MORE METHANE: New research shows that the Arctic Ocean is releasing significant amounts of methane--a potent greenhouse gas--as it warms.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/NOAA Photo Library
The surface waters of the Arctic Ocean may be releasing "significant" amounts of methane into the atmosphere, researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Scientists flying a specially equipped plane over the region detected high concentrations of the heat-trapping gas close to the ocean surface during research flights in 2009 and 2010.
During flights in the high Arctic, above 82 degrees north latitude, the research jet's instruments detected methane that seemed to be coming from the ocean surface below. The signal was strongest when the plane was flying at low altitudes, sometimes just 500 feet above the water.
"We were surprised to see these enhanced methane levels over the Arctic at low altitudes," said lead author Eric Kort, a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It was surprising to find that it was probably coming out of the sea."
The signal was strongest over areas where sea ice was cracked or broken up.
The study's authors didn't have enough data to estimate the total amount of methane coming from the Arctic Ocean in a day or a year. But they do have measurements of methane flux -- how much of the gas is emitted from a specific area in a specific time frame.
In the portion of the Arctic Ocean they monitored, the daily methane flux was 2 milligrams per square meter -- roughly on par with emissions from the eastern Siberian Arctic shelf.
"It's not a particularly large number if you compare it to a high-latitude wetland that's really going in the summer," Kort said.
But the size of the Arctic Ocean that may be emitting methane could make it a significant source of the heat-trapping gas. One key question for scientists, Kort said, is how shrinking Arctic sea ice will affect those emissions.
The new study is one of the first analyses based on data collected by a recently concluded research program, "HIPPO," that sought to track the movement of greenhouse gases through the atmosphere using a Gulfstream V jet outfitted with scientific instruments and sensors.
The aircraft flew five long-haul journeys between the Earth's poles, swooping from low to high altitude and back again to allow the scientists to sample the composition of different layers of the atmosphere (ClimateWire, Sept. 8, 2011).
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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72 Comments
Add CommentDenialists: not to say I told you so – but I told you so…
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the time most people realize that positive feedback loops like methane gas releases in the polar regions is the real threat from global warming, it will be too late do anything about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2 for 2 biased comments! I'm not a denier, but from this article you can definitely tell that these measurements show that these methane levels are either more, less, or the same compared to levels in the past (since no readings were ever taken before). More, less or the same. Definitely one of these three.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, I suppose it would have to be one of the three anyhow. It's like saying that it is either sunny, or cloudy, or raining.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeriously now, the point about this is that methane is dozens of times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and – perhaps the article assumed informed readers – the Artic did not ever use to release methane, this is a new thing, it had remained frozen as peat permafrost since prehistory.
"the Artic did not ever use(sic) to release methane"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt didn't? Based on no measurements being made before? How much methane was being released when no measurements were being made? (hint: it's either more, less or the same - it cannot be known) Or are you assuming that since no measurements were being made that the number was zero? That's silly.
Mark665165165 and Singing Flea:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGive it up. It doesn't matter what evidence is found - climate change deniers will continue to deny climate change is human-caused (or even happening) even when Wall Street is beach front property and half the world's cities have had to move to adjust to new coastlines and unpredictably extreme weather. Climate change denial is based in rhetoric and not on evidence, so evidence doesn't matter to deniers. Whatever evidence is found they just dismiss as "biased" or "incomplete" so they can just keep on believing in what they want to believe in.
But they should believe this too: no matter how long you bury your head in the sand, you will never be able to breath the stuff. When climate change deniers do finally pull their heads out of the ground (and their asses) the first thing they should expect is their kids giving them a swift kick in the teeth.
Give it up. It doesn't matter what evidence is found - climate change demanders will continue to say that any measurement made (even when none were made in the past) 'shows' that temperature is going to increase. It's not about science and measurements it's about attacking the views of anyone who even questions one piece of data. Their unscientific view must be suppressed by equally unscientific means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut they should believe this too: no matter how long you bury your head in the sand, you must turn every scientific measurement into a charged debate about how temperature is going to go up specifically because of this measurement. When climate change demanders do finally pull their heads out of the ground (and their asses) the first thing they should expect is their kids giving them a swift kick in the teeth for not doing proper scientific investigation to understand and determine how to reduce human induced climate changing factors.
I really hate to disillusion you guys with facts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeology and research enabled by the Hubble telescope put the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years, and tell us that the earth had a hot beginning. Geology also tells us that the earth has had at least 5 glaciation periods, each preceded by a hot period. We know that man was not here for the first four glaciation periods and first three perhaps first four hot periods. We know that we started coming out of the last glaciation period about ten thousand years ago. We are not out of it yet, we still have glaciers. Yes it is going to get hotter a lot hotter, then the climate will swing back to a cooler climate, followed by another glaciation period. There has always been climate change and there will always be climate change. The rest is just so much B.S. Nature don't care about man's legislation or faith based "man made climate change" alarm-ism. If we can't adapt, we will become just one more of the extinct 99% of all species that have walked the face of the earth.
erbarker:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour point? The best kind of comment has a point, especially if that point concerns the article being commented on. Are you saying that the large rise in carbon emissions as measured in the atmosphere, or known to be happening based on the world's burn rate of fossil fuels, is not real?
You can try to debate that the effect is insignificant, but it is simply insane to suggest that it is not happening. This is the problem with the climate change 'debate'. An attempt at a scientific debate where almost everyone is abusing facts to forward their personal feelings.
well I am so glad we had a normal winter with lots of snow, no early tornadic activity or other signs of global climate change. I am sure when the oil pipelines in Alaska start to sink into the permafrost that will be nothing to do with methane being released in that peat moss bomb either. As I keep saying all the quarters have been inserted, we cannot stop what is going to be, we can only sit back and watch the folly of thinking we can do it better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith that rant off my chest, I noticed an article regarding an air breathing battery that can get about 800 KM or about 600 Miles per charge. I wonder if we can design one that runs on methane.
And of course while I have your undivided attention I would love to point you back to one of the most under-read important articles I ever read about science discovered in 1993, promptly lost, resurrected only to be lost again... follow the bouncing link. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-production-comes-natu&posted=1 It deals with cynobacteria that poops O2 and H2 prolifically and sustainably fueled by chlorophyll, you know that stuff plant use. Gee if we even burn H2 it pollutes the world with H2O. That must be worse than CO, CO2 or CH4 mustn't it?
