Fountains of Methane 1000m across Erupt From Arctic Ice!

Any Aliens out there would you like to buy a second hand planet with a hot methane atmosphere? one old lady driver low use. dont look under the hud.

Originally posted by Observor
At this point of time debating whether the globe is warming or not and if it is, whether the primary contributor is human lifestyle or not is completely meaningless. Even if we did have some control at some point of time in the past, we are past that as evidenced by the methane emissions. The best that scientists can do now is to develop models to predict climate change, so that we can prepare for it in the best way we can, rather than attempt to stop the change.

There are of course several things that governments need to do, that they will never do.
The first would be to end our dedication to economic growth and personal ownership. There are only finite resources on this planet, and supply and demand rules supreme. This is why we abandoned physical value and turned to fictional wealth. With fiat money, we were able to make the "idea" of something valuable, with no connection to actual physical minerals at all. This is where the gambling and investment in "hypotheticals" took over. It meant that people could just keep getting richer, even though these wealthy people had already bought and sold the planet.

Something else we need to do is limit population growth.
With resources already stretched to beyond breaking, and with some incredibly greedy and selfish people on the planet, we have to do something to slow down our rate of growth. And before people start screaming about that, there is a difference between forcing people to do it and educating people about their future quality of life.

On an individual level, we all need to reeducate ourselves about what is important. We've become confused about what we need and what we want. We need food, water and shelter, we don't need another crappy pair of high-priced sneakers made by a ten year old slave in Asia.

We could do a lot of this ourselves if the people changed. A corporation doesn't exist without the consumer. If people stopped buying rubbish that they do not need the corporations destroying our economies, our environment and corrupting our politics would all die.

Yes it would be tough. The institutions and traditional methods of the commercial structure would still be in place for a while, poverty would rise. Homelessness and unemployment would be incredible. But these problems would largely fall away as new methods of coping emerged.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing all of this happen over the next century anyway. We're about to see the worst of this scenario when the € and $ collapse.

I'm not worried about methane erupting. Either way we are facing the same problems, and we're currently doing nothing about them. We're not preparing, as a species, to deal with what is coming, whether it is our fault or not. There's a lot that we need to start doing a decade ago that we are sill not seriously discussing.

Big deal, the earth farted. Wait until the earth gives us all a dutch oven one day.

Originally posted by Vitchilo
Very very good find.

This show that us humans are puny and earth will do whatever she has to do.

I'm sure those vents are producing in a week way way way more greenhouse gases than all of humanity has produced in the last thousand years.

Now I'll just print this and show this to the still brainwashed ``we must cut our CO2 and pay carbon taxes`` eco-nazis in my family... maybe that'll wake them up.

edit on 13-12-2011 by Vitchilo because: (no reason given)

Maybe Al Gore will race up there and throw his body on top of the fountains of methane.

This cannot be! Man is responsible for 100% of the Global Warming!!!!!

Can we stop with the Carbon Credit BS now?!!

Isn't methane 5x worse than CO2 or something as far as green house gasses goes? This is very bad indeed. My cousin who is a geologist told me that green house effect could mean two possible things: Either the gasses trap heat in the atmosphere creating a heating effect or the gasses prevent some sun rays from hitting the earth creating an ice age. Either one would be bad obviously.

I also believe that the Earth is a living organism, and the sooner people realize this and our connection to nature and all living things on this planet the sooner people will care about the massive damage we have caused and continue to cause.

Just to clear up and clarify.......
1. Methane Release natural Earthly process. As stated earlier "The Great Die Off (Permian-Triassic Extinction Event)". This could be down to a number of things Methane release being one of them.
2. The globe heats up, lets say 10ºc on average. The displacement of Oxygen, Asthmatics, people with Bronchial illnesses would go first, then depending on your fitness the rest..
3. The Core of our planet and various volcanoes and calderas will reach bursting point due to the heat...So Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Tsunamis.
4. The Clouds of ash from the many eruptions will then begin to blockout the sun and a long ice age will ensue. Infact minimum length of the persuing Ice Age would be around 10,000 years.
5 Then we have the eventual melt down..Floods etc etc.... and so on and so on.

People in a sealed off facilty...lets say bunker buried under anything from a few miles to 7 miles of Ice and snow, most of which will be Glacial....Any bunker entrance would have been crushed under such conditions. The only use for shelter would be for the initial events but would be your doom come the day of the many eruptions.
Safest places during these events Mountain regions not prone to Volcanic activity and not to be on Earth at all.
Late 20's you'll see more disturbing signs.... Very early 30's will be devestating and will run up until mid 30's.....

