August 4, 2006
Undersea methane could speed up warming
Methane, found in natural gas, is one of the cleanest fossil fuels to burn.
But when methane escapes to the atmosphere without being burned, it can trap heat rapidly. That’s because methane is at least 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
A new study says if the world continues to get warmer, vast amounts of methane gas trapped in ice under the sea could belch up and worsen climate change.
“We may have less time than we think to do something (about the prospect of global warming),” said Dr. Ira Leifer, a marine scientist at University of California Santa Barbara.
Leifer has studied how “peak blowouts” of melting undersea formations called methane hydrates could release methane into the atmosphere.
The study was published last week in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a climate science publication.
Hydrate formations exist under the surface in permafrost areas of the Arctic.
The study measured the amount of methane that escaped to the atmosphere from a peak blowout from small volcanoes on the ocean floor off California. It found that methane escaping from the deep water reached the atmosphere, countering theories that methane seeps out in tiny bubbles that dissolve in the ocean.
Deep ocean temperatures are stable, but rising sea-surface temperatures could eventually warm the ocean’s depths and release gas.
“If you expose a hydrate to water that’s warmer than normal it starts destabilizing,” he said.
August 4, 2006
Greenlandair confirms U.S. route bypassing Canada
Greenland’s main airline has confirmed that it will start a connection to Baltimore, its first to the United States.
In May 2007, the airline, owned by the Greenland government, will start flying once a week from Kangerlussuaq to Baltimore-Washington’s International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
A Boeing 757 will fly the route from May to September.
“We also know that Americans seek peaceful places with no terror threat and Greenland is the spot for that,” the airline told Associated Press.
About 30,000 tourists visit Greenland every year, 90 percent of them coming from Denmark and elsewhere in Europe.
Last month, the Greenland and Nunavut governments signed a trade agreement, but without an air link between Nunavut and Greenland, it’s not clear how the deal will be carried out.
August 4, 2006
Greenland’s first premier struck by serious illness
Greenland’s former premier and current parliamentary chairman, Jonathan Motzfeldt, is recovering in an Icelandic hospital after being taken to a Reykjavik hospital last week with pneumonia and kidney failure.
By the end of last week, Motzfeldt, 67, had been taken off a respirator, anesthetist Hildur Thomasdottir of the Landspitali University Hospital told KNR radio. But KNR said Motzfeldt was still on dialysis.
Motzfeldt was transferred last Thursday from Nuuk’s Queen Ingrid hospital to Reykjavik, which has better medical facilities.
Motzfeldt, a member of the Siumut party, became Greenland’s first premier in 1979. He left politics for six years in the 1990s because of his problems with alcohol. Motzfeldt returned in 1997 when he won a seat in parliament and was elected premier again.
Motzfeldt was premier until 2002, when he lost to fellow Siumut member Hans Enoksen, Greenland’s current prime minister.
Motzfeldt was then named chairman of the 27-seat parliament.
August 4, 2006
Bidding opens for West Greenland offshore oil and gas
Jorgen Waever Johansen, Greenland’s minister of housing, infrastructure and minerals and petroleum, recently opened a new round of bidding for oil and gas exploration licenses in areas offshore from west Greenland.
The event in Ilulissat attracted a number of international oil companies from Europe and North America.
In 2005, new seismic data from offshore Disko and Nuussuaq confirmed that very large oil deposits are in that area.
A Greenland government news release says there is “a good chance that large amounts of oil and gas have been formed and accumulated in the areas offshore West Greenland between 67 N and 71 N.”
The release also says Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum and the National Environmental Research Institute have conducted “thorough environmental investigations to ensure that oil activities in the area are carried out in an environmentally secure manner.”
The environmentally sensitive Disko Bay near Ilulissat, a World Heritage site, is not included in the current licensing round.
The Calgary-based oil and gas company, EnCana Corp., already holds the Atammik licence offshore from west Greenland. This licence, granted during a licensing round in 2002, is for an area northeast of the new licence area.
August 4, 2006
Shipping emissions may pollute Arctic
Global warming will open new Arctic shipping routes, but ship traffic on new northern sea lanes may increase levels of low-lying ozone, as exhaust from ships spew pollutants into the environment.
Claire Granier, from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, says ozone emissions associated with the opening of these new sea routes, assuming that the routes would be accessible for six months of the year, could triple ozone levels, making them comparable to those in industrialized regions today.
These very high ozone levels are likely to have a serious impact on plant life.
Smog from cruise ships is already settling over Norway’s scenic Geiranger Fiord, which recently won a spot on the United Nations’ World Heritage” list, reports the Aftenposten.
The smog has been forming “like a grey-blue lid,” says the Aftenposten.
According to the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the fiord’s air quality is similar to London’s.
“Our calculations show levels no one would expect to find in otherwise virtually untouched wilderness,” the institute’s Dag Tønnesen told the newspaper.
Some days, when as many as five cruise ships have sailed into the fiord, the concentration of nitrogen dioxide has reached 180 micrograms per cubic meter, about the same level found in London.
Tourism officials say they are concerned.
“If tourists’ experience in the fiord is the opposite of what we’ve been marketing, we have a problem,” Terje Devold of marketing firm Fjord Norge told Aftenposten.
Norwegian tourism officials and authorities want stricter international rules on allowable emissions from cruise ships. Starting in November, cruise ships will be required to present a certificate proving they comply with emissions requirements.
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