Climatologist says Arctic Carbon Release could mean “We're Fucked”

[Perspicuo]

Climatologist Says Arctic Carbon Release Could Mean “We're Fucked”
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/climatologist-arctic-carbon-release-could-mean-“were-fucked”

Climatologists have spent decades politely warning that we are cooking our planet, but now one has decided to stop sugar coating it. Professor Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland tweeted “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're fucked.”

Box was responding to research by Stockholm University reporting “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor” in the Arctic Ocean.

The scientists who made the discovery were more restrained. “This was somewhat of a surprise,” chief scientist Orjan Gustafsson wrote. Although there have been plenty of reports of methane plumes in the Arctic before, these have been a forewarning of danger, rather than a direct threat themselves. Microorganisms in the water column scavenge methane as it rises. Provided they can get to it before it reaches the surface the climate change damage is small.

However, at some locations the Swedish team saw bubbles reaching the surface. Dissolved methane concentrations were 10-50 times background levels, and expedition members report “sniffing methane”.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

 

[barbos]

methane has no smell and therefore can not be "sniffed"

 

[Perspicuo]

Literary trope, barbos.

 

[barbos]

Literary trope, barbos.

I don't think so. They claim sounds as if members of their expedition really felt the smell.
They may have smelt something but it was not methane.

 

[barbos]

And couple of giant bubble of methane in one place do not say anything other than couple of giant bubble of methane.
They need to measure it on the whole scale and then compare to the "normal" level of gasing.

 

[Underseer]

It doesn't matter. Anthropogenic climate change does not exist. It is the product of a vast conspiracy by over 90% of the world's scientists.

Also, the climate change that is not happening is definitely not caused by man. It would have happened anyway, so there's nothing we can do about it.

On a more serious note, I'm old enough to remember communists claiming that environmentalism was a capitalist conspiracy to destroy the economies of the workers' paradise. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

 

[barbos]

With all that climate change wars, climate in my home town has became noticeably better - less dry and hot, more mild and rainy.
Don't know if it is result of global warming but nobody talks about that, everybody talks about climate changing to worse.

 

[Underseer]

With all that climate change wars, climate in my home town has became noticeably better - less dry and hot, more mild and rainy.
Don't know if it is result of global warming but nobody talks about that, everybody talks about climate changing to worse.

Of course they won't admit it. That would expose the conspiracy!

Sorry. Agenda. I meant to say "agenda."

 

[Perspicuo]

With all that climate change wars, climate in my home town has became noticeably better - less dry and hot, more mild and rainy.
Don't know if it is result of global warming but nobody talks about that, everybody talks about climate changing to worse.

Of course they won't admit it. That would expose the conspiracy!

Sorry. Agenda. I meant to say "agenda."

You know what would dispell the conspiracy once and for all? Paying attention to anecdotal evidence such as the weather on certain days at a certain locale. They just don't pay attention!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Agreed. If the methane hydrate layers let go it's going to be a lot worse than the worst of the IPCC predictions. Long ago there is a period where the fossil record is all but blank--too much heat. We could be heading for that again.

 

[barbos]

Long ago there is a period where the fossil record is all but blank--too much heat.

Interesting, care to name a period?

 

[fromderinside]

Long ago there is a period where the fossil record is all but blank--too much heat.

Interesting, care to name a period?

Late Permian. A recent article Geochemical Consequences of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction in a non-marine succession, Sydney Basin, Australia

Positive excursions in Ni, Cr, and Co are coincident with the negative d¹³ C_org shift and are most consistent with a reduction in oxygen availability due to a major volcanic eruption.

http://973.geobiology.cn/photo/2012080813890007.pdf

I've been watching "last 4 billion years" on Nova.

 

[Thomas II]

Scientists may have cracked the giant Siberian crater mystery — and the news isn't good

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/05/scientists-may-have-cracked-the-giant-siberian-crater-mystery-and-the-news-isnt-good/

 

[barbos]

Interesting, care to name a period?

Late Permian. A recent article Geochemical Consequences of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction in a non-marine succession, Sydney Basin, Australia

Positive excursions in Ni, Cr, and Co are coincident with the negative d¹³ C_org shift and are most consistent with a reduction in oxygen availability due to a major volcanic eruption.

http://973.geobiology.cn/photo/2012080813890007.pdf

I've been watching "last 4 billion years" on Nova.

Hardly a blank. Yes, most species died but do you have the evidence that total amount of life was significantly reduced?
Extinction due to the climate change (even to higher average temperatures) is no the same as not being able to sustain much life.
I was promised practically uninhabitable planet.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Long ago there is a period where the fossil record is all but blank--too much heat.

Interesting, care to name a period?

I forget when it was. Hundreds of millions of years ago.

- - - Updated - - -

Interesting, care to name a period?

Late Permian. A recent article Geochemical Consequences of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction in a non-marine succession, Sydney Basin, Australia

Thank you. That rings a bell.

- - - Updated - - -

Hardly a blank. Yes, most species died but do you have the evidence that total amount of life was significantly reduced?
Extinction due to the climate change (even to higher average temperatures) is no the same as not being able to sustain much life.
I was promised practically uninhabitable planet.

At least the total amount of fossil-making life was greatly reduced as evidenced by the lack of fossils.

Note, also, that such mass extinctions favor the small, rapidly reproducing species. That doesn't describe humans nor most of our livestock.

 

[rousseau]

I'm prone to take a website called 'IFIScience' with a grain of salt. It's not that I don't believe in climate-change, obviously I do, but this article doesn't mean much to me.

While we're here, can anyone point me to an actual solid, unbiased resource on the current climate change situation? I'd be curious to know the exact reality of the situation.

 

[bleubird]

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/permafrost.html
Uaf.edu has done some of the best research on this.

 

[barbos]

Correct me if am wrong but all methane from permafrost is equivalent to 40% increase of CO2.
I remember reading it and then my level of scare dropping. Maybe this drop was unwarranted but I had been under impression that everybody and everything dies if it gets out.
Don't forget that methane in the atmosphere does not last long. Again, I think I heard 100 years number.
So in worst case scenario it gets released instantly then we will have around 100 years of hot weather.
If it gets out slower than that then increase in temperature will be much lower.

 

[bleubird]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...s-are-just-the-beginning-of-arctic-surprises/
1.7 trillion metric tons of carbon.
Methane is many times worse then Co2 as greenhouse gas.
The Arctic is warming faster the rest of the globe.
Feedback cycle.

 

[barbos]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...s-are-just-the-beginning-of-arctic-surprises/
1.7 trillion metric tons of carbon.
Methane is many times worse then Co2 as greenhouse gas.
The Arctic is warming faster the rest of the globe.
Feedback cycle.

trillion tons is meaningless number without another number to compare.

40% number i mentioned includes methane potency.
in other words all methane is equivalent to 40% increase in CO2

The permafrost already holds vast stores of carbon, as much as 1.7 trillion metric tons according to estimates—or more than twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere today. Not all of that will thaw in the near future—some areas of permafrost extend 700 meters deep—but as much as 120 billion metric tons could be released by 2100. That's enough to raise global average temperatures by nearly a third of a degree Celsius. "These are big numbers," Schaefer notes. But "they are in fact small when compared to those projected from burning coal and oil and natural gas. Those emissions are just immense."

Kinda deflate the whole scare, don't you think?
I mean in worst case scenario amount of methane will triple, but methane is not a major greenhouse gas currently. And don't forget in this worst case scenario once it's released it's gone, nothing to worry about anymore. I say let it fart, compared to coal burning it's nothing, and we should be worried about coal burning which is by far the biggest source of greenhouse gases.