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Arctic hole throws up methane gases
Australian Herald
Thursday 4th March, 2010
The journal Science has printed a story that details the discovery of a hole in the seabed of the Arctic ocean, which is leaking huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
The scientific research shows the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, which was thought to be a barrier sealing methane, has been holed.
The report from scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences says while there have been many theories on global warming, the methane leak could be an overlooked source of the gas in the atmosphere.
The article says the discovery will provide a better estimate of the contribution of the Arctic to overall methane emissions.
Average methane concentrations in the Arctic are currently the highest in 400,000 years.  Email this story to a friend
Comments on this story
| By ceolacanth, 03-04-10, 11:54 PM |
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| By ceolacanth, 03-04-10, 11:57 PM |
WHAT A POEM~BY CEO~
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| By jose luis belmar, 03-05-10, 05:52 AM |
| Give me a break! Now that I thought that we had lost the terrorist number one in the worl, AL GORE, som idiots are giving him other weapons to keep on bothering us with the famous global warming hoax. Here in Sweden, a nincompoop journalist, with the name of KARIN BOJS, is recovering strenght and printed in two pages about the possible ending of the world because the ocean is farting.
Now, someone will put taxes to ocean’s farts and not only to the caddle, and someone, like Sheryl Crow, will recommend us to use less toilet paper for not contaminating the atmosphere, and someone will suggest to kill all the caddle and raise kangaroos instead. Please! Leave us in peace you Gores, Manns, Bojs and co. Go to hell and enjoy the warm temperature that is waiting for you. |
| By goomba, 03-05-10, 12:00 AM |
| great. Now the world is farting. |
| By Anonymous, 03-05-10, 01:42 AM |
| Global warming will keep Al Gore more richer and richer......The more you talk about global warming more money for him and hsi company. |
| By The Fox, 03-05-10, 03:49 AM |
goombaNow I know what the smell is, and to think I was blaming the dog for all these past years. Good old dog come here! Oh dear!!!perhaps he did contribute any way |
| By jose fucmie, 03-05-10, 04:58 AM |
titsi hope we all die of global warming |
| By vaginas rule!, 03-05-10, 05:02 AM |
2012we should have a massive orgy before 2012 comes |
| By Anonymous, 03-05-10, 09:19 AM |
| When Galljdaj farth it create lot of gases and also create global warming to the extence that the ice in the south and north pole melt. That how bad his farth is. |
| By Anonymous, 03-05-10, 11:49 AM |
Earth farting Dud !!How is the Australian’s Kevin Dud going to solve this one?? The earth is FARTING real bad mate!! No more ETS gabbage??? |
| By ` ~galljdaj~, 03-05-10, 04:13 PM |
Warnings have been presented for many years, ....... Warning have been presented for many years regarding Artic Methane releases due to global warming, and the 'effects' to increase the warming!
Published on Wednesday, December 15, 2004 by the Baltimore Sun
Ticking Time Bomb
by John Atcheson
The Arctic Council’s recent report on the effects of global warming in the far north paints a grim picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries. But it ignored a ticking time bomb buried in the Arctic tundra.
There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.
Now here’s the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and 'burp' into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There’s 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Once triggered, this cycle could result in runaway global warming the likes of which even the most pessimistic doomsayers aren’t talking about.
An apocalyptic fantasy concocted by hysterical environmentalists? Unfortunately, no. Strong geologic evidence suggests something similar has happened at least twice before.
The most recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in what geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane burps caused rapid warming and massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years.
The granddaddy of these catastrophes occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when a series of methane burps came close to wiping out all life on Earth.
More than 94 percent of the marine species present in the fossil record disappeared suddenly as oxygen levels plummeted and life teetered on the verge of extinction. Over the ensuing 500,000 years, a few species struggled to gain a foothold in the hostile environment. It took 20 million to 30 million years for even rudimentary coral reefs to re-establish themselves and for forests to regrow. In some areas, it took more than 100 million years for ecosystems to reach their former healthy diversity.
Geologist Michael J. Benton lays out the scientific evidence for this epochal tragedy in a recent book, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. As with the PETM, greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide from increased volcanic activity, warmed the earth and seas enough to release massive amounts of methane from these sensitive clathrates, setting off a runaway greenhouse effect.
The cause of all this havoc?
In both cases, a temperature increase of about 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, about the upper range for the average global increase today’s models predict can be expected from burning fossil fuels by 2100. But these models could be the tail wagging the dog since they don’t add in the effect of burps from warming gas hydrates. Worse, as the Arctic Council found, the highest temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions will occur in the arctic regions - an area rich in these unstable clathrates.
If we trigger this runaway release of methane, there’s no turning back. No do-overs. Once it starts, it’s likely to play out all the way.
Humans appear to be capable of emitting carbon dioxide in quantities comparable to the volcanic activity that started these chain reactions. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, burning fossil fuels releases more than 150 times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes - the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes the size of Hawaii’s Kilauea.
And that is the time bomb the Arctic Council ignored.
How likely is it that humans will cause methane burps by burning fossil fuels? No one knows. But it is somewhere between possible and likely at this point, and it becomes more likely with each passing year that we fail to act.
So forget rising sea levels, melting ice caps, more intense storms, more floods, destruction of habitats and the extinction of polar bears. Forget warnings that global warming might turn some of the world’s major agricultural areas into deserts and increase the range of tropical diseases, even though this is the stuff we’re pretty sure will happen.
Instead, let’s just get with the Bush administration’s policy of pre-emption. We can’t afford to have the first sign of a failed energy policy be the mass extinction of life on Earth. We have to act now.
