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In this visualization, the Gulf Stream is seen as the dark red current coming into the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico.
A changing Gulf Stream off the East Coast has destabilized frozen methane deposits trapped under nearly 4,000 square miles of seafloor, scientists reported Wednesday. And since methane is even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas, the researchers said, any large-scale release could have significant climate impacts.
Temperature changes in the Gulf Stream are "rapidly destabilizing methane hydrate along a broad swathe of the North American margin," the experts said in a study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
Using seismic records and ocean models, the team estimated that 2.5 gigatonnes of frozen methane hydrate are being destabilized and could separate into methane gas and water.
It is not clear if that is happening yet, but that methane gas would have the potential to rise up through the ocean and into the atmosphere, where it would add to the greenhouse gases warming Earth.
The 2.5 gigatonnes isn't enough to trigger a sudden climate shift, but the team worries that other areas around the globe might be seeing a similar destabilization.
USGS
Methane hydrate samples
"It is unlikely that the western North Atlantic margin is the only area experiencing changing ocean currents," they noted. "Our estimate ... may therefore represent only a fraction of the methane hydrate currently destabilizing globally."
The wider destabilization evidence, co-author Ben Phrampus told NBC News, includes data from the Arctic and Alaska's northern slope in the Beaufort Sea.
And it's not just under the seafloor that methane has been locked up. Some Arctic land area are seeing permafrost thaw, which could release methane stored there as well.
An expert who was not part of the study said it suggests that methane could become a bigger climate factor than carbon dioxide.
"We may approach a turning point" from a warming driven by man-made carbon dioxide to a warming driven by methane, Jurgen Mienert, the geology department chair at Norway's University of Tromso, told NBC News.
"The interactions between the warming Arctic Ocean and the potentially huge methane-ice reservoirs beneath the Arctic Ocean floor point towards increasing instability," he added.
For thousands of years, permafrost has trapped Siberia's carbon-rich soil, a compost of Ice Age plant and animal remains. But global warming is melting the permafrost and exposing the soil, causing highly flammable methane to seep out. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.
He also noted, however, that "one of the big unknowns is the magnitude of rapid methane escape from the ocean floor, and how natural filter systems react and affect the future ocean, its environment and the climate."
Relate: Thawing Arctic permafrost is releasing methane
Another unknown is what caused the Gulf Stream changes, said Phrampus, an earth sciences PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
"Multiple events can play a factor, such as changing sea level or an addition of cold/fresh water from the north," Phrampus said, adding he was hopeful that the changes might be "reversible under their own influence."
But, he added, "we need more data to resolve this, and we are currently investigating this process."
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KMM1976, guess what. I know that scientists have known about frozen methane for years and I know business men have been trying to figure out a way to capture it. Now this will get you good. I am a coal miner in one of the most methane rich coal mines in the world and we liberate millions of cu. ft. of methane on a daily basis and most of it is captured and processed into nat. gas and sold for a profit. Instead of pissing and moaning about it why don't these scientists, and you, come up with a way to utilize the methane and make a new industry out of it instead of wanting to kill off the industries that you think are the cause of this happening in the first place.
Sounds good. Now all you need to do is find a way to construct a membrane thousands of square miles in area to trap the methane. Capturing methane from discreet holes drilled in the earth from mining is a lot different than methane rising across vast areas of the ocean bottom.
Air has a thermal capacity of 0.001297 joule per cubic centimeter per degree K. Water has a thermal capacity of 4.1796 joule per cubic centimeter per degree K. Or put another way, it takes 3,222.5 times as much heat to raise a cubic centimeter of water 1 degree as it does to raise the temperature of air 1 degree. Or expressed yet another way, raising the temperature of the oceans by 1 degree would require the atmosphere to increase in temperature by 3,222.5 degrees.
Methane has been leaking forever, Mother Earth has its own way of farting.
Methane also has been stored in the earth and seas for over a million years. Reversing a process in decades that took a million years to occur doesn't seem to have anything to do with natural cycles of the earth.
"he was hopeful that the changes might be "reversible under their own influence." Really? Well, maybe this whole friggin problem will "reversible under their own influence" and just go away, huh?
Rather than try and put into place that “Old Yankee Spirit” to finding a solution to a problem and overcoming seemingly impossible odds by actually fixing it, most comments on this thread regarding global climate change suggest taking an opposite tack. That being, the easy, spineless, non-productive solution to simply give up and die! Taking that defeatist position and calling yourself a self-respecting, we-can-do-anything American is the height of hypocrisy!
