Posts
The latest from Dahr Jamail
Release
of Arctic Methane "May Be Apocalyptic," Study Warns
23
March, 2017
,
A scientific
study published
in the prestigious journal Palaeoworld in December issued a dire --
and possibly prophetic -- warning, though it garnered little
attention in the media.
"Global
warming triggered by the massive release of carbon dioxide may be
catastrophic," reads
the study's abstract.
"But the release of methane from hydrate may be apocalyptic."
The
study, titled "Methane Hydrate: Killer Cause of Earth's Greatest
Mass Extinction," highlights the fact that the most significant
variable in the Permian
Mass Extinction event,
which occurred 250 million years ago and annihilated 90 percent of
all the species on the planet, was methane hydrate.
To
read the article GO
HERE
Below has been my point for a while ie we don't know what methane has done in the past because it converts to CO2 and leaves next to no record of its passing, It's the CH4 that is going to get us.
ReplyDelete"The length of time for the methane pulse is very important here. If most of the methane came out in a decade, for example then within a subsequent decade or so most of the methane will have been broken down to CO2 and H20 and also been dispersed/distributed around the planet, away from the pulse source area in the Arctic. The CO2 produced would have been small (CO2 stayed within 180-280 ppm range). It takes about 50 years or even more (depending on the snowfall rate and surface melt rates) for snow at the surface to be compacted into firn that closes off the air spaces creating the bubbles in the ice that are reservoirs of the methane and other atmospheric gases. Because of that 50 year bubble closure time, the large pulse of methane that was burped out of the marine sediments and terrestrial permafrost would be long gone and not result in a detectable signal in the ice core record. Just because the record does not capture it does not mean that it was not produced."
"The length of time for the methane pulse is very important here. If most of the methane came out in a decade, for example then within a subsequent decade or so most of the methane will have been broken down to CO2 and H20 and also been dispersed/distributed around the planet, away from the pulse source area in the Arctic. The CO2 produced would have been small (CO2 stayed within 180-280 ppm range). It takes about 50 years or even more (depending on the snowfall rate and surface melt rates) for snow at the surface to be compacted into firn that closes off the air spaces creating the bubbles in the ice that are reservoirs of the methane and other atmospheric gases. Because of that 50 year bubble closure time, the large pulse of methane that was burped out of the marine sediments and terrestrial permafrost would be long gone and not result in a detectable signal in the ice core record. Just because the record does not capture it does not mean that it was not produced."
ReplyDeleteThis is why I say @405 ppm CO2 now is worse than at anytime in geological history, as far as 'life as we know it' existing here goes.
As I keep saying, we are told the last time CO2 went to 400+ppm from 180ppm ? it took 10,000 years or 830 average methane lifetimes, 'normal' atmospheric CH4 comes from plants farts etc, and a small amount comes out of the ground ? from past plants etc. during the past 10,000 year warming period the environment would have sat at lower levels of CO2 for several thousand years, so by the time the atmosphere got to 400 pp CO2, all the ice would have melted, and most of the clathrates would have done their thing, and 830 average CH4 lifetimes would have come and gone ..... where as now ?
There is no precedent for what we are seeing, we are in 100% uncharted territory, in a bad way.
Basically no one has a clue, and nearly everyone studying it is in denial.