Massive methane reservoir lurking under the sea

From Eos

Methane bubbles regularly reach the surface of the Laptev Sea in the East Siberian Arctic Ocean (ESAO), each of them a small blow to our efforts to mitigate climate change. The source of the methane used to be a mystery, but a joint Swedish-Russian-U.S. investigation recently discovered that an ancient gas reservoir is responsible for the bubbly leaks.

Methane in the Laptev Sea is stored in reservoirs below the sea’s submarine permafrost or in the form of methane hydrates—solid ice-like structures that trap the gas inside. It is also produced by microbes in the thawing permafrost itself. Not all of these sources are created equal: Whereas microbial methane is released in a slow, gradual process, disintegrating hydrates and reservoirs can lead to sudden, eruptive releases.

Methane is escaping as the Laptev’s submarine permafrost is thawed by the relative warmth of overlying seawater. With an even stronger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide [80 times stronger over a 10-year span], methane releases into the atmosphere could substantially amplify global warming.

“To anticipate how these methane releases will develop over the coming decades or centuries, we need to understand what reservoirs of methane the releases are coming from,” said Örjan Gustafsson, leader of the research group that conducted the investigation.

Julia Steinbach, a researcher at Stockholm University and lead author of the new research, was instrumental in devising the triple-isotope-based method for finding methane sources. Stable isotopes detect the origin of the molecules, and radioactive isotopes help to find their age. Using this novel approach, the team discovered that the source of the methane was an old reservoir, deep below the permafrost. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in March.

“The big finding was that we really have something that’s coming out from a deep pool,” said Steinbach. As the permafrost thaws, it opens up new pathways that allow methane to pass through.

According to Gustafsson, this is worrying, as the pool likely contains more methane than is currently in the atmosphere. “There is, unfortunately, a risk that this methane release might increase, so it will eventually have a sizable effect on the climate,” he said.

Although intrigued by the study, Jennifer Frederick, a geoscientist at Sandia National Laboratories not involved in the recent research, warned against trying to inflate its findings. “It is very challenging to be able to be confident that your small area is representative of the larger area,” she said. She is hopeful, however, that with enough of these types of studies, scientists will get to a point where they can make accurate predictions about methane releases.

Gustafsson also emphasized that the results are applicable only to this specific location. “It is quite plausible that there are other sources—the thawing permafrost or the hydrates that can be the major source of methane in other parts of this enormous system.”

Even though the study area concerns one of the places on Earth most difficult to reach, the scientists hope to conduct more expeditions to map methane sources in the ESAO. “The permafrost is a closed lid over the seafloor that’s keeping everything in place. And now we have holes in this lid,” said Steinbach. “That means that we really have to keep a close look on it.”

 

Will Antarctic ice melt doom us all?

Methane clathrates burning.
Source: Wikipedia

One of the scariest tipping points is the potential melting of polar methane clathrates.  This is where methane at pressure and low temperatures is trapped into a crystal structure with water ice.  Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, nearly 100 times as potent as CO2 over a 12 year time frame, methane released from polar clathrates could cause temperatures to rise which would in turn melt more clathrates, which would cause temperatures to rise again, and so on, in a doom loop which would raise global temperatures 4 degrees or more.  

From The Sierra Club:

For years, scientists have struggled to figure out exactly how much methane is trapped under the ice at the north and south poles and what it would mean for global temperatures if climate change melted enough ice to release that methane into the atmosphere. A new study published in Nature Communications provides the most comprehensive estimate to date: a staggering 80 to 480 gigatons. That’s a wide range, but even at the low end, it’s astonishing. For context, all the cattle and other domestic animals around the world produce an estimated .08 gigatons of methane annually. Eighty gigatons is 1,000 times that amount. 

The study, led by Jemma Wadham, a professor at the University of Bristol School of Geographical Sciences and Cabot Institute for the Environment, synthesized prior scientific research on the ice sheets. The study found that ice sheets, while seemingly inert, are intimately connected to the global carbon cycle in ways that both store and release carbon. 

