Methane Emissions “Through The Roof” As Arctic Melts Faster Than Predicted: Arctic Study Group

[stuntcat]

Arctic methane emissions this month were recorded at historic-high levels, causing great concern among climatologists, who cite rapidly melting Arctic sea-ice and warming oceans as the main causes.

As reported in the blog Arctic News, ”huge amounts of methane are now escaping from the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, penetrating the sea ice, and entering the atmosphere, in a process that appears to be accelerating, resulting in levels as high as 2662 ppb (at 14384 feet altitude) on November 9, 2013.” Experts generally agree that this amount is roughly twice the globally ‘safe’ level.

Another study group, the Alamo Project, said, “Greenhouse gases are escaping the permafrost and entering the atmosphere at an increasing rate – up to 50 billion tons each year of methane, for example — due to a global thawing trend. This is particularly troublesome because methane heats the atmosphere with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide. The release of all this stored carbon could change climate in the Arctic in ways researchers have yet to fully understand.”

http://planetsave.com/2013/11/15/methane-emissions-roof-arctic-melts-faster-predicted-arctic-study-group/#CJjIxHu8fivpSUtq.99

[pscot]

1. Very bad news

[Sunlei]

2. quite a change "Arctic sea ice may, indeed, “disappear completely” as early as September 2014"

This month’s readings, however, are even more worrisome. The recent AMEG report suggests that the current “catastrophic” explosion of methane emissions will further increase the climate feedbacks so dramatically that Arctic sea ice may, indeed, “disappear completely” as early as September 2014.

[Prophet 451]

3. We're fucked, right?

I hate to say it but between teh corporate interests that control politics in your country and mine (our cartoonishly evil PM is a big fan of bringing fracking to the UK), the resistence to doing anything by the PtB and that they've conned too many into believing the corporate line, I think it's too late.

[GliderGuider]

5. That's the conclusion many of us here have arrived at. As they say in Spanish,

"Estamos tan jodidos!"

[Bigmack]

13. Si, si, hermano! nt

[Ghost Dog]

18. No. In Spain what they say is:

"¡Estamos todos jodidos!", (we're all fucked) with equal emphasis on the todos (as in, all of us in the shit together).

It's often used as a rallying cry, a call to pull together.

And the time, indeed, is now.

[GliderGuider]

19. Thanks for that clarification. And the correct punctuation :-)

[Ghost Dog]

20. We need an Occupy!, ¡Indignados! -style UPRISING,

applying Anarchist political philosophy everywhere, not to prevent bad shit happening, but so as to find the best way through it.

But usually scientists and technocrats expect to see some hierarchical autocratic political power, even if it has to be nominally democratic, implementing the measures they see as necessary.

[pscot]

34. We need an intifada

A global intifada.

[GliderGuider]

37. An intifada with tumbrels?

...he asked eagerly...

[CRH]

38. lol, 'with tumbrels' , ...

sometimes your irreverent carbolic humor makes me spit my morning coffee.

[Scootaloo]

14. Pretty much. The REALLY scary thing?

Have you ever read some of the "solutions" people have come up with? It reads like a bunch of sci-fi writers swapping ideas over bong hits.

You know that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus is teaching Neo the history of the robot wars, and Morpheus points out "Well, the robots were solar-powered, so humans blacked out the sky"? That's what some of these ideas look like.

[Rozlee]

17. Climate change deniers have a comic book mentality anyway.

It's how they're so easily swayed by junk science. "It's cold, ergo, the earth isn't warming." When climate scientists come out with a new study on a record high level of carbon in the atmosphere, they come back with, "oh, it's been that high before and nothing ever happened." Yeah, but the last time it was, humans didn't exist. The climate change denial think tanks know that their followers aren't the brightest and keep their explanations uncomplicated and actively use attacks against scientists and the modern scientific method.

[tavalon]

23. And they will be as dead as you and me

The sad part is that we had a lot of chances to maybe stop this, maybe make it a little less intense and rapid, but those are all gone. Now, we just get to see how it ends. Well, maybe not you and me, but our grandchildren.

[pscot]

35. Maybe even you and me.

[tavalon]

36. Well, the dead part is a guarantee for everyone

Death is, as they say, a sexually transmitted disease. But how we die, well, it's starting to look like we will die like Thanksgiving turkeys with nothing to be thankful for.

[GliderGuider]

4. Tick ... tick ... tick ...

tickticktickticktick...

[Lobo27]

6. A documentary on Discovery...

Stated that at some point all the ice will melt, and that that Ice has so much trapped methane. That they fear that when it makes its way to the atmosphere that it will create a giant cloud of fire, and it'll be the end of civilization.

