Wouldn’t it be great to see that headline somewhere in a completely authentic context? Like someone actually wanted methane. And a lot of it.
As you may or may not know, our climate is changing more rapidly than any previous time in recent memory. It’s a natural phenomenon that has been accelerated by certain post-Industrial Revolution activities.
Polar summers are seeing massive thaws of ice.
Greenland is becoming green land.
Australia and California are getting hit with Mad Max-ian droughts.
And giant sinkholes of hell are spawning in northern Russia.
I’m going to stop there. It’s hard to top giant sinkholes of hell. Even without the media hype, they’re still giant sinkholes.
At the recently discovered giant sinkhole in Siberia’s Yamal peninsula, an archaeologist is reported to have found levels of methane that are much higher than normal – concentrations of 9.6% methane gas. Normal methane level is 0.000179%. So unless there’s a lot of cows in that sinkhole, the current best theory is that these sinkholes are being caused by permafrost defrosting and releasing the methane that had been frozen in the ground.
There’s no other way to put this. Our planet is farting. And we had a lot of chili peppers for dinner last night.
… Okay there were probably other ways I could have put that.
The point is we are going to see more and more releases of methane from sinkholes and from the ocean floor and since an event such as this as never before been witnessed, scientists aren’t sure what to expect.
I was about to propose that you create a challenge around this problem and submit it to our ImagineX Challenge in which we’re awarding 10 people $1000 each for their challenge ideas. But then I noticed that someone has already submitted a challenge for a methane harvesting process.
And now I feel both disappointed and reassured.
Well this is awkward.
Go check out that methane harvesting challenge.
