Climate Plan

This image sums up the lines of action, to be implemented in parallel and as soon as possible, and targets of the Climate Plan, in order to avoid climate catastrophe.

The Climate Plan and its various parts have been discussed in many post at Arctic-news blog over the years.

Now is the time to support the Climate Plan and to make sure that it will be considered at many forums, such as the Climate Summit, to be held September 23, 2014, at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, and preparations for the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015.

Please show your support by sharing this text and the image widely!


Emission cuts

In nations with both federal and state governments such as the U.S., the President (or Head of State or Cabinet, basically where executive powers are held) can direct:

• federal departments and agencies to reduce their emissions for each type of pollutant annually by a set percentage, say, CO2 and CH4 by 10%, and HFCs, N2O and soot by higher percentages.
• the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make states each achieve those same reductions. 



Target: 80% cut everywhere for each type of pollutant
by 2020 (to be managed locally provided targets are met)

• the EPA to monitor progress by states and to step in with more effective action in case a state looks set to miss one or more targets.
  (More effective action in such a case would be to impose (federal) fees on applicable polluting products sold in the respective state, with revenues used for federal benefits. Such federal benefits could include building interstate High-Speed Rail tracks, adaptation and conservation measures, management of national parks, R&D into batteries, ways to vegetate deserts and other land use measurements, all at the discretion of the EPA. Fees can be roughly calculated as the average of fees that other states impose in successful efforts to meet their targets.)

Similar policies could be adopted elsewhere in the world, and each nation could similarly delegate responsibilities to states, provinces and further down to local communities.

Carbon dioxide removal and storage

Target: restore atmosphere and ocean to long term average
by 2100 (with each nation's annual contributions to reflect
its past emissions)

Energy feebates can best clean up energy, while other feebates (such as pictured in the above diagram) can best raise revenue for carbon dioxide removal. Energy feebates can phase themselves out, completing the necessary shift to clean energy within a decade. Carbon dioxide removal will need to continue for much longer, so funding will need to be raised from other sources, such as sales of livestock products, nitrogen fertilizers and Portland cement.

A range of methods to remove carbon dioxide would be eligible for funding under such feebates. To be eligible for rebates, methods merely need to be safe and remove carbon dioxide.

There are methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or from the oceans. Rebates favor methods that also have commercial viability. In case of enhanced weathering, this will favor production of building materials, road pavement, etc. Such methods could include water desalination and pumping of water into deserts, in efforts to achieve more vegetation growth. Selling a forest where once was a desert could similarly attract rebates.

Some methods will be immediately viable, such as afforestation and biochar. It may take some time for methods such as enhanced weathering to become economically viable, but when they do, they can take over where afforestation has exhausted its potential to get carbon dioxide back to 280ppm.

Additionally, conservation and land use measures could help increase carbon storage in ecosystems.

Solar radiation management

Target: prevent Arctic Ocean from warming by more
than 1°C above long term average (U.N. supervised)

Apart from action to move to a more sustainable economy, additional lines of action are necessary to reduce the danger of runaway global warming.

Extra fees on international commercial aviation could provide funding for ways to avoid that the temperature of the atmosphere or the oceans will rise by more than 1°C above long term average.

Due to their potential impact across borders, these additional lines of action will need ongoing research, international agreement and cooperation.

Land, clouds, wind, water, snow and ice management

Target: increase Arctic snow and ice cover (U.N.
supervised) and restore it to its long term average 

Apart from action to move to a more sustainable economy, additional lines of action are necessary to reduce the danger of runaway global warming.

Extra fees on international commercial aviation could also provide funding for ways to cool the Arctic and restore the snow and ice cover to its long term average extent.

As said, due to their potential impact across borders, these additional lines of action will need ongoing research, international agreement and cooperation.

Methane management and further action

Target: relocate vulnerable Arctic clathrates (U.N. supervised)
and restore mean atmospheric CH4 level to long term average
by 2100 (with each nation's annual contributions to reflect its
past emissions.

Further action is needed to avoid that huge quantities of methane will abruptly erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

Vulnerable hydrates should be considered to be relocated under U.N. supervision.

Besides this, local action can be taken to reduce methane levels in the atmosphere with each nation's annual contributions to reflect its past emissions.

