EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- As Death Toll Rises Beyond 500, Garment Factory Disaster 'Worst in World History'
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Pregnant Anti-War Soldier Sent to Prison
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
Popular content
Today's Top News
Shock as Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Greenhouse Gas
Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.
In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.
"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."
Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
537 Comments so far
Show AllGiven the stridency of the comments posted here, I hesitate to set either foot forth. However, one little tidbit as an aside. Those "capitalists" salivating over an open-ocean shipping channel are likely to be chagrined, when there are these methane plumes a thousand meters across out there. The combination of methane and seawater results in a substantially less-dense water mixture. Hence, a ship sailing into the bubble patch (or one sailing along and the vent opens up underneath it) will find the buoyancy drastically reduced - and the ship will literally sink away into the ocean, dropping straight down, no pitch moment. One instant, all sailing well; the next, the decks are awash and then sixty feet under. All this makes the Northwest Passage so treacherous as to be unusable.
This has been know A LONG TIME AGO !!!!!!
Actually, the scale of this methane release was not known, "a long time ago".
Good posts by everybody, imho.
Whether or not "more study" is needed by "cooler heads" is true or not is immaterial when you are dealing with the concept of grave risk mitigation. The consequences of electing to just "study" it further are too grave to risk not taking radical green action immediately.
When the stakes are so high, you err substantially on the side of caution if you are a really a student of geologic history, as you claim to be, since the specter of mass extinction looms greater now than at any time in our history.
1. Outlaw the Private Automobile
2. Outlaw meat consumption
3. Adopt a global one-child policy.
4. Get rid of growth-centered Capitalism and replace it with a sustainable production of subsidized energy production objectives (excluding insane nuclear).
5. Turn off the electrical grid if necessary and just take our chances. Shut down all emitters: Coal, Oil, Gas, and go to solar, tidal, wind, geo, hydro, residential solar etc, despite their severe limitations.
Anything less doesn't have a prayer of putting a dent in this global thermal runaway. The Tsunami of Heat is coming, and we're all sitting on top of a cripple Fukushima telling the press that everything is under control since we're studying the problem.
Or, alternatively, condemn our children to a slow horrible death world.
TJ
The smart man puts on a seatbelt even if he's sure that flying is safe and he doesn't need one.
Hi ~Tom~ How's the weather there? So very glad you are back... Hey; that peace pipe I spoke about yesterday, spoke too soon, you were correct,,, Tunned into war paint again... LOL... I didn't do it,,, honest.
Perhaps you have seen some of the friendly debate Mr. Null an I are having here.. He says the climate scientists cannot put the Arctic methane threat in a computer model... He gave some reasons, which I do believe he pulled out of a dark hole.. Lot of fancy "buzz" words, but nonsense.
It is clearly obvious Null is unaware that two Berkley scientists did compute the Arctic methane in a computer model recently and were shocked at the results. So Null is just blowing smoke here again.
All climate scientists should have done it years ago... I believe it would have helped a great deal to garner world leaders attention and perhaps credible action would have beeen taken a long time ago... We will never know now.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2011/05/04/methane-arctic/
.
In your imaginary universe, are the climate scientists who don't measure up to your high standards evil or stupid?
Also, you haven't answered the question about Dlugokencky. A while back you were citing Dlugokencky as "keeper of the world's methane." Now that he's saying something you don't like to hear, is he also one of the evil or stupid climate scientists?
Perhaps you could list the names of the few climate scientists who are still worthy of your respect. You say you like Shakhova, but you didn't like it when she said the ESAS flux is not dramatically affecting the global methane budget. Is Shakhova only evil or stupid some of the time?
We dearly need to know if any climate scientists can be relied upon. Please help out those of us who don't understand how your mind works.
No, you lie about me again NULL... I never have said he was "the keeper of the world's methane", that is what others refer to him as and I did say that he is called that.... I also have said I never agreed with his asumption the Arctic methane was not releasing and he was totally incorrect about that.
I also have never, ever said all of the climate scientists are wrong or evil as you put it NULL, I have said the failed to compute the Arctic methane threat in their climate modeling. And they never did.
Excellently said, TJ. I'd make only one change: reforest before, or at least in balance with, shutting down all the emitters.
The reason being that, as Hansen has warned, we don't yet have solid data about how much the global aerosol from those emitter sources is helping to hold down the heat increase.
If we cold-turkey, we might find that as the aerosol precipitates out, the short-term heat increase is enough to push us over the final edge.
I hate to say this, TJ, because I like your ideas, but how would you enact all the good ideas you suggest? For example, I live in a 27 story building, which is good in terms of a reduced carbon footprint for heating, and for using walking and public transit. But if you shut off the grid, nobody on the higher floors can get to their apartments, nor use the subway. I have tried to get a project going for solar panels on the roof to provide emergency elevator and lighting in case of a grid failure. But the Board of my building is so involved with their Jr. High mean girl power struggles that they have no time for anything constructive. I think that is an indicator of many people in this country.
