GW update: Degassing has started.

[Ender]

link

Scientists fear the rate of global warming could accelerate due to the escape of methane from beneath the Arctic seabed.

Huge methane deposits are rising to the surface as the Arctic region heats up, according to preliminary findings.

Researchers found massive stores of sub-sea methane in several areas across thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf and observed the gas bubbling up from the sea floor through "chimneys", according to reports.

One of the expedition leaders, Orjan Gustafsson, of Stockholm University in Sweden, said researchers had found "an extensive area of intense methane release".

Mr Gustafsson said: "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 researchers believe escaping sub-sea methane - which is around 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide - is connected to the recent rises in temperatures in the Arctic region.

He added: "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."

I hear Venus is lovely this time of year.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Oh, come on. Earth recovered from the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, that means we'll be fine!

...Well, the cockroaches will be, anyway.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Oh, come on. Earth recovered from the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, that means we'll be fine!

...Well, the cockroaches will be, anyway.

So the politicians will be fine. Blast.

I've been following this event for a few weeks now. The increasing decline in Arctic sea ice and the knock on effect the albedo shift has is starting to get really serious. We have no way of modelling such feedback loops when they are so poorly understood. They've all been linear models, and the IPCC predictions on melt and sea level change are already off by a fair margin.

Methane hasn't been a problem for a while. If this is the start of a permafrost thaw around the globe, then mitigation is useless. Carbon dioxide was bad enough to deal with when we have such limp wristed leaders.

[Chris OFarrell]

So Marina...how much room is there in the survival shelter you've no doubt built?

[Winston Blake]

Let's say the lid gets blown off tomorrow. How long do we have to mitigate before people start suffering significantly? 10 years? 20 years? Or too poorly defined? We've got to do what we can. Failure modes would be mainly coastal flooding and storms or what?

I'm not interested in how bad it will be, only how bad it will be related to time estimates. I'm sure this information is buried deep within various past threads, but I'm also sure that someone here has, in their head, the one paragraph I'm looking for.

[Winston Blake]

Apparently it's not that severe unless there are underwater landslides.

Arctic 'methane chimneys' raise fears of runaway climate change

Scientists claim to have discovered evidence for large releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen seabed stores off the northern coast of Siberia.

A large injection of the gas - which is 21 times more potent as an atmospheric heat trap than carbon dioxide - has long been cited by climate scientists as the potential trigger for runaway global warming. The warming caused by the gas could destabilize permafrost further, they fear, leading to yet more methane release.

But climate experts have expressed caution at the claims, which have yet to be published in a peer reviewed scientific journal.

Methane release from stores of so-called gas hydrates, that can form on land or under the sea, is not new to researchers. Huge quantities are known to exist in the Arctic, but special circumstances would need to exist for significant releases to occur.

""Methane release has been known for a number of years now,"" said geologist Dr. Lorenz Schwark at the University of Cologne, Germany. ""There are various areas around the world that have been studied in detail.""

He said the process of methane release from hydrates had been filmed by robotic vehicles off the coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, for example.

""The problem is that in the Russian or in the Siberian Arctic on land and in the sea there is very little coverage by hard data and there are hardly any measurements. And therefore there is a lot of speculation going on.""

In most cases, methane released from the sea bed is consumed by micro-organisms as it bubbles up to the surface. But if it is released quickly enough it could make it into the atmosphere.

""The most likely process where this happens - and there is geological evidence that it has happened in the past - is when the methane gas hydrate layer in the sediment destabilizes on a slope. And then we have a slope failure, a landslide underwater,"" Dr. Schwark said.

""As long as the scientists in the Siberian Arctic are not able to report very strong increases in submarine landslides and slope failures, I wouldn't expect that the release into the atmosphere is so severe that it is really very serious at the moment,"" Schwark added.

The scientists who have studied methane levels along Russia's northern coastline are aboard the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Örjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden told the Independent newspaper in an email from the vessel: ""An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane.

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.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The sea methane is irrelevant. The tundra and coastal clathrates are more than enough. No one was ever really worried about deep sea methane ice, but the stuff thawing as we speak.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, the polar ice-caps have been nonexistent before, so I am seriously rather confident in the ability of the human species to ride this out, if nothing else, a similar pig-like species in terms of function did in fact become one of the last land animals to survive the PT boundary. But the world is in for a whole hell of a lot of misery at this point.

[Adrian Laguna]

Well, the polar ice-caps have been nonexistent before, so I am seriously rather confident in the ability of the human species to ride this out, if nothing else, a similar pig-like species in terms of function did in fact become one of the last land animals to survive the PT boundary. But the world is in for a whole hell of a lot of misery at this point.

The trick is to maintain industrial society on some level. So long as we have industry, we have the ability to deliberately alter our local environment. This isn't rocks falling from the sky, so if the situation reaches the civilization-ending level of catastrophic, there should be enough time to stick a few tens of thousands of people into underground vaults or something.

[Broomstick]

I doubt very much that climate change will end civilization. It will, however, seriously inconvenience civilization and play merry hell with coastal populations.

MY area might not be too bad off - we're 193 meters above sea level and a warmer planet would probably give us a longer growing season. On the downside, if there's more rain we could continue to have flooding problems during storms, but I think we'll be able to work that out with a combination of public works and not rebuilding in flood plains.

Would suck to be in a coastal city, though...

[Adrian Laguna]

I doubt very much that climate change will end civilization. It will, however, seriously inconvenience civilization and play merry hell with coastal populations.

I also doubt it would ever get that bad, I'm just pointing out that even if it becomes an extinction event humanity will likely not be joining the long rosters of species no longer around.

[Broomstick]

We're already in a mass extinction event - caused by us, I might add.

Yes, it will be inconvenient, even for the industrial world - we are already having a problem with New Orleans, as just one example. For a country like Bangladesh even small rise in sea level can be catastrophic. And it will play merry hell with weather patterns world wide, which people will need to adjust to.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Lystrosaurus, the big winner of the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. Fortunately, it was pig-sized and could eat anything, a description which can also be ascribed to humans, so I think we can ride even this out as a species with some good historical reasons.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Humans, yes. Human civilisation, no. The stability offered by our calm climate is all that allowed humanity to progress so far in civilisation terms. Consider, the effects on coastal urban populations alone will cause widespread unrest and cost far more than the global GDP to correct, and rising sea levels are the hopelessly overplayed aspect of climate change. I couldn't give a shit for several metres increase, not when severe drought, erratic weather patterns and stronger storms which are happening now, will cause far more harm, far sooner.

If the methane starts bubbling up as quickly as some fear, then we basically throw out any previous models or predictions and play the guessing game. At one point in history the global mean temperature went up near 10 degrees in the space of decades. That is not survivable for society.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Humans, yes. Human civilisation, no. The stability offered by our calm climate is all that allowed humanity to progress so far in civilisation terms. Consider, the effects on coastal urban populations alone will cause widespread unrest and cost far more than the global GDP to correct, and rising sea levels are the hopelessly overplayed aspect of climate change. I couldn't give a shit for several metres increase, not when severe drought, erratic weather patterns and stronger storms which are happening now, will cause far more harm, far sooner.

If the methane starts bubbling up as quickly as some fear, then we basically throw out any previous models or predictions and play the guessing game. At one point in history the global mean temperature went up near 10 degrees in the space of decades. That is not survivable for society.

Well, everything is contextual. Historians say that City-based civilization ended in the Dark Ages in Europe--except for Byzantium. We might imagine the God-President of Moscow presiding over the ceremonies associated with the refueling of the city's Reactor Core in 3000 AD, in the worst case, the success of the ceremonies indicating not only that the fuel assemblies will be replaced, but that the armies of the God-President will continue to triumph over the barbarians of the Ukrainian jungles...

