andygates | Subsea methane release documented

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Subsea methane release documented

You know that theory about how methane's trapped under permafrost and it could be a Bad Thing if it was to be released? Well, it looks like it's happening.

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University, in an Independent article: "An extensive area of intense methane release was found [in the Laptev Sea, North of Siberia]. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."

"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."

Oh, crap.

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Oh dear.

Oh dear.

This is one of those things I've always had stashed in the back of my mind as a critical tipping point for phase transition.

Exactly. It's not exactly a rosy picture. What do you reckon, toasty steamball Earth or anoxic nothing-left-but-the-slimes Earth?

The world has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. So it depends on what timescale you want to use. Life already exists here, and life is the thing that allows this unstable mix of gases we call an atmosphere to exist together.

The mistake many people make is to think that the end result will be a dead, sand-blasted, Mad Max apocalyptic Earth with people running around in fur bikinis armed with knives. That's not likely to happen. It's far more likely that the North Atlantic Conveyor will shut down — almost like an emergency safety valve on a boiler. Ordinary maintenance feedback hasn't worked, so the big guns come into play. Once the Conveyor shuts down we get some form of ice growth, increasing albedo and putting the brakes on the warming (although how this happens exactly depends on what El Nino is up to and also a few more cosmic cycles such as solar activity and Precession).

What global warming really means is that the human species is taking the direct route to hell by way of a handbasket held together with second-rate sticky tape. We're busy wiping out top predators and their environmental niches, so completely fucking the ecosystem as we know it. But there have been mass extinctions before. Evolution will, eventually, take care of that. Where there is a niche for a large top predator, a large top predator will evolve. It's not going to be a land of ants, scorpions and cyanobacteria.

What it won't be is nice for humans. We're going to come under greater and greater pressure as things heat up. Look at what they're calling the "credit crunch" and look at the hardship it is causing. One of the big drivers behind that is the price of oil. Hey look! Fundamentally this is a closed system and when critical resources get scarce competition becomes rife in the population, with the weaker members being outcompeted. That we're doing it financially is a reflection of what makes a human organism "fit" within human culture. With global warming that pressure is going to be felt in areas even more fundamental. Food. Clean water. Land on which to live and cultivate food.

It won't be like in the movies. There won't be any of the heroism or the romance. It's going to be dirty, petty, miserable and selfish.

Edited 2008-09-25 09:34 (UTC)

Yay.

But then, genuine yay if we're not looking at an anoxic event or anything realy bogus. Just your garden-variety accelerated-warming catastrophe with mass starvation and migration and heavy weather.

I might just have to make a fur bikini, just so's there is at least one.

I doubt we'll get an anoxic event because of the rapid-response mechanism of coastal-shelf phytoplankton. Currently iron is the limiting resource, ironically because there's plenty of phosphate from eutrophication.

Disease will be a big killer as well, don't forget. Plagues thrive in situations of highly stressed organisms. Never mind AIDs — I mean the real nasty killers like cholera and diptheria and influenza and the black death.

Like you say, it's not about the polar bears. They're just a poster child because nobody wants to look at millions of bloated human corpses. And that's before the political and military reactions to the inevitable mass-migration. Disease loves that too.

See, you guys can talk secure socket layers, co-ax cables and TCP/IP protocol. Me, I know about atmospheric emissions, plagues, death, famine, oceanic-atmospheric forcing, climate modelling and How Humans Are Fucking Themselves In The Ass With A Twelve Inch Black Mamba.

And yet you guys get paid more than me. How does that work?

If humans were smart enough to grok what environmental scientists are worth, it would be smart enough to pull the mamba out of its collective ass before any serious reaming took place.

I suppose another reason that the scientists don't get listened to is they're all fill of predictions and doom but:

As a producer, I notice that not many of them [science-types] come up with stuff that keeps my business afloat. That keeps sales going across counter in a profitable or economically sustainable manner.

