Scientists Discover New Global Warming Threat: ‘Methane Time Bomb’ Under Arctic Seabed
Scientists have today warned that global warming could rapidly accelerate as millions of tons of methane escape from the arctic seabed. According to preliminary findings, as the Arctic region gets warmer massive deposits of the greenhouse gas - 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - are rising to the surface.
Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University, one of the expedition’s leaders, said in an email from their Russian research ship that, for the first time, the team had discovered an extensive area of methane release so intense that “the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface.” The team believe that the accelerated release is connected to rising temperatures throughout the Arctic region.
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Gustafsson went on to report that “the conventional thought has been that the permafrost ‘lid’ on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place.” However, extensive research across thousands of square miles of the Arctic seabed had revealed growing evidence “that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane.”
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Image Credit - Nick_Russill via Flickr on a Creative Commons License
This is what we get for someone else’s mistakes, more and more trouble for future generations, like me! When I’m in my 40s or 50s, all of today’s teens and children will be suffering from all the global warming causes! We need to do something about global warming! Stop worrying so much about just one subject, hey, if people are worried about money, people, economy, etc. then if global warming makes us go extinct, or practically kills us, then there won’t be a world at all to make anything! live anything! do anything! WE NEED TO SAVE OUR PLANET! IT’S OUR ONLY HOME!!!
and about this article…exactlly what Bobby B. said, scientists should be figuring out a way to get the methane out! sure it may cost a couple thousand, ten, or hundred thousand dollars, and maybe take up a couple pounds of water, but we’ve spent billions of dollors on the economy and emergencies like that! Do those people not care about their children’s future!?! WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING!!!
SAVE THE OCEAN! SAVE THE PLANET!!! SAVE OURSELVES!!!!!
WE need Sarah
Yes, let’s capture this bubbling gas, somehow, and make money off it. Are you a total tool? Do you know how the vast the Arctic Sea is and how much methane is being released? By the time anything could be put in place to gather and pipeline anything, we’re already screwed. We’re beyond the tipping point. We’ve tipped. Depending on where you live and how you’ve prepared, you might just be screwed.
Not surprising really. Disturbing none the less.
I agree with Bobby B… When need to think of ways to captures this natural source of methane, and convert it into fuel. This in itself would help with more then one issue we are facing.
i watched your whole video
its pure bullshit
please realize what your doing before the waters heat up and kill all life in the ocean, all the water dries out, all the bees die so we have no food, teh air becomes unbreathable, and no one can eat icecream
sO WHAT? LIGT IT AND WE WILL’ HAVE SOUTHERN LIGHTS TOO.
is it more gas than cow farts?
global warming makes me sad =(
make a factory there that bottles it and fills containers
we r all gonna die!!!!!!