Dear David,
Further to our discussions last year about preparing news report on on-shore
methane venting events in the Arctic Regions
Getting back to the role of Lake Cheko in Tunguska blast, I have further
recollection that you mentioned that some locals said that the lake may have
pre-existed the 1908 blast which would mean that the steep conical crater or
bottom profile is not formed by the venting event, say that the floor of the
river penetrated into a gas field below.
I think it is important to remember that methane devouring bacteria consumes
methane and converts it to carbon dioxide. This brings to another
recollections about event that happened in West Africa a few years ago. There
were a lake which had been saturated by carbon dioxide and then it suddenly
bursted when it crossed critical point.
There pre-existence of Lake Cheko before 1908 blast is explicable because even
if the bacteria can initially devour methane that seeps into the deep conical
basin, but if there is a constant supply of methane so that more and more of it
is added, the water becomes extremely saturated with CO2 and acidic. At one
point, the methane devouring bacteria habitat becomes over-saturated with CO2
and they no longer can survive in the highly carbonated water and keep
digesting leaking methane any further. This then leads to the build up of
dissolved methane in deep water.
Thus, when more and more methane comes in eventually it is no longer digested
by the methane digesting bacteria and it remains supersaturated (dissolved) in
water. As the gas leak continues the water eventually starts bubbling
violently like a shaken champagne bottle and then suddenly all the unprocessed
methane is quikly released.
This then meets the other criteria, being suddenly shaken and gassified to the
air, reaching the densities required to the ignition. This would probably be
the case with all deep and stangnant water pockets, thus releasing methane into
air with the digested carbon dioxide in sudden pulses. As the water sizzles
like champagne, all peat and other microscopic organic material that gets
trapped in the foaming pandemonium ends as small aerosols. When the methane
then ignites with that "immense heat" the organic aerosols are transformed into
microdiamonds by the fireball. Therefore, we can now both dispense with the
idea that microdiamonds at the end of ice age resulted from a comet whose
fireball that put the North America's forests in fire killing and dusting the
mammoths with diamonds.
There is important geoengineering aspect. If one would like to dismiss the
danger like happened in Africa when CO2
accummulated deep lake destabilised in Gabon, the problem is solvable by water
pumping and mixing to prevent the carbonisation of the deep water pocket. This
limnological remedial treatment should work for deep water pocket in Lake
Checko to prevent methane and its digestion product carbon dioxide from
accummulating over sizzling point.
There are good news about this if L. Cheko can be identified having deep water
pocket supersaturated with mixture of carbon dioxide and undigested methane.
There is an easy way to prevent these Tunguska disasters in future.
I want to remind a case of west African lakes.
There are two lakes in Africa being nowadays cared for by artificial water
ciruclation to prevent their deep water from turning into champagne leaking out
carbon dioxide that then in a sudden pulse suffocates everyone in lakeside.
In the Arctic Ocean where ever there may also be reasonably still, deep, water
pockets measurements of CH4 and CO2 should be carried out. If there are nearby
human settlements (or public are put in danger because of fishing or boating in
the area), similar water mixing should be carried out to prevent CO2 and CH4
from accummulating to the sizziling point. Also, if such still deep water
pockets are mixed with clean water from elsewhere, then the bacteria is able to
consume methane into CO2 and sudden athmospheric releases can be controlled.
The alternative is to wait and see the fireball and then collect the bodies and
my diamonds...
Dear David, Remember when we last summer kept pondering about the on-shore
methane explosions and we quite could not figure out everything; ref.