I believe we are trapped in the energy setup which we have allowed to creep into every area of our lives over at least 100 years. I will keep trying for solar panels, reaching out to the building residents. Others who live in suburbs have to work for public transportation or else there is absolutely no hope of reducing auto use, no less banning it. We can figure out how to cook and popularize delicious vegetarian and vegan recipes. etc. There is not much time, but dreams without a plan are still just dreams.
You are suggesting major changes in every public and intimate aspect of daily life, changes that require shifts in consciousness and practice and collide with our convenience addicted culture and the powerful money-making sector. I did notice however, there was no mention of militarization. Hey, you want to get rid of growth centered capitalism, and I agree. Getting rid of war should be one of the goals too, as war is good for absolutely nothing, as they say.
>>jclientelle: "I hate to say this, TJ, because I like your ideas, but how would you enact all the good ideas you suggest?"<<
Even though I have no doubt you are aware of the issues, I'm going to attempt to reply, at the risk of sounding pedantic:
Before we get to the "HOW" let's look at WHAT it is we are trying to achieve. We need to bring the atmospheric CO2 levels to what is considered a "safe" level in a short enough period of time. The "safe" level has been cited as 350 ppm, and the time-frame available to achieve this could be anywhere from a few years to a couple of decades (or more), depending on who you listen to.
But the biggest requirement is that the atmospheric emissions need to be capped at the earliest, perhaps even right now, so that the atmospheric CO2 level does not climb any further, given that the carbon sinks such as the oceans and the forests have already reached their limits, and the carbon that is already in the atmosphere can be absorbed only at a slow rate by the existing forests (assuming we don't cut any more of them!).
The only way to stop the atmospheric CO2 concentration from rising any further is by CAPPING the TOTAL GHG emissions on a GLOBAL basis. There is NO other way. As simple as that! And that has been the rationale all along, behind the Kyoto Protocol, even though it did not go far enough for political and historic reasons, and the first phase was limited to commitments on the historically largest polluters. But without the participation of the US and Canada and Australia (though technically part of it), even the modest first step was sabotaged, making demands on the developing countries that much harder.
Whether one agrees with the Kyoto treaty or not, anyone with the least bit of intelligence has to agree on the need for capping the emissions on a global basis. And this "cap" or upper limit needs to be progressively, and aggressively, ramped down, again on a global basis, every year, for the next several years, while making sure that no further deforestation takes place, and while simultaneously taking other measures such as planting billions of trees, shutting down coal power plants, tar sands operations, switching to renewable energy systems, and so on.
All of the above still only refers to WHAT needs to be done. Now to the HOW part:
There is no escaping from some form of "carbon emission rationing" on a global basis, and translated and broken down to national and local levels, IF we are to achieve the objective of reducing total GHG emissions fast.
The problem now becomes one of how to first of all convince the public about the need for rationing, how to put in systems to implement this rationing while making sure that it is fair to everyone.
Here, I would like to refer you to George Monbiot's proposal of carbon rationing, as described in his book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning". In fact, he has devoted an entire chapter, early in the book, on just this, called "A Ration of Freedom." You can read excerpts on the internet, and also on Google books.
*******************************[Quote]
Rationing begins with a decision about the amount of carbon the world can emit every year. If, for example, it is correct to say that our 7 billion tonnes of current carbon emissions must be reduced to 2.7 by 2030, and if we want to make the biggest cuts sooner rather than later, we might decide that in 2012, the world should be producing no more than 5.5 billion tonnes. We divide that figure by the number of people we will expect to find on earth in 2012, and discover how much carbon everyone would be entitled to emit: it would be around 0.8 tonnes....
This means that some countries, generally the poorest ones, would be allowed to raise their emissions: even in 2030, Ethiopia, if its population remained stable, could emit five and a half times as much carbon as it does today. But the overall effect would be an annual contraction of global carbon emissions....
Continued below...
... Continued from above
Once a country has its allocation, it can then decide how its emissions should be parcelled out. In theory, you could simply hand everyone his or her global share.... But this would create an incredibly complex system. Everything you bought would need both a cash price and a carbon price. If, for example, you stopped to buy a punnet of strawberries, you would need to pay, say £1 for it, plus 0.01588 per cent of your carbon entitlement....
A much simpler system was devised by Mayer Hillman and refined by David Fleming. Both companies and people would need to use their carbon accounts when buying just two commodities: fuel and electricity. If, for example, the fuel and electricity that people consumed directly added up to 40 per cent of a country's carbon emissions, then the citizens of that country would be given 40% of its carbon budget. Everyone would get the same amount and no one would have to pay. We would need to use our carbon allowance only when paying our electricity or gas bills or filling up our cars. (Fleming's scheme could be extended a little to cover aeroplane and train journeys as well)....
The remaining 60 percent of the country's carbon budget would belong to the government. It keeps some for itself and auctions the rest either directly to companies wanting to buy fuel or electricity, or to carbon brokers who would then sell the entitlements to other corporations or to people who cannot stay within their budgets. The price, like that of any other commodity, would depend on the competition for the resource, which in turn would depend on its scarcity. So by the time you stop to buy the punnet of strawberries, the carbon required to produce it would already have been incorporated into its price, and you need to pay only in pounds. The more carbon-intensive a product is, the more expensive it will be.