Claiming that CO2 causes AGW is pure Junk Science
It is devious, dishonest, disingenuous “junk science” for
the proponents of AGW to claim that non-cloud H2O vapor (humidity) is a
heat-trapping “greenhouse” gas …. and then
refuse to include the quantity of heat that it “traps” when calculating
surface temperatures.
It is devious, dishonest, disingenuous “junk science” for
the proponents of AGW to claim that the thermal energy (heat) “feedback” from
the 100 ppm increase in/of the current 395 ppm of atmospheric CO2 is the
primary cause of a recent 1F increase in surface temperatures …. but then refuse to consider the thermal
energy (heat) “feedback” from a 10,000 or a 25,000 ppm increase in atmospheric
H2O vapor when calculating increases in surface temperatures.
Just goes to show you, a little science theory from one of the few remaining climate change deniers when packaged and sold by right wing propagandists has an amazing effect on unscientific minds.
SamC, water vapor can't increase by 10,000 or 25,000 ppm. It rains.
Don't be silly, jock59, in the humid tropics it averages like 4% ....... which is 40,000 ppm.
During the "hot" days of Summer ...... the H2O vapor (humidity) can increase by 10,000 to 30,000 ppm in a "New York minute" ...... which gives meaning to the ole saying "sweating your testicles off" .... and one praying that it will rain.
Maybe you have never watched the local weather report on your TV because the Weatherperson ALWAYS tells you about the increases/decreases in humidity.
the longer we ignore warnings like this- and deny we have an urgent problem- the bigger chances that positive feedback's like methane will increase warming in years to come. over geologic time scales with natural climate change, it would take 20,000 years to see C02 in he atmosphere rise from 280ppm to near 400ppm- the level we will see in the spring of 2013. We have seen this rise of 115ppm in less then 130 years. This kind of forcing is unprecedented in earths geologic history. Yet we have many in this country who are will to continue this 'experiment' and truly believe nothing will happen. Some unpleasant News- in the past this kind of forcing has always changed the planets climate- and it will this time- but much faster.
Many of us have seen this before! During the 1970's they tried this same take-over strategy. Armed, as now , with volumes of "peer reviewed" studies, and reams of impressive looking documentation, they frantically warned us of their absolute certainty that if we didn't surrender TONS of our money and ALL of the control of our industries, we would be destroyed by the rapidly approaching New Ice Age! In fact, even as we speak, New York City is under an ice sheet over a half a mile thick!
You would have thought the fools would at least have waited untill my generation had died to try this again!
ted, that never happened, and you know it.
A few scientists speculated about an ice age and Time magazine hyped it. But still more scientists thought warming would eventually win out.
Time magazine does not "hype" something that is being claimed by a few "nut" cases.
What are anyone's solutions to these problems? I never hear anything but "You're an idiot" "You're a denier" "You're a tree hugging hippy" Buying and selling carbon credits is not a solution. Spreading money we don't have around the world is not a solution. We need clean renewable energy but we are not giving energy companies the incentive to do so. THE EPA IS NOT AN ENERGY COMPANY. It's just a regulator. How about we cut 5-10% off energy companies taxes if that money goes into research for renewable energy? You have 100,000 IRS agents, I'm sure they could handle anything suspicious if it did happen. Billions of dollars would flood into research that is helpful for them, since they would reap the benefits of any new energy that could be used, and not have to pay the government anymore money.
It's sad to see the Planet going in the direction it's going, it's the price we all paid for technology, entertainment and fun. I would like to think it could be reversed. Being a realist says Earth will go into it's 10,000 year shut down for maintenance program. I think the damage we stated can be slowed, but even that would take a commitment of sacrifice people wouldn't be willing to except. The damage that has been done, and continues to be done can't be fixed with money. The problem of thinking with a capitalist mind, is you believe money will fix anything,.... what you destroy to make a profit out weighs the cost to replace or repair the damage.
