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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 02 2017, @03:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the also-useful-at-frat-parties dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Lurking in a lake half a mile beneath Antarctica's icy surface, methane-eating microbes may mitigate the release of this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as ice sheets retreat.

A new study published in Nature Geoscience traces methane's previously unknown path below the ice in a spot that was once thought to be inhospitable to life. Study researchers sampled the water and sediment in Antarctica's subglacial Whillans Lake by drilling 800 meters through ice for the first time ever. Next they measured methane amounts and used genomic analyses to find that 99 percent of methane released into the lake is gobbled up by microbes.

These tiny microorganisms may have a big impact on a warming world by preventing methane from seeping into the atmosphere when ice sheets melt, said Brent Christner, a University of Florida microbiologist and co-author on the study.

"This is an environment that most people look at and don't think it could ever really directly impact us," Christner said. "But this is a process that could have climatic implications."

Additional coverage at the NSF (National Science Foundation), who funded the research team.

Journal Reference: Alexander B. Michaud, John E. Dore, Amanda M. Achberger, Brent C. Christner, Andrew C. Mitchell, Mark L. Skidmore, Trista J. Vick-Majors, John C. Priscu. Microbial oxidation as a methane sink beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature Geoscience, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2992

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:06AM (15 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 02 2017, @05:06AM (#547849) Journal

    Ummm... for sure they exist, but are they "efficient" enough "to have climatic implications"?

    I don't know here. But I do know that IPCC has completely discounted the existence of a methane sink. That may have been premature like many other conclusions they have reached over the years.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 02 2017, @11:22AM (14 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 02 2017, @11:22AM (#547895) Journal

    But I do know that IPCC has completely discounted the existence of a methane sink.

    I doubt this one can be considered as a significant methane sink - can be probably considered a "rounding error".

    The grounds: the microbe evolved in a medium poor in energy (800m+ under ice, not much light available, no active volcanism under the Ross shelf or around), with poor oxygen concentration, converting methane+oxygen to energy (to be used in synthesis of proteins/lipids) - a quite hard thing to do given the conditions.
    As a consequence, the efficiency of conversion may be high, but I bet the speed of this conversion is low (car analogy: the F1 engines are tuned for power, uses the "explosive" part of the cycle and ejects the gases while still hot - efficiency is low. To attain high efficiency, one needs to allow for a longer expansion time, but then the power - speed of energy conversion - gets low).
    There needs to be heck of a lot of those microbes to act as a serious sink - if so, why did this guy chose to search them in those Antarctic harsh conditions when, say, the North Sea is equally full of methane in the sediment (mainly clathrates) and dredging for samples is easier (heaps of oil wells there, equipment for their inspection and maintenance should be available).

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:34PM (13 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 02 2017, @12:34PM (#547911) Journal

      I doubt this one can be considered as a significant methane sink - can be probably considered a "rounding error".

      Sure, but as your first AC replier noted, methane eating bacteria exist elsewhere as well. Plus, bacteria have a tendency to grow exponentially when they have food. The polar regions already have elevated levels of methane in the atmosphere (and presumably a lot more methane than that in tundra soil). Something will grow to eat that.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 02 2017, @01:51PM (9 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 02 2017, @01:51PM (#547930) Journal

        Something will grow to eat that.

        I wouldn't bet the climate will still be pleasant for humans species when it will eventually happen, too high of a risk for my gambling taste.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:13AM (8 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:13AM (#548173) Journal

          I wouldn't bet

          But you would bet humanity's future on your particular flavor of Pascal's wager. My bet is that we'll find that production and destruction of methane have both been underestimated. Sooner or later we will need to learn what the dynamics of this system are rather than merely propagate a particular belief system.

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:06AM (7 children)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:06AM (#548222) Journal

            But you would bet humanity's future on your particular flavor of Pascal's wager.

            My hypotheses:
            1. biotic methane destruction capacity is under what the current level of methane outgassing is - see Siberia craters/pingos, positive net amount of methane release already happened there, local methane destruction capability couldn't prevent them.
            2. certainly the biotic methane destruction capacity is well under the level of currently trapped methane - a Clathrate gun [wikipedia.org]-like scenario is likely to lead to human species extinction

            Doesn't seem to be quite a Pascal's wager taken on un-answerable matters, but I'm not equipped to verify those hypotheses by myself.

