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Permafrost ‘bubbles’ are leaking methane 200 times above the norm
- tominous 10y agoThe headline is incredibly misleading and looks like a misinterpretation by the Daily Mail (not known for their quality journalism in the first place). The "200" figure refers to the concentration of methane in the released gas compared to the atmosphere, not the total amount released in the Arctic compared to usual. Poor article. EDIT: This HN post originally linked to a Daily Mail article with a bad headline. The Siberian Times headline is still misleading but not quite so egregiously wrong.
- denzil_correa 10y ago> The headline is incredibly misleading and looks like a misinterpretation by the Daily Mail Daily Mail could be one of the top list of websites that can be banned from HN.
- lawless123 10y agoThey always have really good pictures though, if someone made a plugin that overlaid the article with a good one while keeping the pictures it would be great.
- denzil_correa 10y agoTabloids use more pictures per screen area over normal websites. I have no particular problems with the usage of pictures btw. A lot of times they also use screen shots from a video (for example - Youtube) and write a text commentary to generate an article.
- kaeluka 10y agoI saw the title and thought: "holy shit!". Then I saw that it's from the daily mail and knew it wouldn't be true.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoSome times they are right, in the same way a stopped clock is right twice a day.
- phaemon 10y agoOriginal story is from the Siberian Times: http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-the-proof-permafrost-bubbles-are-leaking-methane-200-times-above-the-norm/ http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-th... (the Daily Mail? Seriously?)
- biot 10y ago> (the Daily Mail? Seriously?) Reporting quality seems to be good with a lot of images. If the message is good, why criticize the messenger?
- mobiuscog 10y agoBecause it's extremely rare for the reporting quality to be good with the Daily Mail.
- biot 10y agoI can agree with that assessment... they're typically fairly trashy. I've submitted content from them before when it was an AP article (so the text was identical on all sites that carried it) but they had additional relevant, higher resolution images accompanying the text. Got unnecessary flak for it of course.
- denzil_correa 10y agoThe Signal-Noise Ratio of Daily Mail is six-sigma low. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Daily_Mail http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
- jbg_ 10y ago> Reporting quality seems to be good What makes you say that? Like much of the Daily Mail, it seems to be sensationalised in a way that makes understanding the (probably important) content rather difficult. The headline is incredibly misleading, to start with.
- FuNe 10y agoDidn't know that's a tabloid. Can't update the link now. Sorry about that. Yet the story is a good one.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoSomebody light a match! Seriously, why don't they burn it?
- FuNe 10y agoI guess it's not safe (probably explosive) and even if it was safe how could that be done when it springs up from random holes dispersed in a vast area (Siberia)?
- pdkl95 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM0hczFNDZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM0hczFNDZI
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoYep, that's the video I had in mind.
- agumonkey 10y agoBorderline SF.
- raverbashing 10y agoIt's a valid question, oil refineries do burn it
- andyjohnson0 10y agoMethane burns to produce carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. But to burn it you'd have to collect the methane and concentrate it first, otherwise at low concentrations it is unlikely to ignite. Given that the Siberian arctic is vast and remote, I don't think this is a practical proposition.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoMethane has a greenhouse potential 25 times that of CO2. You're probably right though, it's probably not too diffuse and generally impractical.
- haversine02 10y agoIt's a shame that the whole matter of global warming has been politicized and muddied so much by special interests that average person simply doesn't care anymore. That's why it's especially weird to see something like this published in Daily Mail. The positive feedback loop is definitely happening though, but the magnitude and extents of it could still vary. To be honest, I don't believe we can stop this, not with the current population size and the current economic model.
- zamalek 10y agoNot to mention the often overlooked effect of the decreasing planetary albedo, thanks to melting ice caps.
- Brakenshire 10y ago> It's a shame that the whole matter of global warming has been politicized and muddied so much by special interests that average person simply doesn't care anymore. That's why it's especially weird to see something like this published in Daily Mail. The Daily Mail profits from sensationalism, it's not really like Fox News in the sense that it only pushes one ideological position. So you'll get it reporting sensationalist articles for and against action on climate change (although historically it has been mostly anti, because it makes a better story for the purposes of invoking outrage). This article is sensationalist by overplaying what is happening - the 200 figure actually refers to the concentration of methane in the leaks relative to the atmosphere (it doesn't refer to the actual scale of the leaks in any sense). As an aside, I'm not sure these sensationalist stories about extreme climate change actually help, they're still basically pandering to readers by offering a way to be outraged without having to do anything. The narrative shifts directly from 'this is not a problem, we don't need to do anything' to 'this is the apocalypse, someone should have done something about it, but now it's too late for me to make any difference'. Then perhaps a few years later, when the apocalypse hasn't happened, it can go back to 'we're still okay, the problem was overblown, we don't need to do anything'. And the boring work of actually working out a solution falls by the wayside.
- sitkack 10y agoThe best thing for Earth and possibly the thing for homo sapiens is a nuclear winter. Hillary will just continue the drone war and statist business as usual. Trump on the other hand, total wild-card, and possibly unwitting instigator of nuclear war. The long term ecological choice is Trump.
- pmyjavec 10y agoThose photos really look like something out of a science movie, hard to believe we've let it get to this point.
