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Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

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Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#61

Post by remarkEon »

eloff wrote: post #58
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans have already noticed a "big difference" in the influx of Syrian and Afghani refugees. That invigorated anti-immigration parties, but those parties also advocated for various policies that went beyond immigration. A few million people had a huge impact on politics overall. Now imagine the turmoil and political ramifications that could spring, even in the short term, from the flooding of Bangladesh and the mi…

None of which is predicted to happen this century...

Oh good, so we have time?

Not sure what you're point is unless to say that this problem is on a long enough time horizon (where the survival rate for everyone drops to zero ...).

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#62

Post by Enginerrrd »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #44
Mikeb85 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's -10 degrees C with half a foot of snow where I live at this exact moment, does that cancel out your anecdote?

I think perhaps you ought to realize how childish the "it's cold outside so global warming is a myth" argument sounds. It makes you sound willfully ignorant, which I'm sure isn't what you intended.

No it's not, but it's completely symmetric to the anecdote they were replying to, which was in fact the point. We've got 6 replies so far saying mikeb85's comment is silly, but only one saying that the comment he was replying to was silly, by EXACTLY the same arguments.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#63

Post by rosege »

abootstrapper wrote: post #12
blhack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should we do?

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

While you are correct there is just no way that this is going to happen. Even if you could convince all the West to give up FF then I don't think you could convince China and India. Also there is no way you could convince the majority of people in the West to give up FF because a large percentage still don't believe climate change is man made. I was having a discussion a couple of nights ago with someone who thought it was all a conspiracy and when I said well NASA says the number of climate scientists behind it is 94% they still prefer to believe the right wing radio.

I really can't see this being turned around unless a major technical breakthrough is discovered which I consider fairly unlikely.

At this stage no one knows exactly how bad it will get. I've got between 30 & 40 years left (and no kids) so I don't think it will be catastrophic in my lifetime but I still have basic plans in my head about becoming more self-sufficient in the future as one way to deal with a potential fallout should there be some kind of calamity in the future.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#64

Post by realusername »

eloff wrote: post #60
realusername wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see comments like this all the time, but it doesn't happen that fast. You won't notice a big difference in your lifetime, and neither will your children I do already, the weather is much worse than when I was a kid, much drier and the heat waves are harsher.

That's a small difference.

Not really, there's already big parts of the forest dying because of that and it's very visible from the outside.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#65

Post by realusername »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #56
LeoPanthera wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps you ought to realize how childish the "it's cold outside so global warming is a myth" argument sounds. It makes you sound willfully ignorant, which I'm sure isn't what you intended.

I literally responded to a thread where someone said the world would end in 25 years, someone had a more measured response, then someone used the warm weather where they live as proof of impending disaster. Think about what I responded to.

I'm not talking about current weather but climate in general, your answer is missing the point.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#66

Post by flukus »

waste_monk wrote: post #46

Could this be mitigated by floating a whole bunch of logs / other flammable carbon based material and burning them, burning off the methane in the process? It would certainly lead to increased local temperatures in the short term, but it would remove the methane problem, and if we got enough carbon into the air we would eventually see a "nuclear winter" type cooling effect. This is obviously Bad and we'd need to burn…

This is a vast area, you could float and light the whole amazon rain forest and it would only make a small dent for a day.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#67

Post by anonuser123456 »

mdorazio wrote: post #2

So have we fired a clathrate gun then [1]? It's getting increasingly difficult to pretend worst-case global warming scenarios won't turn into reality in the next 25 years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

No. Most methane calthrate exists at depths and pressures that will not be effected by warming for hundreds to thousands of years.

The calthrate gun would more likely be the result of volcanic or continental landslides that mix warm surface water with disturbed sediments.

This is probably a product of local geological activity.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#68

Post by Robotbeat »

Blackthorn wrote: post #24
seiferteric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why ocean fertilization isn't talked about much anymore? All the articles I found about it were from ~10 years ago, with some vague conclusion that we shouldn't do it because it might be bad for the life on the ocean floor or something. There are no good solutions though, nothing will be perfect.

Haven't read anything about it in a while but I believe the conclusion was it wouldn't work, basically because it would take way too much iron to even start to make a dent.

That wasn't the conclusion. It'd make a dent, but not sufficient by itself. The real reason is people are skeptical of the wisdom of geoengineering in general. But I think we will almost certainly have to look at it.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#69

Post by ALittleLight »

klyrs wrote: post #16
kjar wrote: post #5

Apparently it’s no longer mitigation, now adaptation. The desire to avoid nihilism at point is tough. I’m pushing 40 and I hope I get 25 more years, family kids are in for it.:(

I wish I didn't have a child, for his sake. The climate makes things like "retirement" really hard to think about... it just hurts to think about his future

That seems like a very dramatic overstatement. Climate change is a serious problem, but hardly past human ingenuity to deal with. It's not like your children will be in a hell world. It'll be warmer, more storms, challenges due to changing sea level and arable lands shifting etc. It won't be a cataclysm but will play out over decades and centuries.

Your child, and your children's children will be fine.

Re: Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

#70

Post by Robotbeat »

pdonis wrote: post #20
abootstrapper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ. The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat, bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less, telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end goal is we all stop releasing sequestered…

> The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Build nuclear power plants. All the other things are fine, but if you really want to end fossil fuels, you need a non-fossil-fuel source of reliable base load power. Nuclear is the only one we have. Other sources are fine, but they can't produce reliable base load power. And, btw, I think we should end fossil fuels even if it turns out not to make much of a…

So... backed by about 24 to 48 hours of storage, and overbuilt by a factor of 2 to 3 (so you curtail most of your energy), wind and solar can produce reliable, baseload power. Particularly if you connect geographically separated regions and use wind/solar (and possibly geo/hydro) together. The cost is about the same as nuclear.

We should do everything, though, including nuclear. i'm a big nuclear fan. All at once, right now.

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