            So... what do you mean by "I would bet the humanity's future"?
            Perhaps I might be tempted to bet "on the humanity's future" but certainly not "with the humanity's future" (i.e. using "humanity's future" as the value for the bet)

            My bet is that we'll find that production and destruction of methane have both been underestimated.

            Is this your actual bet?
            Perhaps I misunderstood, but until now I took your position as being "I bet the rate of methane destruction is non-negligible when compared with the rate of methane outgassing" (your "But I do know that IPCC has completely discounted the existence of a methane sink." admits this interpretation, does it not?)

            Sooner or later we will need to learn what the dynamics of this system are rather than merely propagate a particular belief system.

            True that.
            A pity that one has only one Earth to perform planetary-scale experiments, with double blinds and whatnot.
            I guess only observation and extrapolation of/from small scale experiments are available as methods (so we'll need to live with obstinate deniers).

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:42AM (6 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:42AM (#548227) Journal

              2. certainly the biotic methane destruction capacity is well under the level of currently trapped methane - a Clathrate gun [wikipedia.org]-like scenario is likely to lead to human species extinction

              [...]

              Doesn't seem to be quite a Pascal's wager taken on un-answerable matters, but I'm not equipped to verify those hypotheses by myself.

              What makes it a Pascal's wager is the infinite cost not the degree of uncertainty. For example, would Pascal's wager have the same impact, if the consequence of not believing in God (the decision point) was that you'd spend a little while in a modest purgatory classroom while you learned about God and then were shooed into Heaven shortly thereafter? Wouldn't the majority go "I'll do that after I die." Similarly, if global warming was presented as a collection of consequences that started mild and took a while to get progressively worse, then people would be much more likely to go "But we have more serious problems in the present that we need to fix so I'm willing to live with a little global warming."

              It's only by presenting global warming as dire as possible that it even stands a chance against the other threats humanity faces.

              I guess only observation and extrapolation of/from small scale experiments are available as methods (so we'll need to live with obstinate deniers).

              But who is the denier?

              • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 03 2017, @05:13AM (5 children)

                by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @05:13AM (#548233) Journal

                What makes it a Pascal's wager is the infinite cost not the degree of uncertainty.

                I think that "better safe than sorry" applies better to my position than "Pascal's wager" (I feel I'm approaching the time when I'll "not give a shit" about humanity - even less willing to give an infinite amount of shit :) ).

                I guess only observation and extrapolation of/from small scale experiments are available as methods (so we'll need to live with obstinate deniers).

                But who is the denier?

                I didn't intend to suggest it is you .
                I hope you won't deny the existence of such characters on SN - if you insist perhaps I can manage to find some time to link to some positions in older posts.

                --
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:33PM (4 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:33PM (#548313) Journal

                  I think that "better safe than sorry" applies better to my position than "Pascal's wager" (I feel I'm approaching the time when I'll "not give a shit" about humanity - even less willing to give an infinite amount of shit :) ).

                  And that's still part of the Pascal's wager argument. There's this infinite cost to something that supposedly has a positive probability of happening and then, better safe than sorry.

                  The problem is that we live in a world which doesn't have this clear binary choice. For example, no one shown that global warming is more of an existential threat to us than the known existential threats (like nuclear war, certain potential diseases, or very large asteroid impacts to name a few). Nor has anyone shown that diverting resources (that could go to fighting other serious problems like global poverty or overpopulation) to the more popular mitigation strategies for global warming is better.

                  I hope you won't deny the existence of such characters on SN - if you insist perhaps I can manage to find some time to link to some positions in older posts.

                  I agree they're out there. But I also agree that there's a lot of denial of reality coming from the other side as well.

                  And what really is the point of declaring that there are "obstinate deniers" out there? I've run across a flat earther on SN, obstinately declaring that NASA faked everything along with the Freemasons and the US military (apparently for Satan who has an interest in faking the outside universe). They've even gone as far as to claim that they've seen [soylentnews.org] "have seen the moon get dark in different ways" without specifying in the least these different ways.