...Granted, I suspect you don't really consider the real-life equivalent of the WH40K Imperium surviving as a sole city-state around Moscow to be "civilization". I, on the other hand, will be content to take what I can get like that.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Whether I like it or not is beside the point (it'd be an awesome film though. Why should the Aussies get all the cool apocalyptic fiction?). I expect many pockets of people to survive even that, but as for the rest of the world, they're fucked. The humans may pull through, but you need that ecosystem stable to feed, clothe and house yourselves, else it's all for naught.

Now, how this impacts us in the here and now is still open to a lot of speculation. We've already seen the Arctic and various other glacial areas contract far more rapidly than even the models for the AR4 report in 2007 predicted (they use a simplistic, linear approach, treating ice packs as one big ice cube; not accounting for moulins, ice sheet integrity and ice-quakes etc.).

If the Arctic goes ice free next summer (keeping in mind it's at last year's record minimum and that's on top of a colder winter causing a million more square klicks of ice to be melted this summer to reach that record), then it could knock things up a gear. The dark ocean causing drowned polar bears to be in the news is the least of our problems. It could kick start widespread degassing up to 900 miles inland around the northern hemisphere, melting much of the world's permafrost and releasing that stored CO2 and CH4 in either a steady stream, or more dramatic belches. The terrestrial stuff is bad enough without worrying about deeper ocean deposits making it to the surface.

In any case, stopping this from happening is impossible now. The inertia is there to keep this game up for another few decades at least, and we're still in a global economy that's growing (albeit, slower with this recession/depression/come to Jebus thing in the markets). If we want to make any meaningful difference, we'd be having to go negative carbon emissions. I don't see a 50% cut by, what was it, 2050? It's comedy gold, people.

I do like the idea of Megapolis though. I'd much rather, however, have the Chinese get that "EMdrive" working and allow us to build colony ships to get off this dying rock. Too bad we plough all our cash into propping up useless financial institutions and not anything actually productive.

[Broomstick]

I don't think negative carbon emissions will do it at this point. The climate is changing. The only thing left is to adapt or die.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't think negative carbon emissions will do it at this point. The climate is changing. The only thing left is to adapt or die.

It would be next to impossible to implement on any real scale now and yes, the momentum is already in the system. Even with zero emissions, or a good chunk taken out, we're getting 4 degrees of warming minimum now. That seems more than enough for positive feedbacks to kick-in that involve clathrates.

[Big Orange]

The lack of proper icecaps did not make the Earth swallow up the dinosaurs and we seem to be on the tailend of a proper ice age, but however that said I do firmly believe that we are not helping ourselves by melting the permafrost prematurely through our short-sighted greed by moving most of our factories to China and India (who are both lackadaisically minded about the enviroment).

Properly colonising the solar system within this century is an obvious no-brainer and after 30-35 years of non-ambition and mismanagement, somebody with balls needs to kick NASA up the backside, while Russia and China should also get on with it properly, to motivate NASA more.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The lack of proper icecaps did not make the Earth swallow up the dinosaurs and we seem to be on the tailend of a proper ice age, but however that said I do firmly believe that we are not helping ourselves by melting the permafrost prematurely through our short-sighted greed by moving most of our factories to China and India (who are both lackadaisically minded about the enviroment).

Properly colonising the solar system within this century is an obvious no-brainer and after 30-35 years of non-ambition and mismanagement, somebody with balls needs to kick NASA up the backside, while Russia and China should also get on with it properly, to motivate NASA more.

The KT mass-extinction was a pittance compared to the permian extinction, which killed 98% of life on this planet and was caused by a rapid climate shift.

An increase in temperature will cause a mass extinction. In fact, it is already doing so. A large part of the global decline in the worlds amphibians is a direct result of climate change.

as for being on the tail end of an ice age... no. No we are not. And even if we were, we are experiencing increases in global temperature that are orders of magnitude faster than what we would see associated with a warm period in our glacial cycle.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't think negative carbon emissions will do it at this point. The climate is changing. The only thing left is to adapt or die.