And if the sales ain't there, then personally I'm broke. So while you might have your utopia, I'd be the one sleeping under the bridge - as will all those whose livelihoods depend on my business paying its bills and so on through the economical cycle.

Perhaps if I wasn't paying 35% of available funds to the government and a pretty large wad of notes to the local council to provide libraries and roading (and bridges to sleep under) then I might have funds to pursue some of the scientists expensive pipedreams.

You want environmental sustainability?
Then you'd better cook up something economically sustainable.
Else no one will (can) afford to buy it (literally)!

They're not predictions of doom, they're predictions of what will probably happen.

I hate when the general unedumacted public confuse science for opinion. :(

I really don't know, but if you figure it out, tell the teachers.

that's really not good.
(predictable, almost obvious, but really not good)

Combine that with the recent research findings that plants use less CO2 as the temperature goes up and you wonder what the outcome will be.

Actually, what happens to methane in the atmosphere? I assume that unlike Co2 it's a short term greenhouse gas that gets broken down eventually.
Does it and what's the timescale?

9-15 years as opposed to CO₂'s 50-100. However, it's also 20 times as effective as a greenhouse gas.

So you get a short, intense period of warming - which feeds back to release more of the trapped methane until it's all gone. In geological time, it's almost instantaneous.

There's more methane in the atmosphere now than there has been for 400,000 years. 60% of methane release to atmosphere comes from human sources (such as landfill gas).

In geological time, yes, it's almost instantaneous. Like I say: life on earth isn't under threat. Human life on earth is under threat. But people haven't quite grasped that yet, in the same way that teenagers think they are immortal. They think it's all about saving the tigers and the elephants and the pandas. It's not really. It's already too late for most of the conservation mascots. The oil industry is fucking up the Amazon and about to try for the shale oil in Alaska. Might as well quit worrying about the polar bears and the Jaglee-ars.

A well-known conservationist recently admitted that it's entirely hopeless. When asked why he keeps going he said it's because it's not about the winning, it's about being on the right side. That brings a level of moral obectivity to conservation that I'm afraid evolution doesn't recognise. We're going to fuck over every species with which we share this planet, and in doing so we're going to fuck over ourselves while the technologically optimistic and the blinkered nay-sayers tell us we'll be just fine because it's not real/we'll find a way to sequester the carbon in time/scientists don't know what they're talking about anyway/we'll move to Mars.

Fuckspuds.

Edited 2008-09-25 10:01 (UTC)

"Drill baby, drill," to quote the fucktard prime.

CO2 has a timescale?
What does it break down into?

or do you mean absorbed (plants (very limited, that's a cycle), or ocean (acid time)).

CO₂ has a timescale in the atmosphere. Everything does. Pretty fortunate, really.

Some methane will be broken down by the activity of free radicals. But while oxidation by the hydroxyl radical is the main sink, it's not the only one. Methane is also taken up by soils.

When you're talking about timescales of effect as a greenhouse gas, I wouldn't have thought the method of removal from the atmospheric reservoir was of major concern.

Edited 2008-09-25 11:26 (UTC)

There's plankton calcification too. Though that mechanism might break if increased atmospheric CO2 increases the acidity of the oceans...

Here's some joy: the last comparable period of sudden warming, which may have been down to a methane-release event, took place so rapidly that the geological record can't resolve a timescale (the resolution's about 1000 years). And it took 100,000 years to settle back down again.

'Welcome to the Hot Earth: Home of modern Humanity. Remember our old combustion-using forebears in the Age of Waste? Back then, they had something called "snow"...'

atmospheric CO2 levels were pretty stable in recent times (last 100,000 years or so), suggesting that removal and release were roughly balanced.

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atmospheric CO2 levels were pretty stable in recent times (last 100,000 years or so), suggesting that removal and release were roughly balanced.
<plant absorbs CO2, plant dies, bacterial action releases CO2>

Now we are releasing massive amounts of CO2 taken out of the cycle millions of years ago. I'm not sure that that CO2 will be taken back out of the atmosphere. It'll join the cycle, but in order for the CO2 levels to drop back down again, there has to be a mechanism of removal above and beyond the normal cycling.
A massive increase in biomass would do that, but I've not seen any sensible plans for how to get that to happen and I can't see it happening naturally.

