farms.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “Diverting Food Wastes from Landfills to Useful Energy.”

Study shows new source of methane hydrate in Artic Ocean

Ultra-slow spreading ocean ridges were
discovered in the Arctic in 2003 by scientists
at Woods Hole Ocenographic Institution.
 

Methane, a highly effective greenhouse gas, is usually produced by decomposition of organic material, a complex process involving bacteria and microbes.

But there is another type of methane that can appear under specific circumstances: Abiotic methane is formed by chemical reactions in the oceanic crust beneath the seafloor.

New findings show that deep water gas hydrates, icy substances in the sediments that trap huge amounts of the methane, can be a reservoir for abiotic methane. One such reservoir was recently discovered on the ultraslow spreading Knipovich ridge, in the deep Fram Strait of the Arctic Ocean. The study suggests that abiotic methane could supply vast systems of methane hydrate throughout the Arctic.

The study was conducted by scientists at Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate (CAGE) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The results were recently published in Geology online and will be featured in the journal´s May issue.

Read the Phys.org story - “New source of methane discovered in the Arctic Ocean.”

Methane 'leaks' its way into the media's headlines

Scientists made significant progress in 2015 measuring methane emissions from the natural gas industry, continuing a years-long quest to quantify the industry's contribution to climate change. What they found adds to a growing body of evidence that methane leaks are sporadic, difficult to predict, and often far larger than existing government estimates.

Many of the studies came from the Environmental Defense Fund's $18 million project. Launched in 2011, it aims to measure emissions from every sector of the industry, including production, storage, transmission and natural gas vehicles. The project has drawn praise for its scope, vision and scrupulous methods. It's also been criticized for accepting industry funding and sometimes relying on collaboration with oil and gas operators to obtain measurements.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “2015: The Year Methane Leaked into the Headlines.”

'It's getting hotter', The Economist warns

S

AVING the planet is now a matter of a few clicks—at least on a small scale.

On September 22nd the UN’s Climate Change Secretariat launched Climate Neutral Now, a website that estimates an individual’s carbon footprint based on whereabouts, recycling habits, energy use and so on.

Offsetting any resulting guilt is easy: the site takes donations to fund clean development projects. Your correspondent paid $24 to a facility capturing methane from pig dung to cover the carbon-dioxide emissions she had caused during the past year.

The initiative is one of many intended to spur action on greenhouse-gas emissions in the run-up to climate talks in Paris at the end of the year. Some seem quite successful: in recent weeks around 2,000 individuals and 400 organisations have committed to stop investing in firms that produce fossil fuels.

More important, countries have responded to a shift in climate-change policy after the failure of negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009: rather than trying to agree on mandatory emissions reductions, they were asked to say by October 1st what they were willing to do.

ReadThe Economist story - “It’s getting hotter”.

Living in quite a different world - let's talk about it

The emphasis for our proposed public event next year should not be about convincing people that climate change is a reality rather, how to live in what will be quite a different world.

The reality is moving faster than people, and their governments, can make decisions.

A report from the ABC headed: “UN warns permafrost is melting”, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane that has been trapped in the subsoil for thousands of years.

The volatile gases to be released before the end of this century have the potential to drive global temperatures up to levels never seen before.

Our range of speakers should be able to give an outline of what is happening, then a précis of how that will impact on human life on earth, what we can do to mitigate the changes we are causing to our atmosphere and how, both as individuals and communities, we can learn to live with the unfolding differences.

The five-strong working group (it’s that at the moment, but may increase) expects to meet within a week or so (certainly early in December) to consider and formulate ideas for the event.

Those with any suggestions should forward them to robed@sheppnews.com.au.

Climate change adaptation idea passes almost unnoticed

An idea that would delay dangerous climate change for about 30 years was discussed at the recent G8 Summit, but passed almost unnoticed.

“The Telegraph’s” Geoffrey Lean reports that G8 members appear to have taken the biggest step in years to combat climate change and, he explains, it is unrelated to carbon dioxide.

He reports in his story headed: “G8: Leaders open up vital new front in thebattle to control global warming” that “The summit's final communiqué, the Camp David Declaration, supports “comprehensive actions” to reduce “short-lived climate pollutants”.

“These substances – including black carbon (soot), methane, ground-level ozone, and hydro-fluorocarbons – are responsible for about half of global warming.”