Katey Walter and the 'Methane Time Bomb'

Is global warming an abstract threat?

To be sure, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the earth's atmosphere, but they remain invisible to the human eye, unlike smog, diesel soot and other air pollutants.

Scientists still struggle to get the public to pay attention, despite an avalanche of peer-reviewed studies showing that climate change is already happening and is likely to accelerate to dangerous levels.

If anyone can talk back to global warming "deniers," it is Katey Walter, a 32-year-old aquatic biologist. She is the rare climate scientist who can make her findings visually -- and literally -- explosive. Walter is studying methane seeps from lakes in Alaska and Siberia (and has to be wary of wandering bears while she's doing it). Methane is a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

When Walter sets a match to a seep, it explodes in flame. Read about her field trip on Alaska's Seward Peninsula, just below the Arctic Circle, learn about methane's new threat, and watch the seeps light up in an LA Times report with video and a flash graphic.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Comments

[David M. Gonzalez]

OK, so it's methane. That can be used for fuel....The carbon goes into the air... That is like ECO rain for microorganisms on the ground the maintain large ecosystems, foliage, animal sustenance,etc. I think we should learn more on the natural benefits of these changes as well. This is probably not the first time in the earths historical record that this has happened, and it won,t be the last. We are just witnessing this due to man made, and natural phenomenon. The earth is changing, waters are rising, this is essential to bring forth fertile grounds, maybe more than we know today.... or ever realized. Imagine deserts becoming jungles.

[Don Nguyen]

The solution to this problem is by going vegan. Green energy is taking too long. We don't have time to wait. Everyone go veg and spread the this truth.
http://suprememastertv.com/

[Xavi Alexander]

We are doomed!

@

[DB]

When are more folks going to start serious discussions about all of the methane, which we could easily do something about, coming from all of this livestock folks are raising and eating at obscene, grotesque levels? From what I have read, one can do more to help stop global warming by becoming vegetarian than by buying a hybrid car. And one could do both, of course. Many would be very happy just to see folks cut down on their animal product consumption. People in the U.S. eat way more animal products than in the past, with the rise of all of these awful fast food restaurants in recent decades, is what I have read. What else have I read. There are more greenhouse gases coming from livestock around the world than from all transportation combined? I can believe it. How many head of livestock on the planet? Even folks at the UN who are working on climate change, have come out and stated folks should cut back on eating animal products, and that while it is a harder and longer-term problem to, say, change our whole transportation system, it would be easy and fast for folks to change their eating habits and help with global warming by helping to cut down on all of this methane coming from livestock, right? Do many folks have any idea the amount of animal feces being generated currently? Do many folks have any idea how completely disgusting it is for many others to have to tolerate living in a world that has just basically become one big s*** pile, so someone can have their stupid hamburger or filet mignon, or pork rinds, or whatever other completely grotesque thing someone wants to gobble down? Do many folks have any idea how much environmental destruction in other ways as well comes from all of this waste? Maybe some of you at the paper could do some more research on all of this and help educate more folks? Huge areas of this country have just been turned into big cess **** pools of animal waste. Just completely disgusting. Biodiversity in western areas which are used for cattle grazing has suffered enormously since the introduction of this awful practice. And yes, methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and while I am glad to read some folks talking more about this, I have yet to see enough discussion on the sickening problem of all of this animal manure ruining the country, polluting water ways, polluting the air, and contributing to the global warming. Animal waste, manure, gases from such waste, does not just smell bad, it can cause respiratory and heart disease, can even cause brain damage and death at high levels, blood poisoning, and on an on, from what I have read. Folks who work on these manure ponds in some places can and have died from gases, hydrogen sulfide, from this ****. Who is regulating all of this waste? The air and water pollution from all of this waste? I mean in some meaningful way? If this was human waste it would not be allowed to just be dumped and spread all over the place in such a disgusting manner. Now, farmers are very concerned about having enough water for their crops, in different areas, as well. And animal products are very unhealthy-- are linked to colon cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, obesity, asthma, acne, other health problems. Pesticides on crops fed to animals (and on other crops as well, of course) are linked to Parkinson's, diabetes, cancer, lower IQs, birth deformities, many other problems, and on and on. Raising animals, livestock production uses huge amounts of water; you can support many, many more people on a vegetarian diet than on an animal product based diet. One thing I read talking about this, said everytime someone eats a steak imagine there are forty people in the room with you going hungry, as you could have fed forty people vs. one if the same resources had gone into growing vegetables as into producing this one steak. With an ever increasing population, dwindling water supplies, greenhouses gases run amok, and increasing problems with health related to over consumption of animal products, excessive protein intake, and so on, perhaps it is really time for more folks to get smarter, and truly progressive in their outlook toward livestock production, an animal based diet, and related environmental issues? How some can call themselves progressive and not see this as an issue, is truly beyond me.

