All the Fountains of the Deep Burst Forth

Posted by James Bowery on Monday, 18 February 2008 22:10.

UDATE (4/5/2008): Relief From All the Fountains of the Deep.

I suggest you not read on unless you want to risk losing sleep, haunted by the fountains of the deep:

In “God Is a Terrorist” I described a nightmare scenario involving the virtually instantaneous termination of most life on Earth in a global firestorm by a moderately wealthy religious fanatic “disappointed”, shall we say, at the lack of fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. My main comfort was that the physics of my scenario have not been validated and that such a moderately wealthy religious fanatic would be more attached to his worldly possessions along with some remnant of the rationality that made him moderately wealthy. The problem, of course, is that even with such comforts, the prospect of a global firestorm driving most species—especially the larger species such as humans—to extinction at a level not seen since before the dinosaurs, is so horrific that its plausibility overcomes its improbability.

Unfortunately, some additional research has led me to believe another, less improbable, route exists to such a global firestorm extinction within the near future as an unintended consequence of simple profit seeking, rather than the intended consequence of an unlikely personality.

You will now learn the reason I find the above image so haunting…

The image is a fountain put into place on Lake Nyos by French scientists to release dissolved carbon dioxide seeping into the lake bottom from volcanic sources. The fountain is driven by the power that drives a champaign bottle’s contents skyward after decorking lets loose with the degassing of its carbonated water. The fountain’s purpose is to release the build-up of pressure from the bottom of the lake that can cause it to degas in a limnic eruption of the lake spewing death-dealing gasses killing thousands of people and animals for miles around. They hope they can release the CO2 faster than it builds up.

If you read “God Is a Terrorist” carefully, you may see this nightmare scenario already:

Energy prices are driving entrepreneurs to seek out new sources of fossil fuels. In many areas of the Earth government regulations and entrenched special interests effectively impede this entrepreneurial drive but there is one environment that entrepreneurs can exploit relatively free from impediment:

The open oceans.

The main thing that keeps entrepreneurs in check on the high seas is remote sensing technology that can monitor unusual activities and report them to interests that might be threatened.

But what if there was a way to appear to be just another tanker ship traveling the open ocean—do so while making huge profits on very little investment and very short turn around—the “only” real risk being that you might trigger the second largest extinction event in the geological history of Earth?

No, I’m not talking about the mining of clathrate or “methane ice”.

The risks of mining clathrate are minor compared to the risks I’m dredging up from the deep here.

I am, however, talking about a related phenomenon discussed in “God Is a Terrorist”: Dissolved methane.

Dissolved methane, like the dissolved CO2 in Lake Nyos, can drive fountains with little more than a pipe sunk to the stagnant depths where methane collects in aqueous solution. These fountains would easily produce 6 times the volume of methane as they do water from those depths, and do so in virtually unlimited quantities and at rates limited by little other than the diameter of the vertical pipes.

This means that it would be feasible to put into place an entirely underwater vertical pipe, anchored to the ocean floor, topped with a mating interface for an ocean going methane tanker equipped with a methane liquification system which might be powered by nothing more than the high pressure flow from the methane fountain. There could be very little remotely sensed heat signature from the tanker during the loading operation. The most obvious signature would be the tanker coming to a stop at the same spot on the open ocean on different trips.

To get an idea of how much methane we’re talking about here, the hypothesized size of a single reservoir of methane water, capable of unleashing a Permian extinction event, would contain enough methane to power the entire US fossil fuel demand for nearly 30,000 years. There are several such reservoirs hypothesized to exist worldwide.

Now, I don’t know a lot about marine engineering, but with the price of liquid natural gas dramatically rising with most other sources of fossil fuels, it is hard to imagine this not being exploited in the very near future by some entrepreneurs from some nations somewhere.

The main risk arises due to the fact that these methane-water fountains are exploiting a meta-stable system which, unlike the methane ice, is far more prone to forming its own “fountains of the deep” unconstrained in scale by any pipes. Indeed, it is plausible that a vertical fountain pipe which, for whatever reason, burst open could reduce the density of the water column over the dissolved methane reservoir triggering the rapid “stabilization” of the meta-stable system—a stabilization transition resulting in the release of enough methane to cause global firestorm extinction.

Things could be worse, degassing could be exothermic thereby heating the water column surrounding the fountain’s pipe but, fortunately degassing is endothermic. Even so, fluid transfer in a pipe does involve frictional losses that end up in heat. Is it enough heat to lower the density of the water column over the methane-water? I don’t know.

And there are things that can be done to mitigate the risk of triggering the fountains of the deep to burst forth, such as using stronger pipes, or laying heavy pipe horizontally along the ocean floor till no longer over the methane-water before going vertical, so there is far lower probability of a vertical column of water over the methane-water bursting forth like an uncorked champaign bottle from Hell.

But these things cut into profits.

What is the moral of this story?

