Burning ice: impending danger

Russian permafrost offers up both hope and danger in this warming world.

It is a great preservation medium, not of fossils so much as DNA from unfossilised specimens (with tissue that hasn't degenerated and been replaced by seeping rock). Such finds, unfortunately, would only go back through the last few ice ages, up to about 700,000 years versus 65 million years for the dinosaur extinction.

But there is also a vast store of carbon fuel trapped within the permafrost, in a form known as methane clathrate: molecules of methane trapped within ice crystals. The tone of a recent New Scientist article was thrilled with the possibilities for this potential energy source, but strangely muted about the danger to the planet: it will accelerate global warming on release - methane being far stronger a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Clathrates are a delicate form of methane: if gas is extracted or gets loose, pressure can destabilise neighbouring crystals for a chain reaction: a "methane burp" that in releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gas, can also generate landslides and tsunamis.

There are three possible eventualities: permafrost clethrates are released as the planet warms, the deposits are exploited for fuel, or they stay in the ground. Perversely, if the planet warms and they are to be released anyway, it's better to use the fuel. On the one hand, methane molecules warm the atmosphere at 20 times the rate of carbon dioxide molecules. On the other hand, burning methane generates only half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.

Therein lies the reason for the article's gleeful tone. We should be restructuring away from fossil fuels, but if the planet warms as expected, the methane gets released anyway.

You can read the full article here. Unfortunately it doesn't include the photos of burning ice from the print version. Spectacular - but deadly.


Whether or not extraction takes place depends on whether our energy and environment plans are fully evolved by the time extraction becomes fully viable. Will the burp happen anyway by now? The odds are not good.

Wind power alone can do it - but...

A new study demonstrates that it would be possible to generate global energy needs from wind power alone.

This comes from a Harvard study published in PNAS (the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences), and reported in New Scientist. Abstract available here; full study here.

The study collated wind data from the past 30 years, to produce a database of the best available global wind information, to a resolution of six hourly for areas down to 50 x 60 km.

The modelling suggests the top ten carbon polluters (bar Japan) could generate all projected electricity needs onshore, from existing technology.

The example given to fill US needs was two or three turbines per square kilometre over just 13% of the country.


I would, however, reiterate my reservations on the use of wind power, specifically for the effect that large-scale 'harvesting' can have on climate. The one study I found - again in PNAS - that does look at this issue concluded that the large-scale effects would be 'nonnegligible', as expected.

I've been signed up for electricity from 100% renewable sources since it was first offered over ten years ago. My current option is for 100% solar sources: a little more expensive again that general renewables, but this reflects my concern, and in particular that extracting energy from solar sources has the least impact - potentially positive, in fact. This may be rather aspirational if wind harvesting is currently negligible - as it is - but one must look to, and build for, the future.