So leaking gas and oil are not the big problems they are usually thought to be? Why doesn't someone propose drilling some horizontal wells, from the safety of onshore locations, out under the sea floor and tap into the source of the leaking oil and gas?
Peter
Scientists Find Good News About Methane From the Ocean Floor
December 20, 2007 SCIENTISTS FIND GOOD NEWS ABOUT METHANE BUBBLING UP FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (source)
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is emitted in great quantities as bubbles from seeps on the ocean floor near Santa Barbara. About half of these bubbles dissolve into the ocean, but the fate of this dissolved methane remains uncertain. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered that only one percent of this dissolved methane escapes into the air – good news for the Earth's atmosphere.
Coal Oil Point (COP), one of the world's largest and best studied seep regions, is located along the northern margin of the Santa Barbara Channel. Thousands of seep fields exist in the ocean bottom around the world, according to David Valentine, associate professor of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. Valentine along with other members of UC Santa Barbara's seeps group studied the plume of methane bubbles that flows from the seeps at COP.
Their results will soon be published as the cover story in Volume 34 of Geophysical Research Letters. This research effort is the first time that the gas that dissolves and moves away from COP, the plume, has been studied.
The amount of methane release from COP seeps is around two million cubic feet per day, according to Valentine. About 100 barrels of oil oozes out of this area as well. Methane warms the Earth 23 times more than carbon dioxide when averaged over a century. Thus the fate of the methane bubbles from the seeps is an important environmental question.
"We found that the ocean has an amazing capacity to take up methane that is released into it – even when it is released into shallow water," said Valentine. "Huge amounts of gas are coming up here, creating a giant gas plume. Until now, no one had measured the gas that dissolves and moves away, the plume."
Valentine hypothesized that the methane is oxidized by microbial activity in the ocean, thus relieving the ocean of the methane "burden."
To arrive at this hypothesis, Valentine and lead author Susan Mau, a postdoctoral fellow in Valentine's lab, tracked the plume down current from the seeps at 79 surface stations in a 108 square mile study area. They found that the methane plume spread over 27 square miles.
By boat, the authors sampled the water on a monthly basis. They found variable methane concentrations that corresponded with changes in surface currents. They also found that more wind releases more methane into the atmosphere. Overall, they discovered that about one percent of the dissolved methane escapes into the atmosphere in the area they studied, a long-term average. This lead the authors to hypothesize that most of the methane is transported below the ocean's surface – away from the seep area. Then it is oxidized by microbial activity.
To back up their findings of their surface sampling of the water, the scientists used a mass spectrometer hauled behind the boat as well. This equipment allowed for very high-resolution chemical information about the methane. This effort showed no significant difference in the numbers.
"We showed that the currents control the fate of the gas and supply it to bacteria in a way that allows them to destroy the methane," said Valentine.
Valentine said that while the seeps at COP are among the largest in the world, they can be found just about anywhere.
##Contact:Gail GallessichUniversity of California - Santa Barbara805-893-7220gail.g@ia.ucsb.eduThis text derived from:http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1704
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Saturday, April 28, 2007
A Glacial Pace On Warming- The Pressure is Building
This is an editorial from the NY Times. Various factions are stepping up the pressure on the Bush Administration and the EPA to take action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I say test the concept in California first. If people don't mind paying ever more for fuel and electricity, then go for it. My guess is people will not be happy. They will be paying more and not seeing any positive effects.
This is going to be an interesting battle of wills and it will not end any time soon. Let your voices be heard.
Peter
Editorial
A Glacial Pace on Warming
('The walls continue to close in on the Bush administration, with the scientists’ warnings, the Supreme Court decision, the escalating pressure from the states and the general public.');
Published: April 28, 2007
Weeks after the Supreme Court’s momentous ruling that the federal government could and probably should regulate greenhouse gases, pressure for decisive action continues to build.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has warned that he will sue the Environmental Protection Agency unless it gives him the power to regulate automobile emissions.