And guess what follows this methane bomb? A nitrous oxide bomb, when all of our carbon sinks in the oceans and on land eventually become carbon sources. This can happen with an average temperature rise of just 2.5 degrees C. This is because these carbon sinks will effectively become dead zones, and dead zones in the ocean and on land give off as much as 10,000 times the amount of NO2 as normal healthy oceans and forests. Keep in mind that a lot of the undersea methane which is being released will never reach the surface before it is converted into CO2, which will further acidify our oceans. NO2 has approximately 310 times the GHG potential as CO2. But you all don't really care about this, do you? Most of you would much rather that our world come to an end, so it will vindicate all of your ET designed and installed terminal religious belief systems, right? Bye, bye! - RC
BTW, there is also a GIGANTIC amount of CO2 and methane about to be released from these melting arctic clathrates. (Just so none of you can claim no one ever told you!) - RC
(They should have declared a global emergency already. It is almost too late to do it now. Have fun, everyone!) - RC
I have tried to tell you all so many times over the years that there was indeed a "higher power" involved in the installation of these Abrahamic "End Time" religions, but that "higher power" was by no means Divine, it was actually outside offensive totalitarian ETs, who repeatedly masqueraded as Divinity toward mankind in the process of covertly installing all three of these terminal religious belief systems into our world known as the Abrahamic religions. From the very beginning I have repeatedly told you all that this is "The Highest National and World Security Issue", bar none. These deadly ET designed and installed terminal religious belief systems have invested mankind with a collective death wish in a program "End Time" way. I have told you all repeatedly that our emerging human world has been under covert biocybernetic warfare attack for thousands of years already, primarily in the form of these corrupt ET designed and installed Abrahamic religions. I said these Abrahamic religions are all critical components of a larger ET designed PWMD, or Program Weapon of Mass Destruction, designed to crash and explode our emerging world in a final programmed cataclysm of global warfare fueled with WMDs, known as the Christian Apocalypse or World War III. These ETs are trying to thwart mankind's successful emergence as a full fledged member of our greater galactic community, so they can one day exterminate mankind from this world and eventually steal and annex our extremely valuable celestial real estate. If you read the Book of Revelations carefully, you will see that runaway global warming is an integral part of those programmed "End Time" events. These viral religions have prevented us from controlling our human populations here on Earth, and it is the exploding human population (combined with the growing support animal populations) which in turn is the primary driving force for runaway global warming. If those tragic days "End Time" days ever come to pass, please know ahead of time that it will be outside offensive totalitarian ETs "coming in the clouds" militarily, while once more masquerading as Divinity toward mankind, this time as the returning Christ or Messiah. These ETs were forced to take this covert approach at territorial conquest in our Milky Way galaxy, because there are Free Galaxy powers which reside elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, who currently stand in the way of overt military conquest on a stellar level. Mankind potentially has countless millions (even billions) of years of growth, development and expansion ahead of them, so long as they don't fall for these ET designed and installed terminal religious "End Time" belief systems known as the Abrahamic religions. Please listen before it is too late for you all, mankind !!! - Rick Carter
That's interesting because I thought the scientists when looking for life on other planets were hoping to find methane, a sign that there was life on that planet they postulated. Now, they are saying it's going to contribute to global warming and be a threat to our existence.
There is as much evidence of man-made global warming as there is of a real god. Just another issue hate mongers like you guys can use to try and attack people who don't believe what you think...just like the religious people do.
man will do himself in .take care of your home ,you have only one earth.
OH great, now It's frozen Dinosaur Farts that are the problem. What ever shall we do!
The only real way to save mother earth is voluntary human extinction. However, I believe the majority would be against this.
Lets figure out how to capture this methane and create some much needed jobs!
President Obama has already signed over 923 executive orders since he has been in office. President George W. Bush signed less than 100 executive orders in the 8 years he was in office. My point in mentioning all of this is to stress the point that it really only takes ONE (1) EXECUTIVE ORDER to potentially fix all of these growing resident problems in our country which are threatening to destroy our entire world. - RC
(I would really prefer that I were the one signing this executive order, but unfortunately the American people don't concur with this. So take your pick, everyone! (That is really what this election is all about, if you all really want to know "The Truth".) - RC
Don't believe everything you here from the right-wing noise machine.
Obama has signed 139 executive orders to Bush's 280. In other words about the same pace.
Oh my God! Thank you for correcting me. I had indeed been taken in by a horrible deception. At the time that I read this there was nothing posted online to counter it. I sincerely apologize to everyone, and especially to the Obama administration. I thought I was reading this from a reputable newspaper online. But I think my ultimate point in even mentioning this still stands. - RC
Let me get this straight - these people want us to believe that 2.5 Gigatonnes (km^3) of Methane is going to have a significant impact on our climate......in an ocean which contains over 354,700,000 Gigatonnes (km^3) of water.
(Bear in mind that methane is less dense than water; they aren't even comparing apples to apples)
Do they also have some "prime real estate" they would like to sell me?
