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The hurry is if warming temperatures cause it all to sublimate and release rapidly as gas, AKA the clathrate gun.
by nitrogen 6y ago
The hurry is if warming temperatures cause it all to sublimate and release rapidly as gas, AKA the clathrate gun.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoIts distribution is sparse and on the surface. Its been forming for a billion years. Conclusion: it's sublimating all the time and being replaced. If there's any danger, its from the billions of cubic meters under the ocean floor (the source of the nodules, seeping from underneath). More carbon than all the oil we ever burned in our civilization so far. Is that in any danger of accelerated release? I've not heard of that.
- vkou 6y ago> Conclusion: it's sublimating all the time and being replaced. In the long-term, yes, it will eventually reach a steady state. In the long term, though, we'll all be dead. In the short-term, on timescales that human beings care about, no, we can release too much of it too quickly, before the system reaches a steady equilibrium. Methane has an atmospheric half-life measured in decades, so getting too much of it, too fast, can significantly spike temperatures.