For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:08 pm Post subject: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
From Der Spiegel (the German equivalent of Time magazine, but better)
"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?"
The last question is a good example of how totally screwed we are. No matter how catastrophic events are, the only question most in our energy-addicted world can come up with is, "But can we get an energy fix from this situation?"
Junkies truly have one-track minds.
Keep in mind that methane is 20 some times more powerful as a green house gas than CO2, but 100 some times more powerful when measured over a decade.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:18 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
I don't know that its really screwed. If there was sosme economic way to harness it economically, it might just happen and avoid the green house problem along with it.
Sometimes you really can kill two birds with one stone.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:47 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
I thought someone might come up with that line.
First of all it is far too diffuse to collect. What are you going to do, put a plastic bag around the whole of Siberia and the shelves of the Arctic Ocean? But that won't stop people from trying.
More likely, the existence of all that methane will draw corporations' attention that direction and they will try to mine the methane at the bottom of the ocean before it is released, likely triggering even more massive releases into the atmosphere.
Or they'll start mining that vast fields of peat that are now thawing, but that could stabilize and even become a CO2 sink if left alone. But, no, some enterprising corporation or country will find a way to mine it and burn it.
Besides, while CO2 is much weaker in the short term,it's still pretty darn bad long term, and it can stay around for a long, long time. But since we are nothing if not short term thinkers (a big reason we got ourselves and the planet into this train wreck in teh first place), I'm sure someone will find some way to capture some of the stuff to burn.
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:18 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
There you go, with that, when it comes to climate change we are fully established in an scenario of an increase of 3 degrees in temperature, which triggers more emissions of greenhouse gases so we go to 4 degrees, which in turn ...
Say bye bye to the world. _________________ Stocking up on popcorn
Joined: Sep 17, 2006 Posts: 623 Location: No man's land
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:13 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
The 2012 doomsday date is starting to look too optimistic. _________________ "It is no measure of health to be deemed sane in an insane society" J. Krishnamurti
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:46 am Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
eXpat wrote:
There you go, with that, when it comes to climate change we are fully established in an scenario of an increase of 3 degrees in temperature, which triggers more emissions of greenhouse gases so we go to 4 degrees, which in turn ...
Say bye bye to the world.
I don't think there is an endless amount of triggered warming loopbacks to the effect of devolving into a venus, earth will reach an equilibrium on a higher energetic level but still be able to sustain life. However a climate change like in the phase between perm and trias (where that methanehydrit from the oceans was released like everyone fears today) will be very bad news for us and most of the other species on the planet.
And btw. I didn't mean to mine the methane, just light it up where it surfaces in unihabited areas. Will look like a bad scifi movie, but if long term CO2 might be worse it might not be such a good idea after all. Where did you get the stabilization and carbon sink info in that context? That would actually be good news.
Well, here is the latest twist to the methane story – methane is not increasing in atmospheric concentration! We have highlighted this fact many times before at World Climate Report, and a new article in Environmental Science and Technology reveals that global methane concentration is not behaving the way the IPCC and the global warming advocates would have us believe. The Khalil et al. team from Portland State University and the Oregon Graduate Institute start the article interestingly noting “Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled over the last century, raising concerns that it is contributing to global warming and will continue to do so in the future. Although these past increases were alarmingly rapid, subsequent measurements showed a persistent slowdown in the trends to nearly zero at present.” Notice that in their second sentence, they fully acknowledge what we have been saying for years – the actual data indicate that atmospheric methane concentration is not increasing, despite what many assume in running climate models to simulate future conditions. We can tell a climate model to assume some rate of increase in methane, and the model will undoubtedly tell us that in response, the world warms. The fact that methane is really not increasing is …an inconvenient truth.
_________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:00 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
tanada wrote:
Fortuanetly the reallity is more reassuring than the hype.
Methane concentration
Quote:
Well, here is the latest twist to the methane story – methane is not increasing in atmospheric concentration! We have highlighted this fact many times before at World Climate Report, and a new article in Environmental Science and Technology reveals that global methane concentration is not behaving the way the IPCC and the global warming advocates would have us believe. The Khalil et al. team from Portland State University and the Oregon Graduate Institute start the article interestingly noting “Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled over the last century, raising concerns that it is contributing to global warming and will continue to do so in the future. Although these past increases were alarmingly rapid, subsequent measurements showed a persistent slowdown in the trends to nearly zero at present.” Notice that in their second sentence, they fully acknowledge what we have been saying for years – the actual data indicate that atmospheric methane concentration is not increasing, despite what many assume in running climate models to simulate future conditions. We can tell a climate model to assume some rate of increase in methane, and the model will undoubtedly tell us that in response, the world warms. The fact that methane is really not increasing is …an inconvenient truth.
Just to note that the chief editor of this site is the skeptic Patrick Michaels who has his fingers in the fossil fuel pie.