In Antarctica, blinding-white ice stretches as far as the eye can see and air temperatures usually stay well below freezing. But scientists have concluded it’s likely that under the ice lies vast stores of organic carbon and methane, created by the slow decomposition of ancient vegetation and marine life that thrived during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period 55 million years ago, when Antarctica was teeming with greenery and wildlife (and much of the rest of the earth was uninhabitable). As the climate cooled, the remains of soils, plant and animal life—or marine life, in the case of marine-based ice sheets—became sediment trapped far below the ice. There, microorganisms converted some of it to methane, a potent greenhouse gas. 

“This methane is preserved because it is cold and there is enough pressure from the weight of the ice above it,” says Lev Tarasov, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography at Memorial University and one of the study’s authors. But, says Tarasov, climate change is starting to shift the conditions that have held methane deposits for millions of years.

Scientists are particularly worried about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Where it is located, warm water imported by shifting wind patterns is washing up against the ice shelves, causing melting even in areas where the air remains cold. As the the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—and all the ice shelves—grow thinner, the possibility arises that large stores of methane will escape, taking greenhouse gas levels past the global levels that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed are the maximum levels to limit warming to 2°C (3.6°F) by 2100.

But as they melt, ice sheets could also help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by drawing it into the ocean. When glaciers grind against the bedrock below them, they create a fine, nutrient rich “rock flour.” As ice sheets melt, some of these nutrients are absorbed by surrounding marine ecosystems, adding vital nutrients that increase microorganism populations, which then suck up dissolved carbon dioxide from the surface level of the ocean. When the microorganisms die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon dioxide with them, where it forms a carbon-rich sediment. 

Tarasov hesitated to quantify how much carbon these microorganisms could take out of the atmosphere—and how much that could mitigate the climate damage caused by the escaped methane. A question like this is one of the hardest to answer, says Tarasov, because relatively small changes in the carbon cycle can lead to huge impacts.  

“The problem with understanding the carbon cycle is it depends on the small difference between really big numbers. There is lots of carbon going from the oceans to the atmosphere, or from the atmosphere to the oceans. It just takes small little changes to shift everything around.” 

If we don't stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, we risk runaway global warming, from melting clathrates at the north pole (under the tundra) and the south (under the ice sheet).  Even if we are not certain of the science, we know enough to realise that it is a huge risk, and once it happens it will be irreversible.  That risk should enough incentive to make us de-carbonise our economy now, before it is too late.

So ... the good news about global warming

Global temperatures continue to rise.  Which is terrifying.  But also very depressing, because we appear to be helpless, individually, in stopping global warming.   So what is the good news? Is there any?

Some broad background.    Electricity generation is only part of total global carbon emissions (25%) but it is key, because in principle you can electrify almost the whole economy: transport (+-20%) can be electrified via electric cars, buses and trains, heating can be electrified, and most energy uses in industry can too.  (And we can create synthetic natural gas via the Sabatier process) That leaves agriculture forestry and other land use (AFOLU -- 25%) but that in turn includes 15% from burning forests, which can easily be stopped.  These remaining sectors will be hard: iron and steel 7%, air transport 2%, cement 5%.  To make iron you need to reduce iron ore (basically iron oxide) to iron by heating it with coal or charcoal, producing carbon dioxide as a by-product.  Batteries are still too heavy for aircraft, though we can use bio-kerosene.  And cement is created by heating calcium carbonate and driving off the carbon dioxide.  So let's say 75% of current carbon emissions can be stopped by electrifying the economy and producing electricity via renewables.

Source

China (30% of global emissions) is very rapidly moving towards renewables in electricity generation.

