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Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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I hate this notation. 30 metres tonnes/hour? 30 millitonnes/hour? 30 megatonnes/hour? 30 metric tonnes/hour? 30 million tonnes/hour?
Context clues indicate it's probably 30 million tonnes/hour. Which is also Megatonnes (Mt).
Anyway, I digress.
I worked in the arctic for years. It's happening faster there than anywhere. Feedback loop where open water has a lower albedo and absorbs more sunlight...
There are more feedback mechanisms as well. For example permafrost melting, releasing huge amounts of methane from rotting organics which were previously frozen. Methane is way more powerful a greenhouse gas compared to co2. We are just finding out about a lot of this stuff in the past decade, which is accelerating global warming compared to models from 20+ years ago. Global warming isn't uniform as well, some parts like for example the arctic and parts of Western Europe are warming a lot faster.
Long story short, we need to be doing a LOT more than we are currently doing. And we seem to be doing very little, except pump all our money in large corporations and rich folks.
I know this probably a bad idea but what would happen if we tried to burn the methane as it comes out of the permafrost? Would it reduce the greenhouse gases?
It could backfire if it's anything like what happened in Turkmenistan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
Apparently it's been burning since the 80's
This has been looked at and methane pockets are burned sometimes. When extracting oil for example there is often a lot of methane, which is burned to turn it into co2. The problem is, we are talking about a huge area with not many people or infrastructure in them. Sometimes the methane builds up in pockets which then can be burned easily, but most of the time it's out gassing over a big area with very little methane per square meter. Capturing that methane is not practically possible.
Maybe some combination of sheets which are reflective to reflect sunlight instead of absorbing it and at the same time direct the methane to a place where it can be burned off. But doing this across a large area would be hard and would also have an impact on the environment, so it would be a hard calculation to find out if it's worth it. And getting funding for something like that is pretty hard. Plus a big chance of failure, what if the sheets crack after a couple of years and get fouled up, then the methane isn't captured, the sunlight isn't reflected and a lot of time and energy has been lost. Plus you have a big patch of nature filled with plastics to clean up.
Methane does naturally get destroyed due to uv radiation, so it isn't long term like co2. But it's way more potent in terms of greenhouse and we've been releasing a lot more than gets broken down. Levels of methane are at a all time high and rising. On a human timescale the methane will take a very long time to get broken down, even if we would stop releasing any right now.
There are satellites specifically made to detect large releases of methane, to identify human sources of methane which could be captured and burned instead of being released. Especially in industrial processes this is often an option.
Large scale meat production is also a large source of methane, which is also hard to capture. Especially when we want the cows to have somewhat of a acceptable state of living, so going outside. The only way to fix this one is for people to eat less meat, however the trend has been for more and more meat consumption instead of less.
Burning natural gases from the ground has backfired before:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
It didn't happen to save the environment, but there was too much natural gas stored to burn off.
How fast does methane breakdown with UV? Is that a practical way to deal with the permafrost methane?
Can you share what you did in the arctic? Sounds interesting...
Geophysics (mapping the subsurface). Largely related to mineral exploration, but also sometimes infrastructure development or environment cleanup or other things. I was often first boots on the ground in a lot of places, having to set up a winter camp upon arrival by bush plane. Good times. :)
I blew out my knee and settled down now to operate a geophysical equipment business. But I think back fondly.
Damn, that sounds epic and adventurous. Thanks for sharing, that's really cool. Not a common thing to have a chance to be that far out, much less in that context.
Looking forward to the incoming ice age tbh.
Seriously though, the melting sucks.
You’re gonna have to wait awhile. We’re still in an ice age