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Methane-Eating Microbes May Reduce Release of Gases as Antarctic Ice Sheets Melt

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

"exec" writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:Cool Re:Cool (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 03 2017, @10:32PM (2 children)

  by khallow (3766) 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.

  Parent

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

  by c0lo (156) 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

  Parent

  • Re:Cool (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 04 2017, @02:55AM

    by khallow (3766) 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.

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