ONE, TWO PUNCH, AND A LITTLE MENTIONED KNOCKOUT PUNCH
[It is true. The ‘thane’ in the word methane just happens to do with death. Soooooo, one COULD say that ‘methane’ means ‘my death’ or ‘I’m dead’.]
Devolution of oxygen production and the blossoming of megamethane will leave us gasping for oxygen and finding too little to make life viable. Errrrrrr – not in 2050 but more like before 2030.
The oceans are dying rapidly. What’s the word for really, really, rapidly? We are dealing already with greater than 400ppm of carbon in the air. Remember when we thought 350 was the upper limit. Seems an eternity ago when environmentalist Bill McKibben started 350.org.
Then we find that animal livestock produce enough methane to push any carbon threat over the tilt point.
Then we find that govcorp’s destruction of the polar sea ice enables the surfacing of previously frozen methane which will further limit the amount of oxygen our air can contain. Imagine the permafrost in Russia and Canada. Those two permafrost freezers are protecting enough permafrost to have long been the freezer for deadly methane
No one knows, few can estimate, the volume of methane being exposed to the air. We only know that as polar regions thaw the volume increases.
AT THIS POINT I MENTION A FACTOR THAT GETS NO ATTENTION. Almost every dwelling in the world’s temperate zone and above is heated by natural gas.
Natural gas is composed mostly of methane. Methane is a fossil fuel many times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
Today, natural gas is delivered to more than 175 million American consumers through a 1.3 million mile network of underground pipe. A total of 285,000 producing natural gas wells, 125 natural gas pipeline companies, and more than 1,200 gas distribution companies provide gas service in all 50 states. As seas rise much quicker than experts can estimate, those gas lines go underwater and shutting them off will be more difficult. As tsunamis and earth quakes get stronger capping all wells could be an impossible task. So, we can expect, can’t we, a growing methane problem from three directions: 1) livestock, 2) thawing tundra, 3) “natural” gas wells.