But in creating a carbon rationing system, you are in effect creating a new currency. The entitlement to pollute will be accounted, saved, spent and exchanged much as money is today. As far as I can discover, no one has yet given it a name, except the rather dull 'carbon units.' So for want of a better term, i will call the new currency 'icecaps,' in the hope that the name will remind people what the system is for: it enables us to cap our carbon emissions to keep the planet cool.
The icecaps you are given can be traded with other people. If you reach the end of the year and find you haven't used all your allocation, you can sell the remainder to someone else. Or if you've used too much, you can buy the extra icecaps you need. You can buy or sell the unused rations in your local post office or bank... Of course, if everyone is trying to do the same thing, the price becomes very high indeed.
What this means is that the lady in the Rolls-Royce car might still be driving around, but only after she has transferred a good deal of money whor are poorer or more abstemious than she is. Economic justice is built into the system....
[End quote]********************************************
Monbiot's proposal, published in his book "Heat" in 2006, has elements similar to the "Fee and Dividend" promoted by James Hansen. But in talking about this system, Hansen has needlessly combined a bit of railing against the "cap and trade" system, with the unintended consequence of many Hansen groupies mindlessly reacting to the word "cap", NOT realizing that a "cap" is only an upper limit on emissions, set globally and allocated nationally. Hansen is human after all, but I feel that he should have been more careful about the effects of his railing, which he has done time after time, while promoting his "Fee and Dividend" system. I have NO DOUBT that without a CAP, the rate of emission reduction will be open-ended, and NOT governed by science, but by economics. So it needs to be coupled with a "cap", and that is why a legally binding international treaty becomes critical.
Assuming this idea or something similar is considered as effective, NOW comes the challenge of how to sell it to the public. This is where the rubber meets the road.
I have always felt that the biggest problem is NOT JUST out there, with the 1%, the corporations and even the capitalist system. The biggest problem, IMO, has always been with the PEOPLE who are addicted to their ill-gotten wealth and ill-gotten consumption made possible by CRIMINAL means, even though the criminal part of it is hidden from view, and would appear criminal only for those concerned about justice on a global basis. For our regular liberals, America is all there is, and so "justice" and "equity" to them only has a limited, narrow national context: me and my ilk, that is it! And for the Canadian liberals, even this is not much of a concern, as they are yet to experience the extremes of economic hardships by and large. For now, most of them are happy to cheer for their "local" NHL hockey team, while content that they are not as evil as the Americans, never mind that their per capita carbon footprint is right up there with the Americans'. But I digress.
The problem is about how to frame the issue. This is where right-wingers do a "better" job of getting their "message" across, resorting to outright lying, if necessary. Fighting climate change is framed as a "job killer" while the Keystone pipeline is pushed in the name of "jobs".
Look at how Canada's environment minister Peter Kent frames the "Kyoto Protocol" while announcing Canada's withdrawal from the treaty:
>>Kent said it would save Canada $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its Kyoto targets. "To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of either removing every car, truck, ATV, tractor, ambulance, police car and vehicle of every kind from Canadian roads or closing down the entire farming and agriculture sector and cutting heat to every home, office, hospital, factory and building in Canada,"..."<<
So, those who want immediate, drastic action on climate change need to do a better job at framing the issue. That is why I understand Bill McKibben's insistence on avoiding the appearance of being too "radical", just to preempt one more opportunity for the criminals to frame the issue to their advantage. But at some point, we'll have to say, "To hell with political correctness!" and start yelling the truth as we understand it.
Yes jclientelle, Alcyon, others,
How should we enact such a radical green policy?
You're not going to like my answer, I'm afraid. With the exception of sites like CD, most of the Public is still plugged into the "Disinformation Matrix" and "we have to realize that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged yet. They are so hopelessly dependent on the system..." to borrow Morpheous's line from "The Matrix" that they are going to fight for their right to pollute at will.
If we use carbon tax schemes like Acylon is suggesting, the one percent will just cheat. They'll invent Carbon Derivatives or some other "Enron" style Tom Foolery and we will accomplish nothing. The one percent wants to control and encourage energy consumption, and nothing in this world is going to stop them. In an honest society, carbon trading schemes might work. But in the presence of Mafia Capitalism, which excels in the Art of the undetected Ponzi Scheme, we haven't got a prayer of reducing actual emissions by taxing everything. The Once percent will just bail themselves out with those Carbon taxes, or start another war with it, like they are doing now with Social Security money in the General Fund.
So, if anyone is dissenting in the camp of the powers that be, and they want to have any chance of arresting this global thermal runaway and at least slow it down so that their children will survive, it has to be imposed on the world in general. It's apparent to me that we're losing all of our liberty anyway and that the powers that be are gearing up for world war anyway..... This huge military that the bankers have created is not going away anytime soon. So why not give them a better mission than to steal more resources "in a racket" as the highest decorated Marine, Smedely Butler once contended in his book "War is a Racket"?
