|
Good news everyone: we won't have to worry about global warming much longer because we'll just accelerate the whole thing to catastrophic levels once we start tapping methane hydrates, which also happens to be closely tied to of the catastrophe scenarios for global warming. You can read a little bit about it here.
marmot25 fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Sep 11, 2012 |
#
¿
Sep 11, 2012 05:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 10:12 |
|
|
Hobo Erotica posted:I don't know much about whether it's a good idea or not, but tapping the deposits for fuel is different to just releasing them into the atmosphere. You're right that those deposits do form one of the biggest threats to the climate though. It's currently sequestered carbon that we will be releasing into the atmosphere, and unless we're planning to do some fancy sequestration when we burn it it's a bad idea. From a warming perspective I suppose it's better that we burn it first, given that methane has a stronger greenhouse gas effect, but it's still pretty bad. The true catastrophe scenario is that the oceans warm enough to the cause wholesale release of these deposits. I just think it's interesting that we'd consider their slow release acceptable.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2012 07:39
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:That's correct, although I would guess that there's a much higher risk of an accident simply releasing a bunch of methane into the atmosphere, so it's a bit more hazardous than liquid carbon stores This is certainly an issue, since I don't think we have any real clue whether we can do it safely. The broader point I was trying to get at is that we're now introducing a huge new source of greenhouse gases from this nearly inexhaustible supply (wiki: "The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth."), meaning that unless we get some breakthrough cheap technologies, we're not transitioning to carbon neutral energy sources anytime soon.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2012 19:19
|
|