Well I live about 5 feet above sea level, so I feel very brave at this point in time. I hope the sunsets are as good from a mountain top island someday soon. Of course that will depend on the weather outside won't it.
Lamorpa's I guess the calving of state size ice shields, the disappearance of the arctic ice cap, the new western route sailed by Russia last year, the sieving of Greenland and the potential damage if, actually not if, when the permafrost melts have no merit either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should probably measure the CH4 in the arctic now so when the permafrost goes and the peat like mass it currently holds farts the big one you will have more empirical data to work with.
One of the interesting things with Climate Change is that it does not mean the whole earth is going to get all hot and bothered at once. Nope instead we will see huge swings in the climate like the cold winter Europe suffered, the tornadoes that flattened the midwest and south this fall and starting up again and of course the loss of some ice and in some cases large amounts of ice that will make coastal areas uninhabitable. No big deal that will only affect about 75% of the earth. Maybe then we can convince you.
To people that still question how much crap the earth can hold before the problems start, here is a simple home experiment. Do not flush your toilet for about two months then flush and run.
I can't wait until we get slapped with a Methane Tax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan areas with no methane sell methane credits to high methane producers?
Humans generate and add 2 million pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere a second. This is 135 times larger than those from all volcanoes on Earth. We use almost 40% of the earths surface for agriculture and civilization. Climate change is the result of our uncontrolled expansion. For humans to survive we will need a fundamental cultural change from the bottom up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article doesn't say anything other than methane is detected over the Arctic ocean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a geologist I'd be surprised if it wasn't detected. No spine put on it has any meaning.
krohleder....re your comment on volcanoes. Firstly a 'volcano' is an ill defined concept for measuring geothermal emissions. Secondly there is no annual level of geothermal activity...it can vary by multiples depending on 'what's happening' at any given moment.
That comes on the heals of a report by another scientific team who traversed arctic waters in a boat, reporting that what they found "astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey observed nearly mile-wide forceful plumes from the ocean bottom emitting huge volumes of methane.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2012/04/deepwater-horizon-keeps-on-killing.html
Since when did a perfectly natural process become bad news for the environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo when are they going to tell us about the methane being released over forests & jungles? Since it was discovered some years ago that live vegetation was releasing methane & that clouds of methane were observed over jungle areas that were not explained by decaying vegetation there has been silence on the subject. Of course if you do not want this information in the public arena you do not even test for it.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4604332.stm
And the BBC News Website has learned that the research, based on observations in the laboratory, appears to be corroborated by unpublished observations of methane levels in the Brazilian Amazon.
You say: For humans to survive we will need a fundamental cultural change from the bottom up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA call for more non breeders?
erbarker: All of your information may be accurate, but it is what you left out that is significant. In all those temperature swings you cite, the rate of change per year was much smaller than what I am reading about occurring now. It is one thing to have populations move over thousands of years, quite another to have it happen over decades. Ditto adaptability of plant life, food supplies, immune systems, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly to consist, the Methane intervenes with the density of the water and air, this is the mechanism of action in Triangle of the Bermudas
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey lamorpa,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK. You’re entitled to neutral, unbiased facts and sources, not promoted by either treehuggers or senior oil executives.
Here are a series of neutral articles that discuss the subject.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/co2_methane.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20120422.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1023esuice.html
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/earthandsun/climate_change.html
Note I am prioritizing NASA and NOAA as serious sources.
Here are other neutral sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1452.html
They don’t jump to conclusions as to the consequences, which is perhaps what is irking you. They make it clear that and that methane is 20 times stronger than CO2 as a greenhouse gas and there is as an unprecedented release of methane going on in the Artic (no, measurements not started only now, what was new about this one is it being done in flight, and the results).
I agree with Erbarker that life made of change and that we must learn to adapt, but I would feel less bad about being wiped out by an asteroid someone painted black than by something I could have done something to prevent.
Note, the worst thing about this is that it’s just consequence of the rogue rich, devoid of any noblesse oblige, doing what they want and going callously after their profits. The key point behind the climatic crisis the political regression that has elapsed after the end of Bretton Woods accord (system of monetary management) in 1971, causing a slow decline from capitalism into a zero accountability plutocratic oligarchy, a regime more typical of pre-classic Mesopotamia than of an industrialized democracy.
We’re going to pay for the consequences of their greed for profit. That is what annoys me.
"I really hate to disillusion you guys with facts."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, disillusion is a big word for someone who doesn't understand that past climate changes took millenniums not decades to change. Climate change is not the problem, the problem is that evolution can't keep up with rapid change. Just ask the dinosaurs.
We are now in the third greatest mass extinction in all history and it started just about a century ago...but of course you republican geniuses knew that too. You just like to deny it all because it's easier then accepting responsibility and doing something to lessen the impact.
I remember reading a few years back that huge deposits of methane in the form of methane calthrate are buried beneath the Arctic and Antarctic regions and deep in the oceans in the temperate zones. It has been estimated that there is enough to power the planet for hundreds or even thousands of years. The problem is the great difficulty in mining this resource. The problem is that the methane is frozen in a solid form under intense pressure or in very cold areas like permafrost. The transition from a solid to a gas is nearly instantaneous so it is not practical to store as a liquid and the small temperature change means huge quantities can quickly be released into the atmosphere as the climate warms even just a few degrees. This makes it much more difficult to extract then natural gas which is just another form of methane that can be easily pumped out of the bedrock with processes like fracking. For decades huge amounts of methane were burned off as a useless byproduct of oil and gasoline production. For those who don't believe peak oil is already here, oil companies are now fracking for the gas just to keep busy. It is also a concern that when burned, methane still converts to CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf methane calthrate was easy to extract it would be the fuel of choice today, but unfortunately most of it will escape into the air before it become obvious that is too late to exploit and the earth become less and less habitable as a consequence.
@Ronwagn,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour reasoning is akin to saying that since forest fires have occurred in the past, way before humanity ever appeared, that arson is then impossible.
Most adults recognize that the same phenomena can have different causes. Are you aware of how we know that humanity is responsible?
Look, I'n not denying that the Arctic is significantly warming, but this article states: "The study's authors didn't have enough data to estimate the total amount of methane coming from the Arctic Ocean in a day..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how definitive is the evidence that, as you said, "They make it clear that... there is as an unprecedented release of methane going on in the Artic (sic)." Can you please provide a specific quote(s) from your references supporting the assertion that methane releases have been measured in the Arctic in the past?