So you better hope we don't have any magor conflicts before then, when ever it actually happens we're gonna need as many cards in the human deck as we can get, else we will go the way of the dinosaur.

i guess all those farting mcdonalds cows are off the hook now eh!
now we can drive all of our suvs in comfort knowing we're not to blame!

Originally posted by detachedindividual

Originally posted by Observor
At this point of time debating whether the globe is warming or not and if it is, whether the primary contributor is human lifestyle or not is completely meaningless. Even if we did have some control at some point of time in the past, we are past that as evidenced by the methane emissions. The best that scientists can do now is to develop models to predict climate change, so that we can prepare for it in the best way we can, rather than attempt to stop the change.

There are of course several things that governments need to do, that they will never do.
The first would be to end our dedication to economic growth and personal ownership. There are only finite resources on this planet, and supply and demand rules supreme. This is why we abandoned physical value and turned to fictional wealth. With fiat money, we were able to make the "idea" of something valuable, with no connection to actual physical minerals at all. This is where the gambling and investment in "hypotheticals" took over. It meant that people could just keep getting richer, even though these wealthy people had already bought and sold the planet.

Something else we need to do is limit population growth.
With resources already stretched to beyond breaking, and with some incredibly greedy and selfish people on the planet, we have to do something to slow down our rate of growth. And before people start screaming about that, there is a difference between forcing people to do it and educating people about their future quality of life.

On an individual level, we all need to reeducate ourselves about what is important. We've become confused about what we need and what we want. We need food, water and shelter, we don't need another crappy pair of high-priced sneakers made by a ten year old slave in Asia.

We could do a lot of this ourselves if the people changed. A corporation doesn't exist without the consumer. If people stopped buying rubbish that they do not need the corporations destroying our economies, our environment and corrupting our politics would all die.

Yes it would be tough. The institutions and traditional methods of the commercial structure would still be in place for a while, poverty would rise. Homelessness and unemployment would be incredible. But these problems would largely fall away as new methods of coping emerged.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing all of this happen over the next century anyway. We're about to see the worst of this scenario when the € and $ collapse.

I'm not worried about methane erupting. Either way we are facing the same problems, and we're currently doing nothing about them. We're not preparing, as a species, to deal with what is coming, whether it is our fault or not. There's a lot that we need to start doing a decade ago that we are sill not seriously discussing.

I felt the need to quote this post because IMO it is one of the best replies that I have seen on the subject overall. Very well done!

reply to post by quedup


This isnt news people have known about it for a long time, i saw it on tv about a year or 2 ago

Water vapor in the atmosphere plays a much larger role than CO2.

1. Only around 380 parts per million of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide.

2. Only 3% of the CO2 results from human activity.
...

7. Water in the air is a greenhouse gas which swamps the others. It is about a hundred times more prevalent than CO2 in clear air, and millions of times more significant on a cloudy day. Yet moisture only changes temperatures about 10-20 degrees on a cloudy day. This means CO2 must be changing temperatures less than 0.000001 degrees all of the time.

8. When el Nino heats the Pacific, CO2 increases in the atmosphere; and after El Nino, it normalizes. It wouldn’t normalize if oceans were not reabsorbing the CO2. And if oceans can reabsorb that CO2, they can absorb any other CO2.

Furthermore:

Compare the numbers to water vapor. There’s less than 1% as many molecules of CO2; it absorbs less than 1% of the radiation; and it sends less than 10% back to earth. That’s 100 x 100 x 10 times less effective than water vapor, which totals one million times less effective. If a cloudy day changes the temperature by 10 degrees, carbon dioxide would be a millionth as effective, which would be 0.00001 degrees. The quantities are absurd.

Additionally:

The cause of the oceans warming cannot be the atmosphere, which has very low heat capacity, but must be due to heat from within the earth’s core, as described on other pages dealing with climate and the earth’s core.

The globe is heating, but the cause is hot spots rotating in the earth’s core and heating the oceans, not greenhouse gases. This can be known from the fact that the past ten ice ages have cycled at 100 thousand year intervals. Environmental factors would not be so cyclic.

There are numerous indications of the oceans heating up. One is increased rainfall in the upper plains, where the moisture originates in the Pacific Ocean. A few years ago, Chicago was flooding due to a rise in Lake Michigan; and another canal had to be built around Niagara Falls to drain it.

Blog entry @ world-mysteries.com

For those who may scoff at the above referenced work, here are some other sources for deep ocean warming you may prefer:

Originally posted by jadedANDcynical
Ok, you got me thinking and after a few minutes of looking around I have found some very interesting results.

Warming waters in the deepest parts of the ocean surrounding Antarctica have contributed to sea-level rise over the past two decades, scientists report today (Sept. 20).