(Don't worry, H2O will eventually prove to be the ultimate GHG (actually it already has), because eventually the H2O bomb is going to go off in our world once these other "bombs" have detonated. (Put that in your pipe and "smoke it" (i.e., "crunch it"), world!)) - RC
"Let me get this straight - these people want us to believe that 2.5 Gigatonnes (km^3) of Methane is going to have a significant impact on our climate"
No, the article said that was NOT true. So I guess you don't have it straight.
They also said in this same article that this process was likely repeating itself in many other parts of the world, so this 2.5 gigatonne figure is really just a starting point when it comes to estimating the total amount, which by the way is only going to rapidly grow over time as our planet continues to warm up. - RC
So much for al whores global warming being caused by americans use of automobiles.
It is caused by accumulation of many things, including Americans' use of automobiles.
Meanwhile, there are 16 time zones worth of CH4 trapped in the permafrost across the top of Eurasia , from Finland to the Bering Straits, then across Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, just a few feet below ground. That methane, laid down in the decomposing grasslands, peat bogs, swamps, and tundra during the last four glacial cycles we collectively call the Ice Age, is now seeking the sunlight. The amount of methane trapped in the cold north dwarfs the hydrates on the seafloor. Oh by the way , the portion of the planet that is warming the fastest ? Ta-da! The Arctic.
When the Greenland icepack melts and busts loose and floods the northern Gulf Stream with fresh cold water displacing the warm saline water, you'll very quickly see the difference between " Global Warming" and " Climate Change" is merely semantic. One generation of humans will experience a tumultuous world weather war the likes of which they write Bibles about. It's just a question of which generation.
America. Born 1776 Dies 2013. Cause of Death : Ignorance , with complications from Denial leading to mass hysteria . Failed to pay attention to the world around them as it consumed 5X its share of resources. Dumped its waste very close to the dinner table. Then blamed the End of the World As We Know It on " dem damm liberal Dems" or something.
All these Post-Apocalypse movies and TV series are training films, people.... so start paying attention ...to something. Anything. ( Hint: try science.)
The king of all doomsayers has spoken. So now we are supposed to believe that Hollywood has the foresight to know what is happening to the planet, and then your last sentence says to try science. I thought the end of time was 2012. Did that prediction get a waiver too? A year from now when the doomsayers are talking about the next earth killer we will look back with fond memories of how wrong you are about this one too.
It's okay. Nothing to worry about. The Earth will fix itself as it sees fit and some life forms will continue to exist in some capacity for many thousands of years. I'm cool with that.
ocean gonna catch fire ?
Conservatives are destroying the world? Really. Anyone posting in here NOT drive a car? Or take public transportation? How about use electricity (trick question kids, you are posting from an electronic device)? The face of global warming is ALL of us. It's not so-called greedy corporations that make exactly what we want, not one political party or the other, but every single one of us in the world today. Plain and simple. And while I don't hold with my conservative brethren that think global warming isn't real, because it is, I hold in even higher contempt you liberals who push the blame on everyone else without admitting the fact that you are just as much a pollution producer as the next guy. Both sides need to get off the political kool-aid and reduce their personal carbon footprint, push for solar and wind generation at the residential level, and so forth. Oh, and ride a bike. We could all lose a few pounds...
You make a valid point, although in average liberals probably do use somewhat less energy than conservatives. But that is not why we say conservatives are the problem. It is their denial of the whole thing that prvents us from taking effective action to make energy less carbon-intensive.
I am conservative in my beliefs and don't deny that the climate is changing but you liberals can't make up you mind about what the problem is. Is it global warming today or are we headed into another ice age? Is it super hurricanes and once in a century floods or is it drought. You and all the scientists in the world just aren't smart enough and the technology just isn't good enough to convince some of us that the world is in that much trouble. One poster on here said that the world will end between one generation and the next, but could not pinpoint which generation it would be. That statement always gives the doomsayers their way out of making definite undisputable statements that conservatives can support. If you can't pinpoint something that will happen how can you convince me to believe that it will?
"Is it global warming today or are we headed into another ice age?"
40 years ago we weren't sure, but still more scientists thought warming would win over cooling. Now 97% are sure.
"Is it super hurricanes and once in a century floods or is it drought."
All of the above. it's a big planet.
"One poster on here said that the world will end between one generation and the next"
That was one poster, and the only time I have ever heard that is from fundamentalist Christians.
That's the point. It is a big planet with a big climate and for you to tell me that it is coming to an end and you can't make up your own mind how it is going to happen makes me quite skeptical as to it happening at all.
It's not yet certain that it is happening? Yea but, it's nearly, almost, not quite hardly, possitively, maybe, perhaps happening! Right! Just like it was last time this takeover strategy was attempted during the '70' when we were headed, just a certainly, into the New Ice Age!
