From 2009:

Just because you are and have been for several years doesn't make this a non-issue. That's your personal relationship to the story. Now if you don't want anyone else to know, go ahead and say so.

Might want to try reading my post again.

One thing that really fucking pisses me off is how little attention most people pay to this issue.

... "hardly news" Okay, it seems contradictory (to me at least) to say that when you want more people to know. Isn't the point that people really need to hear this stuff? And I think it is very relevant to today which very much makes it news.

The issue of methane as a greenhouse gas is not really common knowledge. And its potential level of danger to our ecosystem, from the reports I've heard, are alarming. Sadly, the real knuckleheads who need to hear this stuff have financial ties to the oil and gas industry or other industries that recklessly pollute our world. And just hearing about it is only the first step. So repeat, repeat, repeat as often as necessary. Put it into different words and different contexts. If the scientists are correct (and why should anyone second guess them except out of self-interest), this should be life-changing information.

I'll get off my soap box now. It's clear you care too and there was a misunderstanding of meaning in the words chosen.

Where was all this alarm and coverage years ago?

When these reports were ignored back then, I pretty much gave up hope.

its news because now its reached the surface

"But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that’s a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about."




it even says its normal with the bubbles but now its escaping. So maybe you should be pissed at yourself for not reading....geez the hatred

Either you care enough to educate yourself or you don't. Do as you like.

The story you cited explicitly stated they had not seen that.

Good luck.

but we all agree that this is a big fucking deal.

Is this hipster "I knew about that years ago" attitude some posters wave around. It can be charming (but a little sad) when it's just reaching, but damned obnoxious when it's derogatory.

May the universe save us from those who are just too fucking awesome for the rest of us.

is their propensity to claim to care about things while not actually bothering to educate themselves about those things, instead choosing to debate fucking semantics - or worse, sidestep the issue entirely in favor of trying to score internet tough guy points using petty, personal bullshit.

Too bad the universe can't save us from people who have better things to do than learn.

for driving home my point.

You seem to think that since you knew first, you care more. Fine, you're smart, with great compassion. Try to apply some of those skills to your conversations on DU.

I wish I understood what the hell it is that makes some people treat it like one.

In case you're still confused about my statements, I'm not trying to be a "hipster" I am genuinely fucking pissed at how little people seem to know about what is literally the single most important issue we face.

I'm pissed AT THE SITUATION. I'm pissed at THE MEDIA for treating this aspect of climate change the same as they always have treated this issue. I didn't get pissed at any individual until this became some kind of fucking game.

It sickens me that people can read about this seriously important issue and somehow manage to still want to get down in the mud and take shit personally/make shit personal. But some people are ALL ABOUT ego, I guess.

But I guess we just missed the point. All your "OMGing" and "I'm so over these kinds of 'discussions'" comments weren't a reflection of your ego, they were about everyone else's ego.

Again, thanks are in order.

Fucking hell

roll your eyes all you like, but everyone that interacted with you acted objectively and diplomatically.

You could say "everyone except demwing" which I will gladly admit.

like it's derogatory. I've run into it with young people who tell me that now hipster is a BAD thing.

I don't get you guys at all.

Off topic, though.

but, I picked up the newly redefined term from my teenage son, who says he has never heard the word used as a compliment.

Words change, right? Shit happens.

I speak from experience.

At the very least, we don't have to repeat their shit. Of course the word might not be as important to you as it is to me.

Seems to me the word 'liberal' was made bad for a while there. Not saying they're equivalent, but still an interesting coincidence.

And how about some clowns using the word 'boomer' as a pejorative? Some words we fight back on. I guess for me, hipster is one of those words.

Not that my opinion should matter to you.

And now please back to our regularly scheduled discussion.......

“The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane, and that’s normal,” Box went on. But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that’s a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about.

read to see if I was right.

Edit to follow: ...

Let's put oil and coal barons to good use. I don't think a little Dutch boy's finger is going to be sufficient for this one.

Welcome to the Inferno.

"“The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane,"

That's the first time I've heard that. All the Scientific American articles and other indicate methane will reach the surface and fuck us all.



Kind of makes all the arguing about politics seem small compared to this.

Yes it does

The referenced article is just a little column in salon.com...and the author's credentials aren't really that impressive. Regarding the Dr Jason Box quotes, they are from Twitter. Nowadays young scientists try to use twitter and blogs to get their names out in the media. Putting out a twitter set of comments like this gives the guy a lot of coverage. But it's fairly meaningless.

Regarding the science, sea floor methane emissions are fairly common in some areas. And depending on water temperature and water depth the methane can be consumed by bacteria as it ascends through the water column.

If the methane is bubbling through a single breach in sea floor sediments then the bubbles can reach the surface. Methane leaks are much more frequent where the sediments have generated natural gas, and in some places they are very common (for example, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic offshore Trinidad, the Caspian Sea, and of course in the seas surrounding the Arctic Ocean).

What I tend to notice is that ongoing natural phenomena tend to be used to throw the public into a panic. The Arctic does need careful study and observation, and if the world were to warm a lot more it could cause serious hassles to people living close to the coast (sea level will definitely rise). However, this isn't that big a deal at this time. Every summer we see this type of article, but this is well known and documented.

But this is not old news. Methane bubbles, yes. Making it to the surface and entering the atmosphere? Pretty new.

BTW, you may find this article by Andrew Revkin interesting.

Here, you can also read about in the Good Reads section, if you'd like:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101699386

At 41 and with his experience I would NOT say about him:

"Young scientists try to use twitter and blogs to get their names out in the media. Putting out a twitter set of comments like this gives the guy a lot of coverage. But it's fairly meaningless. "

He is leading the Dark Ice study, was featured in the documentary "Chasing Ice" which I thought was great and in Rollingstone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Box

http://bprc.osu.edu/wiki/Jason_Box_Professional_Bio

http://darksnowproject.org/

I'm sure if it really turns into a problem and lots of people need to migrate from the coasts or wherever, other civilized areas will happily and peacefully absorb the immigrants. Not a big deal at all.

in the form of natural gas. Why can't they find a way to recover this methane that's reaching the surface naturally?

don't take the destruction of our atmosphere into account. Just like they do with the pollution of the water supply.

If we ever actually took our destruction and/or disruption of the environment into the equation, and of course not only from a human perspective, we probably couldn't do anything. At least not to the scale that we want to do it to, both big and microscopic.

That's the real cost-benefit analysis. Civilization or not. If we want it, nothing can really stand in the way. If we don't, well we'll have plenty of issues there too.

So it's a zero sum issue for you?

Really?

What kind of civilization are we talking about here?

I don't think shitting in your back yard is civilized. I don't think destroying the very thing you depend on to live is civilized. And I really don't believe it's an either or situation.

It's not really that much gas, and it's released in relatively short lived bursts of bubbles which don't really amount to much. If people are worried about methane they ought to start sorting their garbage and advocate methane capture in their local organic garbage dump.

So we can't capture it and we can't transport it even if we could capture it.

They are, however, planning on mining seafloor methane hydrates. Oh joy.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/frozen-fuel4.htm

"too diffuse and too remote."

From the article:

"Even if a small fraction of the Arctic carbon were released to the atmosphere, we’re fucked,” he told me. What alarmed him was that ”the methane bubbles were reaching the surface. That was something new in my survey of methane bubbles,” he said.

“The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane, and that’s normal,” Box went on. But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that’s a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about.

Emphasis mine

However, a high volume methane leak through a sediment layer on or just beneath the sea floor and in shallow water (or in a swamp) can allow the methane to reach the surface. When it does on land it can catch fire. I suspect that started fire worshipper religions in the Paleolithic and Neolithic. When it happens offshore it can be large enough for bubbles to reach the surface, but that's rare and short lived (the layer releasing the methane depletes, this lowers the rate, and the bacteria eat what comes out quite nicely).

There are some "extremist" climate scientist who believe that we have set off a series of natural climate cycles that are UN-stoppable, and the climate is in the first stages of a rapid extreme warming. Methane released directly into the atmosphere is up to 100 times more "effective" as a green house gas than Carbon dioxide. There is a fairly massive amount of methane frozen in "hydrates" under the arctic ocean and arctic tundra. If we have warmed the arctic enough to start the methane hydrates melting and releasing the methane directly into the atmosphere, then we humans can do nothing to stop global warming. Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels, global warming would continue to intensify. This warming causing more warming is the positive self accelerating feedback loops. There are many of these, the methane release, and melting arctic sea ice are two of the most important.

So if this theory is true, we could see massive climate warming an resulting effects not in 75 or 100 years but in 10 or 20 years. Warming and more acidic oceans would kill most of the plankton, and nearly all sea life. Warmer oceans would also mean regular cat 5 hurricanes/typhoons. 0f winters and 100f summers with extended period of drought followed by flooding storms would wipe out crops and return dust bowl days, and global famine. Forests drying and burning up, massive mudslides, temperature extremes. No food and water means massive civil unrest to the point of lord of the flies.

Dr. Guy McPherson http://guymcpherson.com/ is one of the major climate scientist pushing this extreme view. Most of the discussion on his website is a bit over my head, but he had a couple of good interviews with Thomm Hartmann available on you-tube which were a bit more direct. His message is basically it is too late, and we have triggered the end of humanity. So live a good life of what time humanity has left.

I am certainly not a climate scientist, and I really hope these people are wrong. But, if it is even a remote possibility that humanity is in hospice, might that not be a little bit important? How many climate scientist have to say "we're fucked" to make that a scientific certainty.

http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/melting-polar-ice-caps-ticking-timebomb-earths-climate-system

REM "Its the end of the world as we know it"

I'm sorry to come across as harsh, but hobody who's done any genuine research on this subject takes this lunatic seriously. At all.

If you want some real information, I'd like to suggest Skeptical Science, or Andrew Revkin's DotEarth blog over at the NYTimes(warning: Revkin may be a tad too optimistic for some tastes, to be truthful). Guys like McPherson are doing nothing but dragging us down, and (unwittingly, perhaps) giving ammo to the Koch Bros. and the other funders of denialism to paint us all in a bad light. And believe me, we DON'T need that now.

Maybe it is responses like this that may be "dragging us down".

But we do need to be careful not to get suckered in to someone's game, just because said source happens to be alternative, or "edgy", or whatever the case may be. It never hurts to take stuff with a grain of salt sometimes....just saying.

before it reaches the surface, it would at least be some good press for an industry so Koch'd. Seems like all they'd need to do is find the ocean floor plumes, where they start, and put a funnel over them, with a hose to the surface to collect the gas. Then, resell it as natural gas, so at least it gets burned before release.

Thanks for the thread, geardaddy.

my upcoming lifetime of student loan repaymemts seem suddenly less oppressive.

Perhaps that's due to a drastic redefining of the term "lifetime."

Please. Please. Please. Or at least math.

That's why I am backing Elizabeth Warren. She at least understands numbers. We can't afford another president who doesn't really understand what risks we are taking with our slow movement toward alternative energy.

motherfuckers sabotaged carters reelection, started wars, and have done a lot more than that to maintain their status quo.

i just heard the local dumbass on the limbaugh station, endorsed by the U of NM lobos, bring on two professional GW deniers for an hour for a veery friendly interview. it happens all the time in all states (these guests and others travel the talk radio circuit) and their sponsoring think tanks probably pay the radio stations payola style.

and they reach tens of thousands of commuters in the afternoon.

they left a few minutes at the end of the show for callers and i happened to get through (they must have forgotten the last time i got through a year or so ago) so i said "hi folks i was just thinking how in ten or even just five years from now the work you're doing to delay action on global warming might be considered treasonous", then i got cut off.

other than a few people getting through once in a lucky while, partly because of call screening and partly because it's completely ignored by the people whose asses it's kicking, they rule the airwaves reaching 50 mil a week.

until that gets fixed good luck getting warren or sanders or any major reforms.

to buy lots and lots of media.

a coordinated lying machine. they already had a lot of those stations before clinton and they used them to push him right and force compromise, thanks to the left ignoring it. media consolidation just allowed them to reduce the number or republican owners who might have decided to switch programming when they figured it was bullshit.

they could have had all the stations in the world but the fairness doctrine would have prevented the psyops it is now.

there will be no rational national discussion of energy and global warming or any other major issue as long as the left ignores talk radio

They willingly support oil.

There will be no rational national discussion of energy and global warming with Democrats that only give lip service to green energy.

have been for 25 years.

i went to a 365 protest some years back with 500 other people to a state capitol protest and there was NO local media coverage in the major papers TV. if 50 of those had gone to the state radio station, or to the university putting it's logo on that station to help it sell global warming denial, it would have made a bigger impact.

it's total bullshit that our orgs are getttting their asses kicked an dwaste so much of our donations and activism because NONE of them even try to address the talk radio problem. OWS is another missed opportunity for exactly the same reason.

and dem or republican, they're trying to get elected and some democrats actually try. their position and strength to push a sane agenda is directly up against a massive fossil powered MIC and their LOON servants represented by the loon party which is informed, motivated and ordered in large part by a talk radio psyops.

the oil thing goes way back and is big money in politics. but the left has been useless trying to push ANY major reform the last 25 years precisely because they let a few hundred blowhards on 1000 very loud soapboxes kick their ass around and take free potshots all day at their candidates and issues.

my call to that radio station, where their lies and disinformation get challenged in real time happens so infrequently it's pitiful.

of the water, the ocean can not keep the gas in solution any longer and it "boils" out or bubbles out.

As you know from a can of soft drink, when the liquid contents warms up, the CO2 bubbles come to the top surface and escape.

The ocean is heating up enough to allow the gas to bubble up and OUT of the sea water. The gas rises in the atmosphere to then trap more of the heat of sunlight. The sun's radiation deflects heat back to the Earth's surface which means more heat to the sea water (and land). It is a vicious heating loop that feeds on itself increasing the release of more gas and more heat.

Can it be stopped is the question. With top scientist saying we-Planet Earth is in a funk, I believe the partial pressures of each of the greenhouse gases are adding up to a huge Vapor Pressure at the surface of the oceans. Have we passed the vapor pressure tipping point?

In 2008.

The lecturer stated that their recent report was damning enough (not to mention the newest report), but it did not contain estimates for one major category; methane releases from permafrost and also future mining of;

"Climate change impacts on methane hydrates

Huge amounts of methane are stored around the world in the sea floor in the form of solid methane hydrates. These hydrates represent a large energy reserve for humanity. Climate warming, however, could cause the hydrates to destabilize. The methane, a potent greenhouse gas, would escape unused into the atmosphere and could even accelerate climate change.

How methane ends up in the ocean

People have been burning coal, oil and natural gas for more than a hundred years. Methane hydrates, on the other hand, have only recently come under controversial discussion as a potential future energy source from the ocean. They represent a new and completely untapped reservoir of fossil fuel, because they contain, as their name suggests, immense amounts of methane, which is the main component of natural gas. Methane hydrates belong to a group of substances called clathrates – substances in which one molecule type forms a crystal-like cage structure and encloses another type of molecule. If the cage-forming molecule is water, it is called a hydrate. If the molecule trapped in the water cage is a gas, it is a gas hydrate, in this case methane hydrate.
Methane hydrates can only form under very specific physical, chemical and geological conditions. High water pressures and low temperatures provide the best conditions for methane hydrate formation. If the water is warm, however, the water pressure must be very high in order to press the water molecule into a clathrate cage. In this case, the hydrate only forms at great depths. If the water is very cold, the methane hydrates could conceivably form in shallower water depths, or even at atmospheric pressure. In the open ocean, where the average bottom-water temperatures are around 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, methane hydrates occur starting at depths of around 500 metres."

We're fucked, worse, if mining the hydrates begins.

Forever, from no onwards, whenever anyone denies science for political gain, point them at all the damage caused by the delays the climate deniers engineered with their roadblocks to public policy.

Never let a science denier hurt us like the climate change deniers have.