The Lena River flowing through Russian Siberia and empties into the Arctic Ocean. This satellite image shows the river delta, where methane concentrations are unexpectedly high.
Posted on 05/04/2008 11:11:18 AM PDT by gleeaikin
Researchers have found alarming evidence that the frozen Arctic floor has started to thaw and release long-stored methane gas. The results could be a catastrophic warming of the earth, since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But can the methane also be used as fuel?
AP
It's always been a disturbing what-if scenario for climate researchers: Gas hydrates -- hard clumps of ice and methane, conserved by freezing temperatures and high pressure -- could grow unstable and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, the result would be a drastic acceleration of global warming. Until now this idea was mostly academic. Now it seems more likely that it will.
Russian polar scientists have strong evidence that the first stages of melting are underway. They've studied the largest shelf sea in the world, an underwater area six times the size of Germany. The scientists are presenting their data at the European Geosciences Union this week in Vienna.
REPRINTS n the permafrost bottom of the 200-meter-deep sea, enormous stores of gas hydrates lie dormant in mighty frozen layers of sediment. The carbon content of the ice-and-methane mixture here is estimated at 540 billion tons. "This submarine hydrate was considered stable until now," says the Russian biogeochemist Natalia Shakhova, a member of the Pacific Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok.
The Russian scientists have estimated what might happen when this Siberian permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes. They believe the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelvefold. "The result would be catastrophic global warming," say the scientists. The greenhouse-gas potential of methane is 20 times that of carbon dioxide, as measured by the effects of a single molecule.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Well, a little decent legislation should clear this up as well. < /sarcasm>
Methane eh ?
Did anyone ever read the sci-fi novel “Denver is Missing ?”
The Lena River flowing through Russian Siberia and empties into the Arctic Ocean. This satellite image shows the river delta, where methane concentrations are unexpectedly high.
It isn’t a linear relationship.
“Green house” gasses can only have so much affect before the affect becomes saturated. Just more BS from the BS generators.
If you want to worry about something, worry about sun spots returning. If they don’t millions if not billions are going to starve.
"Europe is heating up much faster than climate researchers expected, and now they think they know why: air made dramatically cleaner by anti-pollution programs. With less particle pollution clouding the air, more sunlight is coming through and the continent is getting warmer.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
The Great Global Warming Swindle Video - back on the net!! (click here)
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Light your own farts :)
Read the entire article and if I were you I'd be saying:
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE
However, since I'm me, here's my comment: yawn.
By my calculations if all of this was released, it would make up 0.011% of the atmosphere; something like 8 times its current concentration, and about 1/4 the amount of CO2 currently in the atmosphere.
So perhaps this would result in a "drastic" increase in "global warming." But if it's a "greenhouse" gas...wouldn't it make the Earth more like a greenhouse? And aren't greenhouses, well, kind of nice? That doesn't sound catastrophic...it sounds nice. Unless people near the release are asphyxiated...
The Japanese are doing exactly that with an undersea trench off their coast that holds approx 1,000,000,000,000 (yup, trillion) cubic feet of the stuff.
Of course, the greens are having a tizzy fit about that, too...
The Japanese are doing exactly that with an undersea trench off their coast that holds approx 1,000,000,000,000 (yup, trillion) cubic feet of the stuff.
Of course, the greens are having a tizzy fit about that, too...
erf pharts.
When does the nitrous oxide get to the levels of “we are all having a really good time...really?”
Thanks gleeaikin.
GLOBAL WARMING DENIER on CSPAN 2
CSPAN 2 | May 4, 2008 | Lawrence Solomon
Posted on 05/04/2008 1:31:14 PM PDT by skeptoid
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2011149/posts
“Worry about sunspots [not] returning.” “If they don’t millions if not billions are going to starve.”
Yes, I worry about that too. In fact there are so many scary scenarios out there that my main worry is that the world is terribly overpopulated. We need to give great encouragement to reducing the birthrate, with effective family planning, education of women, encouraging later marriages, and, of course, abstainance where it makes sense.
Dangers which have been covered especially on the Catastrophism ping list include; supervolcanos, large meteor and comet strikes, rapid global warming or cooling. Then there is the fact we are running out of fuels, with the sudden realization that burning food could cause mass starvation and warfare, some of which could be nuclear.
Just this evening there was a report of a volcano in Chile which has not erupted for thousands of years. No information yet on how big it is, but a really large one goes off every 50 to 100 years, causing severe cold spells, flooding and other phenomena.
There’s little risk of worldwide starvation — apart from nations run by despots who use food as a weapon against the people, and/or buy the entire crop for shipping into a hot market. The propaganda campaign against “burning food” probably didn’t originate inside OPEC, but the funding probably does.
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