Adaptation, conservation and land use measures could further improve the situation.

The comprehensive and effective action of the Climate Plan will reduce the threat of runaway warming, and this will have obvious benefits for the environment and for species threatened with extinction. Additionally this will also save people money, will improve people's health and safety, will increase security of food and fresh water supply, will make energy supply and the electric grid more efficient, safe, robust and reliable, will reduce perceived needs for military forces to police fuel supply lines globally, and will create numerous local job and investment opportunities. Please support, follow and discuss the Climate Plan at facebook.com/ClimatePlan and at Arctic-news

Obama's Power Plant Rules: Too Little, Too Late, Too Ineffective

On June 2, 2014, the Obama administration through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that states must lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted for each unit (MWh) of electricity they produce.

1. Too Little

Under the EPA rules, the nationwide goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector by 30% from 2005 levels. This will also reduce other pollutants.

Sam Carana: The goal should be an 80% cut in emissions. Reductions should not be averaged out over different types of emissions, but instead the 80% reduction target should apply to each type of emission, i.e. 80% cuts in CO2 and 80% cuts in CH4 and 80% cuts in black carbon, etc.

2. Too late

Under the EPA rules, states must meet interim targets during the 2020s, but they can delay making emission cuts provided they will on average comply with targets by 2030. Moreover, the EPA suggests that they can from then on maintain that level subsequently.

Sam Carana: For over six years, I have been calling for an 80% cut in emissions by 2020. When people now ask if I still believe such reductions are feasible given the lack of action over the years, I respond that, precisely because so little has been achieved over the years, it now is even more imperative to set a target of 80% emissions cuts by 2020. If we start cutting 13.4% off this year's emissions, and keep cutting emissions by the same amount each subsequent year, we'll be under 20% (i.e. at 19.6%) by 2020. 

3. Too ineffective

Under the EPA rules, states could comply by either reducing CO2 emissions from their power plants or buying credits or offsets from elsewehere, e.g. through cap-and-trade programs. States can choose to use existing multi-state programs or create new ones.

Sam Carana: The goal should be a genuine 80% cut in emissions in each and every state. It is good to delegate decisions to states regarding what works best locally to achieve such reductions. However, schemes such as cap-and-trade, carbon credits and offsetting keep local polluters dirty by allowing them to claim credit for progress made elsewhere. A state buying credits from beyond its borders does not genuinely reduce its own emissions, making it even harder for it to reach its next targets (which should be even tighter), while also making it harder for targets to be reached elsewhere.  

The bigger such schemes grow, the more they become fraught with difficulties, twisted with irregularities and riddled with political chicanery, making them prone to fraud and bribery, often beyond the administrative scope and legal reach of local regulators. 

Such schemes are inherently counter-productive in that they seek to create ever more demand for polluting activities; they will continue doing dirty business until the last possible 'credit' has been sold, burning the last bit of fossil fuel from irrealistic carbon budgets that are fabricated inside the dark politics of compromise, campaign-funding and complacency. 

Such schemes are designed to profit from keeping the dirtiest power plants going and prolonging their lifetime beyond any reasonable purpose, in efforts to perpetuate the scheme itself and extract further money that, instead of being used to benefit the cleaner solutions, is then often used to finance further pollution elsewhere and spread the reach of such schemes. Such dreadful conduct is typically hidden away in a web of deceit custom-made to avoid the scrutiny of public accountibility.

And what if states fail to reach targets? The EPA suggestion to use such schemes effectively delays much local action, while encouraging states to negotiate with each other. This opens up the prospect of states blaming each other and taking legal action rather than genuine action. If the trappings of such schemes make states fail to reach targets, penalties could be imposed, but that still does not guarantee that targets will be reached; furthermore, given the complexities of such schemes, policing them poses additional burdens on administrators, police, courts and lawyers. Huge amounts of money and time have already been spent on court cases to postpone action, rather than on building genuine solutions.  

The best way to cater for non-compliance is to prepare federally-administered fees, to be levied on sales of polluting products, and with the revenues used to fund federal projects that do reduce emissions. As said, it's good for the EPA to encourage states to each work out how best to reduce their respective emissions, provided that each state does indeed reach set targets. Where a state fails to take the necessary action, the EPA should resume control and call for federal fees to be imposed in the respective state. 

