Posted on 06/03/2017 5:17:31 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Researchers have discovered hundreds of huge craters, with many over 3,000 feet wide, on the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.
The craters in the Barents Sea, north of Norway and Russia, formed through huge mounds full of methane exploding suddenly and catastrophically around 12,000 years ago, and are still leaking methane.
Scientists say the discovery could help explain why so many craters have appeared in Siberia over recent decades, with the same processes causing these explosive events.
...
he Arctic ocean floor hosts vast amounts of methane trapped as hydrates, which are ice-like, solid mixtures of gas and water.
These hydrates are stable under high pressure and cold temperatures.
The ice sheet provides perfect conditions for subglacial gas hydrate formation, in the past as well as today.
Some 2000 metres of ice loaded what now is ocean floor with heavy weight.
Under the ice, methane gas from deeper hydrocarbon reservoirs moved upward, but could not escape.
It was stored as gas hydrate in the sediment, constantly fed by gas from below, creating over-pressured conditions.
...
'As the ice sheet rapidly retreated, the hydrates concentrated in mounds, and eventually started to melt, expand and cause over-pressure.
'The principle is the same as in a pressure cooker: if you do not control the release of the pressure, it will continue to build up until there is a disaster in your kitchen.
'These mounds were over-pressured for thousands of years, and then the lid came off.
'They just collapsed releasing methane into the water column' says Andreassen.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Somebody let Bloomberg know. He’s got to take action on this! /sarc
I recently had a methane blowout and annoyed my wife.
Has Hillary been there? Do they grow cabbages?
Tell her it is better to blow out than to blow up.
Maybe if we had some really big corks, we could get carbon credits.
But petroleum is made from “thick layers of biological mats...”
CH4 beats CO2 by a wide margin.
When are we going to tax the Antarctic sea floor?
Musta been a lot of dinosaurs up there...
Wooly Mammoth farts
Or better yet use it before it is released into the atmosphere.
Earth farts. Blame Mother Gaia...
There does seem to have been a whole lot of climate changing going on 12 -14 thousand years ago...
Well, yea! But that would be wrong. Or so they say.
I read recently about one found in Russia and they were feebly trying to connect it to global warming....
The Methane was there long before the dynosaurs came to be.
Better start harvesting these hydrates. Otherwise someone could drop an acetylene torch, and BOOM!
5.56mm
Earth Farts Cause Global Warming
China claims a recent breakthrough in harvesting this stuff:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3555227/posts
Thanks. Saw that. Didn’t say how, but it’s a good idea.
5.56mm
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