I'm skeptical comparable data has been collected in the past, since in the past the Arctic ocean has largely been covered by ice and these new measurements have been made at altitude above the ope Arctic ocean.
Thanks in advance!
The notion that the observation is too limited to be of value (Iamorpa's obfuscating meander) is wrong. The evidence of CH4 increase during the period is noted on global emission trends. It co-incides with Artic sea-ice retreat. It has a southern hemisphere mystery partner. It's documented everywhere from the Spittzbergen notes of 2007 to the Sokolov expeditions of 2010/11.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf emissions are less, the missing source is even larger. If it's more, it matches the global observations. Iamarpa hoists himself on his own petard when he rants about personal feelings abusing facts. He tries to evade the evidence.
erbarker commits the same offence when he cherry picks timeframes and events. The last Ice Age didn't begin to unravel 10kya - it finished unravelling 10kya. It double-peaked and finally started downward 5,500ya. Glaciers were advancing and sea-levels receding until modern times. It's reversed. This 'always changed and always will change' is the real BS ... yet he claims to oppose BS. This isn't sweet-betty-lou change - it's disruption. The methane debate is burp versus fizz versus fuse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThough there has not been much publicity about it, clathrate deposits are being developed as energy sources.
Just a few years ago no one was thinking about clathrates as an energy source," Boswell says. "Now there is a great deal of interest in them." It is not just the US. Canada, China and Norway are entering the race too. The governments of Japan and South Korea have given the green light for full-scale production. The first intentional commercial exploitation may come as early as 2015.
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=6958
Yes, methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate, is essentially mehtane frozen with water. IMO it is an excellent candidate source for these recent atmospheric readings above the once frozen Acrtic ocean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs stated by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
"Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. Methane clathrates are also present in deep Antarctic ice cores..."
The Arctic ocean ice cover could have been a great location for the accumulation and freezing of precipitating methane vents on the ocean floor. The methane clathrate deposits I propose under the Acric ocean ice cover would also have melted along with the ice, relasing large quantities of methane into the atmosphere.
It can be predicted from this theory that the methane releases would be directly related to melting of the Arctic ocean ice cover: they would have began with the ice melting and greatly diminish if not end completely if/when the ice cover has melted completely.
There was an earlier report about these flights published in SA. SA is really getting into this recycling business. I posed this question to the authors back then as I have this time. Still no answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. 33. Carlyle07:35 PM 9/9/11
Some years ago it was disclosed that satelite observations showed vast plumes of methane were being released from jungle areas such as The Amazon. Live trees, not decaying vegetation were releasing methane. There was no scientific explanation of this process though German scientists conducted an experiment that showed it did occur. I have read nothing of it in recent years. This report was quick to release information about the Arctic. What about the Amazon & other jungle areas or are we again going to see only selective release of information?
Pole-to-Pole Flights Yield New Climate Data
Findings include a discovery that surface waters in the open Arctic Ocean release heat-trapping methane gas into the atmosphere at a "significant" rate
The link to the original article, or was it a recycle of an even earlier one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=headline-pole-to-pole-flights&posted=1#comments
Hi Trent1492,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's the latest from one of your godheads:
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite
I hope he didn't break a hip jumping off the bandwagon.
"Most adults recognize that the same phenomena can have different causes. " - Trent1492
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcept when it challenges your religion. It must be painful being hoisted on your own petard.
Pray tell, then, what other phenomena could cause global warming? Oh right, in your world there aren't any other causes.
Hypocrite.
ttheobald:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou would be able to discern my position as neutral (neither a 'denier' or a 'demander' or an 'alarmist') on climate change (putting scientific inquiry first), by actually reading (and, assuming comprehension) my comments. Get back to us when 1) Reading is completed, 2) Your anger level goes down.
There's no denying human impact, based on sheer numbers alone. At the same time, pointing things out, and demanding the proverbial 'they' stop doing it, is not enough. Understanding of what kind of effective actions can be taken is actually the important part.
@Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames Lovelock was never my "godhead". What is up with the strwaman constructions? Is it that you are just not intellectually honest enough to tackle issues as they really are?
And here comes Shoshin to proclaim himself a victor in an argument that no one has engaged with yet. Talking about being delusional.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow Shoshing wants to know what other factors could cause global warming while presuming that other factors have never been investigated.
The funny thing here is that all of the following information has been provided to Shoshin on multiple occasions and he still pretends to have never ever seen it before. All well, this is for the lurkers and not for the hard of learning such as Shoshin.
If the Sun was responsible for the current warming then we could expect several characteristics to be evident.
1. All of the atmosphere should warm up. Yet, directly the opposite is happening. The stratosphere is COOLING while the troposphere warms. This is a phenomena that was predicted way back in 1967.
2. If the Sun is responsible for the warming then days should warm faster than nights and the diurnal temperature differences should decrease. Again, exactly the opposite has happened. As was predicted back in 1896 nights are warming faster than days.
3. If the sun is responsible then we should those places on the Earth that receive the most consistent amount of total solar irradiance to warm up first. Instead, we see as was predicted back in 1896, that it is the Arctic that is warming up the most.
Now Shoshin has been told all of the above on multiple times and has never ever cited empirically based peer reviewed studies that can explain these predicted phenomena.
So considering all of this information: Who is the ideologue here who defends their beliefs like a fanatic?
Lovelock's previous estimate was that perhaps as few as 500 million of us would survive the coming century. Now he is saying that it probably isn't going to be quite that bad. He still says it will be bad, and that the sooner we get off fossil fuels the better. Wow, I feel so much better; maybe he thinks only a quarter of us will die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe is still just one guy (not sure why Shoshin thinks he is anyone's godhead), and he is still confident that what is coming is not good. Somehow Shoshin interprets that as an about face in his beliefs. Shoshin is full of wishful thinking.
Back on the subject at hand, there is methane being released. It is not perfectly clear from this one set of measurements that what is currently being released is more or less that what was being released prior to the temperature rising. The fact that the clathrate (methane locked in ice) deposits exist might be an indication that the area was a net carbon sink in geologic history, else there would be no such deposits. So, the question becomes, is it still a net sink or not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan't tell from this one article, but at least we have a baseline measure now, and that will give us something to compare future measurements with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi there Jtdwyer,
“Can you please provide a specific quote(s) from your references supporting the assertion that methane releases have been measured in the Arctic in the past?”
