
China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice' - r721
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39971667
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Robotbeat
Tapping clathrates is a whole new vast source of carbon. If this becomes
economical and drastic measures aren't taken to capture and store the
emissions, the climate is basically toast.

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.

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dharma1
Not just CO2 - methane is about 25x as potent in terms of global warming as
CO2

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ams6110
Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere for nearly as long however. It will
break down upon exposure to oxygen, ozone, and UV sunlight.

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0xfaded
The commonly cited 20-25 multiplier takes into account the half-life of
methane. If the methane didn't beak down the multiplier would be 130-140.

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setr
why wouldn't you want to take the half life into account

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unchocked
This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial
claims.

Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as
cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally
built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken
Soviet submarine.

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elefanten
How does this serve to obscure the military basis? By implying they have an
economic basis instead, or as well?

I doubt that's much of a net PR win, because either way they would be facing
the same charge of trying to claim territory that doesn't belong to them.

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Schizotypy
Claiming areas that don't belong to them is one of China's strong points, they
do it all the time and there's a dispute in the China Sea that could tie into
this

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TheSpiceIsLife
Politics. Claiming areas that don't belong to them is one of the human species
persistent activities.

I'll never understand French Polynesia or the Falkland Islands, but there you
go.

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djrogers
The real concern here is that the country that's furthest along in extracting
the methane is also pretty low on the list of countries that take great care
with environmental concerns. As the article points out, the biggest danger
with this as a NG source is that a lot of methane can escape before you've
extracted it, and the methane that escapes is a huge concern as a greenhouse
gas.

~~~
alphydan
> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental
> concerns

The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between
the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita.
In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took
a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely
responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Per capita, it sits
right next to Iceland at around 6 tonnes of CO2/person)[0]

China is also the number one investor in renewable energy (more than double
what the US is investing). Per capita, they are similar players with the US
ahead. [1]

So it all depends on how you slice your data. Objectively it's easy to say
that China is one of the most responsible countries in terms of global
warming. Now whether it's just a matter of poverty and whether their growth
strategy involves "de-carbonizing" de economy ... it's hard to say.

However, taping the clathrates without capture sounds like sucide.

[0] [http://cotap.org/per-capita-carbon-co2-emissions-by-
country](http://cotap.org/per-capita-carbon-co2-emissions-by-country) [1]
[http://www.businessinsider.com/top-renewable-energy-
investme...](http://www.businessinsider.com/top-renewable-energy-investments-
by-country-2016-3/)

~~~
aianus
> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an
> extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size.

Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western
countries _is_ irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by
population and say they're fine.

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macmacaka
I don't get your point. Who are referring to are not being responsible here?
The Chinese government or the Chinese people? If the former, they installed
one-child policy with the sole purpose of population restriction, sounds
pretty "responsible" to me. If the latter, are you suggesting as a people,
maybe the Chinese shouldn't breed as many, to, say, leave space for other
people?

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aianus
If I choose to drive 1000km that I don't have to drive in a 35mpg Prius I am
not more environmentally conscious than someone who drives 200km in a 10mpg
Hummer.

Similarly if I have 10 kids instead of 2.

Anyways, I should have said "was irresponsible" since those decisions were
made by their ancestors a while back and so there's not much more they can do
about it now.

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justicezyx
The analog is pretty unreasonable. It sounds like 1000km Prius driver has an
option to drive only 200km. But they may not have. I.e. a poor lower middle
class worker needs to drive everyday for work, while a millionare might choose
to stay at home being environmental friendly. But he might be using too much
electricity...

Plus, you cannot just bash Chinese government of killing baby, while at the
same time calling them environmental irresponsible...

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lightedman
Much better alternative to coal, at least. You emit far less CO2 per KWh
generated and the only other byproduct besides CO2 tends to be water.

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Robotbeat
MAYBE. Methane leaks are incredibly destructive as methane is a much more
potent greenhouse gas than CO2. And mining this stuff could cause leaks.

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Freestyler_3
Allthough you could also argue that because of warming these gasses might
escape if we don't mine them before that.

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Robotbeat
Clathrates are one possible positive feedback mechanism that could quickly
(i.e. human lifespan) increase the Earth's temperature in response to an
initial (human-caused) smaller heat pulse:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

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macawfish
"So the trick is to extract the gas without any of it slipping out."

Why should we expect energy companies to be capable of this, given their
environmental track records for other fuels?

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rbanffy
Yay! More CO2!