Clearly there is enough evidence(?) (if not we will fabricate more), to justify commandeering Tens of Trillions of Dollars from those rich people, (and as many others as possible), and to take over the operation of as many companies as possibel to control this! It's saddly unavoidable that a few million will probably perish(actually there are a few million too many anyway) in this effort!
Wait a minute ! ! The Mayan December 2012 Doomsday prophecy has about the same odds of being correct! Well let's work faster and get as much as possible just in case it is!
These twitts remind me of Mel Gibsons charecter in the movie "Conspiracy Theory! " I was right wasn't I? I was right wasn 't I ?....What was I right about? "
"when we were headed, just a certainly, into the New Ice Age!"
Nobody said just as certainly. That is a lie.
If you don't like the proposed solutions, don't blame the problem.
I don't understand why our country has not summoned up enough political will to put climate change front and center on the list of priorities that need immediate action. If we make most of the land mass unavailable for agriculture and habitation, where are we going to live and what are we going to eat? There are no quick technological fixes or miracles that can address a problem that involves the massive amount of energy, land, water, and people that climate change is and will affect. And our attention is riveted on the political spectacle of the election, with neither candidate talking about the seriousness of this situation. The closest they get is talking about a bright energy future where we can keep raising the GDP and incrementally reduce CO2.
Oh boy - here we go - the enviro-wackos - who wrongly think that we humans can control and influence the WEATHER on the PLANET - are going to try to regulate BEAN consumption because the main ingredient of a FART is METHANE. Or maybe we will now have to POOP less to reduce our "methane footprint". Too bad the climate goons have lost ALL credibility whatsoever. Our biggest THREAT to the existence of man is radical Islam as they slash and burn all who do not agree with their distorted view of the world. The next biggest threat is Presidents like Obama who side with the Mooslims against America
When did 97% of scientists "lose all credibility"? That is an even bigger lie than Obama claiming he would side with "the Muslims."
Your mistake is not considering that the environment of the earth is a closed system, save mainly for our dependence on solar energy, with finite capacity to adjust for atmospheric changes and maintain a relatively stable distribution of climatic zones. Despite a few outlier scientists who are heavily publicized and often supported by oil interests, there is a very high degree of scientific consensus that the earth's temperature is rising, that the atmospheric mix of gases is changing, and that change is mainly the result of human activity. What all this has to do with Islamism is beyond me. But what is clear is that you are living in an informational bubble that somehow places all scientists with whom you don't agree in a special category of people not to be trusted. You need to let your mind get outside a little more often. It will do you good.
Hey idiot Jock - Obama stated that he would side with the Mooslims in HIS OWN BOOK - I guess you don't read. And I didn't say that 97% of scientists have lost credibility - just the ones associated with ClimateGate where it was revealed that they FAKED the weather data to support a FAKE correlation between CO2 and warming - turned out that CO2 rose IN RESPONSE TO WARMING not the other way around.
To the other idiot here - FACT - WEATHER CHANGES ALL THE TIME. FACT - it will CONTINUE TO CHANGE LONG AFTER WE ARE GONE. FACT - humans are but a SPECK on the Earth. The climate eco-system is self-adjusting and guess what - it does not CARE if it is comfortable for humans.
The better thing for scientists to be focusing on is HOW TO HELP HUMANS COPE WITH EXTREME TEMPERATURES THAT ARE INEVITABLE? We have made GREAT strides in our ability to cope with weather extremes and that involves FOSSIL FUELS - but idiots like you and the other socialist weather nuts like to bash fossil fuels when it is that very fuel - provided to us by the planet to USE - that you all BASH. That very fuel allows humans to survive in the most extreme temperatures.
Even BETTER science would be exploring how to protect the most humans from extreme temperatures and help provide third world countries with some of the industrial progress that made the US a First World country. Instead of knocking DOWN the US and taking us back to the stone age - how about you climate goons help bring people UP to our advanced lifestyle that allows us to live DESPITE what the weather is doing.
Fact LibertyLover2 is clueless, weak minded and has been deluded by the denier propaganda.
The "lefties" always feel like they accomplished something of great importance after launching a "personal attack" against those who point out their limited knowledge of a subject being discussed.
It's a "feel bad" ........ ego deflating "thingy", ya know, ...... which gets them all p-faced n' pouty.
no value for SamC who thinks he knows something but in fact doesn't.
Unless they are getting paid for doing so ..... there are few reason left as to why their comments are limited to "personal attack" verbiage.