The Clean Air Act calls for the 'best system of emissions reduction' to reduce emissions from power plants. The best system is one that levies fees on pollution and then uses the revenues to fund rebates on the cleaner products sold locally.  

Such combinations of fees and rebates (feebates) are the most effective way to make our economy sustainable, as part of the comprehensive action that is needed to avoid climate catastrophe. For more details on comprehensive and effective action, see the ClimatePlan blog. 

Related

- Methane Man
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/01/methane-man.html

- Climate Plan
http://climateplan.blogspot.com

CO2 growth highest on record

Despite many promises, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) continue to grow.

NOAA figures show that 2013 CO₂ level growth was the highest ever recorded, i.e. 2.95 ppm.

The EPA expects U.S. 2013 energy-related CO₂ emissions to be 2% higher than in 2012.

The UC San Diego image below shows CO₂ levels in the atmosphere over the past two years.

Back in September 2013, John Davies warned: “The world is probably at the start of a Runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040. This will occur because of a massive and rapid increase in the carbon dioxide concentration in the air which has just accelerated significantly. The increasing Greenhouse Gas concentration, the gases which cause Global Warming, will very soon cause a rapid warming of the global climate and a chaotic climate.”

The post featured a graph with a 4th-order polynomial trendline pointing at some 7.5 ppm CO₂ annual growth by 2040. While many welcomed the warning contained in the graph, some argued against using higher-order polynomial trendlines. So, for those who don't feel comfortable with a 4th-order polynomial trendline, the graph below adds both a linear trendline and a 3rd-order polynomial trendline.

The 3rd-order polynomial trendline, based on the recent data, points at CO₂ annual growth of some 7 ppm by 2040, justifying the warning sounded by the 2013 graph.

And what do the recent data say, when a 4th-order polynomial trendline is applied? As the image below shows, they show an even steeper rise, reaching 7 ppm growth per year as early as 2030.

As many posts at this blog have warned, rapid growth in greenhouse gases and numerous feedbacks are threatening to push Earth into runaway global warming. This calls for comprehensive and effective action to - among other things - reduce atmospheric CO₂ levels back to 280 ppm, as illustrated by the image below and as further discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

A RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE EVENT

by John Davies

A linear trendline shows steady growth in the annual increase in CO2 levels, despite promises to reduce emissions.
Furthermore, recent increases show a worrying trend illustrated in the graph by a 4th order polynomial trendline.

GROWTH RATE OF CARBON DIOXIDE IN THE ATMOSPHERE

The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040. This will occur because of a massive and rapid increase in the carbon dioxide concentration in the air which has just accelerated significantly. The increasing Greenhouse Gas concentration, the gases which cause Global Warming, will very soon cause a rapid warming of the global climate and a chaotic climate.

Immediately before the Industrial Revolution, in 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air which had been stable for millennia, the main Greenhouse gas, was 280 parts per million, but in 2013 it is likely to average 395 parts per million. It has been increasing at an increasing rate since 1750.

In 1960 the carbon dioxide concentration was 315 parts per million and in the 1960’s the concentration was increasing at 0.8 parts per million per year, in the 1980’s at 1.6 parts per million and from 2003 until 2011 inclusive it rose at 2 .0 parts per year.

In 2012 it rose 2.39 parts. Between July 2012 and July 2013 atmospheric carbon dioxide increased in concentration by 3.35 parts, by far the largest 12 month increase ever.

THIS HUGE INCREASE SHOULD BE PUBLISHED EVERYWHERE WORLDWIDE NOW

ASSESSMENT

When there have been large anomalous increases in the past, though nothing like this, there has been a rapid return to near normal but this is probably slightly different. The most likely growth in the calendar year 2013 is likely to be about 2.85 parts per million, a calendar year record , but much below the growth from July 2012 until July 2013. The growth for 2012 and 2013 is likely to average out at about 2.62 parts per million, a record for a two year period.