Why not give the military the global job of enforcing a smokeless planet? They'd love that. If the loggers didn't disperse in the Amazon Rain Forest, guess what? Collateral Murder from the sky. If the robber baron won't quit whaling in the South Sea and dumping nuke waste on the sly: Boom. Anybody caught driving in a vehicle by themselves has to answer to a G.I. with trigger finger. And any coal plant running anywhere in the world past a certain date gets it. The same with super-polluting container ships: Boom. Thousands of new artificial fish reef just got created. Fishing trawler, garbage barge up to no good in the deep ocean? Boom.
Zero tolerance, not on drugs, but on carbon emissions instead. A War on Emissions.
Now, that kind of radical green action would be a nightmare for Libertarians like me. But the alternative is premature extinction. Humans have been in no-win situations before, like when the Nile dried up, or the food ran out on Easter Island, and they were able to pull together through the misery for a common cause. But it wasn't a choice to do so. The chief dictated it to the population. Now in the case of the Pharaoh or the Chief on Easter Island religion was employed to convince the masses to build aqueducts, pyramids or statues to the gods. Maybe today we could run a fake election or claim the President is talking to God.... Hey, it worked for George Bush!
Now, I would much rather OWS take over and have this done with Direct Democracy. That would be my feverant wish and first choice. But I'm not sure we have that much time. I'm not sure there's time to educate the population, since half of them in the US didn't graduate from high school and the "science" in Texas teaches the world is only 6000 years old cuz the bible says so.
So, we're in some deep chit here and it's time for the Hail Mary.
On 911 all flights were grounded over the US for Three Days. This provided a unique opportunity to see what would happen with a cold turkey solution. The absence of reflective contrails (ice/carbon vapor) raised average temps across the USA 1.8 degrees C. Once flying resumed, and the reflective white contrails were re-introduced, the temp again dropped.
Now we need to try it with Cold Turkey on Autos and Smokestacks. Say, suspend driving for a month and shut down coal plants. Get to know your neighbors, tell stories in the dark and plant trees during the day. Should have the opposite effect since auto emissions aren't reflective in a month and no heat is coming out of millions of tailpipes. If it's promising, impose it for a year on the world. Yes, I know, it's not going to be pretty, but the alternative is far worse after every chinaman and East Indian gets behind the wheel in the next few years (Three billion new drivers from hell).
That's what I think, since I have a baby son, and I care more for him than I do for myself. Now, let me just crawl down this manhole here before the One Percent Empire NeoCons stone me to death.
TJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Here are some interesting things from a NEW article about the Arctic Siberian Shelf Area permafrost and methane which were not mentioned in this article
Quotes from the new article… (“ The amount of carbon trapped in some types of permafrost — called (*yedoma*) — is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.”).
Continued article quotes… (“Most of the yedoma is in little-studied areas of northern and eastern Siberia. What makes that permafrost special is that much of it lies under lakes; the carbon below gets released as methane. Carbon beneath dry permafrost is released as carbon dioxide…. Using special underwater bubble traps, Walter and her colleagues found giant hot spots of bubbling methane that were never measured before because they were hard to reach…… “I don’t think it can be easily stopped; we’d really have to have major cooling for it to stop,” Walter said.”)… End article quotes..
Would anyone like to have the link for that article? I’ll post it here below.
..
..
Published on Thursday, September 7, 2006 by the Associated Press.
@ COMMON DREAMS archives title: "Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb’"
NEW article? __ In geological time,, six years is a few seconds... Things got worse fast since 2006.... Wait till next summer.
Seems like every year this decade has featured a "methane time bomb" panic or two, doesn't it? Maybe that's why experienced readers of climate news don't run around with their hair on fire every time they hear the phrase "methane time bomb."
If the "substantial increases in methane emissions from the Arctic" portended by any of these prior panics had materialized, we'd expect to see that reflected in the global methane data. People who follow climate news are a little confused about Semiletov's recent interview, because we're still not seeing any surge in the global methane data.
To me, the activity reported by Semiletov, coming as it did from a shallow sea, is worth treating as a canary/coalmine event.
It's worth treating as a potential canary-in-the-coal-mine event. Given Semiletov's stature and experience, the tone of his comments compels our attention, to see what the situation looks like when Semiletov publishes.
But the conclusion that the canary in the coal mine is now tottering strikes me as premature because we don't have any real information from Semiletov yet, and because we have conflicting information from Dlugokencky and the global methane record.
I characterise it as a canary event based on these analogies:
Semiletov's observation ~= canary collapsing.
Reflection in the global methane record ~= human miners collapsing
The collapse of the canary is a warning to the human miners that they're in danger because there's now too little oxygen in the air, a condition to which canaries are more sensitive than humans. The miners aren't collapsing yet (~the methane record hasn't changed yet), but an important precursor event has taken place..
It's probably a good analogy.
There you go again.