Methane is different...that can get broken down relatively easily to more stable forms (CO2 + H2O). So for the medium term (beyond the 9 - 15 you mention), I consider that to be adding to the CO2 pool, rather than a more long term methane pool.

CH₄ + OH —> CH₃ + water.

The immediate effect of this is increased levels of water vapour in the troposphere, which has a negative impact on the ozone layer. After a series of further reactions, IIRC, it becomes an aldehyde, but I'd have to get my environmental chemistry book out when I get home to check. i know it's not quite as simple as CH₄ + OH —> CO₂ + H₂O.

CH4 + 2(O2) -> CO2 + 2(H2O)
there may be lots of intermediate steps, but that'll probably be what happens overall (if an atmospheric process).
I suppose there could be a bacterial process, in which case it might get incorporated into the hydrocarbons of the bacteria. But eventually the bateria will die or get eaten and it'll go to CO2 eventually as that breaks down.

If "eventually" is what's concerning you, then the 9-15 years timescale is of no use because there are many intermediate steps with many various processes and many sinks and many timescales, so there's no point limiting yourself to methane. It's a natural closed system.

I don't have the entirety of the various steps and loops in the carbon cycle in my head, I'm afraid, but I'd be very relucant to come to any conclusions based on an atmospheric methane timescale of 9-15 years and "eventually it turns into carbon dioxide".

Thought I just had that I don't know if it holds any weight.

If you want an increase in biomass then how much of that would get taken up by increased tree growth as the warm belts move north? Probably not much, almost certainly not enough (and frankly we should stop cutting down tropical rainforests as well) but does that make any sense

plankton blooms, from seeding the sea with iron is what I was thinking of. It's been suggested. Doesn't sound like something that'll make the difference to me, but not my chosen specialised subject.
It's an awful lot of carbon that's being chucked into the air at the moment.

I can't see that CO2 has a finite life span in the atmosphere. Certainly I've not heard of a mechanism that will take it out in anything like a suitable timespan.
It took a very very long time for the oil and coal to be laid down.
Growing trees and burying them seems like a lot of effort.
Lets hope for fusion power, lots of CO2 fixing equipment and filling the holes we've just dug back in.

flitljm thought plants would take up the strain over a longish period...but this suggests maybe not:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7620921.stm
though I suppose that is just for plants being out of the zone they like. They'll migrate with the temperature they like eventually.

Geoegineering gives me the willies - it's such a ripe ground for unintended consequences that I'd be amazed if there was adequate international agreement for it to go ahead.

The last time we had a major temperature spike, the slack was taken up over a period of tens of thousands of years...

Maybe we should just hope the azolla ferns do their thang (only without freshwater or a sealed Arctic basin... bah)?

Every living thing on Earth has carbon in it. The sea takes up carbon. Rocks take up carbon. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just part of the carbon reservoir in the Earth as a whole. There have been periods in Earth's history where there has been more CO₂ in the atmosphere than there is now, so evidently it has a finite time in the atmosphere.

The problem is that currently we are increasing CO₂ emissions while not increasing (and in some cases decreasing) carbon sinks. Natural cycles are all about balance. Life itself is a delicate but dynamic balance. You can't reduce the Earth to a simple series of stoichiometric equations. If that were the case you might as well start hurtling trees into space because they'll become CO₂ as well, eventually. So will you. So will I. We could bury 30% of the world's population in a large concrete bunker and that would sequester a good amount of carbon but I don't think that would be politically acceptable.

