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Thread: The Methane Problem

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    this is from back in 2010, but a reminder of why pumping toxic waste in the ground is almost as smart as dropping 20,000 metal barrels of Nuclear Waste in the ocean off San Francisco expecting them not to rust for 250,000 years all sheer stupidity driven by greed.

    Quote Posted by Hervé (here)
    Mysterious menominee crack is unusual geological pop-up feature

    February 9, 2016


    A photo taken in 2010 of the Menominee Crack, a 'pop-up' geological feature. Credit: Wayne Pennington/ Michigan Technological University

    Seismologists studying a massive crack in the ground that appeared north of Menominee, Michigan in 2010 now think they know what the unusual feature might be. But as they explain in their study published this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters, there are still some mysteries to clear up about the strange geological occurrence in the rural Michigan woods.

    A team of scientists led by Wayne Pennington of Michigan Technological University says that the crack, which lies along the crest of a two-meter-high ridge that appeared at the same time, is probably a "pop-up" feature. Pop-ups occur in places where shallowly-buried rock layers spring upward after having been weighed down by rock or ice. Pop-ups—sometimes called "A-tents" for their shape—may develop in places where the earth rebounds upward after an overlying glacier shrinks away, or when rock overburden is removed in a quarry.

    However, the last glaciers retreated from Menominee 11,000 years ago—and there isn't any quarrying in the area.

    "One of our reasons for publishing this was that in our search of the literature we could find no other mention of modern pop-ups that didn't occur at something like the base of a quarry, where people had removed massive amounts of rock earlier," Pennington explained. "As far as we can tell, this is a one-of-a-kind event."

    Residents near Menominee heard a loud noise and shaking in the early morning of October 4, 2010, and soon discovered the crack when they went into the nearby woods to clean up the debris left from removing a big double-trunked white pine tree a few days earlier. The crack split the ground for 110 meters, and was as deep as 1.7 meters in some places. Tree trunks tilted at precarious angles on either side of the fracture.


    Trees tilt away from either side of the Menominee Crack 'pop-up' feature. Credit: Wayne Pennington/ Michigan Technological University

    Pennington went to visit the site on his way back home from a scientific conference, he recalled. He paced off some measurements in his dress shoes and collected some GPS data with his phone. "I was completely blown away by it, because it wasn't what I was expecting when I saw it," he recalled. "It wasn't like anything I had seen before."

    Although the crack was the most dramatic feature, Pennington was intrigued by the new ridge underneath it. "I kept trying to think of ways that there could have been an uplift from a thrusting earthquake or something, but anything like that requires such a huge amount of displacement in order to produce that amount of crustal shortening, that nothing made sense."

    He shared the photos and data with his colleagues, until Stanford University geophysicist Norm Sleep pointed out that the feature formed from a shallow-buried layer of limestone, and looked like a pop-up. "This made perfect sense to us," Pennington said, "except for what caused it. And that then became the puzzle."

    The researchers needed to get a better look at the rock underneath the ridge to confirm that it was a pop-up, so they turned to a technique called seismic refraction. The technique measures the speed of seismic waves as they travel within layers of the earth, as determined at different distances from the seismic source. In this case, the seismologists used a sledgehammer to strike a large metal ball lying on the ground, and captured the resulting seismic waves.

    In broken rock, the waves travel faster as they move parallel to cracks in the rock, and slower when they move perpendicular to the cracks and have to travel across the fractures. The scientists found a pattern of refraction speeds that seemed to be consistent with the intense bending and then fracturing of the brittle limestone of a pop-up feature.

    But what caused the pop-up to...pop-up? Without the usual suspects in play, Pennington and his colleagues had to do a little detective work. The limestone in the area may have been stressed almost to the point of cracking when the last glaciers retreated, they say. The recent removal of the double-trunked pine, which may have weighed as much as 2000 kilograms—over two tons—could have been the final straw, allowing the rock to bend upward when that weight was removed.

    "There's a 60% chance that this explanation we provide is the right one," Pennington noted. "But since we haven't seen this kind of thing elsewhere, and the tree is such a small effect, we wonder if there might be something else."

    The seismologists studied aerial photos of the region to see how soil has been removed in the past 50 years from road work and a re-design of the area's drainage system. These changes might have channeled more rainwater below the surface, potentially weakening the rock as it froze and thawed, the scientists suggest.

    Pennington said "no one should be losing sleep" over the strange feature, which technically counted as the first natural earthquake in Michigan's Upper Peninsula—measuring less than magnitude 1.

    "It may be a one-of-a kind phenomenon," he said. "But if it happens again, we'll be all over it, trying to figure it out."

