From the American Chemical Society.
I wonder if they studied how much methane comes from sediment loads dropped by rivers naturally and compared them? The Mississippi Delta alone must be a terrible offender.
Sediment trapped behind dams makes them ‘hot spots’ for greenhouse gas emissions
With the “green” reputation of large hydroelectric dams already in question, scientists are reporting that millions of smaller dams on rivers around the world make an important contribution to the greenhouse gases linked to global climate change. Their study, showing that more methane than previously believed bubbles out of the water behind small dams, appears in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Andreas Maeck and colleagues point out that the large reservoirs of water behind the world’s 50,000 large dams are a known source of methane. Like carbon dioxide, methane is one of the greenhouse gases, which trap heat near Earth’s surface and contribute to global warming. Methane, however, has a warming effect 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The methane comes from organic matter in the sediments that accumulate behind dams.
That knowledge led to questions about hydroelectric power’s image as a green and nonpolluting energy source. Maeck’s team decided to take a look at methane releases from the water impoundments behind smaller dams that store water less than 50 feet deep.
They describe analysis of methane release from water impounded behind six small dams on a European river. “Our results suggest that sedimentation-driven methane emissions from dammed river hot spot sites can potentially increase global freshwater emissions by up to 7 percent,” said the report. It noted that such emissions are likely to increase due to a boom in dam construction fostered by the quest for new energy sources and water shortages.
The authors acknowledge funding from the German Research Foundation.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
See also:
An alarmist prediction so bad, even Gavin Schmidt thinks it is implausible
and
An alarmist prediction so bad, even Gavin Schmidt thinks it is implausible
Oh, and this methane (CH4) projection versus reality from the IPCC AR5:
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jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 3:57 pm
**************************************
The current warming is the least of the five warming periods of the past 10,000 years, and all the recent warming periods have not reached the warmth of the Eemian 125,000 years ago. The first and warmest period of the Holocene, the Climactic Optimum, covered 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. The less warm Minoan followed, then the cooler Roman, then the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350 AD, and now the least warm period, the current warming, which followed the coldest period of the last 10,000 years, the Little Ice Age. The Earth has been gradually cooling since the height of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
Since sea levels have been higher during the last 10,000 years several times, including during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, there have been ample opportunities for “catastrophic” methane releases, and none occurred. None occurred during the even warmer Eemian either. In fact, the past million years have seen 100,000 -year glacial periods alternating with 10,000-year interglacials. Warming during the interglacials never produced run-away warming, proof of which is that each was soon followed by much longer glacial periods, which began even as CO2 released from the warming oceans was at its peak.
So to recap, warming began each time when CO2 was lowest, and cooling began each time when CO2 was at its comparative highest. The complexity of natural climate change trumps the simplicity of a CO2 driven, now falsified by observations, hypothesis. Alarmists desperately need a new hypothesis, one that explains how heat allegedly “sequestered” in the ocean can be causing changes attributed to atmospheric warming during a 16-year period with no significant warming. The rumored increase in ocean temperatures cannot even be measured with precision with today’s technology, and its existence is an act of faith bordering on religious fervor to answer the question: Where’s the heat?
If it’s hiding in the oceans now, what was different during the warmer Eemian, and why did such heat give way to cold? It’s a fundamental mystery alarmists show no signs of solving.
Good grief. Guess not many folks have walked in the woods in Canada in west coast rain forests or boreal forests or any other lowlands and watched the gases bubbling out of the natural impoundments. The only places I haven’t seen this is in high mountain glacial fed lakes. Elsewhere, all across Canada, the ponds “boil”. I have an aerated fish pond next to my house. Even it produces gas from decaying sediments. What rot.
And to Tim – there are/were lots of water treatment plants with coarse filtration or insufficient disinfection contact time that did not remove Giardia, and many that do remove Giardia can become overloaded. And even those that take out Giardia may not remove Cryptosporidium. Most updated plants are good, but I suspect many are not. However as plants are upgraded to membrane filtration, the problems are usually resolved. (I have been out of the design loop for many years so I may not be up to date, but I still see warnings being posted.)
However, “Beaver Fever” can originate from other vectors besides the municipal water supply.
Dam beavers. Dam methane. What’s old is new again. I worked on both these issues 40 years ago.
Jai,
Here is the phase diagram showing the stability zone for methane hydrates:
youtube – Cold Seeps and Methane Hydrates
At 3:15 in the clip there is a global distribution map. Note the presence of methane ice in tropical/equatorial regions. If the tropical hydrates fail to alleviate your concerns about polar hydrate stability, watch the clip from start to finish, noting the presence of lifeforms feasting on (and in) the methane ice.
An Earth without hydrocarbon powered microbes would be very different. The atmosphere might be orange, like that of Titan, and the oceans probably couldn’t support photosynthesis:, because
“That the globe is not swamped with oil is testament to the efficiency and versatility of the networks of microorganisms that degrade hydrocarbons…”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16489346
The importance of methanotrophs is grotesquely underestimated/neglected in biology, evolution, and in climate “science.” But when ignorance is alarming…it is jolly to be wise. 🙂
@Khwarizmi says:
July 31, 2013 at 8:34 pm: That is fascinating. Nothing that can be converted to energy is wasted. What a superbly efficient world we live in. Thanks.
