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

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

#61

Post by cwal37 »

wiz21c wrote: post #31

I don't like what I'm reading here. Is there any expert here that could at least bring in non-panic arguments ?

Here is an at least a somewhat optimistic take on this issue in that it's looking for mitigation techniques and IDing possible research[1]. I worked for the lead author one summer at LLNL right around when this was published, and I believe he's continued to work on aspects of this in the interim, although I must confess that I'm terrible at keeping up with people and am not entirely sure.

[1] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es204686w

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

#63

Post by TeMPOraL »

clydethefrog wrote: post #44
cafebabbe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then good luck rebuilding civilization now that every easily accessible resource has been mined/harvested out.

Let's hope the beings that will rebuild civilization will learn from our mistakes.

I don't know about you, but I like human civilisation, so this is not much of a consolation for me.

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

#64

Post by gnaritas »

rubber_duck wrote: post #56
fjabre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why focus on "fixing" climate ? Why not just assume it's going to become unstable in close future and start building with that assumption ? Large scale isolated citiy domes. Nutrient synthesis that doesn't rely on climate/agriculture. Environment independent energy generation like micro nuclear reactors. Large scale air filtration and temperature control. As the world becomes more interconnected and developed catastr…

If you can't mobilize man to fight climate change, you aren't going to mobilize him to prepare for it either. People are in deep denial about the problem.

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

#65

Post by tonmoy »

bithive123 wrote: post #49

Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4 Some summary points: - Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons - Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at 100s-1000s of gigatons - Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane - Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1% - The volume current…

Would you happen to know, what percentage of temperature increase due to greenhouse effect is caused by methane right now?

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

#66

Post by jacquesm »

rubber_duck wrote: post #56
fjabre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why focus on "fixing" climate ? Why not just assume it's going to become unstable in close future and start building with that assumption ? Large scale isolated citiy domes. Nutrient synthesis that doesn't rely on climate/agriculture. Environment independent energy generation like micro nuclear reactors. Large scale air filtration and temperature control. As the world becomes more interconnected and developed catastr…

Most of your partial solutions depend on 'mere engineering' on a scale that has never been attempted before.

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

#67

Post by ericd »

rubber_duck wrote: post #56
fjabre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why focus on "fixing" climate ? Why not just assume it's going to become unstable in close future and start building with that assumption ? Large scale isolated citiy domes. Nutrient synthesis that doesn't rely on climate/agriculture. Environment independent energy generation like micro nuclear reactors. Large scale air filtration and temperature control. As the world becomes more interconnected and developed catastr…

Have you read the Silo series?

But to answer your question, because we can't build enough of these to sustain billions of people.

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

#68

Post by dreamcompiler »

mikestew wrote: post #39
wiz21c wrote: post #31

I don't like what I'm reading here. Is there any expert here that could at least bring in non-panic arguments ?

That's why I keep hitting "refresh" on this page of comments, in the hope that someone with more expertise than I have comes along and tells me it's not nearly as bad as I take this to be (i. e., "we're fucked"). Still waiting, BTW.

There is some hope. We could geoengineer a giant shade structure to reflect sunlight away from earth. It would cost $trillions (twelve zeros) but it could be done with current technology. And it would cool the Earth immediately. Unfortunately it would do nothing to fix ocean acidification, which threatens to starve and/or suffocate us all.

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

#69

Post by anon1253 »

_m8fo wrote: post #41

So, assuming we're screwed, where's the best place to move preemptively? I know Boston isn't that place. - I assume the coasts are a nonstarter. - Moving inland could be nice, but the ground would need to be pretty arable to restart civilization there. I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource exploitation there, but then again, there's not much infrastructure at the moment.

I'm betting on the higher regions of Scandinavia or Iceland.

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

#70

Post by marcosdumay »

fjabre wrote: post #7
LyndsySimon wrote: post #3

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…

An engineering solution to CH4 may be much easier than one for CO2. We can buy some time without even sequestration.
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