In an attempt to pinpoint all culprits for the rising oceans, scientists analzyed warming trends in the abyssal ocean — below about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), said study team member and oceanographer Sarah Purkey of the University of Washington in Seattle.

The scientists found that the strongest deep warming occurred in the water around Antarctica, and the warming lessens as it spreads around the globe. The temperature increases are small — about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit (0.03 degrees Celsius) per decade in the deep Southern Ocean, and less elsewhere. But the large volume of the ocean over which they are found and the high capacity of water to absorb heat means that this warming accounts for a huge amount of energy storage.

Well what do you know? I wonder where all of that energy is coming from and what does that mean in terms we can grasp?

This amount of energy would be the equivalent of giving every person on Earth five 1,400-Watt hair dryers, and running them constantly during the 20-year study period, said study team member and oceanographer Gregory Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Wow, I think that might have a noticeable effect, don't you?

Sea level has been rising at around one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) per year on average since 1993, with about half of that caused by the ocean expanding as it's heated, and the other half due to additional water added to the ocean, mostly from melting continental ice.

The oceanographers note that deep warming of the Southern Ocean accounts for about one-twentieth of an inch (1.2 mm) per year of the sea-level rise around Antarctica in the past two decades.

So we have empirical evidence that there is heating going on in the deep oceans, and a substantial amount of it indeed. That heating is causing almost fully half of the rise in global sea levels, but I do not hear that being reported at all, I had to go looking for this.

The authors note that there are several possible causes for this deep warming: a shift in Southern Ocean winds; a change in the density of what is called Antarctic Bottom Water (which would change how much gets mixed with surface waters); or how quickly that bottom water is formed near the Antarctic, where it sinks to fill the deepest, coldest portions of the ocean around much of the globe.

Doesn't sound like they are considering geological processes, though.

source for above quotes

 

Here is a fellow who questions the standard anthropocentric climate change model, although he too does not draw any correlations to geologic processes in the article the following excerpts are from.

NASA’s James Hansen is probably right about this point: the importance of ocean heat storage to a better understanding of how sensitive the climate system is to our greenhouse gas emissions. The more efficient the oceans are at storing excess heat during warming, the slower will be the surface temperature response of the climate system to an imposed energy imbalance.

Unfortunately, the uncertainties over the rate at which vertical mixing takes place in the ocean allows climate modelers to dismiss a lack of recent warming by simply asserting that the deep oceans must somehow be absorbing the extra heat. Think Trenberth’s “missing heat“. (For a discussion of the complex processes involved in ocean mixing see here.)

Well, maybe what is really missing is the IPCC’s willingness to admit the climate system is simply not as sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions as they claim it is. Maybe the missing heat is missing because it does not really exist.

IPCC

It my be worthwhile to look into the innards of that vulture.

More:

I WILL say I firmly believe that the surface temperature is THE MOST important temperature in the climate system. This is because (1) the surface is where most sunlight is absorbed, (2) the atmosphere is then convectively coupled to the surface, and (3) the surface and atmosphere together are the ONLY way for the Earth to radiatively cool to space in the face of continuous solar heating.

But, as we will see, the detailed profile of recent warming with depth in the ocean does appear to have additional information about climate sensitivity that is not apparent from surface warming alone.

Why is it that scientists always seem surprised when they learn that they don't know how systems work or have as yet have everything figured out?

He goes on to detail his analysis in comparison to theirs and evaluates the simulation they are using. What he finds is this:

The bottom line is that 40 years of warming of the 0-700 meter ocean layer has been so modest that, even if we assume it was caused by the GISS forcings (which Hansen believes will eventually cause strong warming) , it corresponds to low climate sensitivity anyway.

In other words, the oceans have not warmed enough to support the IPCC’s predictions of future warming.

So we have the IPCC who

The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore

and has not produced the evidence that has been expected.

(above quote from the Wiki linked earlier)

Even though the model I use is admittedly simple, this does not really matter because, in the global average, long-term temperature change is only a function of 3 basic processes:

(1) the strength of the forcing (imposed energy imbalance on the climate system, due to whatever);

(2) the strength of the climate system’s resistance to that forcing (net feedback, which determines climate sensitivity); and,

(3) the rate of ocean mixing (which affects surface temperature, which affects the rate of energy loss to space through feedback processes).

That's probably the most concise explanation of the phenomena I've ever read.

He then goes into pretty specific detail as to how they cooked the numbers to give them the appearance of accuracy in their models.

He concludes with the following:

It appears that the vertical profile of ocean warming could be a key ingredient in getting a better idea of how sensitive the climate system is to our greenhouse gas emissions. The results here suggests the warming has been considerably weaker than what would be expected for a sensitive climate system.