John Atcheson, a geologist, has held a variety of policy positions in several federal government agencies.
© 2004 Baltimore Sun
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| By Anonymous, 03-05-10, 10:25 PM |
| Methane gas coming from Galljdaj ass will melt any thing |
| By jaysea, 03-06-10, 12:16 AM |
My MyIt’s entertaining to read these posts by some of the ignoramuses of the globe. They’re so juvenile, and coming from supposedly adults. For awhile I thought the U.S. had a monopoly on stupid. Now I find it’s worldwide. |
| By registered, 03-09-10, 06:09 PM |
The new global warming cult is simply shifting the focus!Same BullShiite different argument on cause.
Cap that methane and harness it!
People are killing each other over cheaper sources of energy.
Also Girliejihad has more hot air, methane, and faecal emmisions escaping his mouth then the other end.
The environmentalist assault on economic growth resembles the old shell game practiced by con artists for centuries. Just when you’re sure the pea will appear at the right, it shows up in the middle. Place your bet on the middle, and the pea appears somewhere else.
For decades now, alarmists have claimed that CO2 emissions are warming the earth past the “tipping point” and that only extreme reductions in the use of fossil fuels can avert catastrophe. Yet the earth today is less warm than it was in the middle ages, a period in which it cannot be claimed that human activity was contributing much, if anything, to global warming. Global temperatures in 2010 are colder than they were in 2000, despite a tripling in the annual growth rate of CO2 emissions in the last decade largely attributable to the mushrooming economies of developing nations such as China and India. Alarmists have been predicting catastrophe for over thirty years, yet the earth continues in natural cycles of warming and cooling, just as it has for eons.
Even before the exposure of factual errors and potential misconduct at the IPCC, the East Anglia Climate Centre, and other organizations, the public in America and elsewhere (Australia, New Zealand, and even Britain) had begun to doubt the claims of climate scientists. Now, with these disturbing revelations concerning the way climate science actually works, the public has become even more skeptical. Maybe that’s why climate science has shifted its attention to methane.
On Jan. 14, 2010, the British newspaper the Guardian reported dramatic news of a major increase in the amount of methane leaking through arctic permafrost. Between 2003 and 2007, according to a study in Science cited by the newspaper account, there had been a 31% increase (or one ton per year, for a total of five tons) of methane released. Paul Palmer, the British scientist who reported these figures, stated that his study was based on satellite readings of groundwater depths, not on actual measurements of permafrost emissions.
The Guardian was quick to report that some in the scientific community believe that the earth has reached a “tipping point” from which temperatures will rise exponentially. Increased temperatures will then trigger rising oceans, raging storms, devastating floods (or droughts), and the end of civilization as we know it.
There are problems, however, with the “tipping point” theory. Even with the reported increase in arctic methane, the global buildup of methane has flattened out over the past decade. From 1983 to the present, methane levels have fluctuated from year to year, with an actual decline reported in the period between 2004 and 2006. NOAA scientists confess that they have yet to come up with an explanation for the discrepancy between an arctic tipping point theory and reported levels of methane.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the actual recorded level of methane in the atmosphere does not match the predictions of climate researchers aggregated by the IPCC. As of 2009, the atmospheric methane concentration was 1800 ppb, while the IPCC predicted a range averaging over 1850 ppb — a significant difference. Extrapolating ten years into the future from IPCC projections and recently reported figures, the discrepancy in the model and actual readings would amount to 125 ppb.
The odd thing about the latest shift in environmental scare tactics is that it contradicts nearly everything we have been told about CO2 emissions. Just two years ago, at a time when most of the public actually believed that the use of fossil fuels was responsible for global warming, we were told that fossil fuels must go. Power plants must stop burning coal; oil and natural gas must be replaced with solar and wind; industries must be shuttered; agricultural practices must be radically altered; land use must be restricted. But now that that concern has lessened, the shell game is up and running again. Fossil fuels alone, we are told, may not alter temperatures all that much. The danger is that the use of fossil fuels will warm the planet just enough to reach the “tipping point," and that at that point, billions of tons of methane will come gushing out of the arctic permafrost. Then, much to the delight of the alarmists, the much-heralded catastrophe will actually arrive, but it will be too late to do anything about it.
Unfortunately for the alarmists, this argument has all the marks of desperation. Even climate scientists, whose lucrative salaries and grant monies depend on promotion of the theory of global warming, note that arctic sources constitute only two percent of methane emissions.
Those same scientists admit that five years of data are not indicative of a long-term trend. Even if a trend is underway, a five-year increase of 31% in permafrost release amounts to an increase of less than two-thirds of one percent in global methane emissions. That is not enough to flood the 25% of the Netherlands that lies beneath sea-level, especially since methane is cleansed from the atmosphere by reaction with the hydroxyl free radical (OH).
Global temperatures are now trending downward, so it is reasonable to conclude that the short-term trend in permafrost melting will be reversed. There is also another huge problem with the new methane alarmism: even if CO2 and methane emissions continue to rise (most of them from natural sources), there is no conclusive evidence that these emissions are significantly altering the earth’s climate. It is possible, in other words, but not proven that man-made global warming is real. It is possible but not proven that human activity may be a significant factor in global warming. It possible but not proven that global warming will increase arctic methane emissions. Even though these emissions constitute a small percentage of global methane, it is possible but not proven that they will bring about a global catastrophe. It is also possible, and far more likely, that variations in the climate are largely the result of natural forces.
It appears that environmental activists have once again shifted the pea around, hoping that no one will notice. |
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