On human scales no, it won't happen in time. But humans are another species subject to the same Malthusian concepts of resource crisis as every other. When things get really bad mortality will increase. Under environmental pressure there will be cultural clashes because in a resource crisis every animal becomes territorial and humans are very cultural. War, disease, famine, financial stress, drought, flooding and civil unrest will all contribute. Doesn't matter whether we build fusion reactors and develop carbon sinks. We won't do that in time either. We really don't have very long. In a chaotic system all it takes is something to trigger phase change and then all we can do is try to survive until another tipping point is reached.

I was just trying to question your 50-100 timespan for CO2 in the atmosphere.
because if that's the case, then we don't need to worry too much. Get hot, wait 2-3 generations, cool down again.
I just don't think that is the case.

>>You can't reduce the Earth to a simple series of stoichiometric equations
Isn't that the whole greenhouse gas argument?
Dig up buried hydrocarbons, burn them to release CO2, V.BAD.
(CxH2x+2 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O)
Burying people isn't sensible, but putting bodies or trees back down the mine shafts and sealing them would remove the CO2 that we are digging up I suppose. See my previous comment about fusion, CO2 extractors and mineshafts.

1) We are going to burn all the hydrocarbons we can lay our grubby little hands on.
2) The CO2 will stay around forever (for all practical purposes......hundreds of generations).
We either learn to live with the consequences (not easy), or do something to remove the CO2 (not easy).

Typing with baby.

The main reason for payment to protect tropical forest is that land use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for around 18 to 25% (or maybe even more if soil carbon is properly factored in) of current CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing deforestation is not just a relatively cheap way of reducing emissions, it has other benefits (you get to keep the forest goods and services) that don't emerge from other solutions. But in all honesty, we need every method of reducing emissions we can get. We can't just sit back and go 'oh, it's too late'.

That said, marine biologists are -very- wary of iron seeding, plankton blooms being generally bad for other sea life. Its unclear whether its effective in carbon terms, but some private co's already marketing credits for small-scale efforts.

Temperature experiments - plants will only take up more CO2 if conditions for growth are improving - longer growing season in temperate realms, and better average weather. Those seem to have been grassland plants getting hotter and drier. Response doesn't hold for tropical plants getting warmer and wetter (common projection for W Amazon), which as an ecosystem (not all species) should encourage growth.

Probably, tropical forests have been putting on biomass to date, taking advantage of a bit more warmth and CO2, but the thinking seems to be that this will peak shortly. There's a live debate around these trends (e.g. http://www.citeulike.org/user/Flit/article/2507850).

Boreal forests are projected to spread, increasing carbon storage and possibly protecting peat bogs from temperature-induced degradation, but changing the albedo because forests hold snow for a shorter period. Considering only the albedo versus carbon uptake balance suggests that boreal spread will have a net warming effect (http://www.citeulike.org/user/Flit/article/1281557), but afaik no-one has done the sums for the soil carbon.

Won't that get countered by increasing desertification of middle latitudes? You'll just move the temperate zones towards the poles.

Desertification is a function of dryness not heat, the desert zones should stay more or less where they are apart from some minor tweaks caused by things like the shutdown of local monsoons. In theory, if everything is hotter then there should be more moisture getting evaporated from the sea and turned into rain than is currently the case although I may stand to be corrected in this lot by those who actually know about the subject at hand. The problem isn't particularly that the world will run into difficulties, its just that there are large chunks of the planet that will stop being able to support as many people in as much comfort as they currently do. And as you already mentioned, 2bn (random guess BTW) displaced and disenfranchised people will make al Qaeda and the global financial crisis look like small beer and as the richest and softest targets we all have the most to lose.

Methane releases have been happening for a while. I am sure I remember seeing some footage of someone burning the sea on a telly doc a while ago. Don't get me wrong, this is not a good thing but it has not only just started happening. It is also probably inevitable that it will continue/finish as we can't stop the planet warming up considerably more anyway. If you're Russian or Canadian you may not mind. If you live in subcnotinental Asia then you are screwed. Anywhere else will probably adapt to some degree.

BTW, anybody else read Mother of Storms by John Barnes?

