Methanicoids conquer the world

[Skybird]

They are crawling out of their holes in the ground and go roaming.


https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/17/world/siberia-craters-arctic-climate-change-scn/index.html


Indicative.



There is even more methane store din the emtha nhydrate in certain areas of the deep seas across severla global regions. I see these as the far bigger problem than the CO2 footprint child play we now play at excessive costs. Its one of the reaosns why I am so furious at this enormous waste of time and money. The time and the money will be gone - with no measurabeladaptaiton havign been achieved. We philosophize about cow digestion and indiviodual carbon footprints and neuzrotically get fixiated on these, willing to spoend fortunes on "adressing" them - but the by far bigger threats we ignore.


All methanhydrate in the deep sea areas unfreezing and released into the atmosphere will have a warming effect compared to which CO2 can only pale in envy.

[Catfish]

I have said this some decades ago, this is one of the major threats of a warmer climate. Siberia is the number one candidate for frozen immobilised methane, though there are a lot of other places in Asia. And then there is the Gulf of Mexico's seafloor ..

[Skybird]

Yes, I said this too several years ago in debates we then had. Methanhydrate. But for some reason I absolutely cnanot underdstand, nobody has it on his radar. Maybe its denial of fear, because it is a very apocalyptic scenerio. It has the potiential in my opinion at least, to bring the era of homo sapiens' reign to an end, and that of othe rhigher life on land and in the coean as well. The planet ha sbeen there before, and that he left those back times and forme dlife is becassue what was in the atmnisphere back then, now is in those methanhydrates deposits. I once spoke to a geologist who dealt with these questions professionally, years ago. He called methanhydrate ""Uroboro's candies". That phrase stuck on my mind.

[Catfish]

As you said, evolution has been positive in some way but the human brain is not wired to see so far ahead. It seems it only cares for what it saw based on experience, adapt this to new events, move the thought/promise/non-immediate threat elsewhere. It does not even have to be active denial.

Seeing the virus kills a few people nearby, but not understanding that the rate of spreading is exponential, and what this means in a week, or eight.
Humans only see their immediate intuitive neighbourhood, also in time.

Re once more the "caveman diplomacy", mankind was more advanced in the last century. But evolution does not always mean improvement in a human 'positive' sense.


The winner, at least temporarily:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesiocaeca_methanicola

Methane gas may also have been the reason for the Mexico oil spill, ships or floats of any kind are not able to float on methane saturated water. When methane bubbles rise ..
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65L6IA20100622

[Rockstar]

IMO the worst isn't the AGW alarmist theories and hype of methane escaping from the permafrost. The concern is fuel and gas pipelines and the cities across Siberia that house personnel and families who work in the oil and gas fields. All were built on the permafrost and are now sinking. Causing spills and major damage to the surrounding ecosystems.

As for the methane
“The increase was primarily fueled by human activities—especially agriculture and fossil fuels,” explained Benjamin Poulter, a NASA scientist and coordinator of the wetland methane emissions estimates for the Global Carbon Project. “The specific activities that we linked to the biggest increases were raising livestock, coal mining, waste disposal in landfills, and gas and oil production.”
Across the study years, wetlands contributed 30 percent of global methane emissions, with oil, gas, and coal activities accounting for 20 percent. Agriculture, including enteric fermentation and manure management, made up 24 percent of emissions, and landfills comprised 11 percent. Sixty-four percent of emissions came from tropical regions of South America, Asia, and Africa, with temperate regions accounting for 32 percent and the Arctic contributing 4 percent.

High-latitude ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Large amounts of carbon are stored in frozen soils (permafrost) and in forest vegetation in the Arctic. As it thaws, water-logged soil becomes an ideal environment for methane production. “However, we have yet to detect abnormal methane emissions in higher-latitude regions,” said Poulter, “despite thawing permafrost and record-breaking air temperatures year-after-year.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpVbgIPRGbs&feature=emb_logo

The video above is a data visualization that highlights several different sources of methane emissions produced around the globe and throughout the year. It was created using output from a modeling system developed and maintained by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. Note that the height of Earth’s atmosphere and topography have been vertically exaggerated approximately 50 times higher than normal in order to show the complexity of the atmospheric flow.

[Catfish]

^ "The concern is fuel and gas pipelines and the cities across Siberia that house personnel and families who work in the oil and gas fields. All were built on the permafrost and are now sinking. Causing spills and major damage to the surrounding ecosystems."
umm yes, this happens now. It has been known since the 1980ies b.t.w.
But again the general concern is what this leads to, in say 20 years.

May i suggest you read the second paragraph of my post above? Perfect example :D

[Skybird]

The global threatd lies not so much in the reservoir of frozen ground methane in the permafrost region - it lies in the many, many times bigger ammounts of methanhydrate frozen and laying on the bottom of the deep, deep sea. There are severla such areas around the globe. If temps in those waters and at those depths go up enough so that this methane hydrate unfreezes and completely, then it will change the world beyond recognition.

Last time all that frozen stuff down there was in gas form in the atmosphere, planet Earth was an almost completely dead powerheater.

[ikalugin]

The global threatd lies not so much in the reservoir of frozen ground methane in the permafrost region - it lies in the many, many times bigger ammounts of methanhydrate frozen and laying on the bottom of the deep, deep sea. There are severla such areas around the globe. If temps in those waters and at those depths go up enough so that this methane hydrate unfreezes and completely, then it will change the world beyond recognition.

Last time all that frozen stuff down there was in gas form in the atmosphere, planet Earth was an almost completely dead powerheater.


That is one of the big concerns here, we have been discussing how to either pump it all before it thaws or how to restore pre-human ecosystem in the arctic to keep it contained.

[Skybird]

My concern is more the deep sea's methanhydrate before the arctic circle' methane. And not because of cataclysmic seismic wavesa and super Tsunamis wiping out Scandinavia and Europe like in Frank Schätzing famous novel, but because of an upheating of the atmosphere that even the Holy Greta will not know what to say anymore.

As I said, ther ewere era when all what now is frozen at the bottom of the sea was in the atmoshere. And the planet was extremly hostile to life then and was a planetary super-cooker.

Methane'S potential to warm the climate, over a 20 year period, exceeds that of CO2 by a factor around 85. Eighty-five.

Even if the methan dpown there wpuld be bound by the coean'S water, it would shift the ph level such that highe rlife anf iosh wpould not live anymore, and many algas and other lfie forms would go the way of the dodo, too. This then oinfluences the ocean's intersaction witht he aerial atmopshere and the poluttion there.

And you better build a strong love for jellyfish. It will be the only higher multi-cellular life-form in the ocean. You will not watch further than a few meters due to all the jellyfish.

Before it becomes too warm, that is. Then there will not even be jellyfish anymore. That is long after the coean'S oygene production and CO2 binding capability already will have dropped to zero. And with changes in the temperature gradients int he water, atmoppshere will chnage, mpisture in it. The land will be affected as well, so will be the hcmical mix of the air.

Breathing will become lets say "an issue".


But go on, everybody, get hystericla over your carbon footprint. Waste time and trillions for CO2 polcies while ignoring methane. The simple truth is, if the methane problem does not get solved, it simply will not make a difference at all what is being done regarding CO2. If you have a 10 cm rip in your heart'S wall, you do not care for a small cut in your fingertip, do you.



It is said that all that methane could be used for new forms of energy production. I am not in the knowledge to assess that.