Source

The IEEFA forecasts that China will add 22 gigawatts of wind, 16 GW of hydro, 6 GW of nuclear, and 16 GW of solar this year (2016):

With electricity demand expected to grow by up to 3 percent year-on-year in 2016, this 62 gigawatts of additional zero-carbon electricity capacity will be more than sufficient to meet total electricity demand growth, which is why coal consumption is forecast to fall again this year. China Shenhua said its total 2016 coal sales volumes could decline more than 8 percent year-on-year.

At the same time China is setting new global renewable energy records, rapid improvements in energy efficiency are combining with an ongoing structural change in the nature of Chinese economic growth (2015 GDP growth was up 6.9 percent). The economy is decoupling from growth of electricity demand (of 0.5 percent year-on-year). Tertiary industry accounted for 50.7 percent of economic activity, exceeding 50 percent (up from 48.1 percent in 2014) for the first time.

There’s nothing to indicate this electricity-sector transformation won’t continue.

China’s State Grid Corp. Chairman Liu Zhenya (head of the world’s largest power provider) says his company rejects the so-called all-of-the-above energy strategy—which encompasses fossil fuels—to meet China’s evolving power needs and address climate change. Liu argues that it is better to move on to the next generation of energy technologies and that China believes it might as well start now. He concluded that the only hurdle to overcome is the mindset: “There’s no technical challenge at all.”

(Source)

The US (15% of world emissions) is moving steadily towards 100% renewable energy.  In Q1, 98.5% of new generating capacity was renewable.  Only 1.5% was gas.  This is prolly an exceptional quarter in the shorter term, but the trend is clear.  In 2015, 69% of new electricity US generation capacity was from renewables.

Source

Of course, generating capacity is often quite different from the amount of power generated, since fossil fuel plants generally are used for considerably higher percentage of the time (their “capacity factor”). That’s why renewables now make up 18 percent of total U.S. installed generating capacity — but only about 14 percent of our total power production.

On the other hand, FERC doesn’t track rooftop solar, so its estimate of solar capacity added is certainly low. Indeed, FERC’s data sources only “include plants with nameplate capacity of 1 MW or greater,” so it’s hard to know how much small-scale renewable power generation they may have missed.

It is increasingly clear that we don’t need to add significant amounts of any new grid capacity that isn’t renewable for the foreseeable future. In part that’s because demand for utility power generation has been flat for almost a decade — and should continue plateauing for quite some time — thanks to rapidly growing energy efficiency measures (and, to a much lesser extent, thanks to recent increases in rooftop solar).

We also know that renewable power — both new wind and solar — is now winning bids for new generation around the world without subsidies. Some bids are coming in at under four cents per kilowatt hour!

Studies from NOAA and others — and real-world examples around the globe, such as Germany — show that the U.S. can absorb vastly greater percentages of renewables than we currently have, just with existing technology. Yet NOAA’s research shows that, with nothing more than an improved national transmission system, “a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years.”

A 2015 study showed that we could “decarbonize the electricity supply with a proportionally small requirement for BES [Bulk multi-hour Electricity Storage] because gas provides much of the intermittency management even when the carbon emissions intensity is cut to less than 30% of today’s U.S. average.”

Thus, we really have more than enough natural gas plants in most places to take us to the point where electric vehicles, second-life EV batteries, advanced solar thermal power and other affordable bulk storage would be needed to finish the decarbonization of the grid post-2030.

So we may well see many more quarters in the years ahead like the last one.

(Source)

India (7 % of global emissions):  

Meantime on the Indian solar front, January saw yet another breakthrough as solar tariffs dropped to a new low of  4.34 rupees/kWh [6.5 US cents/kWh]. This builds on the 20 percent decline achieved in 2015 (and the 80 percent decline in just five years).

The latest detail: Fortum Finnsurya Energy of Finland winning a reverse tender auction to build a 70-megawatt solar plant under National Thermal Power Corporation’s Bhadla Solar Park tender. The remaining 350 megawatts put up for auction were won at bids of 4.35 rupees (140 megawatts by Rising Sun Energy and 140 megawatts by Solaire Direct) and 4.36 rupees per kWh (70 megawatts by a newer entrant, Yarrow Infrastructure), indicating that the 4.34 rupee bid was not an outlier. It marks a 7 percent decline from the previous record-low solar bid established in November.