Nope, but isn't the general idea that the clathrate gun triggers runaway warming, and increased sea-surface temperatures go on to set up hurricane seasons the likes of which even God has never seen?

I thought the methane releases I'd seen on telly were related to seismic events disrupting the "lid" - like the posited "bubbles of deth" Bermuda Triangle mechanism.

As I understood it they were mostly triggered by sub-sea slippage (laying undersea cables can do it too), particularly the spectacular avalanches that occur on the edges of continental shelves.

Ooooh. All my old oceanography is coming out now. Those videos were great.

That's the ones. A little earthquake (not the Tori Amos kind) sets off an undersea landslide which disturbs the lid. Not heard about the cables, but that makes sense, any old big thud would do.

Crumbs, bubbles reducing buoyancy could be a real hazard for any attempt to tap clathrates for delicious tasty natural gas...

Thing is, if you're in subcontinental Asia, you won't stay there to die. You'll move North. Ditto North Africa and Europe - there will be lots of bodies moving around. The social upheaval doesn't fill me with giggles; most of the temperate countries are already twitchy about immigration and we've never seen a real mass movement. If the to-be-desert folks would just shut up and die quietly in place, that would be peachy, but they're not that dumb.

I wonder why all those people who live in refugee camps stay there?

Because they expect it to get better. Wars end, droughts end, floods subside. Everything people normally run away from gets better.

The timescale of changes for major climate change is long - even the most optimistic models give you many generations before big change is reversed. People can't wait that out. They will depopulate either by moving or by dying off.

They are there because it seemed like immanent doom where they lived so they left. Now the starving mass has nowhere to go, and no power to enforce their desire to leave.
Mass exodus sucks on foot carrying only only what can be put on yours' and your families' backs (which is often just the youngest child).

Any less than full blown en-masse refugee-ism will have to be performed under law. Which means those with Saleable Skills (tm) and Employment (read bend to The Man) or significant financial backing will be the only ones with enough resources to leave.

Those who cannot work the existing system to their betterment will be trapped in the "lower classes compartment" and have to thrive on there own and the survivors will provide a cheap labour pool because of their need.

It sucks but it beats dyin' - they leave from home to the camp because that's where there is to go. Usually there's a grumpy army stopping them going further, say, over a border.

But say you're right. The ones who can conform to the requirements of their destination will make it, and the rest will politely die in place. The result is still a massive movement; we're just arguing about proportions.

And sign in, dammit, anonyposting is annoying! ;)

Apologies Andy for the anonymouse-ness but I deleted my account pending escalation warnings of a personal nature and prefer to keep it that way until the cause has been resolved in a face-to-face gnosis with the particular gent involved. And I keeps forgetting to add my tag at the end, and can't edit anomymous postings.

Sad thing about environment economics is that it adds to the price of any product or service. Any company that isn't a "price-setter" or genuine monopoly will find it difficult to pass on those costs. Giving the two fold effect: Anybody who "goes green" and can't sell it as value-add will lose to its competitors; secondly any company that can fake green in a cost effective manner will beat out their green competitors. That's why we need third parties like central/local government to level the playing field and keep competitors honest with their green claims (both my company and my opposition). Companies would love to pass the full cost of production (including environment controls) to the people causing the damage : the consumer. But any company that penalises their consumers, rather than sell them benefits will not be in business when the crunch time hits!

And history says those with resources will have best chance of food/shelter. Those who are heroes will just feed the sharks, and thats the first rule of aggressive business. As you can appreciate over-capitalisation be it too much expansion or too many environmental initatives will sink any producer. And sunk [green] producers are no use to anyone!

Regards,
Carl

But that just means that markets cannot be used to solve the problem. There are other means. Legislation: international treaties. Social engineering: the mainstream churches are getting in on the act at last.

I don't think they'll work. I think people will be selfish shits until they drown in their own ordure, bitching about their collapsed economies and mourning the sons they sent to die in stupid, pointless resource and border wars.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Subsea methane release documented

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