Live data from Hacker News

Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

siberiantimes.com

11–20 of 384 posts

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#11
At first I was thinking "stupid click bait title", then I saw the pictures. Anything making those craters is properly an explosion. Anything heard 100km away is properly and explosion.

If anything this article plays it down with words like eruption and venting. This seems super dangerous for people in the area. And dangerous in the climate change sense for the rest of us.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#12
post #7

Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviv…

Artificial sulfate aerosols look like they could quickly damp positive feedbacks though of course they're no permanent fix and won't do anything to counteract ocean acidification. There are more permanent fixes possible in theory (large scale accelerated silicate weathering) but their feasibility hinges, IMO, on some rather optimistic assumptions about the future trajectory of robotics.

Metaphorically speaking, we now have to consider the planetary equivalent of high-risk, high-cost surgery after mostly ignoring the planetary "stop smoking" advice experts have been giving for more than a generation.

Also, any large scale sequestration effort is going to be much harder if emissions continue unabated. We're past the point where prevention alone can stabilize atmospheric CO2 but we're never past the point where further anthropogenic emissions can make the problem even worse.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#13
post #8

A lot of the photos in the article sure looked like pingos[1], which are common in the Arctic and subarctic, rather than something exotic. Horses before Zebras and all that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo

The later photos in the article show very non-pingo large craters with ejecta, though.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#14
post #8

A lot of the photos in the article sure looked like pingos[1], which are common in the Arctic and subarctic, rather than something exotic. Horses before Zebras and all that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingo

Pictures of pingos are shown in the article because some of these craters formed where there were previously pingos. The term is mentioned 6 times in the article.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#15
post #7

Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviv…

> It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change

If the US government was actually focused on prevention, that would be a huge step up from "denying there's a problem."

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#16
I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles.

Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do anything realistic about it.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#17
post #16

I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles. Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do anything realistic about it.

It burns to CO2. Not enormously helpful?

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#18
post #17
post #16

I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles. Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do anything realistic about it.

It burns to CO2. Not enormously helpful?

Pound for pound, methane is a much stronger GHG then CO2.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#19
post #17
post #16

I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles. Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do anything realistic about it.

It burns to CO2. Not enormously helpful?

A stat I hear often is that methane is 26x "worse" of a greenhouse gas than CO2, so not ideal but still helpful.

Re: Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

#20
post #7

Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus' gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in hell, pun intended, of surviv…

Yeah, exponentials are tricky. By the time danger is clear, it's too late to do anything about it. But hey, at least this will probably be self-limiting. Disruption will arguably reduce population and industrialization, and so CO2 emissions will drop.
Post reply on HN