                  That negative belief hasn't turned out to be relevant to discussion of space or physics stuff. If you should have solid evidence for your beliefs and opinions, then obstinate denial isn't a problem merely because there won't be many people doing it. Similarly, if you don't have solid evidence for your position (and something like global warming mitigation should require such evidence just due to the scale of the proposed solutions and their generally negative effect on peoples' well being otherwise), then again, obstinate denial is not the problem, your lack of evidence is the problem.

                  My view is that a common problem here is expectations. Too many people are expecting the current level of evidence for global warming to be persuasive enough to justify taking costly global action (alternatively, they similarly breezily assert that such action would be worth doing anyway, even though it's quite clear that they haven't done a cost-benefit analysis or look at real world examples to see that they fall short of the low cost/high benefit outcomes). But if it's not persuasive enough ten years ago, then why is it going to be persuasive today? What has changed? We haven't really come up with better evidence in the meantime.

                  And every so often, we see that some of these assumptions get challenged. Here, if exposing methane eating bacteria in buried bodies of Antarctica water can potentially change the methane levels in atmosphere, then so can other more mundane bacteria elsewhere through the world (but most particularly, in the same areas as where the high concentrations of locked up methane are). That is a potential threat to the clathrate gun hypothesis since it relies on very slow processes for removing methane from the atmosphere. If bacteria which eats methane is fairly common in the sorts of environments that have methane clathrates, that may result in less methane released than expected and more methane consumed from atmosphere than expected.

                  Let us also keep in mind that the same warming environment which is alleged to release methane also would be more conducive to bacterial growth and that we should have seen a similar clathrate gun in operation after the end of the last glacial period when the continents of North America and Eurasia were exposed after a hundred thousand years of thick ice. So we may already have indirect evidence for elevated levels of methane consumption in the environment global warming is supposedly creating.

                  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 03 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)

                    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @03:27PM (#548395) Journal

                    I think that "better safe than sorry" applies better to my position than "Pascal's wager" (I feel I'm approaching the time when I'll "not give a shit" about humanity - even less willing to give an infinite amount of shit :) ).

                    And that's still part of the Pascal's wager argument. There's this infinite cost to something that supposedly has a positive probability of happening and then, better safe than sorry.

                    You can be on the "better safe than sorry" side with being on the "better safe than infinite sorry"

                    Nor has anyone shown that diverting resources (that could go to fighting other serious problems like global poverty or overpopulation) to the more popular mitigation strategies for global warming is better.

                    The assumption that poverty eradication is somehow hampered by the cost of "global warming safety" is mildly amusing to me - I'll consider it seriously when I'll see the ratio between defence spending [wikipedia.org] and economic assistance spending [washingtonpost.com] a bit more balanced - as it stays now is something 23:1 in favour of defence (which defence should be a "better safe than sorry" cost. Unfortunately, it's far from "defence only" character, as it has the "actively make others sorry" component even when the others weren't aggressive against US)

                    Even if there are problems, the cost of resolving them is finite. As also finite is the cost of adopting a less fossil-fuel intensive lifestyle.

                    Bottom line: I'm not speaking about infinite costs, thus I still assert that "better safe than (finite) sorry" applies better to my position.

                    But I also agree that there's a lot of denial of reality coming from the other side as well.

                    Which is to say, both sides will need to live with the other's "truth", as both sides have hypotheses which aren't hard-scientific demonstrable.

                    What has changed? We haven't really come up with better evidence in the meantime.
                    ...
                    If bacteria which eats methane is fairly common in the sorts of environments that have methane clathrates, that may result in less methane released than expected and more methane consumed from atmosphere than expected.

                    That would be relatively simple to find, if they are so common, right? So, if they are so common, I think they'll get discovered in my lifetime... any time now... heck I think they should already have been discovered by now.
                    But again, they may not exist or not have a high enough efficiency, otherwise we weren't be seeing concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times normal levels. [wikipedia.org]

                    .

                    Or maybe those micrones don't have all the necessary conditions to... ummm... reach exponential growth stage?
                    Like, not enough oxygen dissolved in water for the entire amount of methane present there? Even at 99% efficiency, without enough oxygen a microbe can only do that much. Given the estimation of not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, compute what amount of oxygen is necessary to oxidize it, what amount of water can carry that oxygen (solubility of oxygen at 0C - max - is 0.07g/kg), assume a coefficient of transport efficiency (how much oxygenated water really reaches the clathrate under the sea bed), a dynamic of water circulation (flux of water per sq.m of sea floor, per second) and estimate the amount of time the existing methane could be oxidized by 99% efficient microbes (ignoring new methane genesis).

