Signs of the end times: the devil's flatulence?

[andygates]

It's a highly partisan source and I can't trace it to any more credible origin, but:

According to U.S. maritime industry sources, tanker captains are reporting an increase in onboard alarms from hazard sensors designed to detect hydrocarbon gas leaks and, specifically, methane leaks. However, the leaks are not emanating from cargo holds or pump rooms but from continental shelves venting increasing amounts of trapped methane into the atmosphere. With rising ocean temperatures, methane is increasingly escaping from deep ocean floors. Methane is also 21 more times capable of trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

In fact, one of the major sources for increased methane venting is the Hudson Submarine Canyon, which extends 400 miles into the Atlantic from the New York-New Jersey harbor. Another location experiencing increased venting is the Santa Barbara Channel on the California coast.

Source: Wayne Madsen Report - http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

Well now, if methane clathrates are venting, we're in for a fun time.  Along with methane released by melting permafrost, this is generally considered to be one of the environmental big scaries, the sort of thing that could radically accelerate climate change toward or over a "tipping point" to an atmosphere that's very much more hostile than just a few degrees of heat and some big fat twisters.  Are we witnessing the inital rumbles of the Big Burp?

Comments

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Eek, don't say that.

There was something published last year in Science suggesting that the big burp may not have been such a historical killer as we've feared. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121235 should get you there.

[arabis.livejournal.com]

Well that's a happy thought for the start of 2007.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a relief (though it only covers the more recent heating event, and leaves the clathrate gun open as a candidate for the big Permian extinction).

Yay for isotope cunningness. I wonder what young-Earth creationists make of isotopes?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I'll look into it. I haven't heard anything on the grapevine, but someone at work might have done.

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

So...from a purely selfish point of view, do I stay up here where it's cold and icy, or do I go back to London? Where am I more likely to survive?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Runaway greenhouse effect is a dealbreaker, it's not just "a bit warmer". I'd stay up in the mountains as London's likely to be a hideous fight. In fact, I may join you. But it probably won't stay icy for long so hire, don't buy that primo board. :)

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

Damn... does this mean my Council Tax will go up again?

Lucky Tignes has a varied and increasing programme of summer activities. Expect a pair of Rossy B2s to appear on Ebay sometime soon...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You may have to fight for your place on the slope with all the evacuee Londoners, Dutch and Bangladeshis. Get to the top early and start caching weapons in biscuit tins. You can never be too heavily armed.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

I wonder what young-Earth creationists make of isotopes?

Does it take more than a minute to explain isotopes? Because anything that takes more than a minute to explain is obviously just dissembling with clever words.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Dissembling and twisting compared to, say, the barely-readable turgidity that is the Bible?

Maybe what we need are science preachers, with pulpit thumping and miracles. Voices from on high. Cures for diseases. Oh, shit, we got that already.

Of course, people are going to blame Science for this whole thing. "If it hadn't been for Science," they'll say, "we'd have got along just fine. Now we're suffocating in marsh-gas and the sea level's just swamped my home. Science is bad, hm'kay? Praise be! Deliver us from these scientists, these bad men, these idol-worshippin' prophests of a false God!"

Or something like that.

[despaer.livejournal.com]

I read a book a while back (stil have it if anyone cares) called Mother of Storms which had some very dodgy science in it (although was a remarkably good read) whose main theme was all the methane clathrate round Alaska and the Russian far east melting and causing runaway global warming. The main effect he dwelled on was the fact that you quickly got large tracts of the ocean up over 27C which meant that hurricanes didn't die when they moved away from the tropics.

Should make for some interesting surf if it does all melt...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Hey, hypercanes! Hurricanes over very hot patches of water - in particular, over something like the hotspot created by a big meteor strike. The model there suggests that the hotspot spits out Category 5's as fast as they can clear the generation zone, and goes some way to explaining the dust dispersal after the Yucatan strike.

But I digress. May have to blag that thar book when I'm next up.