The sensitivity number I estimate — 1.3 deg. C — arguably puts future warming in the realm of “eh, who cares?”

It will be interesting to see how the next IPCC report, now in the early stages of preparation, explains away the increasing discrepancies between their climate models and the observations. Since IPCC outcomes are ultimately driven by desired governmental policies and politicians, rather than science, I’m sure the wordsmithing (and figuresmithing) will be artfully done.

source for all quotes except Wiki

 

And then we have Scripps Oceanographic Institute with this from 2006

Global Warming Can Trigger Extreme Ocean, Climate Changes, Scripps-led Study Reveals Scientists use deep ocean historical records to find an abrupt ocean circulation reversal caused by greenhouse gas warming

They reveal quite a bit in this report, among other things we find:

"The earth is a system that can change very rapidly. Fifty-five million years ago, when the earth was in a period of global warmth, ocean currents rapidly changed direction and this change did not reverse to original conditions for about 20,000 years," said Nunes. "What this tells us is that the changes that we make to the earth today (such as anthropogenically induced global warming) could lead to dramatic changes to our planet."

Because, you know, there were so many humans around fifty-five million years ago with their Humvees and other polluting machinery.

The global warming of 55 million years ago, known as the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), emerged in less than 5,000 years, an instantaneous blip on geological time scales (the researchers indicate that 5,000 years can be considered an upper limit and they believe the warming could have unfolded much more quickly than geological records can show them).

There's the ancient human activity again...

"Overturning is very sensitive to surface ocean temperatures and surface ocean salinity," said Norris, a professor in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps. "The case described in this paper may be one of our best examples of global warming triggered by the massive release of greenhouse gases and therefore it gives us a perspective on what the long-term impact is likely to be of today's greenhouse warming that humans are causing."

The gentleman I linked to in the previous section of this post talks about this very issue and the post is much more recent, overturning the entire basis for the Scripps argument.

Finally the report closes with this:

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Science Support Program. IODP is sponsored by NSF and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The JOI Alliance (JOI, Texas A & M University Research Foundation and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University) manages scientific drilling operations conducted aboard the U.S.-sponsored drilling vessel, on behalf of IODP.

emphasis mine
source

Anyone who has followed the Japanese nuclear emergency thread will be very familiar with that particular ministry.

What's the history of NISA?

The agency was established in 2001 as part of administrative reforms under the late Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who wanted to drastically restructure the government's various ministries and agencies.

NISA was formed by basically combining part of the nuclear regulatory section of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency, which also answers to METI, and part of the now-defunct Science and Technology Agency, which was folded into the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.

source

I don't know about the other agencies behind Scripps' research, but knowing they are even remotely affiliated with that group instantly looses much of their credibility with me.

Apologies for this monster post, but I dove down this rabbit hole and came up with this bits I thought might be of relevance to the conversation.

Sigh..when will doomsayers give it a rest. It is certainly affecting some, to the point of hiding in caves, not giving birth or even to the point of giving up on life. It gotta end.

Time out for reality check.

How big is that methane field? How big is it when compared to our planet's surface? It is neglible. The hole in our Ozone layer is a much bigger concern that this piddyling patch of bubble. Furthermore, it has been happening for centuries, not just now, over other miniscule spots on this planet., and escapes into the atmosphere, blending with it. A herd of cows in NZ would give off a far worse case of farts, yet no one is dying from it for centuries.

Millions of years ago, a major catastrophe did happened with high levels of methane escaping into the air, but was there sufficient evidence to conclude that it was the ELE and not other causes? Furthermore, back then, I am pretty sure there were no factories or carbonated airsprays.

It is only natural occurence. What it needs over such news and more fear mongering by the fearful is dose of common sense, reality check and ADAPTABILITY, which all are typical human traits within humanity for centuries. Times change, people change, weather changes. It is only normal. Just adapt and get use to it, and improve our tech science so that one day we can overcome any hurdle that comes our way.

So, chill out folks. The world aint ending yet. We humans are far more capable of doing ourselves in than nature ever will.

Originally posted by InsideYourMind
What about hazards to boats within that area?

As far as i rememeber, large quantities of rising methane can allegedly cause boats to sink.
Wasn't this the supposed reason behind boats dissapearing within the bermuda triangle? (i know it doesn't explain the dissapearing planes, but still).

Just that the idea popped into my head of another bermuda-triangle-style danger zone to come of this. I can't be 100% sure if methane is the culprit for sinking boats though, i vaguely rmeember something along the lines of that however. Lets hope no shipments carrying rubber ducks sails through this area lol.

