I renew an impassioned plea from last Friday to you motivated Kossaks to make comments ("Public Submissions") to BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) about keeping Shell from extending a 2008 original lease to drill in Arctic seas for another 5 years. The deadline to do so is 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 12-22-14, tomorrow! Two alternative ways to do so are here.
Contrary to public belief (if I understand just published findings) the time from carbon emission to maximum warming is about the time it takes for a kid to enter 1st grade and exit 10th grade. Burn a lump of coal, a molecule of "gas", a piece of tree, loose a bubble of methane from melting permafrost (or wherever) and 90% of maximum warming from that event will happen between 6.6 to 30.7 years later, according to:
Katharine L Ricke and Ken Caldeira who report in 2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 124002, Pub. 2 December 2014, "...our study indicates that people alive today are very likely to benefit from emissions avoided today."
The political, social, economic implications of this new finding are extremely significant if we can get governments & corporations like BOEM (administered within U.S. Dept. of Interior) and Shell to come to their senses by taking the initiative to stop releasing oil, natural gas and methane clathrate (CH4·5.75H2O that is also known as methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate) from the permafrost and stones beneath oceanic continental shelves like those underlying the Arctic Ocean (
Beaufort and Chukchi seas).
Natural gas hydrates hold the greenhouses gases (GHG) methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2) and the otherwise toxic hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Methane hydrate can clog drilling pipes where CH4 can then explode. A methane hydrate is thought to have produced the bubble of methane gas that contributed to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe, a proposition from AP reporters previously reported here.
Watch the formation and dissociation of gas hydrates in this "Ole Miss" Mineral Resources Institute video of an experiment near the Deepwater Horizon drilling site.This experiment and explanations of images in the video are explained in detail here.
Here is a computer simulation of methane, also known as natural gas, escaping from a methane hydrate. Many methane hydrate sub-units combine to form a chunk of ice that burns, and this simulation shows how methane can get out without collapsing the entire structure. Red-and-silver water molecules form a cage around two blue-and-silver methane molecules. Two methane molecules are too tight a fit, so a low-energy hydrogen bond -- the red dotted lines -- between two water molecules breaks. This allows the water molecule to swing open like a gate as the methane makes a dash for it. The water molecule swings back into place, the hydrogen bond re-forms, and the methane hydrate remains stable. The work is from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Dept. Of Energy National Laboratory, where interdisciplinary teams address many most pressing challenges in energy, the environment, and national security through advances in basic and applied science.
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Reference: Soohaeng Yoo Willow and Sotiris S. Xantheas, 2011/12. Enhancement of Hydrogen Storage capacity in Hydrate Lattices, Chem. Phys. Lett. Dec. 22, 2011, doi: 10.1016/j.cplett.2011.12.036.
Telling BOEM to say NO Shell Drilling is a sound investment in the likelihood of adding to avoidance of significant extra climate warming by the time today's 1st graders are in high school.
To me BOEM saying NO Shell Drilling is personal because so many of my relatives and friends have toddlers, preschoolers and primary grade children about whose future I care deeply. My grandson is just 3 so 90% of maximum warming from every molecule of GHG released today is what he can expect to endure from when he is 9 (4th grade) to 33 years old.
A video worth watching of Katharine L Ricke very briefly explaining her new research is here.
Use the link here to get 2 different ways to submit a comment before 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 12-22-14, tomorrow!
Thanks!