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Re:New research: natural gas appliances emit much more metha... by WalterBright on Friday February 04, 2022 @03:28PM (#30212611)
I watched the NOVA episode on methane bubbling out of the defrosting arctic. Made me wonder if instead of pumping gas out of the ground here, we should be collecting that gas instead and piping it south.

I.e. since it's bubbling out anyway, use it to replace our natural gas burning, for a total reduction.

Re:New research: natural gas appliances emit much more metha... by tasty_freeze on Friday February 04, 2022 @03:38PM (#30212783)
If there were a small number of sites where the gas was emitted, akin to the way rivers tend to combine into one larger river, then the idea would be good. The problem is that the emissions are happening over hundreds of thousands of square miles. Putting a dome over all of it to capture the gas is not possible.
Re:New research: natural gas appliances emit much more metha... by WalterBright on Friday February 04, 2022 @06:21PM (#30214922)
Watch the NOVA show, they showed it bubbling fairly vigorously out of a lake. They speculated it was coming from a large reservoir 500 feet below the permafrost.
Re:New research: natural gas appliances emit much more metha... by reincarnate0x14 on Friday February 04, 2022 @04:09PM (#30213260)
It's typically considered not worth it collect methane from oil-producing wells, even though it comes out in such volume that it needs to be appropriately vented and flared (burned) which is why you can see burning torch-like pipes out in the middle of nowhere all over oil producing areas. Given that is much more concentrated than thousands of kilometers of bogs and tundra, the odds of this being practical, much less profitable, are basically zero.
Re:New research: natural gas appliances emit much more metha... by Dumblydorr on Friday February 04, 2022 @03:34PM (#30212716)
It's very spread out, in far northern locations, where roads and infrastructure don't exist. These are microscopic bubbles released very slowly over all of Russia and northern Canada. It'd be an economic money pit to attempt to harvest gas that way. Better to put all that money towards making batteries to supplement renewables.