So WayneWR is running around with his "hair on fire"? You're clearly trying to paint WayneWR as a fanatic, instead of engaging in respectful debate.
Again, for the reader not familiar with Aleph Null. This person, out of the blue, attacks, insults, hurls innuendo, and then feigns civil discourse when the person Aleph Null attacks, responds in kind.
In short, Aleph Null is an antagonist, and a dishonest person who is not engaging in positive relations on this forum. The evidence is clear in this thread.
And hue_sir_name, as you can see, always sticks to the matter at issue and never resorts to profane, abusive personal attacks.
For the record, again, I'll point this out, THIS is how my discourse began with this dishonest person Aleph Null.
I had said, in a response to another post the following…
"The thought of rapidly depleting oxygen in the atmosphere is of course terrifying."
Then, the ever civil Aleph Null replies, in his very first correspondence with me ever on these forums the following…
"Oh for crying out loud. Please don't worry your little head over "rapidly depleting oxygen," unless you're a fish. Atcheson is not silly enough to speak of "rapidly depleting oxygen in the atmosphere.""
Again, you are the one that started the abusive attacks, with your insults, that are just as profane as a four letter word. You just don't have enough personal integrity to acknowledge such. .
So much for a person who claims to just stick "to the matter".
You are the hypocrite, not me. I've fully disclosed, that I indeed resort to attack, but in DEFENSE of myself, and others.
Again, you are a dishonest person.
That is not how your discourse began. It was an hour an a half before that, when you flamed me about not seeing the forest for the trees. In response to similarly colorful language about not suffocating unless you're a fish, you indulged in abusive cursing. And now Mr Manners is going to stalk my posts to critique my comportment. Get a life.
He didn't flame you NULL,.. That was honest and consrtuctive criticism... Accept it as such and wise up.
Saturation in the oceans or elsewhere? Perhaps the world system has a carrying capacity for methane, as with CO2 and other chemicals, that can be tipped past?
In the graph you link, I don't see a dramatic rise, but I see a steady trend upward, about 10% over just 25 years. Perhaps our "methane tank" is steadily being saturated, and the slow filling from the graph could become much more rapid filling?
Climate science is obviously hugely complex and it's almost impossible for non-experts like us to meaningfully speculate.
I humbly suggest listening to the climate scientists, if our aim is to understand climate science. It's not easy for a layman to form an opinion when there's a genuine scientific dispute, but it's certainly not out of reach for reasonably well informed people to have a good idea what's happening to Earth systems.
If we lose sight of scientific standards of evidence and disrespect the current state of knowledge and the competence of climate scientists, then we lose any hope of rational discourse and the whole discussion devolves into a shouting match.
This is a key aim of climate denialism: to frame scientific knowledge as just another opinion, no more valid than ignorance. Thus is science destroyed, for the whole point of science is effective communication toward the determination of contingent truths.
"I humbly suggest listening to the climate scientists, if our aim is to understand climate science. It's not easy for a layman to form an opinion when there's a genuine scientific dispute, but it's certainly not out of reach for reasonably well informed people to have a good idea what's happening to Earth systems."
That's why it's important to properly understand scientific statements like: "Based on what we see in the atmosphere, there is no evidence of substantial increases in methane emissions from the Arctic in the past 20 years."
This scientist doesn't see IN THE ATMOSPHERE evidence of increased methane. There are other possible places that methane could have been collecting. Don't oversimplify.
Your point holds to some degree, but still I don't quite get it. Scientists like Dlugokencky, carbon specialists, don't just study the rise and fall of atmospheric carbon, they study the carbon cycling through terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric systems. So you're right that addressing only the atmospheric methane is a simplification.
But the most important problem with methane is its great potency as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. It is this property which could lead to a self-reinforcing feedback of more heat from methane causing more melting causing more methane. Also, most of the methane which dissolves into the water (or settles to earth) will stay there - will not wind up in the atmosphere.
Semiletov's comments specifically address venting of such velocity that the gas is injected into the air. This is the main problem: methane in the atmosphere. That's what people ask Dlugokencky about, and that's what he comments on. Sometimes a simplification like "the problem is atmospheric methane" is a useful simplification. Not an oversimplification.
You "humbly" suggest NULL... LOL... I flat out suggest we retire about 9,800 of the climate scientists who have accomplished shittt,, who every year say,,, "Things are happening much faster than or friggin computer models have indicated>"
Instead listen to the oceanic bio-chemists, geologists, earth scientists, Bill McKibbens and pay strict rapt attention to what they say and or are reporting.
I believe that the absorbtion of CO2 by the oceans has already resulted in acidification that is better tolerated by jellyfish than by algae, bony fish, corals, and shellfish. So the changes are underway. Other factors, such as runoff and oil pollution, contribute to anoxia or dead zones which are also places where green sea plants cannot thrive, and thus cannot replace oxygen under the sea or in the atmosphere.
~NULL~ wrote, in a smart-ass manner, ("Seems like every year this decade has featured a "methane time bomb" panic or two, doesn't it?").
