And why no mention of the much higher methane levels of the Paleocene and the 21 times stronger greenhouse potential of methane over CO2?
What I smell is a funding deficit. Orbital changes won't draw Ford, Pew or even NASA money. Methane isn't a by-product of industry and not a big field of study unless you want to be laughed at by the general public for studying cow farts.
But if you can have those billions of tons CH4 meet free O2 on their bubble to the surface and convert into that dastardly CO2, then you have something that you can beat industry over the head with to make it worthy of funding.
BTW. I wonder what happens to the 4 leftover hydrogen atoms in his model? Maybe he's come up with the key to a hydrogen economy --- farts in the bathtub, so to speak.
The PETM mechanism is (apparently) not related to orbital cycle forcing.
And why no mention of the much higher methane levels of the Paleocene and the 21 times stronger greenhouse potential of methane over CO2?
Why does that need to be mentioned? I'm not following you here.
The methane release scenario for the PETM has been around awhile. This isn't new. The rate-of-release comparison and the number of ocean cycles that it occurred over, comparing the PETM to the modern era, is what I haven't seen before. The conversion of methane to CO2 goes back to the "Ocean Burps" link I posted higher in the thread -- dated 2003, I think.
If CH4 is oxidized by O2, then the H gets converted to H20. I.e., CH4 + 2 O2 --> C02 + 2 H20.