                    BTW - degradation of methane in atmosphere is abiotic [wikipedia.org] (thanks $DEITY for this - if a bacteria can oxidize methane, it will oxidize easier one's lungs). And once the methane in atmospheric, it hardly get dissolved back in the sea water, be it only for the fact that it has a lower density than air and will raise up.

                    --
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @10:32PM (2 children)

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @10:32PM (#548508) Journal

                      You can be on the "better safe than sorry" side with being on the "better safe than infinite sorry"

                      Human extinction, which you've used as the basis for your decision-making, is an infinite sorry event.

                      The assumption that poverty eradication is somehow hampered by the cost of "global warming safety" is mildly amusing to me

                      It's also based in fact. We have in no particular order, Germany's Energiewende, the US corn ethanol subsidies, and the poorly designed carbon emission credit markets of Europe. All have demonstrated propaganda rationalization based on global warming, poor execution, and substantial negative effects on the poorest people - sometimes worldwide.

                      if a bacteria can oxidize methane, it will oxidize easier one's lungs

                      Lungs aren't made of methane. They are very resistant to oxidation for several reasons (wet, vicious immune system, made of chemicals that don't oxidize as readily as methane does).

                      I'll consider it seriously when I'll see the ratio between defence spending [wikipedia.org] and economic assistance spending [washingtonpost.com] a bit more balanced - as it stays now is something 23:1 in favour of defence (which defence should be a "better safe than sorry" cost.

                      Economic assistance doesn't actually do that much. It's basically support for corruption in other countries. Defense on the other hand can prevent being taken over by another country or other military power. For example, Iraq's existence hasn't been threatened by climate change, but it has been taken over once by the US and almost again by Iran and ISIS at different points in the past 40 years. You can point to numerous parties in living memory that have lived and sometimes died by the effectiveness of their militaries.

                      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 04 2017, @12:52AM (1 child)

                        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 04 2017, @12:52AM (#548534) Journal

                        You can be on the "better safe than sorry" side with being on the "better safe than infinite sorry"

                        Human extinction, which you've used as the basis for your decision-making, is an infinite sorry event.

                        Your choice for the assgned price, not mine.

                        It's also based in fact. We have in no particular order, Germany's Energiewende, the US corn ethanol subsidies, and the poorly designed carbon emission credit markets of Europe.

                        I can speak for US corn ethanol subsidies, I'm not aware of the details.
                        About Germany's Energiewende, it decreased Germany's dependence on Russian gas at the very least (which is a good thing in my books). It also helped reducing their CO2 emission and made them more sustainable.
                        About the "poorly designed emission credit markets" - I don't think I remember somebody dying or becoming destitute because of them (by contrast, the "defense" activities of US did result in deaths and destruction. If you call this "poverty eradication" you probably have the very special choice for the "eradication" meaning).

                        Lungs aren't made of methane.

                        No, they are made of substances much easier to degrade than methane (lower binding energy) - anything able to derive energy from methane will make an easy work from the substances in the lungs.

                        Economic assistance doesn't actually do that much. It's basically support for corruption in other countries.

                        If you are doing it the wrong way, yes. There was a time (and I only can remember that single time) when economic assistance actually helped - you can go over specific differences that made the Marshall Plan work in contrast with the current situation, this kind of analysis is quite common for raising hypotheses as the first step in getting explanations.

                        Defense on the other hand can prevent being taken over by another country or other military power. etc

                        Let me put it in civil terms: let's agree to disagree on this one.

                        --
                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 04 2017, @02:55AM

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 04 2017, @02:55AM (#548569) Journal

                          Human extinction, which you've used as the basis for your decision-making, is an infinite sorry event.

                          Your choice for the assgned price, not mine.

                          Ok, but why bring it up in a "better safe than sorry" argument, if it's not intended to be the dominant cost of the argument?

                          About Germany's Energiewende, it decreased Germany's dependence on Russian gas at the very least (which is a good thing in my books). It also helped reducing their CO2 emission and made them more sustainable.