Again, looking to the past, when there has been a rise in concentration like we will have had in 2012 and 2013 the rate of increase in concentration diminishes for a couple of years before rising again. I would expect the rise in concentration in 2014 and 2015 to average 2.55 parts per million before rising at an increasing rate thereafter assuming the world carries on with business as usual. Nevertheless this average rate is faster than we have yet witnessed except for the 2012 and 2013 period. This rate of increase is much faster than that which preceded the greatest ever wipe out of life on earth 249 million years ago.

There is a significant uncertainty about the above growth rate in the near term, with a chance of a higher and lower growth rate though the above forecast is the most likely outcome.

There must be a small chance that this is really the start of a very fast runaway event. Should the growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2013 be greater than about 3.1 parts per million then the world will probably have entered a very fast runaway event.

It is even more absolutely critical that carbon dioxide concentrations from August 2013 onwards are rising at a slower rate than between July 2012 and July 2013 otherwise the world will have entered a very fast runaway Greenhouse Event. Carbon Dioxide concentrations will almost certainly be rising at a slower rate from August 2013 onwards.

The runaway greenhouse event, or a very fast runaway Greenhouse Event is probably just starting, and can only be stopped by an immediate response. The danger is that it will very rapidly run out of our control. I think the net negative feedback to greenhouse gas emissions is just starting to diminish. It is not clear whether this is because the sinks are absorbing less carbon dioxide or a form of positive feedback is starting probably a bit of both.

The rising carbon dioxide levels will probably lead to rising global temperatures from about 2015 onwards which will cause more climatic disruption, especially severe droughts, and thus more carbon emissions almost certainly before 2020.

This is going to occur at a time when the Arctic Ocean will probably become free of sea ice leading to a different set of runaway events which will coalesce with the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This will lead to societal collapse after rising global temperatures have caused severe droughts and a global famine at some time prior to 2040, but probably much sooner in about 2020 or in the 2020’s.

IMMEDIATE ACTION IS CRUCIAL

The absolute priority is that the world’s public and politicians are told about the rapidly increasing rate of carbon dioxide concentrations in the air which will cause a runaway Greenhouse Event, both in the media and in social media. The gravity of the situation needs to be accepted and all nations agree to co-operate to solve the problem.

There needs to be a world conference at which all nations agree the grave situation that the world is facing and that urgent and drastic action is essential. They need to accept and agree that all nations will cut greenhouse gas emissions to an accepted and equal low level of emissions per person. This will mean that only nations with very small emissions per person like the Central African Republic will not need to make any emission cuts. The rate of increase in Carbon Dioxide needs to be cut to 2 parts per million per annum by 2015 onwards. The arctic needs to be cooled so that the sea ice does not all melt before the end of the Arctic Summer.

Reducing the rate of carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere will be astoundingly difficult. Emissions must be cut drastically, but this will lead to a reduction of Sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere, which might cause temperatures to rise and more carbon to be emitted from biomass as droughts become more severe. The solution is to try the relatively easy route and then use geo-engineering as necessary. This involves huge societal changes, a more egalitarian society and a smaller global economy, but if it is not done almost everybody will die.

Secondly, a group of scientists needs to be formed under the authority of the United Nations to formulate geo-engineering technologies, to go together with cuts in emissions, to reduce the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, such as planting forests, and to cool the arctic to save the arctic sea ice.

The immediate priority is to accept the gravity of the situation and that all nations and peoples will co-operate to solve the problem.

These measures will give humanity a chance of saving civilization.

Mean Methane Levels reach 1800 ppb

On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. This is 120 ppm higher than pre-industrial peak levels. This unfortunate milestone was widely reported in the media.

There's another milestone that looks even more threatening than the above one. On the morning of June 16, 2013, methane levels reached an average mean of 1800 parts per billion (ppb). This is more than 1100 ppb higher than levels reached in pre-industrial times (see graph further below).

NOAA image

Vostok ice core analysis shows that temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide and methane have all moved within narrow bands while remaining in sync with each other over the past 400,000 years. Carbon dioxide moved within a band with lower and upper boundaries of respectively 200 and 280 ppm. Methane moved within lower and upper boundaries of respectively 400 and 800 ppb.
Temperatures moved within lower and upper boundaries of respectively -8 and 2 degrees Celsius.

From a historic perspective, greenhouse gas levels have risen abruptly to unprecedented levels. While already at a historic peak, humans have caused emissions of additional greenhouse gases. There's no doubt that such greenhouse gas levels will lead to huge rises in temperatures. The question is how long it will take for temperatures to catch up and rise.