hypothesis that the Tunguska explosion was an on-shore methane explosion event:
Due to the conical shape and deep conical bottom profile of Lake Cheko, I
suggested that a bypassing river had a spring time ice dam that had blocked the
ordinary route and river therefore burst its banks and the redirected water
began running over permafrost marshes. When the permafrost was melted by the
river water, there was a gas field underneath whose roof melted or softened by
thawing and the river water fell into, this suddenly releasing all the contents
of the pressurised methane in the gas field and the ignition took place
subsequently few miles away from L. Cheko. Quite co-incidentally whilst writing
to our Google geoengineering group about the possibilities of using carbon
sequestration logging in the Arctic and subarctic Russia to remove CO2 from the
athomosphere, I got a response from Sam Carana that refers to the "tropospheric
hydroxyl decreases that will generate conditions where methane accummulation
and ignitions occur" and can generate "incredibly high temperatures", the
tropospheric hydroxyl depletion stabilising the amount of methane to the
ignition points. I like to draw your attention here to another phenomenon
where these 1908-2008 cetennial "comet theorists" again, to my irritation these
taken the Tunguska-concept now as the causative to the end of the Younger Dryas
period, even it has been suggested that the Laurentide Ice dome from the Hudson
Bay was blown off by a falling comet. The 'evidence' is the microdiamonds that
are found in the soils of the end of ice age deposits all over the world. I
would like to point out that there are off-shore methane craters on the Arctic
Ocean seabed in their thousands and if many of these produced immensely strong
fireballs, the microdiamonds allocated to the cometary fireball, resulted from
the decay of the Arctic Ocean sea bed methane clathrates as well as some
on-shore gas fields. I await to hear if we can pick up this matter and follow
it up once again and throw out the comet theorists with their cometary
snowballs killing mammoths, raining diamonds and blowing up even the Laurentide
Ice sheet (into smithereens) when there are much more down-to-earth causative
prospect for the presence of microdiamonds: The exposed seabeds (when the sea
level was over 120 metres below present) and shallow waters warmed rapidly at
the end of ice age along the Arctic Ocean's coastal margin, together with
melting permafrost on land, releasing gas fields and methane clathrates. The
immensely hot methane explosions and fireballs produced the microdiamonds.
Similarly, the comet did not hit into the middle of a river, in the middle of
forerest, but it was the river that burst the banks and either excavated or
melted so that a roof of gas field failed, the river fell in and the result was
L. Cheko and the Tunguska blast few miles away. Regards, Albert the arctic
ocean and hitting comet to the middle of river in the Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009
10:02:11 +1100Subject: Re: [geo] Re: Crop residue ocean permanent
sequestrationFrom: [email protected]: [email protected] I think
it's a brilliant idea Albert. The effectiveness of Arctic timber dumping could
be enhanced by planting specific types of trees that grow very fast. Seedlings
could be planted while felling timber. Genetically-modified trees could grow
even faster. That brings us to the point that Andrew emphasized, it will be
difficult to get legal approval and there will be political opposition against
such methods. This will have to be taken into account when assessing the
possible success of methods. However, while we should be aware of the political
issues associated with geoengineering, our primary focus here should be on the
more technical and engineering side of things, i.e. we should come up with
estimates for effectiveness, side-effects, how things will work out
biologically, etc. To be better prepared, I agree with Stuart that we should
try and examine scenarios while coming up with figures on volumes, timescales,
etc. In case of Arctic timber dumping in lakes and rivers, we have to look at
the risk of emissions due to underwater rotting, in particular methane
emissions. Furthermore, there's the doomsday scenario of the "Sudden Methane
Explosion" hazard. Methane oxidation now takes place by tropospheric chemical
reaction with hydroxyl radicals (OH), producing CH3 and water. As more methane
enters the atmosphere (due to livestock, burning of peat deposits and melting
permafrost), the amount of tropospheric hydroxyl decreases, so methane will
remain in the atmosphere ever longer, an accumulation that could accelerate
into a huge local built-up of methane. Lightning could then ignite the methane,
resulting in a 'Sudden Methane Explosion' that could rage like wildfire over
the Arctic. Theoretically, this could reach incredible temperatures, consuming
entire lakes, complete with water and the timber at the bottom of these lakes,
everything in its path further fueling the fire. Let's examine such risks. As
you say, Albert, Arctic timber dumping could use timber from newly developing
forests in the Arctic, so it could be done without affecting existing forests
or agriculture. It could also be done independently from pyrolysis of
vegetation and other carbon-containing bio material (such as animal manure)
elsewhere. However, we should compare these methods (pyrolysis and Arctic
timber dumping) with alternatives such as deep ocean dumping. Let's put some
figures on the various scenarios.> > > Cheers!> Sam Carana> > > > On Fri, Feb
6, 2009 at 12:59 AM, Albert Kallio> <[email protected]> wrote:> > Hi
Sam,> >> > What do you think about my idea that in quantitative terms perhaps
easiest> > way to remove CO2 is to log trees in the Arctic and junk them to
lakes and> > rivers. As the climate warms up, new trees grow faster and lop off
more> > carbon. Event without any action, treeline is going to push all the way
to> > the margin of the Arctic Ocean.> >> > All these new forests will store
away huge amounts of carbon.> >> > Although economically a win-win, many very
good applications like you> > propose might not remove alone quikly enough CO2.
I also think that as the> > Arctic warms up, more needs to be done locally to
create sinks while soils> > start release more of it back.> >> > Rgs, albert.
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