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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Somebody light a match! Seriously, why don't they burn it?

Methane burns to produce carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.

But to burn it you'd have to collect the methane and concentrate it first, otherwise at low concentrations it is unlikely to ignite. Given that the Siberian arctic is vast and remote, I don't think this is a practical proposition.

Methane has a greenhouse potential 25 times that of CO2.

You're probably right though, it's probably not too diffuse and generally impractical.

> Methane has a greenhouse potential 25 times that of CO2.

True, although it decays to CO2 and water after about twelve years [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...

First time I've heard that methane decays so fast. Doesn't this dramatically reduce the practical warming effect of methane?

It does, but according to the Wikipedia article the '25 times' figure seems to have taken that into account. Methane has a 25 times (or 34 times according to more recent estimates) larger effect than an equivalent mass of CO2 over 100 years. When measured over the first 20 years this rises to 70~80 times.

At least there's a ray of hope. The problem is that we don't know how much CH4 is locked away in pockets like this.

The factor of 25 is over a 100-year time period, and accounts for this decay.

> Methane has a greenhouse potential 25 times that of CO2.

Where does this number come from? Heat capacity is almost the same for CH4 and CO2 (and half of that of H2O).

Wikipedia has an explanation of the calculation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Calcu...

And where does this calculation come from? How was it determined that this is a valid approximation of a physical process? This "global warming potential" seems to assume that a wave of certain length can be reflected and absorbed at the same time, which idea is somewhat unexpected if you dig through optics handbooks.

Not to mention that the formulas are incomplete.

The calculation comes from the physicists who came up with it of course. Are you saying they were wrong? Do you have a link to a paper showing this?

> The calculation comes from the physicists who came up with it of course.

This is the part I'm not so sure about. Physicists tend to not bother with climatology.

What gave you that idea? Radiative transfer is physics. That doesn't change because we're talking about planet earth. I would guess that most scientists involved in climatology have a physics background.

Edit: for example, Radiative Forcing in the AR5 http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/climdyn2013/IPCC/IPCC_WGI1...

The main author is Drew Shindell, Professor of Climate Studies, PhD in Physics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM0hczFNDZI

Yep, that's the video I had in mind.

Borderline SF.

I guess it's not safe (probably explosive) and even if it was safe how could that be done when it springs up from random holes dispersed in a vast area (Siberia)?

Since it is spread out over a region, it is harder and less economically viable to collect it and use it as fuel.

It's a valid question, oil refineries do burn it

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