Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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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.