CLIMATE COCKTAIL:
Arctic Peat
Methane Release

_{©Drink the Change}

BARTENDER NOTES

The Arctic Peat is a simple spirit forward cocktail that is smoked for service with a split base (whiskey and brandy), fortified wine, a sweetening/flavoring ingredient and a little spice from bitters, stirred to perfection and strained.

The smoked element of the drink brings that chaotic element of the scratch and sniff, with elements being disturbed by heat, releasing their impact. For the smoke we made a tar, combining crumbled peat, muddled bear berry, peach tea leaves, molasses and high proof rum to make a dry loosing held tar, then ignited inside a cloche with the drink.

Alternately you could avoid the bulk of the cloche by holding your double old-fashioned glass over the smoked tar for a few seconds. It also makes a great incense when the drink is done. And of course, a large ice cube, hacked off of a block to resemble an iceberg floating in the drink is the perfect finish for the arctic, just watch it slowly melt.

Arctic Tundra

The Arctic is How Hot?

90 degrees in Anchorage. That’s never happened before. Never is a strong word. When someone says “that’s never happened before’, it’s usually more a turn of a phrase than a definitive truth.

But here is a kind of declarative statement that can send make the your hair stand up on end:

Anchorage has never reached 90 degrees.
New York Times - July 4, 2019

National Weather Service - July 4, 2019

National Weather Service - July 4, 2019

The effect of this unparalleled heat has so many impacts. Predictably sea ice melt has increased. Land ice too, which is causing sea levels to rise. Fires have broken out across the arctic as dry hot tundra is sparked by lightning strikes.

Sea Surface Temperature Departure from Normal - June 16-22, 2019. Credit: Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP)

Sea Surface Temperature Departure from Normal - June 16-22, 2019. Credit: Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP)

Not so obvious - the risk of increased release of methane as the tundra, which has remained frozen for millennia, thaws and becomes a new super-source of this destructive greenhouse gas.

You Say Peat,
I Say Permafrost

PERMAFROST is any ground material — such as soil, sediment and rock — that remains at or below freezing temperatures for at least two consecutive years. Its composition, depth, age and extent can vary wildly: it can be ice-free or 30% covered in ice, it can be less than 1 meter to more than 1,500 meters thick.

Permafrost's uppermost active layer is comprised of dead plants and animals that have been frozen for thousands of years.

Arctic permafrost serves as an important sink for large quantities of geologic organic carbon.

Polar tundra

In parts of northern Canada's McKenzie River Delta, seen here by satellite, scientists are finding high levels of methane near deeply thawed pockets of permafrost. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

PEAT is a kind of substrate that's made of partially decayed organic matter, such as mosses and swamp plants. It is found below the surface, buried deep under the permafrost, and above the surface, where it shields the ground beneath it, keeping it cool.

Widespread in and around the southern Arctic, peat safeguards permafrost from solar heat.

Scientists are closely watching both Arctic permafrost and peat, because permafrost contains large quantities of organic carbon, both methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). As the Arctic warms and the permafrost thaws, all that carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

It's hard to predict how much and how quickly carbon and methane will be released as the Arctic warms up. But scientists know that it's starting to happen, and as the Arctic gets warmer the rest of the world will get warmer too.

Floating peat islet

The Problem with Methane

Scientists estimate that five times as much carbon might be stored in frozen Arctic soils as have been emitted by all human activities since 1850.¹

_{NASA Earth Observatory: Methane Matters}

Methane is the second most common greenhouse gas found in our atmosphere, making up 10% of total emissions--only 1% from permafrost, the rest primarily from natural gas and petroleum industries, and agriculture--compared to 82% for CO₂.

But methane traps up to 100 times more heat than CO₂ in a five-year period.

On the upside - methane leaves the atmosphere in a dozen years, while CO₂ lingers for thousands of years. So how to make sense of methane's potency?

The U.S. EPA developed the Global Warming Potential (GWP)² to indicate the amount of heat absorbed by one ton of a gas compared to the amount of heat absorbed by one ton of carbon dioxide over a set period of time.
NOTE: because it's used as a reference, the GWP for CO2 will always be 1 regardless of the time period.

For a 100-year period, the GWP of CO₂ is 1 and the GWP of methane is 28-36, which doesn't sound that bad.

But, since the 2018 IPCC³ report tells us we have to drastically cut our fossil fuel use by 2030 at the latest, we need a more realistic idea of its global warming potential. Hence, for a 20-year time period the GWP of methane is 84-87.

Another way to explain why everyone is so worried about the warming Arctic.

Methane gas bubbles trapped in frozen lake

Hunting for methane with Dr. Katey Walter Anthony, an aquatic ecosystem ecologist and biochemist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Click here

CLIMATE COCKTAIL RECIPE
Arctic Peat
Glass: Double Old-Fashioned

An old-fashioned/lowball build akin to a Vieux Carre, delicate, with a smoke waft on top, creating atmospheric mimicry.

As with any spirit forward cocktail without perishables, the Arctic Peat can and should be batched for service, with water added for dilution (an ounce to 1.25 ounce/drink), and a chill provided by the freezer or very cold refrigerator, ready to pour over ice, and saving the carbon footprint of the ice used for dilution/chilling.

SINGLE BUILD
.75 oz. St. Remy brandy
.75 oz. Westland Sherry Cask
.5 oz. Blanc vermouth
.25 oz. Apricot cordial
1 dash Aromatic bitters

To serve
Stir and pour to Absinthe-lined double old fashioned glass
Use large ice cubes
Add orange peel swath

SMOKE
Crumble peat/peach tea leaf/bear berry/molasses paste
Soak paste with high proof rum to make an ignitable tar
Light with a brûlée torch
Cover with cloche

FEATURING

_REFERENCES^₁_{Voiland, Adam. (2016, March 8), NASA Earth Observatory. Methane Matters: Scientists Work to Quantify the Effects of a Potent Greenhouse Gas". Retrieved from}_{https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters}

^₂_{EPA: Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Understanding Global Warming Potential. Retrieved from}_{https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials}

^₃_{IPCC: Special Report - Global Warming of 1.5 ºC Retrieved from}_{https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/}

_{LEARN MORE}_{Read more on the study of methane release from the tundra}