Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sooner the better. According to the most realistic climate models, the point of no return for ~2 degree global average warming is already over. We don't have a good idea at what point truly catastrophic damage is going to occur (by which I mainly mean something like a Siberian clathrate gun that could hypothetically drastically warm the climate within a human lifetime). Continuing the current path of CO2 increase…
Holy shit! The methane clathrate gun is scary stuff..so basically there's a temperature that we dont exactly know that could eradicate our species in some kind if irreversible chain reaction. And almost no one talks about it.. Ive never heard of MCG before, thanks for your post.
> "Research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released, apparently through perforations in the seabed permafrost,[20] with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times normal levels.[22][23] The excess methane has been detected in localized hotspots in the outfall of the Lena River and the border between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Some melting may be the result of geological heating, but more thawing is believed to be due to the greatly increased volumes of meltwater being discharged from the Siberian rivers flowing north.[24] Current methane release has previously been estimated at 0.5 Mt per year.[25] Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5–10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks. They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve,[26][27] equivalent in greenhouse effect to a doubling in the current level of CO2."
Yet in the same section, you know what the introduction text reads currently?
> "Most deposits of methane clathrate are in sediments too deep to respond rapidly, and modelling by Archer (2007) suggests the methane forcing should remain a minor component of the overall greenhouse effect.[17] Clathrate deposits destabilize from the deepest part of their stability zone, which is typically hundreds of metres below the seabed. A sustained increase in sea temperature will warm its way through the sediment eventually, and cause the shallowest, most marginal clathrate to start to break down; but it will typically take on the order of a thousand years or more for the temperature signal to get through.[17]"
So let me get this straight: Because someone found a model from 2007 that makes things look mostly fine, we ignore empirical data from 2008 that shows that a Clathrate Gun of 50 Gt could go off at any time? Please someone tell me how I'm wrong just so I don't have to go crazy here.