It would be next to impossible to implement on any real scale now and yes, the momentum is already in the system. Even with zero emissions, or a good chunk taken out, we're getting 4 degrees of warming minimum now. That seems more than enough for positive feedbacks to kick-in that involve clathrates.

Actually, I do have a very quick solution that should actually work: We could throw a counter-value targeted nuclear war. Cripple the vast majority of the world's industry, kill enough people to slash their carbon emissions even if they still had crap to buy, which they wouldn't, and engulf the globe in clouds of dark ash which would block substantial amounts of sunlight. Maybe the latest round of standoffs between Russia and the USA aren't so bad, after all.

[Ender]

I don't think negative carbon emissions will do it at this point. The climate is changing. The only thing left is to adapt or die.

It would be next to impossible to implement on any real scale now and yes, the momentum is already in the system. Even with zero emissions, or a good chunk taken out, we're getting 4 degrees of warming minimum now. That seems more than enough for positive feedbacks to kick-in that involve clathrates.

Actually, I do have a very quick solution that should actually work: We could throw a counter-value targeted nuclear war. Cripple the vast majority of the world's industry, kill enough people to slash their carbon emissions even if they still had crap to buy, which they wouldn't, and engulf the globe in clouds of dark ash which would block substantial amounts of sunlight. Maybe the latest round of standoffs between Russia and the USA aren't so bad, after all.

Or we could do something more sensible and cheaper like dumping iron shavings in the Antarctic and triggering a plankton bloom. Cheaper and easier, but it lacks the massacre of billions.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Or we could do something more sensible and cheaper like dumping iron shavings in the Antarctic and triggering a plankton bloom. Cheaper and easier, but it lacks the massacre of billions.

I see you just completely didn't notice Mayabird's post from like a year ago systematically refuting the notion that was possible.


P.S. billions of people are going to die no matter what. The issue is what the quality of life is going to be for the survivors; nor, however, am I seriously proposing this.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It would be next to impossible to implement on any real scale now and yes, the momentum is already in the system. Even with zero emissions, or a good chunk taken out, we're getting 4 degrees of warming minimum now. That seems more than enough for positive feedbacks to kick-in that involve clathrates.

Actually, I do have a very quick solution that should actually work: We could throw a counter-value targeted nuclear war. Cripple the vast majority of the world's industry, kill enough people to slash their carbon emissions even if they still had crap to buy, which they wouldn't, and engulf the globe in clouds of dark ash which would block substantial amounts of sunlight. Maybe the latest round of standoffs between Russia and the USA aren't so bad, after all.

Or we could do something more sensible and cheaper like dumping iron shavings in the Antarctic and triggering a plankton bloom. Cheaper and easier, but it lacks the massacre of billions.

Except that that will not work. Ever. The plankton will get eaten faster than you can say "I always wondered what it would be like to rape ocean chemistry", and all you have done is just that. Screwed up ocean chemistry.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Of course, what would make this solution even better for those of us in the First and Second Worlds would be to just form the Purnelle-verse CoDominion and nuke the fuck out of the third world to achieve the same effect. It would certainly work.

Though generally speaking there are plenty of adaptation mechanisms for society. Algae in the oceans will not, for instance, stop global warming, but we can certainly harvest it and process it into food, and algae will certainly be more resilient in the future than any other crop.

Indeed, our society may transition to an algae-based society for food, in which algae is harvested out of the ocean, with a huge surplus of production serving to deal with destruction of the "crop" due to mega-hurricanes, and we essentially have a mono-crop diet of processed algae supporting a population which lives in immense fortified Arcologies powered by nuclear reactors. Such a civilization should prove quite resilient against the effects of even a Permian-Triassic boundary extinction event.