- codecamper 10y agooh. it's going to get a whole lot worse. you can count on it. I think it's pretty much 100% that we will see geoengineering attempts within our lifetimes, maybe even within the next 20 years. Probably dust injected into the atmosphere.
- harwoodleon 10y agoAside from the shock value of this, this underlines that there are feedback systems that we have kicked in. I think the science is not clear, we are still learning about the effects. Climate sceptics are right in a perverse way, we have no idea really what we have done.
- dharma1 10y agoHere's more on that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change James Lovelock (the inventor of the Gaia hypothesis and the discoverer of CFC's in the atmosphere) seems to think only the northern parts of the planet will remain habitable, sustaining a population of a few hundred million - we'll see.
- Red_Tarsius 10y agoIf this is true, Should I move my family to Northern Europe (Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland) for the sake of my descendants? I've been thinking about this for a long time. It's too late to stop the feedback loop. I fear the current migration crisis is nothing compared to what will come.
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoMany parts of that area are still rebounding from the mass of the ice sheets and are rising faster than sea level. For those of us in the USA, the Great Lakes region would likely be the best bet.
- witty_username 10y agoNope, I don't think there's any scientific consensus that the effects are going to be that extreme (1). (1) it might be very bad for say a poor farmer, but the typical HN reader will be able to survive it.
- phaemon 10y ago...by living off their fat reserves when the farms stop sending food?
- FrozenVoid 10y agoIts seriously bad, and we still argue about electric cars and profitability of solar power: Methane is powerful enough to create rapid warming feedback loop that cannot be stopped by current means(unless the world economies are changed overnight), there is a model that shows +6C warming effects if methane reaches 1000ppm(2000 Gt release): http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00533.1 http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00533.... Notice the predictions of methane release from 2013 are on track: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/05/7-facts-need-to-know-arctic-methane-time-bomb https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/a...
- vixen99 10y ago1000ppm methane would be a big problem. Meanwhile methane concentration (2015 figure) is 2.85 ppm. Please correct if you think this is way out.
- dharma1 10y agoI have wondered if we couldn't engineer solutions to capture the methane. Locating the leaks should be straightforward with spectral satellite imaging
- dvh 10y agoIt's everywhere, dead leafs under the tree that used to be frozen now are being composted by bacteria producing methane, you would have to cover ground with plastic foil.
- phkahler 10y ago>> dead leafs under the tree that used to be frozen now are being composted by bacteria producing methane This is THE thing people overlook. There used to be trees there! There used to be lots of vegetation, that's why there's so much carbon trapped in the permafrost in the first place. We're not releasing something bad, we're returning the earth to a better equilibrium. Imagine if the Siberian tundra were replaced with forests and farms. Imagine if we avoid the next glaciation - which is coming if we do as the climate alarmists want, yet there is evidence that we can't prevent it even if we try.
- mikeash 10y agoImagine if the Siberian tundra were replaced with forests and farms, and current forests and farms were replaced with desert. You can't just look at the potential upside, assume it will be huge, and also assume there aren't any negative effects that might outweigh it. The argument that the Earth used to be warmer or cooler or whatever is completely nonsensical. We're not worried about Earth, we're worried about people, and more specifically civilization. The fact that the tundra used to be lush doesn't mean anything in that respect.
- phkahler 10y agoCivilization could "just" relocate. As for desertification, see this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl... And remember, the alternative is still glaciation.
- vixen99 10y agoElsewhere in the arctic: Geophysical Letters 22 JUN 2016: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069292/pdf reports "No significant increase in long-term CH4 emissions on North Slope of Alaska despite significant increase in air temperature"
- bjz_ 10y agoYale Climate Connections on the melting permafrost in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLCgybStZ4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLCgybStZ4g - sad to see we have been moving so slowly in the three years since I watched it.
- spiderfarmer 10y agoSerious question: Is there any research in how far will nature be able to adapt? For example, if the permafrost melts, wouldn't that enable growth of CO2 absorbing plants in those areas? I found this article that says the predicted CO2 levels will increase plant growth: http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108 http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-...
- api 10y agoWe don't know what runaway climate change will look like. The system is chaotic with lots of feedback loops. Stuff will happen, some of it counter-intuitive. It may or may not be okay in the end. I like Elon's take: yeah, it might not be that bad, but is it really smart to do an uncontrolled experiment on your own biosphere and "see what happens?" I also like George Carlin's: "Stop talking about saving the Earth! The Earth is four billion years old. The Earth will be fine. We're fucked." Carlin's comment is actually quite wise. Life will adapt, but adaptation is a painful evolutionary process that often involves a lot of death. Concern over things like climate change is entirely self-interested. We don't want to unleash a Darwinian "adaptive" process at the global scale upon ourselves.
- csours 10y agoI didn't read the article closely enough, but I'd be interested to see if this methane is released from a stored source or if it is from rotting vegetation. Much of the permafrost area is a frozen swamp; when it thaws, the swamp plants rot. In other words, this may be a one-time outgassing of a limited amount of vegetable material, at least in this case. We still have the clathrate gun to worry about.
- patrickmn 10y agoRelated interview with Natalia Shakhova from the International Arctic Research Center: https://youtu.be/kx1Jxk6kjbQ?t=9 https://youtu.be/kx1Jxk6kjbQ?t=9 Very ominous.