    Explore further: Menominee County shakeup was an earthquake, says researcher

    More information:
    "Menominee Crack: Bedrock Pop-Up Event near Menominee, Michigan," dx.doi.org/10.1785/0220150161

    Journal reference: Seismological Research Letters
    Provided by: Seismological Society of America

    ===============================================

    There is an alternate explanation for this feature which the above geologists and geophysicists seem to overlook and that is the result of a horizontal compression stress resulting in a buckling of the limestones layers and permanent strain of these layers into a fold exhibiting tensile strain (cracks/veins) along the hinge line of the outer layers and compression (pressure-dissolution) in the inner layers.

    I am mentioning this alternate explanation due to the occurrence of earthquakes in places there shouldn't be any (North American Craton) as well as my recall of a presentation on the existence of parallel, low "ridges" in fields somewhere in Southern Ontario.

    Accordingly, the above would be indicative of a continental scale, sub-horizontally oriented stress field with resulting permanent strain (plastic = folds / brittle = rupture) of rock formations.


    Last edited by Hervé; 10th February 2016 at 19:21. Reason: deleted duplicate posting

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    I heard they managed to close it. Is that correct?

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Yes it is capped, but it may just have been the first of many failures as the aging infrastructure of the US starts to fail.

    Quote California’s gas leak is finally capped, but the next disaster could be right around the corner
    Engineers have finally staunched a leaking gas well in southern California’s Aliso Canyon. Since the leak was discovered four months ago, the well has bled 96,000 metric tons of methane, the equivalent of running an extra 505,000 cars on the road for a year.

    For neighbors, it’s been a nightmare. Residents started complaining of bad smells, headaches, and nausea in October. Under a court order, the well’s owner, Southern California Gas Co., has temporarily relocated more than 11,300 people. They’ll have seven days to move back home once regulators confirm that the well is permanently sealed.

    The disaster in Porter Ranch, like the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, is the result of aging infrastructure. In California, it’s a corroded storage well; in Flint’s case, rusting water supply pipes are to blame. The question isn’t if another Flint or Porter Ranch will happen; it’s where, and when, and how long a community will have to shout before someone hears them.

    Like a negligent homeowner, the US is woefully behind on repairs to its most basic systems. Existing roads, bridges, ports, water systems, and other infrastructure need an estimated $1.6 trillion in upgrades, according to a 2010 report from the Department of Homeland Security.

    Take a look just at the oil and gas sector. Drilling in California began a century ago. Only a tiny fraction of wells were safely sealed after their operators abandoned them for more productive or better constructed options. Today, the state is littered with 20,000 idle oil and gas wells.

    Even active production and storage facilities are worryingly neglected. The gas well at Aliso Canyon was drilled in 1953 and converted to storage in 1973, without a single upgrade. The state regulator responsible for the wells has all but admitted that its inspection program is useless. The agency’s own report dated Oct. 8—less than three weeks before the leak’s discovery—found “outdated regulations that in some cases do not address the modern oil and gas extraction environment.”

    “It’s been a long-standing concern that this agency is too close to the industry that it regulates,” said Briana Mordick, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In California, the NRDC is lobbying for a complete overhaul of the regulatory system.

    Infrastructure failures could cost the US $3.1 trillion by 2020, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates. By their count, an annual investment of $157 billion a year could stave off the worst disasters. In an era of strapped budgets, the likelihood of states taking proactive action on a budget item that can almost always be convincingly delayed is slim.

    It doesn’t help that most of the worst risks are in low-income communities, which typically have to fight a lot harder to be heard. While nobody should have to put up with environmental catastrophe on their doorstep, the response times for the disasters in California and Michigan are striking. The gas leak lasted four months in Porter Ranch, a predominantly white, upper-middle-class community.

    In Flint, a lower-income, predominantly black city, regulators dismissed residents’ complaints of water that looked, smelled, and tasted bad for almost two years, even as scientists and doctors reported elevated lead levels in the water and the people who were drinking it. No one has been relocated. Flint is still charging residents for water that makes them sick.

    “It’s a game of as long as its not happening to you, you don’t think about it,” said Casey Dinges, senior managing director at ASCE. “People can always convince themselves to do nothing.”
    http://qz.com/616369/californias-gas...nd-the-corner/
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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    About 1/2 of the 8000 families who left due to the situation are still in limbo.

    Quote But nearly half of the 8,000 families who left home at some point have yet to return, many still worried about the possibility of another leak and potential health hazards from chemicals in the gas that spewed uncontrollably for almost four months.

