November 1, 2008 by mike.

Our solutions to our population and environmental demand problems can be elegant instead of catastrophic.  We don’t have to go to war to control petrol reserves, we could re-tool our fuel economy to run on fuels we can develop, capture, and benefit from without bombing anyone, intelligent or otherwise, on the small blue planet.

Methane Gas Capture

The way that we bring the planet into balance is through elegant thinking, elegant being.  We currently have a problem with the buildup of certain gases in the atmosphere that are causing the planet to heat up with disastrous consequence for many living things.  An elegant approach to this problem is to look at the capture of one of these gases, methane, and it’s use as a relatively clean fuel.  It burns much more cleanly than gasoline or coal in terms of other greenhouse gases, so the capture of methane is a twofer.  We reduce the atmospheric buildup of a powerful greenhouse gas and we burn it in place of less clean fuels, thereby producing less other greenhouse gases as combustion byproduct when we burn methane instead of gas, diesel, or coal.

This is happening.  At various places around the small blue planet methane is being captured as a fuel instead of being emitted as a potent greenhouse gas.  Here are some examples:

•  Environomics - Waste2Profits.com - feedlot waste digesters
•  Great Lakes Biomass Partnership 
• Harvard University study on methane capture from landfills
• San Antonio Waste Water Methane Recapture Contract

The solution to our environmental problems is to find the solution within the problem somehow.    Here is a thought from a great thinker and problem-solver:

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

R. Buckminster Fuller

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November 1, 2008 by mike.

Courtesy of Reuters:

Climate-warming methane levels rose fast in 2007 | Environment | Reuters

Methane is a serious green-house gas.  It has 25 times more impact in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide.  If we were burning fuels that sent clouds of methane out the tailpipe instead of clouds of carbon dioxide we would be cooked already, but methane is not a by-product of combustion generally.

Methane is the primary component of natural gas.  It is essentially a vaporous fuel.  Methane levels in the atmosphere have risen since pre-industrial times.  The level has more than doubled, but the methane levels had been essentially stable until 2007.

In 2007, methane levels in the atmosphere, measures around the small blue planet, took a significant jump.  The mechanism of the jump is currently unknown and the increase does not pose an immediate risk, but if the increase is indicative of a trend for increasing atmospheric methane levels, it is worrisome.

There are at least two ideas currently under study with regard to the methane increase.  The first, that I have posted about before, is that as global warming advances, tundra and permafrost thawing release methane.  This methane release is also occuring from the floor of the Arctic Ocean as the polar ice cap diminishes.   The second potential cause of atmospheric methane increase is the possibility of a change in the atmosphere’s capacity to scrub methane through the hydroxy free radical (like Williams Ayers, I guess,  free radical, get it?  stay with me) known as OH.

Too soon to tell how the methane story will play out, but I am following it here and I will post again as more information develops.

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