A New York Times/CBS News Poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans now want immediate steps to deal with global warming. And a leaked draft of the next report from the world’s leading scientists says that the window for action is shrinking — that what governments do over the next 20 to 30 years will determine whether the world can avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Even so, Washington continues to move as slowly as a melting glacier. This week, Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A. administrator, told a Senate committee that he was still mulling the ramifications of the court’s decision, and he would not say when or even whether he would regulate carbon dioxide. He promised to solicit public comments on Mr. Schwarzenegger’s request but, again, would not say when or whether he would grant that request. Under the law, California can set its own emissions standards — which other states can then adopt — but it needs a federal waiver before putting them into effect.
“I don’t hear in your voice a sense of urgency,” Senator Barbara Boxer, the committee chairwoman, told Mr. Johnson. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, was less charitable. “You astonish me,” he said, a criticism clearly intended for the entire administration.
Nobody is asking Mr. Johnson to design a comprehensive national program for regulating greenhouse gases, an enormous undertaking that is plainly Congress’s responsibility. Ms. Boxer and others are simply asking the administrator to exercise the authority the court gave him.
That would mean promptly approving California’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gases from vehicles by 30 percent by the 2016 model year. That proposal is the centerpiece of a broader state effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources by 25 percent by 2020.
California requested a waiver in 2005, but the E.P.A. — hiding behind the now-demolished claim that it lacked the authority to regulate greenhouse gases — has been sitting on it. Eleven other states have adopted the standards and will put them into effect as soon as California gets the green light.
Mr. Johnson’s stalling is a symptom of a larger problem, the administration’s reluctance to take seriously the science of global warming, which in turn explains its reluctance to take meaningful action. Yet the walls continue to close in, with the scientists’ warnings, the Supreme Court decision, the escalating pressure from the states and the general public. If President Bush will not lead, Congress must.
This is going to be an interesting battle of wills and it will not end any time soon. Let your voices be heard.
Peter
Editorial
A Glacial Pace on Warming
('The walls continue to close in on the Bush administration, with the scientists’ warnings, the Supreme Court decision, the escalating pressure from the states and the general public.');
Published: April 28, 2007
Weeks after the Supreme Court’s momentous ruling that the federal government could and probably should regulate greenhouse gases, pressure for decisive action continues to build.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has warned that he will sue the Environmental Protection Agency unless it gives him the power to regulate automobile emissions.
A New York Times/CBS News Poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans now want immediate steps to deal with global warming. And a leaked draft of the next report from the world’s leading scientists says that the window for action is shrinking — that what governments do over the next 20 to 30 years will determine whether the world can avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Even so, Washington continues to move as slowly as a melting glacier. This week, Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A. administrator, told a Senate committee that he was still mulling the ramifications of the court’s decision, and he would not say when or even whether he would regulate carbon dioxide. He promised to solicit public comments on Mr. Schwarzenegger’s request but, again, would not say when or whether he would grant that request. Under the law, California can set its own emissions standards — which other states can then adopt — but it needs a federal waiver before putting them into effect.
“I don’t hear in your voice a sense of urgency,” Senator Barbara Boxer, the committee chairwoman, told Mr. Johnson. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, was less charitable. “You astonish me,” he said, a criticism clearly intended for the entire administration.
Nobody is asking Mr. Johnson to design a comprehensive national program for regulating greenhouse gases, an enormous undertaking that is plainly Congress’s responsibility. Ms. Boxer and others are simply asking the administrator to exercise the authority the court gave him.
That would mean promptly approving California’s proposal to reduce greenhouse gases from vehicles by 30 percent by the 2016 model year. That proposal is the centerpiece of a broader state effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources by 25 percent by 2020.
California requested a waiver in 2005, but the E.P.A. — hiding behind the now-demolished claim that it lacked the authority to regulate greenhouse gases — has been sitting on it. Eleven other states have adopted the standards and will put them into effect as soon as California gets the green light.
Mr. Johnson’s stalling is a symptom of a larger problem, the administration’s reluctance to take seriously the science of global warming, which in turn explains its reluctance to take meaningful action. Yet the walls continue to close in, with the scientists’ warnings, the Supreme Court decision, the escalating pressure from the states and the general public. If President Bush will not lead, Congress must.
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