I see that anything jai mitchell has an emotional reaction against anything he presumes is “a blatant lie”. He gives no proof whatever that anything is a “lie”, only his baseless opinion.
That is typical of the religious cult of runaway global warming acolytes. Its adherents do not need any scientific evidence, they only need their inner ‘feelings’, which they presume are required to be shared by one and all.
Could jai mitchell and his fellow acolytes be any less credible? Planet Earth is falsifying everything they believe in. This is the internet’s “Best Science” site, not jai mitchell’s wild-eyed Congregationalist feel-good ‘The End Is Nigh’ doom & gloom climastrology prophesy blog. Facts are necessary here, not emotional opinions.
Wayne Delbeke says:
I have an aerated fish pond next to my house. Even it produces gas from decaying sediments. What rot.
= = = = =
All methane-producing microbes (methanogens) are anaerobes – oxygen is their poison. So the gas from your pond probably isn’t methane.
majormike1 says:
July 31, 2013 at 8:07 pm
jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 3:57 pm
**************************************
The current warming is the least of the five warming periods of the past 10,000 years
Stop right there and prove that statement. I believe it to be completely false. Absolutely. show me how you think this is true and maybe we can talk.
Kwarizmi
Thanks for the note,
you need to look up permafrost associated clathrates, they are known to form and function differently, they exist outside of the ocean.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-4387-5_5#page-1
majormike1
I will respond to the following statement:
So to recap, warming began each time when CO2 was lowest, and cooling began each time when CO2 was at its comparative highest. The complexity of natural climate change trumps the simplicity of a CO2 driven, now falsified by observations, hypothesis.
———
Yes, warming began when CO2 was lowest in the glacial cycle because the normal interglacial cycle is driven by the milankovitch solar cycle where the difference in northern hemisphere solar intensity will very rarely and very very temporarily make the northern hemisphere glacier free.
once the glaciers start to retreat the combination of decreased albedo and the release of carbon dioxide gasses produce additional warming. As the earth continues to warm additional moisture vapor (humidity) grows in the atmosphere. And the cycle continues, but always within equilibrium due to the very slow (>10,000 year) process of warming about 4 degrees C on average.
Once the solar cycle peaks, the temperature stays warm for a while, several thousand years, then once the solar cycle is very much lower than the peak and the earth starts to cool, the humidity levels drop and it cools even more, then the natural CO2 emissions are absorbed by the earth and CO2 begins to drop and finally the earth’s temperature drops quite rapidly, (but still over several thousand years).
No one ever said that previous interglacials were driven by CO2, they aren’t. They have always been described as I have just told you. In fact, we know that the amount of heat energy in the northern hemisphere simply isn’t enough to get rid of the ice ages. After all, the increased solar radiation in the northern hemisphere is balanced by a decrease in the southern hemisphere. So it is a land-based effect that produces the necessary heat required to push the earth into an interglacial.
The last time CO2 was this high there were palm trees growing at the arctic circle.
Khwarizmi
you said, “The importance of methanotrophs is grotesquely underestimated/neglected in biology, evolution, and in climate “science.” But when ignorance is alarming…it is jolly to be wise. :)”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6033/1033.3.full
The giant solitary jet of oil-saturated gas at the Macondo site differs dramatically from hydrate-depth seepage plumes (13) and experimental deep sea hydrocarbon releases (14), which featured weaker intrusions near the thermocline (13, 14). Although it remains largely unknown whether methanotrophic microbial communities are efficient biofilters in hydrate dissociation settings, it is notable that δ13C profiles above deep, natural Gulf of Mexico seeps (500 to 1000 m) show considerable methane bypassing the microbial biofilter under low ebullition conditions (13, 14).
Finally, today’s most vulnerable marine methane hydrate deposits underlie shallow Arctic waters (15), where methane is entrapped by submarine permafrost or stabilized as hydrates by year-round cold temperatures. Here, released methane rapidly reaches the atmosphere with minimal microbial oxidation (15). Therefore, extension of Kessler et al.’s conclusions to such contemporary natural hydrate destabilization events would be inappropriate.
Jai,
Your first link to “Permafrost-Associated Gas Hydrate” offered no useful information in the abstract on how they might “form and function differently,” and I’m not willing to shell out $30. Are you willing to pay $40 to read about the “Discovery of Viable Methanotrophic Bacteria in Permafrost Sediments of Northeast Siberia” … ?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1016025709833
Or is the title informative enough?
Here’s another peer-reviewed paper (Marine Geology, Dec 2012) – no charge:
“Methane seeps in the ocean are much more important to life in the ocean than we previously have suspected“:
http://martinhovland.weebly.com/
There is a link to my “exciting” website at the end of the paper. 🙂
Methane? Will make zero difference to climate.