Quote:
Writing in Harpers Magazine in 1995, author Ross Gelbspan noted that "Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels."[3]
A furor was raised when it was revealed in 2006 that, at customer expense, Patrick Michaels was quietly paid $100,000 by an electric utility, Intermountain Rural Electric Association, which burns coal to help confuse the issue of global warming [4][5].
Asked about his funding on CNN in August 2002 Michaels rejected the suggestion that industry funding influenced his work. "Well, you know, most of my funding, the vast majority, comes from taxpayer-supported entities. I would make the argument that if funding colors research, I should be certainly biased more towards the taxpayers, of which I am one, than towards industry. But the fact of the matter is, numbers are objective," he said. [6]
and......
Quote:
Michaels "co-operated with Ross McKitrick on another paper that managed to "prove" that global warming wasn't happening by [http://timlambert.org/2004/08#mckitrick6 mixing up degrees with radians]." [7]
Michaels has written papers claiming that satellite temperature data shows no global warming trend. But he got this result by cutting the data off after 1996. (Every year after 1996 the satellite measurement showed warming.) Another paper made the bizarre claim that the temperature increases were meaningless because they correlated closely to GDP, without explaining how the GDP caused the increase warming. (A more likely explanation is that high-GDP countries tend to be at higher lattitudes, where global warming has the most impact).
In August 2004, Michaels told Business Week "We know how much the planet is going to warm. It is a small amount, and we can't do anything about it." [8]
But Peter Gleick, a conservation analyst and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, said "Pat Michaels is not one of the nation's leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence." [9]
Michaels responded by threatening to sue. (Michaels had gotten another scientist to withdraw similar remarks.)[10] But Gleick stood by his statement and others have joined him.
Dr. John Holdren of Harvard University told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians... He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science." [11]
Dr. Tom Wigley, lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the world's leading climate scientists, was quoted in the book "The Heat is On" (Gelbspan, 1998, Perseus Publishing): "Michaels' statements on [the subject of computer models] are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation… Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading." [12]
And an article in the journal Social Epistemology concluded "...the observations upon which PM [Patrick Michaels] draws his case are not good enough to bear the weight of the argument he wishes to make."
Just how fast do you think methane concentrations change? Historically even a worst case scenario takes decades! _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Joined: Mar 28, 2007 Posts: 339 Location: Cambs., UK
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
Tanada wrote:
Historically even a worst case scenario takes decades!
So? This is something to be ignored then, yes? You're not doing yourself favours by posting shoddy articles from a year ago by some biased fossil fuel tycoon.
It's great that we've still got "decades". A real situation changer that. _________________ "Nothing survives. Not your parents. Not your children. Not even stars."
-Pinbacker, Sunshine
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3431 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:16 pm Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
Valdemar wrote:
Tanada wrote:
Historically even a worst case scenario takes decades!
So? This is something to be ignored then, yes? You're not doing yourself favours by posting shoddy articles from a year ago by some biased fossil fuel tycoon.
It's great that we've still got "decades". A real situation changer that.
I never said anything remotely like that, TYVM, I said an article being a year old in a process that takes Decades is not outdated. _________________ Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov
Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 1:05 am Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
Yes, it takes a long time for change. That's why it is disingenuous at best to point to a slight recent slowing in the rate of increase in atmospheric methane concentration--after a historically enormous increase over the decades--and claim that there has been no methane increase.
This is a denialist site, Tanada. After all the great insights you have brought to these discussions over the years, I find it sad to see you drawing from so deep in that cesspool of disinformation.
The (probably temporary) apparent slowdown in total methane concentration has to do (as I recall, I'll have to do a bit of digging for verification) with the fact that wet lands around the world are being drained at alarming rates for ag and development, and that as fuel prices increase and global warming concerns become more pronounced, methane from various sources is being collected or burned more often where previously it was simply released into the atmosphere.
That these measures are not in fact decreasing the amount of methane in the atmosphere suggests that there are indeed new sources taking their place. And when there are few new swamps to drain, or economic downturn makes it less profitable to do so, and as Arctic melting really gets under way, the new sources of methane could quickly lead to significant new increases.
And yes these, and many, many other factors, could lead to a runaway situation. And, oh yes, at some point it will stabilize, but none of us can know where--we can't know whether or not it will be at a level conducive to continued complex life on earth or not.
Maybe that bit of uncertainty gives some folks comfort.
And perhaps it gives some folks comfort to go with the latest spin (read lies) from the latest (or even out-dated) denialist blogs, well, each to his own and best wishes--we all have to find what little comfort there is to find wherever we can in these insane times , I suppose.
Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:29 am Post subject: Re: The Great Siberian Methane Melt is off and running
Dohboi brought very good arguments above, which are more convincing for me, than graph presented by Tanada.
However I also like to read Tanada's arguments on climate change.
They are often convincing, albeit in this particular case dohboi's argument is a winner, at least IMO.
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