Why, sure! The main NOAA climatic change page (extensively cited to by NASA) has graphics on methane that go back to 1978:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/
Ice sheet coverage, on the other hand, was measured since 1885:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/ice-seaice.shtml
Hello Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no article recycling whatsoever, it was a whole new study. The prior observations were all in Siberia, while these were done by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory north of the Beaufort (Canada) and Chukchi (Alaska) seas in April 2010.
The original journal article and the raw data are at:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1452.html
for more details on this exact study without having to purchase the article see:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340200/title/Arctic_sea_emits_methane
But please don’t give up denying, keep on trying, this is really fun.
Scientist have long known that methane is released by rotting plants and living plants. No one is disputing that here. It is a natural cycle in any forest. What scientists are concerned about is methane that was trapped for millions if years in frozen tundra and beneath the arctic ice that is suddenly added to the environment do to global warming in a relatively short amount of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou either get or you don't.
Either way it doesn't matter what you think, because it is a process independent of what people in denial believe.
The same argument can be made of the sudden increase of CO2. Yes, plants absorb it and the ocean absorbs it and always has, but that does not change the fact that it is increasing at an alarming rate.
While it is true that growing plants use up more CO2 then mature trees, the sheer mass of mature forests takes in far more then a newly planted forest. If you cut down a forest the net increase of CO2 and methane released into the atmosphere is much greater then what is absorbed by newly planted trees even when that forest is converted to lumber. We all know that that lumber eventually decays too, even though it may take a lot longer when protected by a roof. The decay process releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere. In the end, when a house is torn down it still ends up in a landfill.
I was very specific. This is NOT from rotting vegetation. Prior to this discovery it was thought impossible that living vegetation could produce methane. The science said it was produced by rotting vegetation in an oxygen deprived environment. How about you read what I said before responding?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother link for you: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/full/439128a.html
The startling discovery that terrestrial plants produce the greenhouse gas methane is sending scientists in two disciplines, not to mention a few politicians, back to the drawing board.The newly revealed methane emissions have taken plant physiologists by surprise, because far more energy is required to create methane than, say, carbon dioxide in an oxygenated environment.
Forrests are good & should not be detroyed but there are manay falaciesabout their capacity to store CO2 as well as universal denial about te fact they also produce CO4 as reported above. Once a forrest reaches maturity it CO2 budgetis in balance. CO2 is on average balanced by C2 release through burning or decay. Otherwise you would end up with a solid block of wood reaching for the clouds sitting on a massive bed of bio char or coal. The Amazon forrest is believed to be 10 milion years old. It is simply impossible for such a forrest to continually expand.
Accidentally posted the above before checking, spell checking & re reading your post. You state that scientists have long known that living trees emit CO4. This is not the case. It was only discovered about six years ago. I wish to emphasise that few people know that living trees emit CO4. Even many climate scientists do not know about it or claim not to. There has been virtually no published research about it since. The subject is avoided by environmental scientists. The other relevant factor is that trees continue to emit CO4 even when a forest reaches maturity & is no longer absorbing additional CO4.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy have they not released findings from these flights about methane over forests?
It is the selective release of information that plagues climate science & severely impacts on its credibility.
Carlyle, are you sue you mean CO4 or CH4. CO4 is pretty unstable and not really a problem. Otherwise, good day mate. Keep up the fight for the right. You know we don't agree 100% but I love to watch half wits deal with your whole wit. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomething to consider is that if and really when the permafrost melts there will be an effect both mechanically because the pipelines running oil down from the north slopes of Alaska will lose their foundations, mush making a lousy support system. And as the Peat (which is what the permafrost essentially is) will release quite a bit of CH4 and CO2 which will create a feedback situation meaning with the release of that much green house gas there will be warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso with the loss of the arctic ice, the darker water does absorb heat rather than reflect it as the polar ice does meaning that again the feed back is added to. This is an asymmetrical issue so when the proverbial crap hits the fan the effect will be logarithmic or exponential and we have passed the time of stopping it. Below is a link to a study done in Canada regarding Peat release of CO2 and CH4 and essentially an anaerobic environment does have impact in how much is released. The permafrost is a fair example of an anaerobic form of peat. Enjoy.
http://geog.mcgill.ca/faculty/moore/Wetlands_24_261.pdf
Another possible issue that may arise is if the Gulf of Mexico was to warm to the deeper water the frozen Methane at the bottom may release and oh what a smelly place my home would become.
:) Breath deeply now, and it is okay to eat beans.
Absolutely correct David. Particularly error prone this morning it seems. CH4 it is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing in Brazil, I get to study the Amazon quite a lot. Methane emission spikes in the Amazon are caused by waterlogged rotting vegetation. This is being caused by the widespread hydropower damming that is taking place right now, with several dozen small and two very large projects. This is the one time that deforestation must occur, and it is not being done. The amounts involved are still small, however, compared to Artic Farting (I mean, Outgassing).
Pertaining the discovery in the article you mentioned, which talks of the creation of trace amounts of methane in living plants, SA has a pdf for download about plant methane emissions at http://www.pages.pomona.edu/~cjt04747/chem106ps/Scientific%20American%20Feb%202007.pdf
that starts with the header,
“The surprising recent finding that living plants produce methane does not throw doubt on the cause of global warming. Human activities—not plants—are the source of the surge in this and other greenhouse gases”
What now?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs David and I have been trying to explain about feedback loops, as usual among complex systems, the Planet will not remain stably at any arbitrary temperature but has saddle points of stability. Thus, it swings. In between these points, processes occur in a runaway manner.
Now, if you take my five favorite Contrarian websites (see below), you’ll see how all of them explain how Earth’s temperature has usually, in fact 75% of the time, been much higher then today, so the planet today is almost unfairly cooler than usual. They show how the temperature has swung over the last hundreds of millions of years between “cool” and “warm” periods, oscillating between them and not staying for long at the intermediate temperatures.
The cool periods include Today (Quaternary), Ordovician, Silurian and Permian. The warm periods include Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, time of the giant insects due not to temperatures but to high oxygen levels, and the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, of the dinosaurs. The sites very their definition of low and high temperature points from 12 to 15 degrees Celsius for the cool point and 25 to 27 degrees Celsius for the warm.