Yes indeed NULL, , ever since at least 2003 there have been dire warnings and every year it has become (far worse)...... ~John Atcheson's~ paper in 2004 for example, he warned us of what was coming if we didn't act then to prevent a catastrophic disasster and what he predicted is now happening,,, just as Atcheson preicted,, only a bit sooner thant he had predicted.
Meanwhile; due to denying people like NULL, nothing has been done to prevent it and the soon to come RUNAWAY global warming,, which will be (*irrversible*) and lead to an eventual mass extintion of life.
Null was not sent here to (help), as he states,,, he was sent here to discredit Wayne, as the ones who hire such ilk know exactly who WayneWR is and they do not like what I write... I am a thorn in their sides..
On every website I have ever posted on, a closet GW denier shows up,, one who is very well versed in computer use and an excellent writer,, pretending to be against GW deniers', but they are very adept at deceit and have other team members to support them, or sock-puppets perhaps, we never really know for certain if they are or aren't sock-puppets... NULL will also often attack any who may agree with me.
And lie? __ Oh yeah, Indeed... For just ONE example, NULL here attacked another for mentioning POSSIBLE lack of oxygen. Why did NULL do that? What purpose? NULL has previously posted comments about a potential of oxygen depletion due to acidification of our oceans and the demise of the ocean green plant life, "phytoplankton", and he was correct.
Who knows what a massive amount of methane will do in the atmosphere?__ That once killed hundreds and all of their livestock,, wild animals and birds in a 30 mile radius, when methane erupted from a lake in Africa... What would occur if 1 or 2 trillion tons erupted from the Arctic? Possible? ,, Yes indeed, it is possible, but maybe not very likely all at once.
NULL often post credible comments, He's dont that here, he builds up an audience who see he is quite intelligent and well informed, which he is... Then he attacks Wayne and tries to discredit him... Smart guy.
But here on this thread and another prior therad he has shown himself to be a closet GW deneir, one who does not wish to see (anything) done in enough time to stop the Arctic from becoming ice free... Who wants the Arctic to be ice free? __ The oil and shipping barons do..
NULL has a good support team here too, some who write loooooonggg annoying comments about things that are really not worth talking about, but they disrupt the thread's issue.
And insults? NULL complains about insults.. LMAOff. The nasty and obnoxious insults he has slung at me here are a trip... Not vulgar so as to possibly be barred, but hurtful shittty insulsts... And if caught in an error due to something he had previously posted and then writes a totally opposite comment on another thread in argument, he will lie about what he had previously written and try to say that was not what he meant... Yeah, deceitful.
Null says ALL we have to do to solve the GW issue, is to do as the scientist Dr. James Hansen promotes,, which of course will be as helpful to reverse GW as pisssing on a forest fire... But disagree with Dr. Hansen in any way and you are a dirty rotton lying no good harmful freak of a drunken shill-whore for Anthony Watts... LOL.
If I was bothered by what I see on this computer screen, those types of insults would hurt... But his purpose of course is to discredit me at every opportunity.
NULL repeatedly wrote here about the five scientists who in 2008 said the Arctic methane threat was nothing to be concerned about... They were wrong,,, as is clearly obvious now by what is occurring in the Arctic.
I have quoted those scientist's work many times,,, but I have never agreed with their (assumption) that the Arctic methane threat wasn't a seriou issue for our (present time).
When this news of Dr.Semiletov broke and prior to it being a article here at CD, NULL had read the news article and on another thread in part wrote,,, quote, > ("This looks, like, really bad... I vowed not to talk about this because it literally makes me sick to my stomach,,, but it's too important to deny.... These recent observations are startling, to put it mildly.")... End NULL's comment.
Now,,, NULL has sided with the NY Times writer who quoted a climate scinetis's 2008 iincorrect remarks and says Dr. Semiletov is wrong... Go figure..... I have,,, deceit... Smart guy.
And NULL says climate models cannot compute the amount of methane in the Arctic and comput what would occur if specific percentages are released in specific time periods... Bullshit.. any math figures can be computed by a computer and computed into a climate prediction model.
My wife Julie just read all the comments, and was surprised that I had called for "cool heads" and depicted many here as "alarmists."
The wise man listens carefully to his wife - so I'll try and explain.
Commenter Thomas Jefferson:
I do agree with the precautionary position you implied in your post. As a mountaineer, I apply it all the time, which is why I am still alive and posting here.
What alarms me is seeing again the herd mentality, even on this progressive website.
As Aleph Null has pointed out repeatedly, and if I may take the liberty to paraphrase Aleph, it is not climate scientists who are in need of education - it is the public - including many posting here.
The real and original Thomas Jefferson pointed out that "from the conclusion of this [Revolutionary] war we shall be going downhill... the people...their rights disregarded...will forget themselves but in the sole facility of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights..."
If you actually read and understood those words of the man who effectively wrote the Declaration of Independence, you will recognize in them a great and prescient genius, and you will doubtless see in the present day the extent to which America has fulfilled this prophecy.
