Sadie+Hartell

The Effects of Methane on Our Planet
Methane is a colorless, odorless gas, that is less dense than air at room temperature. Its chemical composition is CH4. If you reduce the amount of oxygen inhaled, methane can be deadly. Methane is mostly used as a fuel. The combustion reaction is very exothermic: Natural gas is 75% made up of methane. Natural gas was used for 1/5 of the energy used world-wide, and 1/3 in the United States. []  Methane is much more dangerous to our environment than carbon dioxide, even though methane stays in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time. A huge amount of natural gas remains piled up on the seafloor; some estimates say from 5,000 billion metric tons to around 20,000 billion metric tons. As carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere, the seafloor also gets warmed. This could release all of the methane in the natural gas, aiding the carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere more quickly. This has happened several times in Earth's history, causing at least one significant extinction each time, sometimes abruptly changing the history of life. One of the extinctions (at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago) killed off more than 90% of the existing species. []  Methane breaks down more quickly than CO2, but when it breaks down, it oxidizes into a  carbon dioxide molecule which can last for over 100 years in the air. Methane can trap 20 times the amount of heat that carbon dioxide can. As much as 55 billion tons (10 times more than the amount that is currently in the atmosphere) of methane could be released from only the Siberian lakes as warmer air thaws the Arctic. Human activities, mainly rice cultivation, cattle raising, and coal mining make up over 70% of the total methane produced. The rest is attributed to termites and tropical wetlands. []  The number one source world-wide of methane is animal agriculture. It produces 100  million tons of methane per year; world-wide, people have increased the consumption of meat by 5 times in the last 50 years. 85% of animal agricultural methane is from the digestive process of the livestock. 15% of that methane is from the "lagoons" where farmers dump untreated farm animal waste, which is also the number one source of water pollution in the U.S. Not counting CO2, methane is responsible for about as much global warming of all the other greenhouse gases put together. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen about 31% since before the industrial revolution, methane atmospheric concentrations have more than doubled. Human sources only produce 3% of natural emissions of CO2; human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources. []
 * CH4(g) + 2 O2(g) → CO2 (g) + 2 H2O(l) ∆H = –891 kJ**

media type="youtube" key="GQ1Ew1P3HS4" height="344" width="425" <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">It is entirely possible to create electricity by converting manure from the animals on farms to methane and sell it back <span style="font-size: 110%; color: #6900eb; font-family: Georgia, serif;"> to the local power grid as proven by the above video. <span style="font-size: 70%; font-family: Georgia, serif;">[] <span style="font-size: 110%; color: #6900eb; font-family: Georgia, serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> NASA has never had methane rockets, but because Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and Neptune all have an abundance of methane, in the future, NASA may have missions to these planets to capture some of this methane. They are considering methane because it can be stored at a much warmer temperature than liquid hydrogen, meaning it needs less insulation, so it's lighter. It's also less dangerous, you can handle it without a HAZMAT suit. <span style="font-size: 70%; font-family: Georgia, serif;">[]