So if now, due to the methane, we have a Runaway Greenhouse Effect (similar to what happened in Venus but for natural causes, naturally with less dramatic effects) we have a reasonable chance of ending up with not a 2 or 3 degree increase, up to around 18 degrees Celsius. Now that we have our new friend Methane to accommodate, we are may very well oscillate back up to the average “warmer” temperature, which was not 2 or 3 degrees, but 10 to 15 degrees higher than today, to the worldwide tropical world of the dinosaurs. Exactly because, as every Contrarian will explain if you will only listen, the planet today is cooler than usual; now we may get back to “usual”.
All perfectly natural. Just not very good for us. All thanks to fossil fuels and the insurmountable greed of Big Oil. Who cares if it changes a little? Change is good for you!, says the oil baron or corporate suit; well, in that case, I am sure they will not mind if we bill them in court for any inconvenience.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/co2_fairytales_in_global_warmi.html
(12 C – 22 C)
http://strongasanoxandnearlyassmart.blogspot.com.br/2011/01/for-several-years-i-have-immersed.html
(12 C – 25 C)
http://www.stuffintheair.com/ancient-climates.html
(12 C – 27 C)
http://earthintime.com/earthintime.html
(15 C – 22 C)
http://www.nctimes.com/app/blogs/wp/?p=5373
(12 C – 25 C)
Also, any effect of methane production in living plants has not changed over the last two hundred years; the discovery in the article you cited was not that plant started to produce methane, but have always done so. The only thing that has changed was human industrial and vehicular CO2 emissions, and now Arctic Outgassing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, the Amazon is at least 100 million years old, perhaps much more. It reconnected with North America 3 million years ago; the deer and puma are newcomers. The exotic fauna (anteaters, capybaras, sloths, agile-tailed monkeys) is from the separation period from Africa staring 140 million years ago.
I think we are safe from becoming Venus. The Earth has something that insures it will not become Venus and that is the moon. If it truly was created by a glancing collision with a planetoid about the size of mars a few interesting results would have occurred.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Any excess CO2 would have been blown away therefore the atmosphere we have is a remnant at best and probably completely new. Also we had a huge amount of cynobacteria that were created (evolved to be proper) by smokers and pooped O2 which became 2nd only to nitrogen. CO2 is still about 400 ppm so it is just barely a gas and without it most ecosystems would crash instantly.
2) We probably gained a much faster orbit, keep in mind Venus barely rotates and has little to no magnetic field. Some magnetic properties were recently observed but they are nowhere near the dynamo we have with our magnetic field. I think we can attribute some of that to the fact that the heavier metals settled on the earth and promptly found their way to the core.
3) The moon insures a stable rotation with little to no wobble, Venus, Mars and other planets with minimal or no moon wobble excessively which would bode badly for evolution into an intelligent being. A highly unstable orbit would allow for complex life under the ocean but the geographic impact is unpredictable and the ring of fire might be much more dynamic than it is.
That said, we will be boiled away in about 1 billion years but we can blame that on the sun and there is nothing man can do about that and even if we postpone that fate (I doubt a species maybe 1,000,000 years old is going to make the first 1,000,000,000 year mark but hey what the heck this is conjecture), we go crispy in 5,000,000,000 years when the sun goes big bad and red.
Ice ages will be with us until the continents come back together again into a super continent but that does not make the weather any better. Something else to keep you awake at night is that 90% of the fresh water in the world is under the earth. There is no logical reason it could not find its way back to the surface again.
So worry about all the things we can't fix if you want, but there is a lot of things we can and should do to optimize the energy we use and clean the place up as much as we can just because it is the right thing to do. I would like to think we could be oil free and I know the parts and pieces are there, but is the will?
Mark I do not dispute much of what you say. My objection on the methane issue is that though there is a little information if you know where to look, right from the time the discovery was made , contribution to the total amount of methane being released into the atmosphere from this source has not been researched. Even the discoverers tried to distance themselves from their discovery. Why has there not been a vigorous effort to quantify this source. What if it is shown for example that predominately one type of tree or class of vegetation was responsible? It might then be prudent not to include that type in plantations. This is not science. It is politically incorrect science just as it would be if a significant source of naturally occurring CO2 was discovered & then ignored. The fact that these have been occurring prior to mans influence does not excuse the omission. If it were found for example that the contribution made by human influence was a much lower percentage of the overall emissions, it would lower the proportion of mans effect on climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis fits into the same category of data inclusions, omissions & massaging that we have seen in much of the climate science. Too often we get to see only one side of the equation.
Trent 1492:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime to face facts: Your "consensus" is faltering. Unfortunately for you, a consensus is critical to your AGW religion. I can see how you and your ilk now are eager to throw your godhead under the bus now that he admits to having feet of clay.
Another theory for you to try to shoot down. This one contains correlations and makes testable falsifiable predictions that people can actually use to look for answers. You know... real science... heard of it?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/
As to your comments, you erect the strawman arguments, ascribe them to someone else and then answer them yourself. They mean nothing other than demostrate your lack of disciplined thinking.
As I've requested numerous times and I will keep hammering please present data showing a DIRECT MECHANISM that AMPLIFIES CO2's effects.
We all know that CO2 by itself is a impotent pimply faced skinny virgin in the humping sweaty brothel of climate drivers.
Please demonstrate what Viagra like elixir turns this quaking and flaccid bystander in a stud. And no computer models please; only hard throbbing data.
To repeat, recent methane releases from the Arctic ocean are likely due to increased melting of ice sheets along with associated methane hydrate or clathrate deposits. The Arctic ocean is the is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. While its ice cover naturally varies seasonally, nearly on half has been perennially frozen for perhaps thousands of years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Arctic ocean is thought to cover perhaps 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources. Methane gas percolating from natural faults in the ocean floor binds with water and freezes to form methane hydrate deposits. In the Arctic ocean, much of the undersea methane releases may have been trapped and accumulated under long frozen ice sheets, producing methane hydrate deposits at the bottom of the ice.
As long frozen ice sheets have been recently melting, their underside methane hydrate deposits would most likely also melt, releasing into the atmosphere large amounts of methane that had been accumulating under the ice for perhaps thousands of years.
If this is the case, the high volume methane releases should continue as long as long frozen ice sheets are melted. The should also be some way to observationally determine whether methane hydrate deposits actually exist on the underside of long frozen Arctic ice sheets.