There is no economy to speak of in the United States save war and finance, which is anti-life and anti-nature - and thus anti-economic, despite the machinations of the bean-counters who practice their art of GDP smoke and mirrors day by day, century after century.
Economics is all about life in the long run, and saving is part of its practice, not mindless spending to boost a GDP which reflects accurately only our profligacy and death wish.
Now we have these Arctic Methane Plumes of large size, but they are actually inevitable, given our way of doing "business as usual."
If I may generalize for effect, realizing this does not apply to some:
We are afraid of the Methane Torches, let's call them IGORS in honor of their discoverer, but not so afraid as to change "business as usual", i.e, war and finance.
You want to be alarmed - all right - how about the recent bill, passed by Congress, and as I now understand, given assent by the President of the United States of America, which effectively completes the evisceration of your Constitution, the only remaining check on power and privilege, and makes the USA a formal dictatorship.
I am told seventy-one percent of Americans now doubt the truth and accuracy of man-made global warming.
By implication, science itself is under attack.
Maybe we can bottle and sell IGORS???
Why do the right thing, when the wrong is so profitable.
Compared to the mindset of the global anti-economy, those plumes are small potatoes.
Manysummits
=======
My current status: I am unemployed, so "I am not a scientist" officially. In fact, I call myself an artist because I'm painting when not reading or relearning my native language and culture. BUT, I did learn the statistics and mathematics (my major) involved in research in graduate school. I know a few things about what you can and can not conclude from data/research/experimentation depending on the set-up/parameters/observations/etc. Additionally, I also worked as a systems analyst for over a decade until recently when I moved/lost my job/my personal world came crashing down/whatever.
Why I'm telling y'all this information about myself: Is there a way to find out what equations and parameters the most recent and accepted models are based on? How the observations were collected? Basically, a start to maybe do my own research so I can see for myself what window of time we might have left, depending on business-as-usual (because changes will not be made in time, as we have seen from observations of the past). I'm not associated with a university anymore and am not in the U.S. anymore, so my resources are a bit limited: I can pay a little bit of money for journal subscriptions, but would like to limit my spending as much as possible since I am unemployed. I've been through a lot in the past year (and I was diagnosed with PTSD just before my personal life's SHTF even further), so I apologize for asking these simple questions that I would have normally known automatically the answers to in another time and place.
I guess, basically, I'm considering a new way to spend my time that might actually make a difference in knowing where we're at within the environmental destruction timeline. Especially in light of these most recent observations made. Good, basic links on where to start my research is what I'm asking for. Maybe a good (but relatively cheap) way to access the actual research papers (as opposed to abstracts only) without needing to be employed by a university (although there is one near me that I can possibly get an affiliation with, if I need to - but I'm not personally quite ready for official/administrative work and paperwork).
I'm sorry to hear that your life crashed; I sincerely hope you can soon reassemble the bits in a satisfying way, or build a satisfying new life if easier.
As to doing your own research, I'd suggest getting a copy of Hansen's Storms to begin with. It's a few years old now, but his digest of the data and his conclusions certainly seem to me a good starting point for anyone.
Thank you for your concern. I'm restarting my life from scratch in my original country. There are no old pieces left to pick up that I can use. I can't even wear most of the clothes that I brought with me because I lost weight and the climate here is so different (one of the reasons I moved, it is colder here, so knew that would happen). It's a slow process, but I'm working on it.
As for research, I'm looking into finding the equations/formulas/analysis that others have used and maybe checking for accuracy, as well as maybe doing my own analysis if that is possible. I've read plenty of articles and some books on climate change, but those give you an interpretation of research. Sometimes interpretations can be wrong. Sometimes people writing an article about other people's research don't understand the research. (Not Hansen, he's a researcher himself, I'm talking about journalists unfamiliar with the topic or those that have their own biases towards that particular topic.) I'm sure you've read conflicting articles giving different conclusions about the same research. With something this important, I would like to read the actual published journal articles - not someone else's interpretations that can be a result of misunderstanding. I have the training and experience to understand and do my own analysis. I would like to put it to good use.
Just to be clear, I know that the earth is heating up. I moved because of it. This is personal for me. I'm one of the fragile canaries that would have died if I didn't move somewhere cooler. There will be many more others like me in the future. I would like to know how soon.
onebody
Yes, best of luck to you. A couple of suggestions:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
Online resource to free "scholarly publications" of James Hansen et al, regarded by many as the number one climate scientist alive today.
Particulary: "Earth's Energy Imbalance"; "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?"; Paleoclimate Implications for for Human Made Climate Change"
You can add yourself to Dr. Hansen's mailing list. for free.
----------------------
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/researchnews/tippingtowardstheunknown/thenineplanetaryboundaries.4.1fe8f33123572b59ab80007039.html
"Planetary Boundaries" - nine quantified, entire paper from Johan Rockstrom et al. at the Stockholm Resilience Centre free for down load - highly recommended.
Of course, there are a wealth of papers listed in the papers cited in the reference sections, some of them "Open Access" (free).
I'd be happy to provide more info - just tell me what you need?
