New Gizmo That Converts Methane To Harmless Stuff To Help Combat Climate Change

The British tech firm Levidian has figured out a way to 
convert methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas into
two harmless but very useful byproducts. 

Levidian, a British carbon climate tech business, is on a mission to make methane into a hero instead of a villain. 

No, Levidian doesn't love methane. It's a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. Increasing methane emissions are worsening climate change. 

The company has figured out ways to break methane down into two substances that actually can do a world of good. 

 As CBS explains:

"The technology uses microwave energy and a special nozzle system to split methane molecules intl the gas' component parts - hydrogen and carbon - and captures them."

That hydrogen left over from the process is pretty valuable. It can be used to power factories, vehicles, ships and machinery.  When burned, hydrogen provides heat and energy, but the only emission is water vapor.

Water vapor is pretty harmless, and I supposed if you have a big enough operation, you can capture the water emissions for,  I don't know, irrigation or something. But you'd need to break down a LOT of methane. 

The leftover carbon from Levidian's process turns out to be even better. That carbon left over from that technology becomes a solid called graphene. Scientists have only known about this stuff for about two decades but it turns out it's one of the strongest materials in the world. 

It's also a great conductor of heat and electricity.

So Levidian is working on ways to use graphene in everyday products. Putting graphene into tire treads, for instance, makes them stronger and yields a longer-lasting, more fuel-efficient tire.

Adding graphene to concrete makes that material stronger and less likely to crumble. 

Graphene is even flexible enough to include in the manufacture of medical gloves to make them stronger. 

This stuff can also boost the battery life in electric vehicles. And it can be mixed in with plastic to help factories make material that uses less petroleum based material. 

As the BBC reports, most efforts to combat climate change have been to reduce emissions. You know, electric, cars, heat pumps, efficiency improvements. 

Not so many outfits have found ways to remove emissions altogether, so Levidian's efforts are unique and laudable. 

Luckily, Levidian is British, as noted, so we don't have to worry about the mendacious Trump administration from discouraging this or banning public investment. (The UK government is interested in doing some funding for technologies like Levidian's).

We're hoping more companies find ways to innovate our way out of climate change. Anything helps in that global battle, 

 

Not On My Bingo Card: Ice Fishing Can Lead To Dangerous Methane Fires

Ice fishing shanties on Harriman Reservoir near 
Wilmington, Vermont. Methane escaping through
a hole in the ice created by an auger is believed
to have contributed to a flash fire that burned
a father and his two daughters recently on the lake. 

We know how long term methane emissions can be dangerous. 

It's a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so it's contributing to climate change in a serious way. 

But it turns out methane can pose a more immediate danger.  To, believe it or not, people out on frozen lakes enjoying a day of ice fishing. 

 A terrible incident happened in southern Vermont on February 1, proves the rare but dangerous phenomenon. 

A father and his two daughters went out onto frozen Harriman Reservoir in far southern Vermont for a day of ice fishing. A propane-fueled heating device of some sort warmed their ice shanty. 

Then, horror struck. 

A flash fire erupted inside the shanty, burning the dad and the two daughters. Police said there might have been a defect with the heater, but another factor might well have contributed. Methane bubbling up from rotting leaves at the bottom of Harriman Reservoir became trapped under the ice. 

The hole in the ice the family created inside the shanty allowed the methane to escape and build up inside that shanty. The heater then ignited it. 

The man and two girls were taken to a hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont, and then transferred to a Boston hospital for treatment.  Reports are the three are recovering, but we don't know how long that recovery will take. 

This apparently isn't the first time methane seeping from Harriman Reservoir has caused methane fires. Per the Brattleboro Reformer:

"Police contacted a witness who had provided the injured people a ride off the ice to a parked vehicle following the incident. They 'learned that this person had witnessed several instances where pockets of methane released through holes in the ice surface were ignited and burned, the (Wilmington, Vermont) news release states.

"During the investigation, police also received several phone calls from people providing information about other incidents involving flash burns of methane released through holes in the ice.

'These incidents were reportedly witnessed over the last several years during the ice fishing seasons,' the news release states. 'These incidents had not been reported to the Wilmington Police Department until after this tragic accident had occurred and an investigation was started."

Police said it's not worth it to drill a hole in the ice on Harriman Reservoir and wait to let methane disperse because shifting ice can keep methane billowing out of an ice hole.  Authorities advised people to not bring ignition sources near ice fishing holes and to be especially careful not to do so inside fishing shanties. 

I haven't figured out yet if the methane releases from Harriman Reservoir are unique to that body of water or whether it occurs elsewhere and if so, how often.

You do see methane bubbles frozen or encased in lake ice from time to time. Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada sometimes draws tourists who want a view of some unique methane bubbles stacked in the ice covering the lake in late winter. 

Some stunning photos were also taken of methane bubbles frozen within the ice on Lake Baikal in Siberia back in 2022. The lake is the world's deepest, and has a large storehouse of methane due to rotting organic material at its bottom.  

I can't imagine that all lakes are ticking time bombs for ice fishing enthusiasts. But I guess you need to be extra careful while trying to stay warm in an ice shanty. You never know where methane lurks. 

I hope that family victimized by the Harriman Reservoir methane in southern Vermont have a speedy and full recovery.  

Report: Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases Continue To Zoom Upward

All kinds of greenhouse gases are continuing to increase,
so the pace of global warming shows no sign of slowing. 