As stated by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_hydrate
"Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. Methane clathrates are also present in deep Antarctic ice cores, and record a history of atmospheric methane concentrations, dating to 800,000 years ago.[5] The ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis I believe will lead to a Nobel prise. It will also eventually lead to a complete revision of the present theory of global warming. For those interested in the subject, it also gives an explanation of earlier ice ages & extinctions.
I think this ranks with the discovery of plate tectonics 40 years ago. Many scientists did not believe in it initially but now they all do.
So SoshinI had not read your post. This is the game changer though there will be enormous resistance. It explains so much that simply did not fit the CO2 theory & AGW or things like the extinctions & Ice Ages. The extinctions blamed on meteors was never quite convincing because the extinctions happened over extended periods of hundreds & even thousands of years, not over brief periods as could be expected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProud to be a sceptic.
David! I am in no way concerned we will become Venus! Jeepers!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I said was that, only in between the stable saddle points of the system, processes may occur in a runaway manner.
What I am concerned about is that if you look at the Earth average temperatures over the geological ages
(serious source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast20oct_1/ Contrarian source, same exact graph: http://strongasanoxandnearlyassmart.blogspot.com.br/2011/01/for-several-years-i-have-immersed.html)
You will see that except in fleeting passage, the Earth remained at, basically, only two temperature ranges, at 12 to 15 Celsius (such as today) and at 22 to 27 Celsius, with only once a brief sporadic period at 17 to 19 in the early Cretaceous. That means that for over 95% of the time Earth remained at either around 15, or around 25 Celsius. The latter is the global tropic climate typical of the time of the dinosaurs and several prior epochs.
My concern is that IPCCs approach that we have to put in an effort to remain at a global average of an intermediary value of, say, 18 or 19 degrees, may not be feasible for systemic reasons; that the planet system may remain with stability only at either stable saddle point – perhaps the peat permafrost being in fact the very variable to rule among these two stable saddle points. Once we blew it, so to speak, passing the 16 Celsius (for instance), the system shifts to the other stable point, the world tropic. You should see what happens to the coast lines in these times (way higher).
Cheery point: we might get to colonize Antarctica, which if this prediction is correct becomes inhabitable in one or two generations.
Sad point: millions or billions might die or at the very least require extensive aid. I am sure Big Oil will be happy to pay.
Possible fluke stroke of luck: if the polar inversion (which has already started and is an entirely unrelated event) causes the amount of volcanism expected, this could cool things back again and save us.
Downside to fluke stroke of luck: then again, this may involve the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, which would cause an event analogous to a nuclear winter, and again, millions or billions die.
Hence, the IPCC may be unrealistically optimistic in aiming at a 3 to 6 Celsius warming. It may be that we can only get either of the stable saddle points, the Cool (Today / Quaternary, Ordovician, Silurian and Permian) or the Warm (Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/ ??????????????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, come on. Hardly a serious website.
Could we perhaps, for the sake of a serious argument, use in our citations credible sources, such as NASA and NOAA or any other government authority or major university?
I will not stand around to see climatic debate become a rerun of the ridiculous Creationist debate some time ago. (Creationists should not be debated with. They should be gently tapped on the head, and told in a kind and encouraging manner, There, there.)
We have here a scientific, not philosophic, debate. The highest scientific authorities in this area, NASA and NOAA, have agreed on a conclusion, and can hardly be accused of bias. If you are not going to believe in them, regarding their own field of science, then who are you going to believe?
How about these links as a reply to the supernova thing (we have the Van Allen belts for the cosmic and hard gamma rays, BTW):
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/
PS The extinction of the dinosaurs has been credibly settled as being caused by the asteroid related to the Chicxulub crater in Mexico. A worldwide layer of an iridium isotope gave it away. This also inspired the dubbing of a phone satellite grid with the same name at the time, now also extinct. The impact caused a level of cooling which made life unpractical for all large cold-blooded animals over the following million years – basically ending the world tropic which prevailed prior to that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI want everyone to take note that Shoshin has chosen NOT TO ADDRESS the EVIDENCE. The best he can do is call the predictions and evidence a straw man. He does not tell how they are straw man constructions he just seems to think that if he declares it so then that is the end of the argument. Idiot
Now here is how a straw man argument is defined:
Straw Man:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
"The Straw Man is a type of Red Herring because the arguer is attempting to refute his opponent's position, and in the context is required to do so, but instead attacks a position—the "straw man"—not held by his opponent. In a Straw Man argument, the arguer argues to a conclusion that denies the "straw man" he has set up, but misses the target. There may be nothing wrong with the argument presented by the arguer when it is taken out of context, that is, it may be a perfectly good argument against the straw man. It is only because the burden of proof is on the arguer to argue against the opponent's position that a Straw Man fallacy is committed. So, the fallacy is not simply the argument, but the entire situation of the argument occurring in such a context."
Now let us take a look at one of my points.
I note that back in 1896 Svante Arrhenius predicted that nights would warm faster than days and that the diurnal temperature difference would lessen. That prediction has been observed. The observation is in DIRECT contradiction of what can be expected if the warming was solar induced. Where days and nights temperatures would DIVERGE.
Now Shoshin, has responded by calling this a straw man argument. He does not tell us how the logical fallacy is applicable, nor does he attempt to explain how back in 1896 using physics Svante got it right.
Nope. He just moronically claims that is a "straw man argument". I have the suspicion that Shoshin does know what a straw man argument is and sees such phrases as "straw man arguments" as magical incantations.
Does anyone here doubt that Shoshin is not going to engage on this one topic and simply move onto another false talking point?
Come on Shoshin, shows us you got the intellectual chops. Lets us talk the physics of why nights were predicted to increase in temperature and the diurnal difference to decrease. Let us discuss why you think it is a "straw man argument" to note that increased solar activity will result in higher day time temperatures and INCREASE the divergence between night and day time.
Got intellectual honesty?
I agree with most of your post but not the causes. For extinction to be caused by an asteroid, yet taking a million years? I believed this too initially but that really is not credible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Earth most likely will go through similar phases as it has in the past without any influence from man to either cause or ameliorate the changes.
This does not mean we should not clean up our act. Many times I have advocated a concerted effort to shift to nuclear power generation to save precious carbon based fuels while at the same time enabling energy supplies to the energy deprived & reducing pollution.
With regard to your dismissive response to my post #53 if even an illiterate person told you your house was on fire, would you refuse to even look unless it was confirmed by two independently reporting firemen? Cavalierly dismissing all information reported by WUWT is a blind spot you need to address.
