Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
The carbon in the methane will have a specific radioisotope which is a marker for identification.All forms of carbon emissions can be identified to their source.
|
Ain't so. Methane is CH4. There are 3 carbon isotopes in nature. C-12 and C-13 are stable, C-14 has a half-life of 5700 years, so it decays away over the 100 million year plus age of fossil fuel deposits.
C-12 and C-13 do appear in different ratios in the current environment, because C3 and C4 photosynthesis take them up at different rates. But C4 photosynthesis didn't evolve until about 30 million years ago (recently in geologic time), so this wouldn't be a factor in fossil fuel deposits.
Hydrogen is similar: H-1 and H-2 are similar, other isotopes have such short lives that they aren't found in geologic deposits.
Bottom line: you can use isotopes to distinguish biogenic methane (e.g. cow farts) from natural gas, but that's about it.