[Jeffrey S]

Scientists Debunk Alarmists

"The Russian Academy of Sciences has found that the annual temperature of soils (with seasonal variations) has been remaining stable," reported the August 22 Russian News and Information Agency. "If anything, the depth of seasonal melting has decreased slightly."

"Unscrupulous scientists are exaggerating and peddling fears about permafrost thawing and swamp methane becoming aggressive," Professor Nikolai Alexeyevsky, doctor of geography and head of the land hydrology department at Moscow State University, told the Russian News and Information Agency.

"The alarmists' misrepresentation of the Siberian permafrost is not surprising," said Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "So long as governments hand out billions of dollars each year for climate research, there is no incentive to report the truth. The only sure way to keep receiving climate research funding is to keep claiming impending climate catastrophe."

Derided as 'Scare Story'

"This is just another scare story," added Vladimir Melnikov, director of Russia's Institute of the Earth's Cryosphere, the world's only institute dedicated to investigating the ways in which ground water becomes ice and permafrost. "This ecological structure is balanced and is not about to harm people with gas discharges."

Melnikov also disputed the claims that rapidly thawing permafrost is causing the formation of small lakes in Siberia. "Scientific findings and experience suggest that small lakes result from irregularities when laying oil and gas pipes and other engineering systems. But the scale on which new formations are appearing is small, and they do not pose any threat."

"The boundaries of the Russian permafrost zone remain virtually unchanged," agreed Yuri Izrael, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Climatology and Ecology. "At the same time, the permafrost is several hundred meters deep. For methane, other gases, and hydrates to escape to the surface, it would have to melt at tremendous depths, which is impossible."

[Alice]

Our planet how wonderfully made. It trys to repair itself despite mankinds stupidness. Thank you for the articule, its was a wide-eyed awakening.

[Commie Stooge]

Isn't this what caused the Permian Extinction? First the volcanoes of the Siberian Traps erupted, releasing CO2. This then led to warming, which released this frozen methane from under the sea!

The Science Channel runs a show "The Day The Earth Nearly Died."

Watch it!

[Geoff Graham]

We should take care that our energy policies avoid not only environmental disaster, but geopolitical disaster as well. The most dangerous event of the 20th century was not global warming but the Cuban missile crisis--which almost annihilated civilization. We should not repeat it.

Russia currently resembles the Weimar Republic that existed in Germany between the two World Wars. The Russians have lost a global struggle for dominance in which they were NOT entirely at fault, but for which they have borne nearly all of the blame. Their economy is in shambles, and dominated by oligarchs and gangsters. They have lost much of their national territory, and they watch helplessly as members of their own ethnic group are oppressed in these now foreign countries. They have little faith in diplomacy, which has usually failed them, and a belief--backed by much experience--that only military force is reliable. Yet, while they were once militarily strong, they are now nearly helpless, and they are repeatedly humiliated by people whom they once considered their equals. Their political traditions are authoritarian, rather than democratic. Even more than the Germans, they are subject to great waves of nationalistic fervor that sweep away all caution, good judgment and common sense.

If Russia follows the German example and gets a revanchist government, it will probably strike at Western interests in the Persian Gulf. The less the West depends on Persian Gulf oil, the more flexibility we will have in responding, the more time we will have to defuse the crisis, and keep it from becoming a nuclear war.

It is admirable that we try to predict temperatures a century from now, but we should also work much harder at understanding how our own actions and those of other countries might combine to produce peace or disaster. Otherwise environmental zeal may lead us into a geopolitical catastrophe.

For the foreseeable future, we should agree that ALL domestic energy--carbon-emitting or not--is preferable to all foreign energy. Within that framework, we should give strong preference to renewable energy, and use the profits from conventional energy production to subsidize renewable energy.

[WTL]

In 1994, John Barnes published his novel about a catastrophic release of methane hydrates called "Mother of Storms" - http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Storms-John-Barnes/dp/0812533453/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235325968&sr=8-2. He probably had no way of knowing that it wouldn't take a nuclear missile attack to free all that methane, but he was right on about one result: massive hurricanes generated by warmer oceans due to higher global temperatures. This article lays out the science, which is pretty much inarguable in its basics - methane is an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas, it's being released in increasing quantities, it will play a major role in global warming, global warming is a fact, and human activity is contributing heavily to it. Climate scientists predict this oceanic warming will generate more and bigger hurricanes - it's inevitable, since hurricanes are a product of warm oceans, which is why they're always born in tropical waters. The novel takes this concept to an extreme, of course, but the basic science is there. And hurricanes are by far not the only catastrophic result we can expect.