In that bid, SunEdison won 500 megawatts at 4.63 rupees per kilowatt-hour. This was repeated in a 350-megawatt solar auction by SoftBank in December. The total installed cost of solar in India dropped by more than 20 percent in 2015 alone.

A big piece of India’s transformation in occurring through grid-efficiency reforms, exemplified in January by Piyush Goyal, India’s energy minister, announcing an $11 billion investment to roll out 30 million solar irrigation pumps for farmers over the next three to four years. Annual savings on existing farm subsidies is modeled at $3 billion, suggesting the program is entirely and immediately commercially viable.

(source)

[Meanwhile in Dubai, solar has plunged to US3 cents/ kWh.  Why is India still more expensive than Dubai?  Partly the monsoon which brings rain to India for 3 months of the year (July to September) which reduces insolation in India even though India is closer to the equator than Dubai; partly the cost of capital which is significant for solar because all the expenses are up front.]

Europe (10% of emissions).  Europe was an early mover on renewables.  Already 40-50% of electricity in some countries (Denmark, Portugal) or regions (the former East Germany) is produced by renewables (non-hydro).  And several European countries are planning to ban all petrol-/diesel-engined car sales as early as 2020. 

So countries emitting 62% of the world's CO2 are switching their electricity generation into renewables.  But it's not just the largest emitters who are moving towards renewables.  Lots of countries with smaller CO2 footprints are also moving towards green generation.  Just three examples: Mexico (solar), Chile (wind + solar + CSP), South Africa (solar + CSP)  Then there a few who aren't doing much (Russia, Australia, Poland).

This almost global switch is being driven by government policy, but also by the collapse in renewables prices.  There is a virtuous circle, called a learning or experience curve.  As we use more of a new technology, its price falls, which leads us to use more, which leads to further price falls, etc, etc.  So, solar is falling by 15% to 20% per annum, which means it's falling by +-60% over 5 years.  Wind is falling by 10% per annum. Lithium-ion batteries by 15% or more per annum.  The battery in your laptop cost $2500 15 years ago, $250 4 years ago and now you can buy one on line for AU$ 50 - 100 or US$35 - 70. 

According to Ray Kurzweil [1] [2] [3], who has been much more right than wrong in his forecasts over the last 20 years, solar will dominate world energy within 16 years.  His point is simple: solar has been doubling installed capacity every 2 years for 20 years.  Like computer chips. there is no sign we've reached the end of that road.  Solar now produces 1% of total global energy.  In 2 years time that will be 2%.  In 4, 4%.  In 6, 8%.  In 8, 16%.  In 10 32%; in 12 64%.  Game over.  To quote the first article I referenced above:

Just like computer processing speed—which doubles every 18 months in accordance with Moore's law—the nanotechnology that drives innovations in solar power progresses exponentially, he says.

During his latest Big Think interview, Kurweil explained:

"Solar panels are coming down dramatically in cost per watt. And as a result of that, the total amount of solar energy is growing, not linearly, but exponentially. It’s doubling every 2 years and has been for 20 years. And again, it’s a very smooth curve. There’s all these arguments, subsidies and political battles and companies going bankrupt, they’re raising billions of dollars, but behind all that chaos is this very smooth progression."

So how far away is solar from meeting 100% of the world's energy needs? Eight doublings, says Kurzweil, which will take just 16 years. And supply is not an issue either, he adds: "After we double eight more times and we’re meeting all of the world’s energy needs through solar, we’ll be using 1 part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the earth. And we could put efficient solar farms on a few percent of the unused deserts of the world and meet all of our energy needs."

Needless to say, the implications of cheap solar power would be truly staggering, revolutionizing virtually every aspect of life and geopolitics. Potentially dangerous nuclear power would become obsolete; dirty energy sources like coal and oil would be a thing of the past; and the world would no longer have to kowtow to corrupt governments that just happen to be resource-rich. 