                          Germany has increased its dependence on a lot of external energy sources in a complex way. I don't see that the dependency on Russian natural gas has actually decreased. Nor do I see that they've decreased their CO2 emissions when they've increased their dependence on fossil fuel plants locally and externally.

                          Then we get to the other costs. The big obvious one is the doubling of their electricity prices. But there's also the feast or famine aspect of their current renewable energy mix. Sometimes they produce so much power that they pay others to take it (also an indication that the Energiewende consumer-based subsidies have perverse effect since in a less distorted market, they'd just turn off the excess energy production till things improve). Other times they're massively importing power (and demonstrating said dependence on fossil fuels).

                          About the "poorly designed emission credit markets" - I don't think I remember somebody dying or becoming destitute because of them (by contrast, the "defense" activities of US did result in deaths and destruction. If you call this "poverty eradication" you probably have the very special choice for the "eradication" meaning).

                          Why would you remember what you can't see? Deaths due to economic inefficiency and opportunity cost would be fairly invisible. These markets have at least three times created such problems (I recall huge market and electricity price fluctuations when the cap was reached in several European countries - hard caps create incentive to manipulate the markets, there was a lot of fraud in carbon sinks in Russia and the Ukraine that resulted in a complete ban on these countries getting involved in the markets, and currently prices are so low, that the EU has been buying credits off the markets in order to get the behavioral changes they want. That weakens Europe's economy by misdirecting resources (and in turn weakening economies that trade with Europe), makes more people somewhat poorer, and increases the harm from poverty globally (including additional deaths).

                          As to US defense, is waste and loss of life excusable merely because you can find someone out there who is worse? Somehow I doubt you want the worst offenders of the world to be your moral star. And given that you're comparing this to carbon emission credit markets, what should we do with the money from US defense spending? Buy up as many credits as we can and sabotage the Eurozone economy at considerable expense?

                          No, they are made of substances much easier to degrade than methane (lower binding energy) - anything able to derive energy from methane will make an easy work from the substances in the lungs.

                          Let us recall you wrote:

                          if a bacteria can oxidize methane, it will oxidize easier one's lungs

                          Methane generates a lot more energy when oxidized (let's keep in mind that energy released when oxidized is more important than an easy to overcome binding energy). That makes it easier to oxidize than a food source that has lower energy content per mass and fights back. Let us also keep in mind that lungs have their own bacteria which will start eating the lungs when any degradation occurs. So the methane eating bacteria gets to deal with the local, highly specialized competition as well.

                          If you are doing it the wrong way, yes. There was a time (and I only can remember that single time) when economic assistance actually helped - you can go over specific differences that made the Marshall Plan work in contrast with the current situation, this kind of analysis is quite common for raising hypotheses as the first step in getting explanations.

                          Europe would have rebuilt itself anyway. They did the same after the First World War and previous wars and disasters of similar scale (the Napoleanic wars and the Black Death, for particular examples). OTOH, the US did get a military edge on its rival the USSR through the Marshall Plan since it helped create a bunch of allies in Western Europe.

                          Defense on the other hand can prevent being taken over by another country or other military power. etc

                          Let me put it in civil terms: let's agree to disagree on this one.

                          Well, if you really want to agree to disagree with me and thousands of years of human history, you're quite free to do so. But there's a lot of extinct cultures out there that got that way because they didn't bring enough fight to some ancient battlefield.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 03 2017, @09:22AM (2 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @09:22AM (#548273) Journal

        Plus, bacteria have a tendency to grow exponentially when they have food the appropriate conditions.

        You know the baker's yeast eats sugars, right? If you'll put yeast in a very thick sugar syrup, the yeast will die - a thick syrup will be dehydrating the cells. Thin the syrup with water and indeed the yeast will go exponentially (for a while)

        Keep a tank of turbid water in the dark and no algae will develop (even if other microbes may). Bring the same into day light... ask the pet fish owners what to expect if you don't want to make the experiment yourself.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:00PM (1 child)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:00PM (#548302) Journal
          Availability of food is the key one of the appropriate conditions.
          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:11PM

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 03 2017, @12:11PM (#548309) Journal

            Necessary but not sufficient, yes.

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford