The methane time bomb
Scientists have recently documented the ticking of the biggest climate change time bomb of them all - methane frozen for millennia beginning to melt in the Arctic. Indeed, the tipping point that the IPCC fears the most may already have been reached. The Independent reports the bad news:
In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.
They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.
Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.
And what does Jeanette have to say?
We won’t fix this one by changing light bulbs. It’s really, really scary.
That pretty much sums it up. The scientists have reported that at some locations, the methane release is 100 times normal background levels, so this is a meltdown significantly greater than business as usual.
The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.
It is truly disturbing that such an important indicator of anthropogenic global warming gets such short shrift in the main stream media. We should be responding as if our lives depended on it. Because they do. tick. tick. tick. tick…
September 24th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
If the end is here (where are the religious end time preachers - right up their alley!) what is the point of the ETS?
If these methane emmisions are as described, no amount of carbon emmision control will do diddle squat.
Lets party with he remaining oil!
And let the survivors who weather the heat wave start a new civilisation.
Now, where is my cave!
September 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Gerrit said: If the end is here (where are the religious end time preachers - right up their alley!)…
Funnily enough, denying anything is happening at all Gerrit.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Right. Let’s move straight to mitigation, then.
Any other response, like an ETS, would be irresponsible and murderous, surely…..
September 24th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“Right. Let’s move straight to mitigation, then.”
What have you got in mind and what party would pursue such ends in Parliament?
“Any other response, like an ETS, would be irresponsible and murderous, surely…..”
Those who want to do nothing are the ones to answer questions about being irresponsible and murderous.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Don’t you mean adaptation BP? The ETS is an attempt at mitigation.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I’ve published a farting ice video about this issue, over at g.blog.
September 24th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
So has the methane farts been factored into the computer programmes for global warming and what do they predict?
When is it the end time?
September 24th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Damage mitigation. Adaptation- sure.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
>>When is it the end time?
It’s not over until the hokey stick renders….
September 24th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
More nails in the coffin for the “we need PT because of the price of oil” fallacy.
tinyurl.com/3nbykf
“In a surprise move here this morning amid struggling sales numbers from its dealers and fuel-efficient buzz from competitors, Chrysler announced that it’s charging into the electric vehicle market a lot sooner than expected. The automaker just unveiled a trio of battery-powered vehicles—including an all-electric, 200-mile-range Dodge sports car that we revved up near its 120-mph top speed on the test track and think could give the Tesla Roadster a run for its money—and plans to bring one of them to market by 2010, aligning Chrysler with the timetable for General Motors’ Chevy Volt.
“
September 24th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
toad Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
> Gerrit said: If the end is here (where are the religious end time preachers - right up their alley!)…
> Funnily enough, denying anything is happening at all Gerrit.
Toad, are the Family Party actually an apocalyptic sect?
I know the Exclusive Brethren are, and I know that Sarah Palin is a believer in the apocalypse, but plenty of conservative and fundamentalist-type christians aren’t. George W Bush (for example) isn’t, though I understand that some of his cabinet are.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
By the way, if you want to know what the apocalyptic christians are thinking, this is a good site:
http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html
it only looks like a parody.
A few years ago, they were using global warming as one of their signs of the apocalypse, but it looks like now they’re not.
September 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
kahikatea, from what I know of the the Family Party, they will encompass a broad spectrum of fundamentalist Christiandom. Some are apocolyptic, but there will be others who will not be.
September 24th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Yes, I’m surprised this doesn’t get much traction Frog. I’ve been blogging about methane all year, but this is just about the first time a major paper has run with the story. It is very scary indeed, and for once I agree with BP. If the methane is bubbling up fast enough to boost global atmospheric concentrations (and we’ll know that fairly soon), then the carbon cycle feedback will make a mockery of attempts to mitigate carbon emissions. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, though, and partying with the oil is obviously not wise. But then neither is BP…
September 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
You just had to have a dig, didn’t you
You know I’m right.
So, what does this do to the models? Anyone?
September 24th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
>>Those who want to do nothing are the ones to answer questions about being irresponsible and murderous.
Opportunity cost.
Huge.
Sure your course of action is right?
September 24th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
BP, give the scientific community a break for heavens sake, the researchers who discovered the plumes of bubbling methane haven’t even got back home from their sampling trip yet …
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http://isss0 8.wordpress.com/
let alone crunched the data and published their findings - you can’t update models without numbers.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Models: One of the standard sceptic tropes is that the models don’t work - that they exaggerate likely warming in the future. The truth is that they don’t work - because they haven’t got the Arctic warming right. Until they can model the events we’ve seen in the Arctic over the last couple of years, they can only give us a hint of what might happen. And until we know the likely size of the carbon cycle feedbacks (methane bubbles), it’s really difficult to suggest what might happen.
We need to be lucky.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
“Sure your course of action is right?”
Reasonably.
September 25th, 2008 at 7:40 am
>>haven’t even got back home from their sampling trip yet …
Then perhaps the first post has jumped the gun somewhat.
>>One of the standard sceptic tropes is that the models don’t work
It’s a reasonable (scientific) objection if said scientists are using models to prove a theory.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:04 am
BP said “It’s a reasonable (scientific) objection if said scientists are using models to prove a theory” here lies your fundamental misunderstanding of science. Theories are accepted if they are supported by evidence i.e. they have not been disproved. As Gareth says, the models are an indication that there is still a great deal that is unknown about the climate system and feedbacks.
It is pretty difficult to run an experiment with a climate system - and were running this real time, and it looks like we will find out the hard way. Metaphorically, the models are attempting to feel the way and give some indications of a likely range of possibilities, unfortunatley we are well in to the upper and worst case range by the look of it, which means that we can expect at least the upper range of sea level rise this century also.
So no, it’s not “a (scientific) objection, or even reasonable objection, although either would be welcome.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:05 am
So no, it’s not a (scientific) objection, or even a reasonable objection, although either would be welcome - but I doubt you are capable.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Still think it is time to party,
Better go out with a bang then a wimper!!
For if it is all to end, lets use of what there is, drink and be merry, and go out with a much satisfied smile of a life lived to the full.
We will all be gone and mother earth can rebuild over the infinite rhytme of time and get ready for another darwinian cycle.
The problem for the Greens with their constant messages of doom is that people will take them serious, and take on a fatalistic attitude. If it is all so bad, it cant get any worse so lets that enjoy what we have for the time available and forget the consequences.
Interesting doco on TV about how quickly mother nature takes over once the people have gone. The studies in the chernobal exclusion zone are interesting to say the least. Even the birds and animals are making a comeback in that human uninhabital environment.
Those plants and animals that can, through darwinian natural selection, tolerate the radiation are taking over in the exclusion zone.
One can almost hear mother earth heaving a sigh of relieve to have mankind gone from her care.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:34 am
They use them for predictive purposes - prediction of global temperature rises. That’s what the theory is all about, isn’t it?
September 25th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I presume these are methane clathrate deposits? Is there a reference to the studies paper anywhere?
Oh thanks stuey (I read back through the comments). I see that they’re just coming back from the expedition.
I haven’t seen any estimates for the mc volumes that high up on the continental shelf. But it figures, the tempatures are in the right range. I wonder how much is below the ross sea and other rice sheets in the south.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:55 am
oops type - ice sheets (not rice sheets).
BP - the models can’t predict what they don’t know. In this case I can’t remember seeing any estimates for mc’s in those locations that high.
September 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Yo that Lyn - think of a model as a massive xl spreadsheat BP, if you dont tell it to calculate a variable it won’t - easy as that. And how can you put in unknown data and variables?
Gerrit - I think it is better to advise of the implications, once those who gravitate to challange and problem solving manage to impliment some strat, e.g. a price on carbon, electric vehicles etc., then those that would resign themselves to fate may see enough hope to join the effort - but without jumping back to “she’ll be right”, or “scientists will come up with something and save us”.
It will take a massive shift, not just in technology (we already have much technology) and it will be a bumpy ride, with an energy slide.
But hey, we can do it! if our mammoth hunting ancestors said “fcuk-it, this uckers too big, lets party and eat the little stuff till its gone”, or “hitlers coming, lets get drunk so we dont feel the bullets” we wouldn’t be here to be confronted with this. And don’t go worrying what comes next now - cause AGW is only a symptom anyway.
September 26th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Scientists never use mathematical models for predictive purposes. They use them for extrapolation purposes and analysing the impact of variables. Because the future values of variables can only be predicted in hindsight and modellers must therefore calculate probabilty estimates for the range of appropriate variable values and consequently the model outcome will always be a range of outcomes consistent with the initial probability estimates. In the business world these are popularly known as “what if” models or scenarios. What if we do this, what if we do that, what if we just do “business as usual”. The Club of Romes prediction that the world was going to run out of oil and copper was a “business as usual” what-if scenario. The fact that OPEC and fibre-optics respectively eliminated “business as usual” meant that the “prediction” never came true, precisely as “predicted” by the models. It was the MSM that called the models predictions, not the Club of Rome. You can safely dismiss anybody who cites these “predictions” as being merely poorly informed or possibly willfully ignorant.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Kevyn,
You are wrong. Mathematical models are used every day by meteorologists to predict the weather (quite successfully for the next 3-4 days at least).
On a lighter note, if you are interested in science fiction, the novel “Transcendent” by Stephen Baxter is all about an engineering solution to the problem of methane being released from underground deposits in the Arctic region.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:44 am
BP,
WTF?
On cutting carbon output to prevent global warming you seem to have jumped from “it’s not needed” to “it’s too late to do any good”, without touching ground in the middle.
Kevyn,
“Scientists never use mathematical models for predictive purposes.”
That’s certainly news to economists, meteorologists, the scientists monitoring our fishing stocks, astronomers, atmospheric chemists… how long a list do you want? I’m having trouble thinking of an applied science that *doesn’t* do this.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:51 am
McTap said:
“Theories are accepted if they are supported by evidence i.e. they have not been disproved. ”
This bit I agree with: “Theories are accepted if they are supported by evidence”
This bit is Karl Popper’s contribution to philosphy of science, and not something I agree with: ” i.e. they have not been disproved.”
The problem is that science is actually much more complicated. You go with the best theories and models you’ve got where “best” means it has a bunch of virtues including “supported by evidence” and “able to to be tested” and “coheres with our other ideas about how the world works” and “simple” and etc.
This goes to Bucolic’s comment about climate models: “The truth is that they don’t work - because they haven’t got the Arctic warming right.”
Guess what. Relativity is wrong too. It predicts the period of the orbit of Mercury incorrectly. Model the orbits with Newtonian physics and Mercury’s orbit is wrong. Model it with Relativity and it’s less wrong, but still wrong. That didn’t cause scientists to toss away Relativity.
Because you go with the best theories and most accurate models you’ve got. Not the “perfect” ones because they don’t exist. Just the best you’ve got. That’s science.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
toad:
“Gerrit said: If the end is here (where are the religious end time preachers - right up their alley!)…
Funnily enough, denying anything is happening at all Gerrit.”
If you want a party that is denying anything is happening at all, talk to Act.
The Family Party, who you link to, is not saying anything of the sort (and is not a bunch of “end-time preachers”, if we were counting on the end being that near there would be no need to go into parliament!).
We are the only party taking a neutral view on this issue. We don’t believe any politician knows the answers, they (or at least the major parties) mainly pick whatever position may gain most votes. We are wanting to take this out of the hands of vote-buying politicians and put it into the hands of the experts.
This is not “denying anything is happening at all”, if anything it is the opposite. We recognise that if global warming is occurring we will need sensible policies that actually work, unlike the ETS, and will ensure we get sensible policies.