    As the state investigates the cause of the blowout, the 114 other wells in the field are undergoing rigorous tests before the company can resume injecting gas into wells a mile-and-a-half underground. The company said it expects to resume operations by the end of the summer.

    Concerns in Porter Ranch and surrounding communities were reinforced last weekend by a small gas leak and oil spill at another company operating in the Aliso Canyon, one of the nation's largest natural gas storage fields and the major supplier for Southern California.
    (Sources - Penn Energy, O&G News, and AP)

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Quote Posted by Bob (here)
    About 1/2 of the 8000 families who left due to the situation are still in limbo.

    Quote But nearly half of the 8,000 families who left home at some point have yet to return, many still worried about the possibility of another leak and potential health hazards from chemicals in the gas that spewed uncontrollably for almost four months.

    As the state investigates the cause of the blowout, the 114 other wells in the field are undergoing rigorous tests before the company can resume injecting gas into wells a mile-and-a-half underground. The company said it expects to resume operations by the end of the summer.

    Concerns in Porter Ranch and surrounding communities were reinforced last weekend by a small gas leak and oil spill at another company operating in the Aliso Canyon, one of the nation's largest natural gas storage fields and the major supplier for Southern California.
    (Sources - Penn Energy, O&G News, and AP)
    That would be terrible.. I can't imagine how they feel; I certainly would not want to return to that area probably ever.
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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Glad I was going through past posts! We need to be "informed"!

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    .
    From http://interestingengineering.com/si...-forming-going (and other sites):

    Siberian Soil Bounces and Random Craters are Forming – What is Going On?

    Have you ever been walking through the park and all of the sudden the ground beneath your feet becomes like a bouncy house? Well, that exact thing is happening in the Siberian soils this hot summer and it could mean bad things for the environment. A group of research scientists exploring Belyy Island off Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula discovered large areas of bouncy soil, caused by trapped pockets of methane and carbon dioxide. The country is undergoing an unusually hot summer this year, and it is believed that the gas was previously frozen deep underground. You can check out the trippy video below.


    Most of the Siberian soils are made up of a high-density organic matter which has been compacted over thousands of years, according to Gizmodo. As the organic matter is broken down, methane and carbon dioxide are released only to become trapped in the ground. The hot summer Siberia is currently experiencing has melted some of the thick permafrost, which allowed the gasses to percolate to the surface.

    One of the biggest fears around this odd release of gasses is the continued rise in global temperatures. As the gas released was mostly methane, which has an 84 percent higher warming potential over CO2, researchers fear that this release of gasses could only make things worse. Other than the bouncy soils, locals are also finding gigantic craters appearing overnight in the region. It is believed that these are caused by gas pockets that were frozen in ice, suddenly bursting, and giving way to the soil overhead. Either way, there are some crazy things going on beneath the Siberian soil.

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    What's going on at Yellowstone :


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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    The early , and deep ,snow cover over swathes of Siberian Tundra will surely leave us with issues? Be it the winter insulation of the Permafrost below from the frigid conditions above or from the spring flooding should we see the spring trends in ever earlier melt out dates. Spring flooding will flood the melted permafrost causing a more rapid degradation but also , as we saw this melt season, flood out onto the coastal ice lowering albedo and hastening break up/melt out. The record temps over Summer will have already done damage to the permafrost ( onshore and offshore) in Siberia but those impacts will not be seen until spring next year.

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    The methane gas is causing massive sinkholes in the earth :


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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Quote Posted by Sueanne47 (here)
    The methane gas is causing massive sinkholes in the earth :
    Sueanne: Most of these are NOT sinkholes -- the natural kind.

    Most of them are artificially created by incompetent human design of inefficient, flawed, disrepaired plumbing systems (most are deficient, flawed, broken storm drains/sewage/waste water systems)...

    ... and certainly NOT caused by methane releases!

    Would you mind quitting your spreading fear porn? Inform yourself better?
    Last edited by Hervé; 21st November 2016 at 14:37.
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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Okay, some of them under roads maybe not natural, but some of them in the earth are very deep. "Rainwater becomes acidic when it absorbs carbon dioxide in the air & ground. Over time it can eat away at the rock leaving caverns, caves and sinkholes"

    I found your statement about me spreading fear porn...when I am just passing on news to Avalonians Herve ~ very patronising to say the least.

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    Quote Posted by Sueanne47 (here)
    Okay, some of them under roads maybe not natural, but some of them in the earth are very deep. "Rainwater becomes acidic when it absorbs carbon dioxide in the air & ground. Over time it can eat away at the rock leaving caverns, caves and sinkholes"
    Hi Sueanne,
    Please continue to add all News you believe to be of even the slightest value, if this is of interest to even ONE member, then you've done that member a service, Thank you...