*thinking out loud*

Yes, boats can sink from that.

When a gas mixes with a fluid and is not absorbed by the fluid, the gas reduces the fluids density proportional to how much gas has been aerated into the fluid.

Simply, the tiny bubbles make the boat heavier than the water, making it impossible to be held up via buoyancy.

The earth is not alive. God is. God knew how everything would fall together.

reply to post by SeekerofTruth101


I heard that the sun also contributes to the warming/cooling of the Earth.

So much for man made CO 2 killing us all.

reply to post by Phenomium


The methane is the least of our worries. Ancient anaerobic bacteria convert methane to H²S(hydrogen sulfide) gas. Rotten egg gas, heavy, highly toxic and flammable. This also erodes the ozone layer allowing more radiation/heat, releasing more methane, on and on until ignition point or ELE. The earth will rid herself of this bad case of humans. There is a scientific American story on this. The earth is trying to balance herself and we are on the wrong side of the scale.

reply to post by StormingHeaven


Yes I posted on that. That is why I believe they built those dumbs and infastructure in Colorado, even the Royal UK family, and possibly why Rockefeller's whole clan went to India and didn't come back, Himilayas.

High ground, since the gas is heavy.

The Mail has been digging, this an old story, here's the thread,

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sorry I did post this earlier, but in the wrong thread

Originally posted by UnlimitedSky
reply to post by quedup

 

Plus I can assure you the planet is cooling!

It is December, normally, from beginning December or earlier till early March or late Feb gets very very hot here.

I wore a jersey (jumper) AGAIN today, because it is nippy. Summer? WHat summer?

Even in Europe (Italy) where we lived in the town of Treviso 2008 to beginning 2010: Treviso has for centuries been getting about 1 hour of snow in perhaps every two years. ONE hour of snow does not look like this:

(Don't know what's cutting, but I can't upload images at the moment. Done it 3 times but still no joy. Will post this pic we took Christmas 2009 later.) But to fill you in, it snowed for weeks and weeks on end. Even in 2008, the same thing.
A real pity I can't get this pic up, it is really stunning, well, for someone that comes from supposedly sunny South Africa. Supposedly, cause where is the sun these days?

Local weather does NOT equate into global climate. Local weather is partly a function of global climate, however it does not necessarily correlate. Global climate average temps could rise, yet some specific areas could actually experience a drop in local temp averages due to the heat altering other factors that influence that local weather.

Global warming can lead to local cooling.

"My area is colder, thus the entire planet is colder" is very unsound logical induction.

People need to stop inducing facts; they are usually wrong.

reply to post by quedup


Um... methane is a greenhouse gas. This isn't an example of earth's "self-correction" (negative feedback). It is an example of a runaway process in which there is positive feedback. Warming led to thawing of permafrost, which in turn leads to release of methane, which adds to the warming.

I don't know the significance of this. In fact, I'm not even convinced of the legitimacy of this report. However, if it's legitimate, it may be an indication that we've lost any chance of reversing the climate changes we've initiated. If there are kilometer-wide fountains of methane spewing, I don't think worrying about our own emissions is going to help much.

Kinda makes me glad I don't have any kids that have to deal with this crap...

I'm going to TRY and keep my tone respectful -- because I may be reading the OP wrong;
Are you TRYING to say that this methane gas release is going to "cool down" the planet or that it somehow means global warming isn't an issue?

Methane releases have been happening all over the ocean -- in fact, we first found out about it because the alarms on Oil Tankers reacted to them as if the ships were leaking (I guess they measure Methane bubbles to detect leaks). The ocean is warming, and crystalized methane is being released as the warmer water moves lower into the ocean -- as GW models have predicted.

The PREDICTION of this methane release is in the models -- since the melting of perma-frost in Siberia has brought up the issue of runaway climate.


>> The Methane release MIGHT not be happening, if the Poles weren't melting. Even though NATURE is now adding to global warming -- it's not as if this weren't a trigger pulled by human activity, or that we CANNOT do anything about it.

The good news is, that Methane doesn't stay as long in the atmosphere as CO2 -- the bad news is it is a bigger greenhouse gas pound for pound, and it might kick the ball rolling downhill faster.

It's the "gleeful" tone that I'm reading that really annoys me. It's as if this weren't what we've been WARNING about. The earth might have certain mechanisms that moderate changes -- but I'm pretty sure human activity is breaking that system.

A lot more swampland will need to be produced, and a lot more carbon sequestered. When ice ages end, there are natural increases of vulcanism because of the reduced pressure when Glaciers recede. However -- we are long past our last mini ice age, and this would be a time when natural processes would cause heat to be shed.