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
In response to the first commenter about the documentary The Global Warming Swindle as seen on rightalk.com. You simply need to google this movie and the featured scientists to find out that this movie is a piece of propaganda. Read the Wikipedia entries for this movie and featured scientists, the movie is very misleading.
what else is new…this world is just a time clock…it can only take some much…lesson is ..live life to the fullest daily enjoy cuz its not forever
Methane gases have been leaking at irregular intervals since the earth first formed. How about some positive news from our scientific dooms sayers. If I were a 10 year old today I’d probably shrug my shoulders and blow my brains out. I mean if its not asteriods the size of Manhatten, global warming or a islamic jihad on western civilization, then expect the sun to super-nova and vaporize us all instantly.
You guys should be writing science fiction books, not this garbage. Dean Koontz said it best,”there is more truth in fiction than there is in science.”
Very interesting video. But I think the polical timing of this video is not good. When media gets a hold of a canidate that doesn’t believe in Global warming he/she is instantly a puppet of Big Oil industries.
This video will come to light after the election is complete or when the amount of sun spots is reduced
So basically take the lemons God’s handed us and make sweet tasty fuel flavored lemonade. If such a mechanical system exists to harvest the gas over the area that it’s being released from, it would be sweet, but that may be biting off more than we can chew. Factor in the amount of R&D required to make such platforms and the amount of time needed to build them, it seems implausible that such harvesters could be constructed in time to make use of the abundant fuel source. That is, before it tears a hole in the ozone layer, or will it? Life on this planet emits a whole lot of CO2. We gotta be asking how much methane gas is a massive amount of methane gas, between us and everything else that poops we emit a lot of methane gas. One could say a massive amount of it. Should we do something about it? Sure, and probably soon. Will we be able to do something about it? Probably, but that depends on how many people still think this stuff is a hoax.
Perhaps between the LHC, global warming, and the economic breakdown/transition the Mayan oh-**** date will be true. I’m just banking on robot dinosaurs (ancient prisoners of the time war) to pop out of the time hole where the Higgs boson was supposed to be. Robot dinosaurs are the real reason why particles have mass!
i guess in this case, we need to focus on how to prevent that methane from going up.. i am concerned about the human race and race after us.. we should consider this as our top priority.. we can still do something, we just have to figure this out.. i do not know more about in scientific explanation but, u can translate it into English.. =)
Well…I hope its warm in hell.
@ Bobby B. thats an intelligent point but then again, couldnt we find a more efficient way of breaking down the methane into something other than a fuel source?
thereby reducing the CO2 released into the air to just the amount given off by factories that will break it down.
then we go with that 12 year old’s idea, work on it, evolve it a little to the point where solar energy is the primary source of energy, or we can use one guys idea of a windmill like object thats higher in the air so it gets greater gust of wind which eguals more power being generated, i think there were only a few problems to be worked out.
also i think most cars are 15% efficient, which is horrible if you ask me, shouldnt we have mech engineers nd chem engineers working on solving this problem?
Why does Sarah Palin not talk more of gobal warming that is taking place in Alaska? I know that she is a republician and most are for the oil companies but come on your there governer! Unless maybe gobal warming is a lie?
[...] 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