THE DANGER OF JAPAN’S METHANE ‘TREASURE’

Japan's 'frozen gas' is worthless if we take climate change seriously; Like all nations extending the fossil fuel frontier, Japan is adding to the mountain of fossil fuels we cannot responsibly burn

George Monbiot, 14 March 2013 (UK Guardian)

“…[W]e have already identified more underground carbon than we can afford to burn between now and the year 3000…[yet] governments and corporations are spending hundreds of billions prospecting for new reserves…[M]indless enthusiasm has now greeted the Japanese government's announcement that it has successfully extracted natural gas from methane hydrates (otherwise known as clathrates) buried under the bed of the sea.

“Clathrates are composed of a frozen matrix of water and gas…They are super-concentrated: a cubic metre of clathrate contains 164 times as much methane as a cubic metre of methane gas. The great majority (99%) are found beneath the sea bed…[A]bout 1,000 times more methane is trapped in hydrates than is consumed annually worldwide…The US Geological Survey warns that clathrates could contribute significantly to climate change. Yet it also boasts that the ‘first goal’ of its clathrates project ‘is to contribute to research that may lead to the development of gas hydrates as a potential energy source.’ They know what they're doing, and they don't care.”

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“…During the palaeocene-eocene thermal maximum, 55m years ago, temperatures rose by around 6C…[I]t took 20,000 years – but it was fast enough radically to alter the world's ecosystems, catalysing both mass extinctions and new speciation. There is evidence to suggest that much of this warming was driven by the release of gas from methane hydrates…[T]he much smaller volume of methane hydrate locked up in the permafrost beneath shallow Arctic seas could…could add significantly to global warming – [but] it will take a very long time…

“…[T]his is not to say that there will be no catastrophic release of gas from methane hydrates buried beneath the deep sea. If it happens…it will be the result not of global warming but of the process the Japanese government has now pioneered: extracting gas in order to burn it…Japan is adding to the mountain of fossil fuels we cannot responsibly burn. The brave new technology it has developed, now lauded in the media, would be worthless in a world that took climate change seriously.”

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