Subsea methane release documented

[andygates]

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.

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

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.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

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

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

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.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

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.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

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.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

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.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

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?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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)!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

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. :(

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

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