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Red Sea huge source of air pollution, greenhouse gases: study:
Hydrocarbon gases bubbling from the bottom of the Red Sea are polluting the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to the emissions of some large fossil fuel exporting countries, researchers said Tuesday.
The gases seeping from the waters—which are ringed by the resorts and ports of several countries, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—then mix with emissions from industrial shipping and turned into noxious pollutants that are very harmful to human health.
The Middle East holds more than half of the world's oil and gas reserves[. The intense] fossil fuel exploitation that takes place there [means] the region releases enormous amounts of gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere.
But during a 2017 expedition around the Gulf, researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Chemistry noticed that levels of ethane and propane in the air above the Northern Red Sea were up to 40 times higher than predicted, even accounting for regional manmade emissions.
The team analysed possible sources for the gas emissions, including traffic, agriculture, burning of biomass, and power generation from hydrocarbons.
They came to an unexpected conclusion: the two gases had to be seeping out of the sea bed after escaping natural subterranean oil and gas reservoirs.
They were then carried by currents to the surface, where they mix with another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, which is emitted in high amounts by industrial shipping.
The resulting gas compounds are extremely harmful to human health, according to the team's study, published in Nature Communications.
Journal Reference:
Bourtsoukidis, E., Pozzer, A., Sattler, T. et al. The Red Sea Deep Water is a potent source of atmospheric ethane and propane. Nat Commun 11, 447 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14375-0, www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14375-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 30 2020, @11:43AM (1 child)
If we are so worried about atmospheric CO2 then we ought to be seeing a much bigger shift in behavior and attention paid to remediation and countermeasures than we are. Instead of endless hand-wringing, where are the massive efforts to re-forest the Sahara and soak up more of that carbon dioxide? Why aren't people taking more simple steps to fully insulate their homes and require less fossil fuels to heat them? Why are people still buying crap they don't need from China and incurring all the pollution there to make it, and pollution between here and there to deliver it? Why aren't more people biking to work instead of driving?
I just don't see any changes commensurate with the amount of complaining. Hypocrisy is stultifying. I wish people would either put up, or shut up.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @02:47PM
That's another reason I don't give the doom-mongers much credence. There are plenty of projects that would cost less and remove more carbon than what they propose.
eg:
It wouldn't take that much of a canal to flood the Great Rift Valley, change the climate in western North Africa, and re-forest a lot of Ethiopia.
3000 years ago the cedar forests of Lebanon were considered endless. We should bring them back.