Below is another way of looking at the hockey stick. And of course, further emissions could be added as well, such as nitrous oxide and soot.

Large releases of methane must have taken place numerous times in history, as evidenced by numerous pockmarks, as large as 11 km (6.8 mi) wide.

Importantly, large methane releases in the past did not result in runaway global warming for a number of reasons:

• methane release typically took place gradually over many years, each time allowing a large release of methane to be broken down naturally over the years before another one occurred. 
• Where high levels of methane in the atmosphere persisted and caused a lot of heat to be trapped, this heat could still be coped with due to greater presence of ice acting as a buffer and consuming the heat before it could escalate into runaway temperature rises.

Wikipedia image

Veli Albert Kallio comments:

The problem with ice cores is that if there is too sudden methane surge, then the climate warms very rapidly. This then results the glacier surfaces melting away and the ice core begins to loose regressively surface data if there is too much methane in the air.

Because of this, there has been previous occurrences of high methane, and these were instrumental to bring the ice ages ice sheets to end (Euan Nisbet's Royal Society paper). The key to this is to look at some key anomalies and devise the right experiments to test the hypothesis for methane eruptions as the period to ice ages.

Thus, the current methane melting and 1800 ppm rise is nothing new except that there are no huge Pleistocene glaciers to cool the Arctic Ocean if methane goes to overdrive this time. In fact methane may have been many times higher than that but all surface ice kept melting away and staying regressive until cold water and ice from destabilised ice sheets stopped the supply of methane (it decays fast if supply is cut and temperatures fall back rapidly when seas rose).

The Laurentide Ice Sheet alone was equivalent of 25 Greenland Ice Sheets and the Weischelian and other sheets on top of that. So, the glaciers do not act the same way as fireman to extinguish methane. Runaway global warming is now possibility if the Arctic loses its methane holding capability due to warming.

Further discussion is invited on the following points:

• The large carbon-12 emission anomalies in East Asian historical objects that are dateable by historical knowledge. Discussion about the explanations concocted and why methane emission from permafrost soils and sea beds must be the answer; 

• the much overlooked fact that if there were ever very highly elevated concentrations of air in the Arctic, this would induce strong melting of glaciers which then lack those surface depositions where the air were most CH4 and CO2 laden. Even moderate levels of temperature rise damaged Larsen A, Larsen B, Petermann and Ellesmere glaciers. If huge runaway outgassing came out when Beringia flipped into soil warming, then methane came out really large amounts with CO2.

• Discussion of the experiments how to compensate for the possible lack of "time" in methane elevated periods in the ice cores by alternative experiments to obtain daily, weekly, monthly and yearly emission rates of CH4 and CO2 from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene Thermal Maximum (as daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly sampling of air).

Editor's update: Methane levels go up and down with the seasons, and differ by altitude. As above post shows, mean levels reached 1800 ppb in May 2013 at 586 mb, according to MetOp-2 data. Note that IPCC AR5 gives levels of 1798 ppb in 2010 and 1803 ppb in 2011, as further discussed in later posts such as this one. Also, see historic data as supplied by NOAA below.

Post by Sam Carana.

Glaciers cracking in the presence of carbon dioxide

Northern Hemisphere snow and ice map , October 14, 2012 (credit: NSIDC, NOAA)

Snow covers more than 33% of lands north of the equator from November to April, reaching 49% coverage in January. The role of snow in the climate system includes strong positive feedbacks related to albedo and other, weaker feedbacks related to moisture storage, latent heat and insulation of the underlying surface, which vary with latitude and season (IPCC, 2007a⁸).

Albedo or reflectivity of surfaces
wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

Ice caps and glaciers cover 7% of the Earth—more than Europe and North America combined—and are responsible for reflecting 80–90% of the Sun’s light rays that enter our atmosphere and maintain the Earth’s temperature⁷. They are also a natural carbon sink, capturing a large amount of carbon dioxide⁷.

Snow and ice on the Northern Hemisphere has a cooling effect of 3.3 watts per square meter, peaking in May at ~ 9 watts per square meter. Snow and ice on the Northern Hemisphere has declined over the years and is now reflecting 0.45 watts less energy per square meter than it did in 1979 (Flanner, 2011). As discussed in Albedo change in the Arctic, this compares to warming of 1.66 watts per square meter for the net emission by people (IPCC, 2007b⁹).

A recent press release⁷ announced that researchers from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have shown that the material strength and fracture toughness of ice are decreased significantly under increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide molecules, making ice more fragile and making ice caps and glaciers more vulnerable to cracking and splitting into pieces.

“If ice caps and glaciers were to continue to crack and break into pieces, their surface area that is exposed to air would be significantly increased, which could lead to accelerated melting and much reduced coverage area on the Earth,” said lead author of the study Professor Markus Buehler.

Buehler, along with his student and co-author of the paper, Zhao Qin, used a series of atomisticlevel computer simulations to analyse the dynamics of molecules to investigate the role of carbon dioxide molecules in ice fracturing, and found that carbon dioxide exposure causes ice to break more easily.

Notably, the decreased ice strength is not merely caused by material defects induced by carbon dioxide bubbles, but rather by the fact that the strength of hydrogen bonds—the chemical bonds between water molecules in an ice crystal—is decreased under increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide. This is because the added carbon dioxide competes with the water molecules connected in the ice crystal.

It was shown that carbon dioxide molecules first adhere to the crack boundary of ice by forming a bond with the hydrogen atoms and then migrate through the ice in a flipping motion along the crack boundary towards the crack tip.

The carbon dioxide molecules accumulate at the crack tip and constantly attack the water molecules by trying to bond to them. This leaves broken bonds behind and increases the brittleness of the ice on a macroscopic scale⁷.

A drop of as little as 1% in Earth’s albedo corresponds with a warming roughly equal to the effect of doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which would cause Earth to retain an additional 3.4 watts of energy for every square meter of surface area (NASA, 2005¹⁰; Flanner et al., 2011b⁶).

Below, a video by Dr. Peter Carter⁴, showing loss of snow and ice albedo on the Northern Hemisphere from 1997 to 2009, using NOAA images, and also showing the relationship to global food security and Arctic methane.

Blowing Hot Air: The Methane Hydrate Delusion

Earlier posted May 10, 2012, at Science 2.0 Seeing Green. Posted with the author's permission.  

By Holly Moeller  

Last week, word came from Prudhoe Bay that sent chills through me as surely as if I’d been standing in the Alaskan North Slope drilling outpost myself. The United States Department of Energy – in collaboration with energy giant ConocoPhillips and the Japanese nationalized minerals corporation – reported success from a month-long test extraction of methane gas tucked into an icy lattice below the permafrost.

These methane hydrates – also called methane clathrates, after the particular crystalline structure of the ice matrix – are found in cold regions (like the Arctic, where low temperatures keep the permafrost soil layer frozen year-round) and off continental shelves (where pressure from a thick blanket of water stabilizes the compressed gas).

Though testing to reveal the full extent and nature of these gas deposits has only just begun, methane hydrates are already making headlines as the next big energy source.

The US Geological Survey estimates that there’s twice as much burnable carbon hiding in hydrates as in all other known fossil fuel deposits worldwide. And since methane gas burns hot and clean – giving off 33% more energy per carbon dioxide molecule emitted as petroleum, without the nasty nitrogen and sulfur oxides that come from coal – ears around the world have perked up.

In 2006, China pledged $100 million to hydrate exploration. In 2008, Japan and Canada completed a six-day test drill in the Mackenzie Basin. And now that this year’s test results are looking good, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu says that domestic gas prices could drop 30% by 2025.

As an added bonus, methane extraction traps CO2. The latest technology pumps the most notorious greenhouse gas into the ground, where it replaces methane in the ice matrix. The displaced methane is then pumped to the surface and – in the DoE’s (and, undoubtedly, ConocoPhillips’) vision – down pipelines to heat homes in the Lower 48.

Plus, argue supporters, climate change projections indicate that rising temperatures may release much of that methane anyway. If the permafrost thaws or the ocean warms, vast tracts of icy clathrates could melt, outgassing methane – which has 20 times the warming potential of CO2 – into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change. This is one of the most feared positive feedback loops known to climate scientists.

