Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by nullnilvoid on Friday May 19, 2017 @12:52PM
(#14377416)
That is a valid concern. However, clathrates (mostly CH4) is actually much cleaner than coal, by far the biggest source of energy in China. If China can replace coal with clathrates, it would be an huge improvement for the environment.
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by spenrose on Friday May 19, 2017 @01:05PM
(#14377540)
China is already replacing coal with renewables and nuclear. It doesn't need a new source of CO2.
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by TheSpiceIsLife on Friday May 19, 2017 @03:22PM
(#14378651)
China is still building new coal. "65GW of new coal-fired units had started construction between January 2016 and January 2017, down 62% on the 170GW the year before. Most coal power stations are around 1GW or greater in capacity."
Consider that those coal plants could run for 40 years[3], it's probably better if those new plants were CCGT[2] rather than coal.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/coal-pow...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
3. https://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement...
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by rosser on Friday May 19, 2017 @04:25PM
(#14379048)
While completely true, this misses the crucial detail that burning the methane clathrates is pretty much the best case scenario for their release. They're coming out, one way or another. Right now, that means melting as methane, or burning to produce energy, yielding CO₂ — which, yes, would ideally be captured.
Which would you prefer?
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by erikpukinskis on Friday May 19, 2017 @06:36PM
(#14379856)
Maybe a better thing would be to use some of the energy to convert the rest to hydrogen for more stable storage?
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by rosser on Saturday May 20, 2017 @12:56AM
(#14381114)
In the abstract, sure.
In the concrete, how viable is that technology? How efficient is it? How much of a hydrogen based energy storage infrastructure do we have to leverage for that?
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by dharma1 on Friday May 19, 2017 @12:48PM
(#14377370)
Not just CO2 - methane is about 25x as potent in terms of global warming as CO2
Re:China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'
by ams6110 on Friday May 19, 2017 @01:56PM
(#14377952)
Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere for nearly as long however. It will break down upon exposure to oxygen, ozone, and UV sunlight.
In the last few years, it has become quite obvious to me we're not going to ever run out of carbon before we, say, octuple (or more) the CO2 in the atmosphere. And the technology to get these fossil fuel sources improves just about as fast as other energy technologies (and sometimes faster). We have to rely on measures other than scarcity if we want to keep our atmospheric CO2 levels anywhere even remotely similar to what homo sapiens have experienced since we've been a species.