Good Luck
Mike - in Calgary
=======
Thank you. I'll look into those as a beginning. I also just opened a jstor basic (free) account right after I posted. I'm following links, and might have a way to get full (or more than basic,at least) access from here, it just takes a bit of work to get it. So I can start off with your sources and work on access at the same time.
Again, thank you.
onebody,
I can second Mike's recommendation of Hansen's papers as an intro. Just start at his website with the most recent papers and keep reading.
But it sounds like you're interested in really applying your skills to serious analysis. For that you might take a look at the CESM (Community Earth System Model), an open source climate model from NCAR.
NASA GISS makes climate data (and models) freely available here.
Inevitably, if you read all the supporting documentation available you'll still have some questions how to put it all together. Or you might have some questions at the outset, because there are other open-source climate models out there besides CESM. I don't know which model is best suited for an individual researcher like yourself. And you'll want some textbooks, probably.
Anyhow, I suggest you take questions like these to realclimate.org, the climate scientists' blog. They start an open thread at the beginning of each month, where rookie questions are welcome.
proportions are epic
2007 - arctic waters nearly melted away
2011 - CO2 hits record high at fastest pace ever
2011 - methane pipes grow an order of magnitude in one year
2011 - methane venting by natural gas industry starts unstoppable runaway heating
The American Dream is like a shiny methane bomb whose fuse we choose to light.
Thank you for mentioning gas fracking. Joe Romm, who has a very good feeling for the relative potential quantities of various methane sources, is very worried about methane leakage from 100,000 gas fracking operations.
The steepest part of the global atmospheric methane graph, from 1984 to 1991, coincides with a period of massive careless oil extraction operations in the Soviet Union, leaking vast quantities of methane. In 1991 they switched to better practices to stem the leakage.
I recall reading about methane hydrates, clathrates, in 1998 (at age 42), and wrote that this type of release is what I had hoped to avoid in my lifetime. For me, articles of this type mark the end of the Beginning of the End.
The process has now evolved into full-scale Climate Change in my book.
After doing research on this story, I wonder about the validity of it. No scientific studies posted online. No videos. And for a story so important, why only one small interview with a small independent press?
Does anyone know where one might find more?
Both Aleph Null and I posted links to studies and items that explained and linked to studies, unless they've been scrubbed. RealClimate in its reportage of the American Geophysical Union's conference has a lot of commentary related to the research behind this article and is a good place to start--try the Day 5 comments first.
You raise some good points about the paucity of further information about Semiletov's observations. The only further info from Semiletov is an abstract from last week's AGU conference, but that was submitted before the 2011 results were in. One of the comments underneath this write-up at Neven's blog reproduces the abstract.
All I can find is discussion of the Independent story. There is no other current interview with any member of the expedition, and if anyone was taking pictures, they're saving them for later. The AGU Day 5 thread at RealClimate has some people talking about this. One of them is wondering where the pictures and video are, like you.
It's somewhat unorthodox for a scientist to grant an interview like this months before the research paper is prepared, but that's not really cause to doubt the validity of what Semiletov has told the interviewer. The scientific publication process moves at what used to be called "a glacial pace." Three years from data collection to publication is about par for the course. Semiletov might have conscientiously considered that letting out some early news of this could help raise awareness.
If I find any more informative links on this story I'll post them below.
I just read Revkin's blog about this article, subtitled "Apocolypse Not", at the NY Times-- http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/ --regarding this report (sorry, not sure how to link). Those of you with a science background, would you please weigh in with a response?
RVingRetiree made note of Revkin's article upthread, so there are some responses up there.
I've been following Revkin's work for years, and he seems to get worse and worse with a weird "middle-ground" pose he strikes, drawing a moral equivalence between the advocates and enemies of science. Some of that attitude surfaced during Revkin's interview of Naomi Klein last week.
So I'm inclined to distrust Revkin, but the job he did with this article looks maybe a little better than his usual product. It's possible he's hoodwinked me by taking statements out of context, but the voices he invokes on the side of "now wait a second" are extremely credible. In particular, Ed Dlugokencky is widely regarded as the pre-eminent authority on global methane.
There's been very little additional information out there. Revkin should be commended for at least broadening access to expert discussion, and doing so expeditiously.
see the little dark blue areas where the methane bombs have gone off.
What happens when the whole shelf goes off? Unstoppable. No going back.
The booming natural gas fracking industry will continue to vent massive amounts of methane at record pace. Politically unstoppable. COP!7, who are you kidding? What makes us think that the intellectual good outweighs the visceral bad of daily life? Trust in magical thinking is a good hunter/survival skill, but not helpful without practical strategy. We need a global transparent goal oriented society. It's time to grow up and leave the greed is good world behind. A global new society. We need it fast. It's up to the young. Good luck kids, you'll need it.
Good point Rob, but how can we rationalize the legacy of wealth, our own insecurities and the countless poor who will suffer first and worst?
We can't that is why we won't act until we have to. It's in our nature. You idiot!
Go to hell Rob!
No. you go to hell!