I’m afraid it may be too late for it but if I may offer this observation:

A generation ago life reached from this planet for the lifeless space filled with energy. It did so via a pioneering species called humans. Humans did so via a pioneering race called whites. Whites did so via pioneering nations known as Russia and America.

But then something happened to them.

Something stopped them.

Some called it liberalism. Some called it progress.

But it was neither.

It was life’s opposite.

It was death.

Tags:

Comments:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:30 | #

There’s no conceivable commercial use for the huge volumes of CO2 brought up from those lakes?

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:39 | #

Or just the force of the fountain effect — you’d think in lakes where there are several of these CO2 fountains this force could be put to use generating some electricity, or powering a small mill of some sort, turning a flywheel, something. In the log entry it mentions using the force of the proposed methane fountain to power a gas compressor for liquifying the methane. These fountains, once primed, run permanently, 24/7, in principle never stopping until the geology itself changes in tens of million years from now. That adds up to significant power at least for some small local projects, completely free.

Posted by GT on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:38 | #

If disaster can be mitigated by the laying of strong, horizontal pipe along the ocean floor for extraction purposes, then why isn’t it mitigated naturally through currents which would disburse the methane throughout the earth’s oceans and prevent (or minimize) the creation of the methane-water reservoirs in the first place?

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:07 | #

I should have said “hugging the ocean floor” or “well off-vertical” rather than “horizontal”.

The hypothesized methane water deposits are stagnant. From Ryskin’s paper:

The microfossil carbon isotope data
from the Santa Barbara Basin sediment core show that high levels of
dissolved methane were present periodically in the water column (Kennett
et al., 2000). This has been confirmed by a microbial-biomarker
study (Hinrichs et al., 2003), and is likely to be representative of oceanic
regions prone to stagnation and anoxia, such as silled basins or
deep-water masses isolated by topography and Taylor columns1. (Such
regions are likely to have sizes below the resolution of ocean circulation
models used in biogeochemical studies; e.g., Hotinski et al.
[2001].)

Posted by GT on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:24 | #

Such regions are likely to have sizes below the resolution of ocean circulation models used in biogeochemical studies; e.g., Hotinski et al. [2001]

The existence of ancient, anoxic deep water is possible – perhaps even likely, as Ryskin says – but Hotinski writes, “…relatively high rates of ventilation and reduced productivity keep the deep ocean near the <u>oxic-anoxic boundary</u>, rather than firmly in the regime of sulfate reduction.”

Am I correct in thinking that Hotinski’s ocean circulation model is “state-of-the-art” and that Ryskin hasn’t access to anything better? If so, then GIT should wait a while longer before renting that tanker.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:53 | #

Am I correct in thinking that Hotinski’s ocean circulation model is “state-of-the-art” and that Ryskin hasn’t access to anything better?

Within its domain, I believe so. The problem, as Ryskin points out, is that certain structures like “silled basins” and “Taylor columns” are outside the domain of Hotinski’s model—and such structures are, for reasons Ryskin points out, and despite being smaller than the resolution of Hotinski’s model, quite plausibly large enough to support extinction events on the order of the Permian.

Posted by GT on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:05 | #

Taylor columns appear to form as ocean currents pass alongside vertical structures (mountains?) in the sea, trapping anoxic water over the structure. Silled basins appear to be inland seas, or the “sunken” remnants of same. I’m not sure either structure has the depth necessary to preclude ventilation altogether. Surely Taylor columns would rotate, allowing for some exchange of oxic with anoxic water. And I think silled basins would “burp” methane on occasion, as Lake Nyos “burps” CO^2, due to the inherent “shallowness” of basins compared to the deep ocean. Of course, I don’t know for certain and I’m practically guessing at this point.

Posted by Fr. John on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:07 | #

I find it fascinating that you posit a ‘nutcase wackjob end times scenario’ by a person (who presumably holds Christian opinions related to the heresy known as Dispensationalism) and consider it a possible reality, and then you come up with this far-fetched Orwellian/Ecoscam scenario.

Who has the greater ‘faith’ in supposed ‘endtimes’ scenarios?
Yours is just as much a religious POV, as the most rabid Dispie out there.

Historic Christianity says that before the ultimate ‘end of the World’, God in Christ would intervene.
The Supposed “rapture” event is just that—a supposed event. No special group will be absent from the earth, ‘saved’ from tribulation, whether chemical or apocalyptic. It’s just that the fallacies and follies of man will have reduced the total number of honestly faithful and racially aware members of ‘Adam’s race and David’s line’ to a very small number… and, basing the potential here in America for the “Obamanation” to be elected our next ‘tribal chief’, it seems we are very far along in THAT scenario.

Which is at least far more believable than your methane gas one, which is just a lot of ‘hot air’. I mean, you might as well lose sleep over farting cows!

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:15 | #

“you might as well lose sleep over farting cows!”