So wouldn’t it be nice if we could turn some of that methane into carbon dioxide ahead of time?

I don’t think so.

Burning fossil fuels – oil, coal, and natural gas – put us into our tenuous climatic position in the first place. Any CO2 we sequester during methane hydrate extraction will quickly be replaced through burning of the extracted methane. And the CO2 trap is only temporary: warmer polar temperatures will free it as surely as the presently trapped methane scientists are so concerned about.

Add to this the issue of scale. Given that commercialization of methane hydrate extraction is still a political pipe dream, we’re unlikely to process any significant portion of the 320 quadrillion cubic feet of methane scattered in hydrates around the country.

Now to don our economic hats. Increased supply and decreased costs only drive up demand. Say we can, as the DoE promises, double our natural gas supply and effect dramatic price cuts by using only 1% of domestically available methane hydrates. This quick fix of another carbon-based fuel will only delay our ultimate sustainability reckoning.

Methane hydrates, no matter how vast their supply seems, are just another nonrenewable resource. A boom in gas production will add years – maybe decades – to the difficult but necessary transition to renewable energy sources. And in the meantime, we’ll be doing plenty of damage to our environment both globally – through additional greenhouse gas emissions – and locally – by drilling in sensitive ecosystems.

In the last decade, we’ve fought plenty of environmental battles over how and where to drill for oil. We’ve seen the consequences – Deepwater Horizon and the Gulf of Mexico 2010 spill, for example – of pushing our technological limits towards harder and harder to reach deposits.

And now we want to grasp at something even more risky, at mineral formations that, when destabilized, cause explosions and landslides.

I’m afraid that the laws of economics – especially in a country that will invest $6.5 million this year alone (plus an additional $5 million, pending Congressional approval) on methane hydrate recover research – will once again favor Sarah Palin’s mantra, “Drill, baby, drill.” Because as surely as methane is trapped within its lattice of ice, we’ve trapped ourselves in a spiderweb of fossil fuel dependency. Unlike methane, however, it seems even climate change can’t force us out.

Editor's notes:  
- Methane's global warming potential (GWP) is more than 130 times that of carbon dioxide over a period of ten years, as described in the post Methane in the Arctic.
- The Energy Department's announcement can be viewed at: http://energy.gov/articles/us-and-japan-complete-successful-field-trial-methane-hydrate-production-technologies

Record levels of greenhouse gases in the Arctic

Carbon dioxide levels are at an all time high. The image below, with hourly averages, shows recent measurements that are well over 396 ppm. Formal figure for the week started April 22, 2012, is 396.61 ppm at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

The image below shows the atmospheric increase of CO2 over 280 ppm in weekly averages of CO2 observed at Mauna Loa. The preindustrial value of 280 ppm is close to the average of CO2 between 1000 and 1800 in an ice core from Law Dome, Antarctica. For comparison with pre-industrial times the Mauna Loa weekly data have been first deseasonalized by subtracting the observed average seasonal cycle, and then subtracting 280 ppm.

The image below shows the results for carbon dioxide global monthly averages for the period 1979-2010. The axis on the left shows the radiative forcing in Watts per square meter, relative to 1750, due to carbon dioxide alone since 1979.

The situation is even worse in the Arctic, where carbon dioxide levels can reach values over 400 ppm, as illustrated by the image below showing carbon dioxide measurements at Barrow, Alaska.

Apart from carbon dioxide, there are further forcers such as methane. The image below shows methane levels at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Methane levels are again higher in the Arctic, as illustrated by the image below showing methane levels at Barrow, Alaska, of well over 1900 ppb.

Figures for methane on above image are monthly averages, showing recent levels well over 1900 ppb. The situation looks even more worrying when looking at hourly averages, showing measurements of up to 2500 ppb.

The fact that such high levels occur is alarming. The danger is that radiative forcing will be extremely high in summer in the Arctic, due to high levels of greenhouse gases and other emissions, which will speed up the loss of sea ice, resulting in even further warming that increases the danger that large amounts of methane will be released from hydrates and from free gas in sediments under the water.  This danger is further increased by the many feedbacks, as depicted in the Diagram of Doom.

For a more detailed description of the many feedbacks, see the Diagram of Doom.