So many other global issues—like impending water and food crises—would also no longer be issues if a cheap, renewable energy source existed. "We’re awash with water, but most of it's salinated or dirty," says Kurzweil. We have the technology to desalinate and clean water, but it is very costly. Cheap solar would change that. If we had inexpensive energy, scientists could also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables, supplying the growing demand for food and "recycling all the nutrients and materials so there's no ecological impact at all." They could even "grow meat without animals by cloning muscle tissue," eliminating the need for disastrous factory farming, he says.

(Source)

Sounds utopian, doesn't it?  Yet who would have said  even 10 years ago that we would all these days be carrying advanced computers in our pockets?  And it will prolly not happen as he forecasts, because concentrated solar power is in there with a chance, and wind will still have a role to play because it diversifies solar (wind and solar are not just uncorrelated: they appear to have a small negative correlation--the wind blows more when the sun isn't shining)   But essentially the point remains.  In 20 years time, all electricity globally will be generated by renewable sources.  Note that last year, for the first time, developing countries invested more in renewables than developed countries. (Remember that the data show nominal investment in renewables, i.e., before price falls.  In real, volume, terms, investment will have risen not 5% but 25%.)  Developing countries are not doing it because they are concerned about global warming.  If renewables were too expensive they would make excuses--after all they're poor, and most of the CO2 already emitted was from currently developed countries.  They're doing it because renewables are cheap.  

And they're going to get cheaper.  Let's conservatively assume solar falls by 50% over five years.  Electricity from solar will fall in cost to US cents 1.5 to 3 over the next 5 years.  Five years after that it will cost USc 0.75 to 1.5.  And 5 years after that USc 0.4  to  0.8.  This will be irresistibly cheap.

Meanwhile, electric car sales are doubling every 18 months, as the cost of lithium-ion batteries plunges.  Last year they formed just 0.7% of global car sales.  This year it should be over 1%.  Sales are quadrupling every 3 years,  And that's not going to stop, because (a) global warming is obviously happening and it's happening scarily fast, so governments will be pushing electric cars and (b) we're moving down the learning/experience curve, just as we did with the first petrol-driven automobile, the Model-T Ford.

Well, those are the reasons to be optimistic that  mankind will do enough to prevent global temperatures from rising another 1 or 2 C.  Does that mean we must stop worrying, stop fighting?

No.  There are powerful vested interests which would like to slow this revolution.  Demented plutocrats.  Fossil fuel interests.  The usual suspects.  And the Right, at least in America (and Australia), has become actively hostile to rationality, logic and science.  You have only to look at the Republican candidates for the US presidency to see this pattern.  For some bizarre reason the Right opposes this shift to clean cheap energy, a shift which will transform the world and raise living standards everywhere.  And given the risk of runaway positive feedbacks (the melting of methane clathrates in the tundra and on shallow continental shelves, for example), we need to accelerate this transformation.  We need to slash emissions by at least 3% per annum.  And although global emissions may have peaked, they haven't yet started falling.  Until they do, steadily and persistently, we cannot relax.  We still need to remove subsidies from fossil fuels ($450 billion a year, globally, not including the costs of pollution).  We still need to tax carbon emissions if only to remove externalities which favour destructive energy sources to the cost of mankind.

The battle is far from over.

The scientific guide to global warming

It's long, but it's essential reading.

Every single indicator discussed in the report adds to the unequivocal evidence that global warming is (a) real and (b) man-made.  I urge you to read it.  In my opinion, global warming denialists are either cretins or venal.  Especially since the cost of switching to renewables is negligible.

And if that doesn't scare you (and it should), this article about how the warming of the Arctic (2-3 times as fast as the globe as a whole)  is leading to the massive release of methane which is, over a 20 year period, 85 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 is.

We need to do something about global warming and we need to do it NOW.  Not by 2050.  That will be too late.