[riversedge]

7. whow just whow. I think dying in a fire is one of the

worst ways to die.

[SHRED]

8. not if you suffocate first due to no oxygen

[loudsue]

10. Not much help there, Shred.

Can I borrow some xanex?

[SHRED]

28. I know...little consolation

I fear for my kids and grandkids.

[tavalon]

22. Well, they certainly don't know that

that's pure fear mongering. That said, the end of our species is coming far sooner than anyone anticipated. We're going to take so many species with us, we already are. We were horrible stewards of this earth.

[Lobo27]

24. Most likely fear mongering, but the sad thing in all of this...

Is that we may have already damaged the planet beyond repair. And that we don't truly know of that will happen when shit truly hits the fan.

Puts things in perspective, for me at least, I have always thought that one day humans would go beyond solar system. Be more then what we are today, but at the rate we are going none of that will happen. We will cease to be, and that is damn shame.

[tavalon]

31. Is it a damn shame, actually?

Look around.

[kelliekat44]

9. Quick! Get a rig up there and harness that sucker and sell it at a huge mark up!!

The corporate capitalist said....

[glinda]

11. Well this is depressing.

[CRH]

12. 'Huge amounts are escaping'; in October and November when the Ice is just reforming, ...

After a mild summer of melt as per recent trends, this moves toward confirming what is happening far below the water, is systemic, not seasonal. As if to put some punctuation, the Alamo project infers the problem, systemic or not, manifests itself on land as well.

When will be the next cascade of arctic sea ice, 2014 or 2015? I can't be long.

It will be sad to view this unique event, in our specie's limited lifetime.

[chervilant]

15. Hmm...

The release of all this stored carbon could change climate in the Arctic in ways researchers have yet to fully understand.”

In other words, we're well and truly fucked.

Photosynthesis stops at 104°F...

[RoccoR5955]

16. Not to worry

Entergy, Exxon-Mobil, and Shell have figured out how to capture that methane, and sell it back to you.


NOT!


Yep, we are royally screwed!

[tavalon]

21. Blessedly, Mother Earth measures time in epochs

To us, were we to be here, it would look like she was destroyed by global warming but she's seen this before. Not man made but similar enough. She will adjust and she will repair. We will never see it, but one day she will be as beautiful as she was before the industrial revolution.

We will be gone and soon by any measurement. The sad part is that we will have taken most of the species with us. But Gaia, Mother Earth will be okay and that is only good news to be taken out of this.

In the microcosm, we will see these stories and worry but in the macrocosm, it's already over. Just the clean up to do. And now we are back to epochs.

I see so many yelling to save the earth. And yet, few yelling to save the bald monkeys. We (along with so many other species) are the dead men walking. The planet, our mother, will be fine, so long as we are gone. So, in the macrocosm, that has to happen and it is happening.

[hatrack]

25. Oops!

Look! Kardashians!

[aquart]

26. When archaeologists from other planets ponder why we died out...

The best answer will be "Their god was Greed."

[CrispyQ]

27. In Thom Hartmann's mini-documentary, he dares mention the E word.

http://lasthours.org/

It's about 12 minutes long.

The documentary "Chasing Ice" is visible evidence that the planet is warming. They caught an unbelievable calving event on film. The scope of the glacier calf was hard to grasp until they superimposed Manhattan over it, then it was mind boggling! It is an incredible documentary. Highly recommended.

We are consuming our ecosystem for the profit of a few.

[stuntcat]

29. K for this video

Please watch.

In real life I do not know one single person who'd spend ten minutes watching this. They do not care and can't be bothered to understand it, even though it's simple. It's just not as important as the hours of sports or TV shows. And since the tv and radio news almost never mention science or environmental news, it's clearly not as big a deal as Obamacare or the price of gas or the next election.

[CrispyQ]

30. "In real life I do not know one single person who'd spend ten minutes watching this."

Ditto. I post stuff like this on my FB page & never get likes. My friend will post how she spilled her coffee on the way to work & it will get 5-7 likes.

[Bigmack]

39. S W E E T J E S U S!

Watched this….and while I sorta "knew" most of the stuff in it, seeing it all put together at once in one place is just BAT-SHIT SCARY! Ms Bigmack

[CFLDem]

32. Good thing I already started building

my Ark!

[red dog 1]

33. Can it get any worse?

Here is more bad news from the SOUTH Pole.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/volcano-under-antarctic-ice-may-erupt-accelerate-melting-2D11603371/