Saturday, December 31, 2011

Siberian Permafrost Time Bomb?

I was watching NBC Nightly News tonight on TV and it had a segment about the quickly melting permafrost. It showed a Russian who was researching how methane and other greenhouse gases are being released very quickly into the atmosphere. I had done some other research in the past and it seems to me that I read and commented upon how methane goes to the very top of the atmosphere. When I researched it once again on Wikipedia I found under the heading "Lighter than air" the fact that Methane is one of the gases used to lift balloons alongside of hot air, Ammonia, hydrogen and helium.

Here is a quote from "lighter than air" regarding Methane, "

Methane

Methane (the chief component of natural gas) is sometimes used as a lift gas when hydrogen and helium are not available. It has the advantage of not leaking through balloon walls as rapidly as the small-moleculed hydrogen and helium. (Many lighter-than-air balloons are made of aluminized plastic that limits such leakage; hydrogen and helium leak rapidly through latex balloons.)

It seems to me if I remember correctly that Methane is a problem at the top of our atmosphere because it prevents the formation of Ozone by creating water vapor instead. Ozone is one of primary things that humans and all animals need on earth to protect them from harmful rays from the sun giving them skin cancer and blindness (for animals and people not wearing good sunglasses). So, for example, the ozone hole above Australia was probably partly caused by the methane from herds of animals producing methane from their feces all around the world. Methane also occurs as plant and animal life decays after death which is what is the problem in the Tundra of Siberia, Canada and Alaska.

The NBC report was about a Russian Geophysicist studying this area. Some of the people there lit on fire spouts of methane and it produced flames taller than a man on camera as it oozed from the ice and ground. This methane when it is released from the ground and ice goes up into the upper atmosphere and prevents the formation of ozone by creating water vapor instead.

So the Russian Geophysicist came up with the idea of recreating the tundra to how it was during the last ice age with mastodons and furry horses, furry camels and furry bison by using a large 4 wheel drive to knock down small trees which encourage grasses to grow like the mastodons would have done naturally. All the herbivores eat the grasses and trample down the snow and change the climate in this particular area back to where it was in the ice age. The experiment was successful for the land that the geophysicist experimented with. So now, the world needs to support doing this in much larger areas to prevent basically the end of life on earth as we now know it which is what will happen if the permafrost keeps melting at the rate it is now. If nothing is done the planet may not be able to support life as we know it within 100 years. So, it looks like there will be a lot of knocking down small trees and breeding herbivores like furry horses, camels and bison to take the area back to ice age status so melting Siberian Permafrost and  methane doesn't end life as we know it on earth within 100 years.

No comments: