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The scariest part of the slow trend of global warming is that maybe big positive feedback mechanisms could be literally hidden under our feets, pretty much ignored till now. Things could go wrong very fast, in ways that not even experts could had predicted.
I worry a lot about global warming, but I've never found that argument massively persuasive. The core worry you're getting at is that there might exist turning points, where a marginal unit of carbon will cause greater feedbacks and runaway global warming, at least until we stumble on another stable equilibrium.
If that were the case, though, we likely would have hit that turning point in the past. The Earth's temperature has been significantly warmer in recent memory, and if it were, we'd have already fallen past that turning point.
This isn't to say that there aren't currently positive feedback mechanism, nor that they're not big positive feedbacks, nor even that we won't stumble upon new positive feedbacks as we hit temperatures outside our historical memory. However, it's unlikely we'll ever hit a point where a unit of carbon causes a discontinuous change in average global temperatures.
It's an odd juxtaposition to see your comment about how this won't happen because it never happened before, right next to a comment about how it has happened before.
Yeah, maybe. On the other hand the whole phenomenon seems to be very common and has been going on for thousands of years.
Just in this one picture one can see hundreds of such craters:
http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/crater-...
Trying to link the phenomenon to the post Industrial Age 'Global Warming' I call that just another lie.
I think you're wrong here. The 'craters' on the picture are defenately something different.
If it was that common, the scientists and/or the people would know about it. What we're talking about here is very rare.
What I'm curious about is the mechanisms that might counteract global warming. The earth has cycled in the past between hot and cold periods, so there are obviously natural mechanisms that cause it to reverse as well.
Could we harness these mechanisms to keep the earth compatible with human habitation?
The earth has sometimes been cooled by volcanoes putting stuff in the atmosphere and that could be simulated by pumping sulphur dioxide though whether its a good idea is dubious. Funnily enough the present man made warming may actually help keep the earth compatible with human habitation as there are arguments it may head in to another ice age otherwise.
I think that this mechanism is mostly CO2 being slowly weathered out of the atmosphere and disposed of, mostly via limestone formation. This takes a very long time and is very slow, so it can only catch up if you stop pumping it out.
Well, the main feedback mechanism that I can see being a major influence in the beginning chaos is that of albedo. In short, atmospheric warming causes more water vapour higher in the atmosphere, causing higher and denser clouds - which will reflect most light and energy and prevent it from reaching the surface. This in turn could cause snow and ice cover on the ground, due to lowered surface temperatures, which would feed further into a cooling system.
You'd expect to see this effect most prominently in continental rain shadow areas, particularly at altitude.
Frankly, the outcome is unknowable, there are too many variables, both known and unknown. The only element which does seem inevitable is that there will be major changes to human civilisation.
Oh - one thought I did have was blanketing the Arctic in artificial icebergs - just big white floating plastic platforms, millions of them.
You mess with a nonlinear system, you get nonlinear results.
haha, i have been saying people this thing to people for years. the climate is non-linear which means slight changes can result in bifurcations that are irreversible. When we lose all our mathematical models we lose our understanding and once that happens we are no different from cavemens who dont understand how fire works.
This exact thing (with methane) has happened before and it is believed to be the cause of the extinction of extinctions, the PT event.
This gets brought up a lot but virtually no one in the extreme Warmist community takes this risk seriously, which is weird because a) it isn't entirely implausible and b) they talk about it a lot.
Yet we can tell they don't take it seriously, because they are adamantly opposed to nuclear power, which would defang coal, a major contributor to climate change.
One of the reasons otherwise reasonable people don't take AGW seriously is this kind of disconnect, in which the people who make the most noise about it are so clearly, obviously and transparently inconsistent between what they say they believe ("AGW runs a serious risk of creating civilization-ending events") and what they actually believe ("Global industrial capitalism is the root of all evil").
This is unfortunate, because AGW is a real problem, and should be addressed aggressively by both technological (nuclear, solar, etc) and political (carbon tax) means. But neither will happen until people start actually taking it seriously, instead of simply using it as a stick to beat some political hobby horse.
Denialists are little better, of course, but I honestly think it would be possible to get them mostly on side--and I have had some success in doing so--by sincere and consistent arguments that separate the science from the rabidly anti-capitalist, anti-industrial proposals for solution.
If methane makes it into all of our water, can we defend against that? Can we filter it out? I imagine even if we could, other animals will still go extinct, which would disrupt our food chain.
Yep, pretty scary. Even scarier, if oceanic methane clathrates are destabilized, we're pretty much fucked i.e. kiss your hopes for controlling global warming goodbye:
Thanks for the link, it taught me something. I wonder if that's how Styx did that album cover long before Photoshop was invented? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_(Styx_album)
I just gave some guy shit this morning for playing the old man card, but you do realize we had special effects before photoshop, right? A lot of what you can do in photoshop is actually the digital translation of the analogue process. Photoshop didn't make this possible, it just made it easier and faster.
The article that this article is about is a lot more informative and has a lot more photos.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0127-dozens...
Short version: "Siberia is warming. Permafrost thaws and spews methane, and blasts out a burst of highly flammable gas."
The consequences of that can include: Russia's economy being broken due to a main export literally vanishing into thin air. And worse: Green house gases getting into the atmosphere in vast amounts.
> The consequences of that can include: Russia's economy being broken due to a main export literally vanishing into thin air.
As far as I know, the methane from the permafrost is not commercially exploited. It's left there frozen, so this doesn't affect the Russian economy unless one of this "explosions" hits a building.
The currently mined gas deposits in Siberia are at least 600 meters below the ground level, normally deeper (generally at 1-2 km). The thickness of permafrost in most areas is a few ten meters, with the more cold areas reaching 300-450 meters, so there little to no overlap between the two.
This PDF contains a few numbers for those interested: http://www.arlis.org/docs/vol1/ICOP/40770716/CD-ROM/Proceedi...
When I read it I also wondered: "Why noone is pointing out that methane emissions also increase global warming?"
I have no idea ho much methane can be released, since I don't even know how much Russia is mining or anything like that...
But it sounds a lot (since in Ukraine crisis Russian gas is a big point), so if all that leaks out it would greatly accelerate global warming no? (thus releasing even more gas!)
>> Why noone is pointing out that methane emissions also increase global warming?
Methane produces a much stronger greenhouse effect than CO2, so the obvious solution is to capture it and use it for fuel, which will convert it to CO2.
So is it old, buried organic (flora,fauna) matter thats causing the methane ?
I'm wondering a couple of things :
1) Is there any way arial or satellite imaging can help predict where these methane bubbles in the permafrost will occur ?
2) Could this be tapped as a resource ?
P.S , is anyone else reminded of the "Spice blooms" from Dune ?
Landfills in the US are now esentially very large plastic bags.
The problem is when the trash decays it produces methane (and other gasses), and having flamable gas in an many acre bag is bad.. So there are vents and the methane is captured. This is captured and piped to burn off. There are claims of generating power but the amount I've seen is not significant.
Landfill gas generation is quite significant. In the U.S alone as of 2013, 621 LFG projects were operational producing 1,978 MW. Another 850 MW worth of projects are candidates.
"So is it old, buried organic (flora, fauna) matter thats causing the methane ?"
Yes, I believe so, though it could be still younger than the normal gas and oil fields (personal speculation).
1.) I think it may be possible, using a mix of infra and normal optical observations with a good algorithm to identify it on the images. Another but even smaller possibility would be the inspection of differences in the gravitational field * (though there may not be enough gas to be measurable this way).
But for either of these to be even remotely possible, we would need a good idea of what to seek, namely a not-yet-popped methane lens under the permafrost.
2.) Unlikely. Suppose if we manage to find some intact ones, tapping into those would be dangerous to a currently unknown extent, maybe even compared to the normal hazards of working with explosive and flammable hydrocarbons. Secondly, the amount of gas may not be enough to clear the costs.
Edit.: * Gravity gradiometry
> Could this be tapped as a resource ?
Methane is not a very useful resource, combustion results again in two greenhouse gases: Water and carbon dioxide.
In the interest of being sure (because I'm interested) I had to second-guess that water is a greenhouse gas. NOAA had an interesting statement on it, which I'll just quote:
"Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its concentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization."
And now I'm left wondering how to unpack that, politically AND scientifically. Ah, the luxuries of Saturday morning browsing.
If anyone is interested in learning more about permafrost methane, and a bit about clathrates as well, this paper[1] is a pretty good primer. I worked with the lead author over a summer around when he was publishing this a few years back. It's possible I can answer your questions, although I won't guarantee it. Clathrates/hydrates are a personal favorite of mine, even wrote up a short research paper in grad school on the possibility for their economic extraction.
[1]http://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/L_Livermore...
EDIT: The URL is a bit hyperbolic, but the paper is legit, it's just the first host for this paper I found.
Are there any reports of this phenomenon occurring in Alaska and Canada?
considering how watched they are I doubt it, it could be likely to destabilization brought on by developing the area for natural gas usage. Perhaps they are causing fractures as other fuels taken out.
As for global warming or what not, its not like it wasn't warmer within periods of well documented history and we survived that just fine. It is more likely one volcano will do more than we think we do.
As a Canadian I haven't heard of any but the current government is massively anti-science so if there were any projects they would have been stopped.
Interesting phenomena. Presumably this happens every time the average temperature rises above the melting point of the water and clathrates. Given that Methane is a pretty powerful greenhouse gas, it makes me curious what the mechanism is that converts a 'warm' earth into a 'frozen' earth.I think understanding that would help us understand what to expect as the temperature increases.
Methane is unstable in oxygen atmosphere. Ice ages are caused by earth orbit and rotation axis orientation changes.
I guess people might be left with an incomplete image from that comment.
The positive CO2 feedback loop amplifies ice ages a lot.
Asteroid strike, massive volcanic eruption, etc...
I find this process indescribably scary. It's understandable that the public is clueless, but can someone explain to me why the technologists aren't worried? Positive feedback would put us so far past the point of no return that earth will be unrecognizable.
Probably the fact that no positive feedbacks or 'tipping points' happened during the Holocene Climate Optimum, so it's fairly easy to figure out that this is your usual alarmist nonsense.
There is no point of no return, earth cycles temperatures regularly, humanity is just a pimple on its face.
Seems to be evidence that the earth hasn't been this warm in a very long time or these pockets of gas wouldn't possibly even exist now.
It was warmer 8000 years ago due to orbital effects. [1]
Am I the only one who feels that it is inappropriate to describe a saga as "more widespread" or as having "deepened"?
s/saga/phenomenon/ just for you.
Why are they calling this a crater when their theories don't include impact from space?
Any distinct bowl-like land feature is a crater. Volcanoes have them, too.
Craters can be created by any kind of explosion or impact, in this case it's by underground gas explosions.
Seems like a legitimate question. Why should it be downvoted.