For those who are allergic to WUWT perhaps they may find this site more palatable: See the RAS press release at http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is the Royal Astronomical Society. Do not try & say that is not a prestigious organisation.
Awe never heard of them. (Kidding of course) Good point on the Super Novae expulsion and we need to thank them and fear the caca out of them. Without them no heavier metals than Fe and that means no life. But they are better served in the past because if one does go puff near by such as Rigel or there is another one that is due we may suffer from the fall out. Also as close as Sirius is 10 LY and the fact it is a binary it too may do weird things on occasion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat may be interesting is we do go through an event about every 250 million years which is about the time it takes to take a trip round the Milky Way there is something going on and it may be related to crossing the galactic plane. We won't be here to see but perhaps there is an impact.
What we do need to appreciate is that currently the inter planetary space we are in contains about .001 atoms per cc which means we are as close to vacuum as you can get. If we do go through an interstellar cloud and they are out there the figure can change to 5,000 atoms per cc and that would play havoc with the Oort Cloud and the Kupier belt.
The Oort Cloud is about 1 light year out so we would get some pretty good warning but the Kupier belt is much closer and contains a lot of Pluto size objects which could cause a bad day on earth, moon or no moon.
The bottom line is that there is about 10 things that will get us on earth.
1) Asteroid hitting the earth
2) Solar Flare that is so extreme it blast away all of the magnetic field and strips the atmosphere.
3) Polar/magnetic shift (these happen and we may be in the process of one) There is an outside chance it affects the magnetic shield.
4) The wobble of the pole insures an ice age at some point no matter how much CO2 we put in to the atmosphere.
5) A super volcano *Yellowstone is way over due
6) A series of fault slip earthquakes creating a wave of 9.0 and bigger across the globe (we may be seeing that happening)
7) Invasion of an alien race. (They would probably take a look at us and either eat us or go running. Running would be the intelligent thing to do. Also if they were here, we would never know it. It would be like us studying nature with the tagging being unnoticeable by us.
8) The earth orbit changes from elliptical to circular and it plays havoc with the climate.
9) Insert your own idea here.
10) We create a total failure of enough feedback systems that the entire life systems we depend on collapse taking us with them.
We can control item 10 and that is all. Keep that in mind and be good keepers. Urban sprawl!
David that is GGH. Galactic Gallows Humour :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLove you too mate. Keep up the good fight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat to do about it?
There are two basic options, adaptation and remediation.
If our choice is adaptation, we prepare for the changes to the World Tropic of the dinos. This transition is going to be a rough ride. Severe weather, droughts and floods, more tropical diseases and insects.
The coastal areas –homeowners and businesses – will have to relocate, as today in Tuvalu and other areas, and eventually in several additional ones. This is expensive real estate that is being lost; it was all caused by fossil fuel peddling Big Oil, who will naturally be happy to pay the bill, and a mandatory consortium should be formed by governments right now to provide a billable defendant.
On the other hand, extensive additional territory will be made habitable in Alaska, Canada and Siberia, to which coastal refugees may chose to relocate.
(continues)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(continuation)
If our choice is remediation, on the other hand, there are several options. Some pollutants have a strong cooling effect, but they also cause acid rain. Large artificial shadows may be produced, on the ground, in the air or in space, through impractical engineering schemes.
Nature’s way of cooling the planet moderately, however, is through volcanism. Every time a large volcano goes off we have a cooler year. We are approaching an interesting period, the polar magnetic shift (the poles will invert their magnetic orientation: all compasses will point the other way), which has occurred 171 times, the last was 700,00 years – when the ice ages started - and is due. Its first signs are called the South Atlantic Anomaly, a magnetic hiccup that makes Hubble have to shut off while passing though.
Polar inversion is associated to a more intense tectonic and volcanic activity. Notice how every year now we have a large earthquake, until a decade ago they came one every half decade or so. One supervolcano that went off the last time this inversion occurred was Yellowstone. Humanity was then a small band then and took refuge in the South African coasts, fish production being less affected than crops by the cold. If the supervolcano does go off, sea fish farms may likewise replace some crops.
(In this context, I occasionally pout out that Yellowstone is a great geothermal source, enough to supply all the power required in the world many times over. Also, the easiest way to prevent the supervolvano from erupting would be by relieving the safety valve, by drilling simultaneously several dozen 10 m wide craters, with disposable subway tunnel sized drills, puncturing the magma level simultaneously. Old Faithful always kept intact, our thermometer.)
Well, the point now being, if we are going to try to do something the try to stop further warming, the most natural, thus cost effective way, would be if it were possible to do controlled volcanic eruptions (anywhere but Yellowstone). If we could induce volcanic eruptions at just the right rate, we might counter the warming effects of the artic methane.
It would certainly be the cleanest and cheapest way to cool the planet; I am not sure we have the capacity to do the math, however, and anything would be a blind shot.
Do you realize we got to this point because we thought we had all the answers. The only thing we can do is clean up our own act and that means learn how to get the most out of the energy we use. Carbon has come a long way in solving these issues with graphene, nanotubes, synthetic diamonds, carbon composites, graphite all the above does not mean burning it. Secondly and we need to do this anyway because eventually there will be none is move off an oil based economy but that is not going to happen in a timely manner no matter how hard we try.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCynobacteria offer a tremendous way to convert chlorophyll into O2 and H2 see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-production-comes-natu&posted=1 which for some reason keeps getting pushed under the mat. Germany is currently laying down a Hydrogen dispersal infrastructure and we would be smart to do that but with military budgets at 700 billion plus and republicans running the purse strings the word fat chance comes to mind.
You mention Yellowstone, well Yellowstone when it goes and vent it all you want it will still go will release more CO2 and CH4 than all the cars in China of which there are more now than people in the US. Oh yeah it is an international issue and getting the third and second worlds to step in line while they are still trying to bring food, shelter and health to there people to stay legitimate may not be that easy.
But what ever you do, do not add to the fire. I have seen ideals of Sulfates and aluminum sparkly things that may create some blockage of sun light. That is an act of war sir. Anything that is disbursed into the atmosphere that would cross an international boundary is causus belli and I guarantee you there would be wars fought if some egg head tries that approach.
We have crossed the point of fixing the problem, we can mitigate the results to some degree and we should start looking at moving domestic populations to safer heights which may become an issue in 50 to 100 years. But by no means is it time to start moving them, my concern is that about 75% of humanity lives at or near sea level. If Greenland starts to go or we see some movement on the eastern sheet of Antarctica then we better worry. The rise in sea level if they both go would be about 300 feet at which point this essay becomes glub glub glub....