 If you think the world is starting to find success at reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we belch into the atmosphere, think again. 

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - three of the main greenhouse gases, rose even faster than in 2022, according to the World Meteorological Organization

 As the Washington Post reports: 

 Concentrations of carbon dioxide - the most important driver of global warming - are now growing faster than at any time since our species evolved, according to the World Meteorological Organizations' annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The increase can be traced back to stubbornly high rates of fossil fuel consumption, the report said, as well as ecosystems that are becoming more likely to produce emissions and potentially less capable of absorbing excess carbon."

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year was a little over 420 parts per million, a level Earth hasn't experienced since the Pliocene Epoch, which was more than three million years ago. You missed that era because human beings didn't exist yet. But at that time, scientists estimate the world was about five degrees warmer than it is now and sea levels were 30 to 60 feet higher than they are now. 

Most of the extra carbon dioxide that accumulated in the atmosphere last year is from us burning coal, oil and gas, like we have since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide started to increase with that Industrial Revolution and has accelerated since. 

But there might be something called a positive feedback loop increasingly adding to the equation. That's when a trend - climate change in this instance - gets reinforced and boosted by that very same phenomenon. 

Wildfires boosted by climate change also added extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The amount of this gas increased by 2.3 parts per million in 2023 the twelfth year in a row that CO2 went up by more than two parts per million.

This feedback loop also involved other greenhouse gases as well 

The WMO said atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide and methane both went up sharply last year. 

The spike in carbon monoxide was the largest yet observed. Most of that comes from wildfires, as burning trees release this chemical into the air. Global carbon emissions from forest fires were 16 percent above average during the 2023-24 fire season. 

A large share of that probably came from Canada, which had by far its worst fire season on record in 2023 with 37 million acres burned. 

Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane emissions are also increasing, too.

Those surging methane levels are partly due to bacteria living in landfills and from cows.  A lot of methane comes from wetlands.  It turns out this is a feedback loop. Methane helps warm the atmosphere. Then, a toastier atmosphere allows wetland to increase their methane emissions.

And on and on it goes. 

Thawing Arctic permafrost might well be adding extra methane to the atmosphere. Another example of global warming creating even more global warming. 

The only vague bright spot regarding methane is that 2023 emissions were a wee bit smaller than 2022.

The environment also takes up carbon, removing it from the atmosphere, so that's a good thing. However, there's bad news on this one, too. Per the Washington Post:

"Meanwhile the net amount of carbon taken up by ecosystems last year was about 28 percent lower than in 2021 and 2022, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Monitoring Laboratory. This decline may be in part because of 2023's record high temperatures, which are known to stress plants and cut into ecosystems' ability to serve as a carbon sink."

Since 2024 is virtually guaranteed to be even hotter than 2023, this trend will likely continue.  

Given the political climate, I don't see any slowing of greenhouse emissions anytime soon. So the world will keep getting hotter and hotter. 

More Bad News For Climate: Methane In Atmosphere Growing Fast

Cow farts are only one source of methane, which is a potent
greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Methane
is rising at a fast clip in the atmosphere, and climate change
might be contributing to this increase in a feedback loop.

The amount of methane in the atmosphere is now growing at a faster, alarming rate, and scientist worry this could be sign of a quicker, more dangerous phase of climate change.  

Methane now comprises 1,900 parts per billion in the atmosphere, almost triple the level it was at in the pre-industrial age, notes the journal Nature.  

The more famous greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, and there's much more of that in the atmosphere than methane.  However, methane is a good 28 times as potent as CO2 in terms of warming Earth's atmosphere. 

The rate of growth of methane in the atmosphere slowed down a bit around the year 2000. It was still gaining,  but it seemed like pollution controls were slowing the rate down, says Nature.

However, around the year 2007 methane began increasing in the atmosphere much more rapidly and that trend continues to this day. And it might not necessarily be more cows farting or you and I eating bad fast food lunches.  

Actually, the farting cows might be a small but real part of this increase in methane concentrations. It could also be from more oil and natural gas drilling, more emissions from landfills or microbes in wetlands getting more active. Or all of the above.

The truth is, nobody is exactly sure why methane levels are going up. 

One, clue, reports Nature, is something called isotope carbon-13, that you're always going to find in methane. 

Scientists can look at ice cores going back centuries to figure out how much of that isotope was in atmospheric methane at a given time. Methane released via oil and gas drilling has more of that isotope carbon 13 than methane released from microbes getting it on in swamps and other wetlands. Or from livestock farts and poops. 

 One research team concluded that 85 percent of the growth in emissions since 2007 came from microbes, while the rest came from oil and gas drilling.  

Which leads us to the next aspect of the problem. The rising methane growth could be a sign that global warming is causing even more global warming. It's something called a positive feedback loop. 

As phys.org explains, a warmer atmosphere allows wetlands to generate and decompose stuff at a faster rate. That means faster methane emissions. The faster methane emissions contribute to global warming, which revs up the wetlands even more and on and on it goes.  

One piece of potential good news is methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide.  So if we stop methane leaks from oil and gas projects, collect methane and better dispose of methane from landfills and reduce livestock methane emissions, we can really cut the rate of growth pretty fast. Or at least counteract the effects of higher methane production from warmer wetlands. 

We can even play around with the food we give to livestock or find ways to collect the methane from their poop to reduce emissions. 

Since, as noted, methane is so much more potent than CO2, but stays in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time, we can slow the rate of climate change comparatively easily