Roy Jones says:
July 31, 2013 at 12:55 pm
“So, was the Medieval Warm Period caused by the increased number of monasteries in Europe, each of which built dams to create their fishponds? That would mean that the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries caused the Little Ice Age. ”
Great idea! One problem: The protestants never destroyed the fish ponds. There are such ponds a few kilometers from where I live in Germany; it’s a beautiful recreational area these days, the ponds have always been in use since their creation 900 years or so ago.
The monastery was never dissolved by the protestants but only by Napoleon after his invasion of Germany.
Aerial sight of the ponds:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Braunschweig_Luftaufnahme_Riddagshaeuser_Seen_(2011).JPG
Firstly, thermostats V proxies. Add observations = you are pulling facts right out of your arse. Where is your evidence?
Read about the global Medieval Warm Period.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Now, I look out the window and see this every day. Figs and grapes growing in the wrong areas TODAY! Ha.
It’s a good thing it turned colder.
Since you like any proxy that shows warmer today here are other proxies showing a warmer MWP.
Further reading
Here is a review of the scientific literature says warmer MWP than today plus pdf original.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/review-finds-medieval-warm-period-was.html
On Siberia.
Jimbo,
look at this graph that your own climate sceptic friend Roy Spencer used in his recent testimony. http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/2000-yr-temperature-variations.png
you will see that the 1998 peak in NORTHER HEMISPHERE temperatures is slightly higher than both the medieveal warm and the minoan warm period. These temperatures are northern hemisphere temperatures, not global temperautures. Globally we know that the warm pulses were regional events associated with an abnormally quiet north hemisphere volcanic activity and that the temperatures were much more moderate in the southern hemisphere during this period.
Things are actually warmer now than even the Holocene climate optimum (or at least statistically tied).
This is the most accurate representation of global temperature during the last 20,000 years, with a projection of the temperatures we currently expect to 2100 though the future projection assumes a very low emissions profile and an artificially low sensitivity. It would be more accurate to show a projected increase 3 degrees above the Hadcrut curve (red) at the end (so it should go up to 4 with uncertainty to 6).
http://klimaatverandering.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b.png
jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 10:41 pm
When are you going to study climate history before spewing on it?
The last time CO2 was this high, during the Pliocene, there were not palm trees but boreal spruce & pine in the Arctic. The fact that now only scrubby vegetation rings the Arctic Ocean shows how insignificant is the effect of going from 280 to 400 ppm in 160 years.
jai mitchell says:
July 31, 2013 at 6:50 pm
milodonharlani
This is so false as to be a blatant lie. Current temperatures in the Arctic & just about everywhere else are lower than in the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period & especially the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Proxy data show this observation to be what in science is known as a fact.
proof??? because the proxy data I have seen shows significantly lower globally averaged temperatures and even comparatively identical current temperatures to both the Minoan warm and the Holocene optimum.
——————–
The fact that you have never posted such proxy data shows you to be a liar. You can’t because you’ve seen no such thing.
Repeatedly here have been posted the proxy data showing that the earth has been in a cooling trend since the Holocene Optimum. Need we post again the Greenland Ice Sheet cores that clearly show this to be the case in the region most relevant to your ill-founded methane concerns?
Soil radioactivity in Antarctica shows that the East Greenland Ice Sheet has been stable for at least 3000 years. Proxy data from all over the globe show that the world was warmest at the long Holocene Optimum peak, cooler in the Minoan Warm Period, cooler still in the Roman WP, cooler in the Medieval WP & coolest of all now, in the Modern WP, with also generally colder troughs in the interspersed Cold Periods, such as the Dark Ages & LIA.
Post whatever data you’ve seen to the contrary, then we’ll talk.
wow!!! I did not realize that Dr. Roy Spencer went before congress to show that the current global warming period was not exceptional and used a graph that was not only just northern hemisphere temperatures and left out the cooler southern hemisphere BUT it was also ONLY extratropical and left out the relatively milder northern hemisphere tropics. The temperature graph ONLY showed temperatures from 30 degrees North to the North Pole.
And when he did, he showed this graph and stated that it showed that our current GLOBAL warming wasn’t exceptional.
The graph that Dr. Spencer used had a modern NH temperature climb only .4 above the 1961-1999 mean but the actual data shows that it is .8C in the northern hemisphere above that value.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1961/to:1999/mean:13/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1961/to:1999/trend/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1961/to:1999/mean:1
He didn’t include the graph in his testimony. I wonder why that is. . .
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=16e80c55-9ebf-42e4-852e-1f6e960b0902
REPLY: Jai, you idiot. He showed SATELLITE DATA sets, including his OWN WORK. Why the hell would he show HadCRUT when he manages the UAH satellite data set? Like me, he thinks the surface data sets are polluted with biases and over adjustments.
Take a 24 hour time out. Go protest the new bypass road in Willits or something, but don’t come back here until tomorrow morning 8AM. – Anthony
Here’s a recent study on the Medieval WP globally & in Russia for Jai to read & ponder during his time out:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/06/analysis-finds-medieval-warming-period.html
Warmer than now with CO2 at around 285 rather than 395 ppm.
I’d like to thank the people who tried to tell Jai Mitchell the historical facts regarding warm periods in the past. I myself gave up.