    In return, might I ask whether you follow " UKColumn.org " ?

    and, on the subject of holes.... " https://thesinkhole.org/ " ...
    FWIT, I truly believe that the ' Energy Weapon 'described by Dr Judy Woods; is being now used ( and ' played with ' ) , to create SOME sinkholes. Bear in mind that GRP [Ground Penetrating Radar ], can be employed PlaneT-wide, so these sickos { sorry not sure to spell psycopaths ! ? } so while it seems the majority are caused by Man's stupidity, I believe the Energy weapon, { which dis-associates, the individual atomic bonds - John Hutchinson / DR Woods... } is certainly NOT being left on the shelf, doing nothing ! !

    all the best !
    Last edited by Frenchy; 21st November 2016 at 21:49. Reason: careless spelling ! { Sorry people ! }

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    *Thank you* dear Frenchy, but no, I wont be posting news anymore.......in fact I dont think I'll be posting at all from now on. I will still like to be a member for reference on Avalon, and I'll check out UKcolumn.org

    Sue

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    In 2013 we discovered, via the team studying Siberian caves, that a rise in temp of just 1.5C would lead to the loss of the Permafrost ( and all the lovely GHG's they contain). Last Feb global temps saw 1.5c above pre-industrial reached. It was during a Nino and limited to 1 month but the same as we saw when CO2 first touched 400ppm, it don't take long for that figure to become the 'average' , and then be surpassed.

    Currently we sit over 1c above pre-industrial ( 1.2c some agencies say?) . Since 2014 the 'naturals' , blamed for 'The Pause' when they were negative, flipped positive. Since the middle of the noughties China has fought to control its inner city pollution. Unlike the west who had to develop solutions when we introduced 'clean air' acts the Chinese could buy technology 'off the shelf' to scrub out their pollution. This also appears to be having impact esp. in the areas downwind of the 'Asian Brown Cloud'. Was the naturals flipping positive 'natural' or were they being forced as 'dimming' reduces over the areas allowing more energy through to the surface?

    I digress. The GHG forcing we sit under will take decades to fully warm the planet to that particular loading. By then there will be another 50ppm aloft. Odds are that 400ppm is more than enough to see global temps above 1.5c above pre-industrial.

    Unless we can find a way of soaking up the CO2 we are done. Dead man walking the green mile.

    With open water existing in the Arctic basin for longer and more extensively each year the thermal forcing placed on the permafrost is increasing. Will we see a slow 'drip, drip' of emissions or are there any 'methane burps' along the way?

    We found worrying 'chimneys' forming under the waters of the shelf seas off Siberia ( East Siberian Sea)that were venting methane direct into the atmosphere ( not being absorbed by the water column above) back in 2010.

    The features were metres across.

    On their return in 2012 they found the features up to 1 km across.

    In 2014 they returned to find hundreds of such feature now covering the shelf ( around the time we were seeing the first 'craters' forming on land in the Yamal?).

    Another few warm years and I feel we will see noticeable amounts of CH4 being released each year no matter what human emissions do.

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    Default Re: The Methane Problem

    From Zero Hedge, yesterday:
    Massive Methane Cloud Visible From Space Leaks Above Louisiana

    Here comes the crowd of "climate justice" activists ready to pounce on the perpetrators responsible for producing a massive cloud of methane gas that's purportedly visible from space.



    According to one of Bloomberg's sources, the plume represents one of the most severe concentration of the powerful greenhouse gas to appear in the atmosphere in years.

    Geoanalytics firm Kayrros estimated an emissions rate of 105 tons of methane an hour was needed to generate the plume, which stretched more than 56 miles (about 90 km) across multiple parishes and was the most severe concentration of the powerful greenhouse since October.

    The state of Louisiana is now investigating the source of the massive cloud of gas, which appeared over the state.
    The state began its investigation after Bloomberg News contacted the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration about a cloud of invisible gas detected Jan. 21 by Kayrros SAS.
    The geoanalytics firm estimates an emissions rate of 105 tons of methane an hour was needed to generate the plume, which stretched more than 90 kilometers (56 miles) across multiple parishes and was the most severe concentration of the powerful greenhouse gas spotted by the Sentinel-5P satellite in the U.S. since October
    If the leak that released the gas plume was broken down and compared with cars, it would be equivalent to the annual impact from 1,900 cars. The release appeared to originate within 7 km (4.3 miles) of a gas pipeline owned by Energy Transfer, LP, Kinder Morgan and Boardwalk Pipelines.

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