Love those good news bad news days

Methane, hey!  Just can’t pin it down.  After writing about the horrors of nature unleashing her methane plumes in Alaska and the Siberian Ice Shelf, a flurry of new information has become available. 

Recently I have been focussing on the substantial fossil reserves shown as assets on the balance sheets of both listed and private companies.  Carbon Tracker estimates in its report Unburnable Carbon, that 80% of this is impaired.  This is because, only 20% of those reserves may be used before the carbon in the atmosphere tips us into catastrophic weather patterns. Therefore, these reserves should not be considered assets at all and should be written off the balance sheet.

Then news in The Independent suggested that the amount of methane in the Arctic and Siberian Ice Shelf was being released at a much greater rate than previously thought, as the ice melts faster than ever.  Methane of course as a carbon equivalent of ~25 times carbon.  It is ugly stuff.

Now we have the counter argument.  Although I don’t really see it as a counter argument, because it seems to me we are all in agreement about the methane, it just seems to be about the quantity and timeframe.  

So that’s the good news.  The New York Times reports that although methane releases may be quickening, it won’t occur for some time.  And it directs you to a website that then discusses a research publication by Igor Dmitrenko of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, who says it won’t be a problem till the end of this millennium or the next.  

The bad news is there is a lot more methane / carbon than the calculations in my blog on methane, where it was ascertained that 40 – 72 GtCH₄  (that’s methane) was trapped there.  Equivalent to the entire carbon reserves allowed to be used before the proverbial 2 degrees centigrade tipping point.  In the NYT article however it reports that the amount of carbon in this permafrost contains about 2.5 times the amount of carbon in the entire atmosphere.  They refer to the Arctic et al methane emissions as one of the biggest wild cards in climate science.  And the Tundra is burning!!

Now I don’t know how you feel about this debate; it is not happening as fast as thought, and it is twice the existing carbon in the atmosphere and a wild card.  But I know how I do.  Can we please just stop arguing about the timing and do something about the problem!!

Based on what I have read so far, should this methane be released, even an itty bitty bit, you can bet your life that you won’t have one.  

Oh, and it is still bad news for fossil fuel companies and their impaired balance sheets. Nature is now your competitor and she ain’t for negotiating on cutting her emissions and reserves.