Buckwheat, among others commenting, needs to think more clearly - yes, glaciation and warming are cyclical, but in our particular interglacial era our entire human civilization has developed. It's not like we can just wait out these eons - we don't live that long, y'know. That's why some kind of action is crucial if we want to continue our existence without falling back to cave-dwelling status, if not extinction - we are not all-powerful, despite our hubris and delusion. Buckwheat and the rest of us reading this article today probably won't live long enough to see the ultimate effects - even if these effects occur in the next 100 years, our short life spans and attention spans will make them seem gradual, with the accompanying illusion that they're temporary, not quite real.

That's one of the primary failings of human behavior - short-sightedness. It can be catastrophic - regard the banking industry and stock market if you have any doubts. We are duplicating that stupidity on a global environmental scale.

[sheryl]

Someone said recently "never let a crisis go to waste". Isn't this an opportunity for some business venture to harness this gas, transport it to where it could be consumed and used to heat houses, for example. I am sure other uses could be found for this gas. Trap it and sell it. But let's not give in to gloom and doom just yet.

[Buckwheat]

10 thousand years ago a glaciar covered most of what is today the state of Wisconsin. It is called the Wisconsiounian glacial period with the matching period called Wurm in Europe. Previous to this glacial period, there were two other major glacial periods in the last 400 thousand years or so. We are in the interglacial period between the third and fourth glacial periods. What is the point of this endless diatribe using data from the last two hundred years when we have had three major glacial periods with interglacial periods between the first two? I am tired of pseudo science and chicken litttle philospohy. Get a life!

[Brad Arnold]

You don't understand the magnitude of the threat: methane hydrate (greenhouse gas caught inside ice) deposits have more carbon than all the oil, gas, and coal deposits COMBINED. Furthermore, rather than being released into the air by burning it, the release the greenhouse gas when it melts. Finally, not all carbon is created equal: methane is 70 times more powerful a greenhouse gas over the first 20 years than carbon dioxide. There is about 300 billion tons of methane inside above water inside permafrost, and it is estimated that 50% of the surface permafrost will melt by 2050 (over 90% by 2100). It gets MUCH worse: there is an estimated 10,000 billion (!) tons of methane hydrate under the sea. By the way, a sudden release of under 30 billion tons would be like doubling the CO2 level in the air for 20 years. There is (for example) a patch of underwater permafrost off the coast of Siberia that is just above freezing. It is bubbling methane, the water is supersaturated with methane, and if it alone completely melts (a small fraction of the submarine methane hydrate) it would be like raising the CO2 level in the air something like ten times (i.e. runaway global warming, a cull of humans, and the death of civilization). There is only one way (I can see) to stop this speeding train: not a carbon diet-it is too late for that-instead immediate cool down the Earth cheaply and simply putting a small amount of sun dimming aerosol into the upper atmosphere. There is really only one choice: either use geoengineering or accept a cull of mankind.

[sheila]

and who is watching out for the huge SF6 emissions caused by transmission lines? SF 6 is 23,900 times as potent as CO2, but all these greenwashers keep pushing for Giant Transmission lines which will do incredible, incredible harm to the planet.

STOP BIG TRANSMISSION and focus on point of use solutions or your Big Solar Boondoggle will kill us all, ya dummies!

[Ballardog]

Co2 is not a pollutant but a natural gas that we need to live.

If the government tries to regulate and tax it I will encourage everyone to build a mulch pit in their yard to produce as much methane and co2 as possible. Let them try and stop us!

The correlation of sunspot activity and climate temperature is much stronger. In fact this winter the arctic sea ice has returned faster than has ever been recorded and is near levels unseen for 30 years. But, for some reason the satellites that are used to measure this sea ice have recently mysteriously malfunctioned. Imagine that.

[larrydalooza]

CO2 is not a pollutant. Vegetation does best at around 600-800 ppm. We are entering an age of great prosperity, yet we try to stop it. CO2 is good. The Earth uses it to provide for us. This is insane. You AGW nuts are legitimately insane.

[Tony]

First the Internet bubble, then the housing bubble, now the human bubble. the Earth will weed us out as we continue to produce more and more unnecessary offspring and keep consuming at breakneck pace. Once the Earth, may have already, reaches the tipping point, it will be a quick population control method. We are but a speck of dust in the time of things, ashes to ashes and dust to dust never meant more to me at this moment in time. Nobody will listen, we'll just figure it will work itself out, and it will, without us in the way. Sorry God, I can only do my small part, now just need the rest of us 6billion+ to join in. All the big houses, beachfront property and sports cars will mean nothing in 20 years as we scrape together fresh water and any food that might be left. My apologies to Mother Nature, we really did mess this one up. Intelligent species? Us? Hardly.