4 ms·
The problem is doing it at the scale required. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf alone has an estimated amount of 50 to 800 gigatons of CH4. Current atmospheric c
by partycoder 10y ago
The problem is doing it at the scale required.
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf alone has an estimated amount of 50 to 800 gigatons of CH4. Current atmospheric concentration of CH4 is about 5.
I think our best interest is to stop or slow down the process and try to find out a solution. And that is achieved by keeping the permafrost frozen.
One solution could be using metanotrophs, which are unicellular organisms that eat methane. The advantage over reacting chemicals is that they reproduce on their own. Maybe we enhance them through GMO to make them have a higher fertility rate.
- EGreg 10y agoBut the fire would just spread and burn it all. Your idea is good too, they also engineered bacteria to eat plastic in the great pacific garbage patch.
- macawfish 10y agoI dunno, methane isn't very energy dense. It's hard for me to imagine the fire spreading unless the methane was already in very dangerous concentrations. But I don't know! Seems worth investigating. Also, what would be the risk of something like that perturbing larger bubbles and causing an eruption, like a popping balloon?
- partycoder 10y agoProblem is that fire would also increase temperature reinforcing the methane release.
- api 10y agoIt really is too bad we can't harvest and store it all. Hundreds of years of clean burning low carbon energy.
- pm90 10y agoWell, maybe we can if we put some of our best thinkers on it instead of cutting funding for scientific research...