Believe me, out here in the English countryside that is not far-fetched.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:08 | #

far-fetched Orwellian/Ecoscam scenario.

I hope you’re right.

I also hope the “anti-racists” are right and that the ecological horrors, both human and non-human purported by guys like me, of global panmixia are simply a “far-fetched Orwellian/Ecoscam scenario”—because otherwise it looks very likely we will face those horrors.

There really is little conflict between conservation and conservatism.

I also really hope you’re right that Christ was a European who will somehow reincarnate or otherwise come again and save us.

Posted by GT on Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:16 | #

I have much greater acceptance for the idea that an airburst of methane and water vapor caused the Permian Extinction than I do for the GIT scenario due to the geological differences between then and now. In the Permian Age one continent and probably less concentrated inflow of cold water from the northern and southern hemispheres would mean fewer deep water currents, less ocean ventilation, and more opportunities for the creation of huge, deep reservoirs of methane water. Today those conditions don’t exist to anywhere near the same degree. And silled basins, then and now, haven’t the depth necessary to trap sufficient quantities of methane to cause world wide extinction in the event that methane was allowed to escape to the surface and ignited before it was dispersed by the winds. Those are my guesses, anyway.

Given the conditions during the Permian it’s easy to see how underwater geological activity might generate an avalanche of escaping methane and water vapor to the ocean’s surface and its subsequent ignition by lightning.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:35 | #

You raise an interesting point that Ryskin doesn’t really address when he recommends that there be an intensive search conducted in the open for deep water stagnation:

There should be better models of the Permian ocean.

Certainly if the world’s geography were so profoundly distorted that there was only one continent—Pangea—it is probable that there was a profoundly distorted ocean floor.

I have to, however, give the Ryskin his due here: That an intensive search for deep water stagnation should indeed be conducted out in the open and that any parties interested in preservation of the majority of life on Earth be made aware of the precise degree of danger. The only question is how much of an investment should be made. That “actuarial” estimate does heavily depend on what the model of the Permian ocean tells us about the methane water hypothesis of the Permian extinction.

I guess the correct answer is more than should be invested in searches for potential asteroidal collisions and less than should be invested in global warming research.

Posted by GT on Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:43 | #

Since my last post on this topic I’ve discovered that although the majority of silled basins are relatively shallow there are some with depths of 3500-4500 meters. Judging by my interpretation of a few oceanographic images found on Google, one exists off the northern coast of South America and at least two more are located in the Mediterranean. The latter are separated by a shelf which can be identified by the relatively shallow waters stretching from Morocco to Italy. With adequate volume (whatever that is), I think an average depth of 4000+ meters is sufficient to store problematic quantities of methane water. Therefore, although I remain skeptical of the GIT scenario in general I’m friendlier toward the possibility. As to an airburst causing the Permian Extinction, I think that remains a very good possibility for reasons stated in my previous post.

If extraction of methane water is as easy as presented in your entries, then I don’t think the JOG will publicize it. Prevention of this scenario, if attempted, will take place “quietly.” Why? Too many dispensationalist xtians, suicidal muslims, and observant jews have the funds to extract the water for reasons of expediting Revelations or implementing an ethnic revenge scenario against the hated Zionists and Gentiles. Recognizing this danger, traditional xtians like Mel Gibson & Crew could gain a powerful political foothold among the Joe Sixpacks of the world, resulting in widespread pogroms or a real shoah this time around. No, GIT will never receive the attention that Global Warming receives. Global Warming is about gentile control. GIT could result in jew-control. Jew-control is not good for jews.

Posted by GT on Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:53 | #

I should have said, “resulting in the micro-scrutiny of jewish behavior and ending in widespread pogroms or a real shoah this time around.” Scrutiny would result in restriction of movement. Jews couldn’t fart without us catching wind of it. You can bet your buttons that that alone is of greater concern to jewry than the possibility of pogroms or a genuine holocaust.

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:05 | #

My main concern isn’t about religious nuts, as I described in my prior post “God is a Terrorist”, but the prospect that rising energy demand will cause someone to find a methane water deposit and exploit it on-the-cheap or otherwise constrained (perhaps by secrecy) so that adequate safety isn’t maintained during extraction.

My main hope is that your issue about the Permian ocean being so different from the present ocean, has the consequence that something like a major extinction event from methane water simply can’t now happen.

Posted by GT on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:45 | #

I think today’s ocean is too ventilated to worry much about either group (religious nuts or capitalists) causing a world-wide extinction - intentional or otherwise.

Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:45 | #

If so, it leaves open the plausibility of a lesser environmental catastrophe triggered by greed or malice—how much less being the question.

Posted by GT on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:06 | #

The only way to be certain is to carry out a search. Such a search is unlikely to involve Ryskin, however, due to the need for discretion. Discretion means the involvement of researchers would be structured in such a way that plausible deniability exists from top to bottom.