I followed your link to WUWT out of morbid curiosity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently you have not formulated opinion based on real science. FYI, WUWT is a blog site dedicated to providing hucksters from the oil industry and right wing denial nuts a place to congregate and cogitate about nonsense. Do you really believe that supernovas millions of light years away have causes the sudden climate changes of the past two centuries? Do you really believe that 'Climate Gate" was not a inside plot from big oil and right wing propagandists?
Obviously, none of the script kiddies at WUWT collectively have any real education to back up their ridiculous claims. They are kids playing with graphics programs to produce amateur graphs and using search engines to create laughable statistics. They all need to go back to school. Dropouts never get a Nobel prize (spelled prize, not prise). I can only compare the site to the Heartland Institute with one major difference, Heartland was funded by people with big money resources and the site looks like it was built with big money. It has the facade of looking professional but the content is all designed to fool gullible people with little or no education. Did you ever read their crap about how harmless tobacco is? Who do you think wrote that crap? I'll give you a hint, shills from the tobacco industry.
WUWT in contrast is a low budget pipe dream with the sole purpose of making money through advertisements. One look at the slogan next to the logo says it all, "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change". Has the muck racker who created the site ever heard of NASA or the USGS or even SA or National Geographic? It goes beyond being an outright lie, it is a self proclaimed endorsement that only a fool would believe, and that is exactly the kind of traffic they attract.
Group thought caught doing evil... What did you expect, but he does it so well. I love when Carlye enters the room. Unfortunately the same amount of group thought is just as stanky on the other side of the issue. What scares me the most is we will try to fix instead of ourselves. That would create potential extinction potentials off the chart and the guarantee of a war between countries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear David,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that any international remediation effort must be agreed upon by nations at UNO level first or there could be conflicts. I would specifically avoid engineering shadow producing schemes as costly and unwieldy.
I believe induced volcanism as the cleanest, safest and cheapest planet remedial cooling mechanism. It would take a small volcano and medium sized explosives, then monitor results before the next shot to perfect the modeling. Every time the planet has cooled off it was because of the dust in the atmosphere due to volcanism or impact cratering (the dino asteroid).
If Yellowstone went off it would release CO2, but also vast amounts of dust, which would have such a strong cooling effect as to produce and event analogous to a nuclear winter (without the radiation). Our best option in that case, not to starve, would be to shift partially from agriculture to aquaculture, crops to sea fish farms, as fish thrive in cold because ccoler water holds more oxygen.
I definitely agree with you that we should clean up on principle, not by constraint.
Your Cyanobacteria concept is really cool, do you believe it would have the required high yield? Public contributions to the next Climatic Summit, the Rio+20, are open through the links below, all good ideas are welcome.
uncsd2012@un.org.
https://www.riodialogues.org/
http://www.rio20.gov.br/sobre_a_rio_mais_20/participacao-na-conferencia
Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe long winter and subsequent permanent cooling from a world tropic to a current temperate clime caused by an asteroid, as the cause for dino extinction, is accepted by all (I think) mainstream scientists and not really up to debate.
The effects of supernovas and other sources of hard radiation are an interesting field of study, but understand that the absolute amounts of energy conveyed are very small as these sources are distant, usually other galaxies. If a supernova went off nearby, up to a few dozen to hundred light years away, or a few thousands if we happened to be aligned with its axis, now that would have a strong effect.
Your ideas on nuclear power are worthwhile, particularly if we focused on thorium reactors, which are less pollutant. The reason nations keep conventional fission reactors is not to produce power, who cares about power, but to stockpile plutonium.
Public contributions to the next Climatic Summit, the Rio+20, are open through the links below, all good ideas are welcome.
uncsd2012@un.org.
https://www.riodialogues.org/
http://www.rio20.gov.br/sobre_a_rio_mais_20/participacao-na-conferencia
I am not suggesting doing any remediation now, of course, this is all long term, worst case planning. It would be good to know what to do if we really needed to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCarlye,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have finally read your Royal Society article on Supernovas.
For all other readers, it is really interesting, check it out.
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive
Very promising, but the author is jumping to conclusions when he correlates the sun passing thorough the galactic arms with supernova rates and nothing else. It could be anything else in the arms, including the extra dust, other stars, happy aliens, or whatnot.
The one solid correlation he does make is among evolution rates and temperature (a ha).
>>A likely reason, according to Prof. Svensmark, is that the cold climate associated with high supernova rates brings a greater variety of habitats between polar and equatorial regions, while the associated stresses of life prevent the ecosystems becoming too set in their ways.<<
REPENT !! THE END IS NEAR !!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuppose we plot, over an usual 30cm sheet, the undisputable temperature graph of the last 500 000 years.
In order to see the anthropogenic (caused by humans) impact on the global temperature one have to pay attention to the last part of that graph, let say the last 200 years, representing the period starting from industrial revolution.
So, let us take a pen and highlight, over that graph, the referred period of 200 years.
Difficult ?? I guess so…
In fact we have to buy a magnifying glass and a super-extra thin pen to do it because in that 30 cm long graph, the last 200 years measure exactly 0,12 mm !
(I googled for a extra thin pen and the thinnest I found had 0,2mm thickness.)
So, a single (!!) dot, made with that pen, represents about 333 years of temperatures.
Well they gave us some billion dollars to analyze anthropogenic temperatures and we cannot give up so easily. We buy a electronic microscope, and…
Eureka !! There it is! Hidden in the last dot of the graph we were able to found something slightly different !!! We are not sure what it is, it may be a flee excrement, anyway, whatever it is, it’s pointing upwards !!
So with the same 0,2mm extra thin pen we mark the next dot of the temperature graph, which represents no more no less than the prediction for the next 333 years temperatures, and solemnly declare to the world:
We are doomed !! The end is near !!!! REPENT !!!
http://mthudson.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/end-is-near.jpg
Oh thank you for relieving me of all that false stress. On with the sprawl, kill the EPA, dump the spent nuke fuel in the ocean its big and lets make more subdivisions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, we need to start drilling deeper and deeper, there must be more oil and God there is so little CO2 anyway, we have tons of O2 in the atmosphere. Who cares about feedback systems and eco systems we made a mistake, they don't really relate at all.