Clathrate Gun Has Fired (It's happened.)

[Dooom35796821595]

It'll be fine. We'll just print more ice.

From Halley's Comet.

[Dumb Ideologies]

It'll be fine. We'll just print more ice.

From Halley's Comet.

We must have a very strong Wi-Fi signal.

[Wolfmanne2]

Old news, this.

Could you deliver the reassuring explanation, else I may have to listen to Chicken Little?

[Dooom35796821595]

From Halley's Comet.

We must have a very strong Wi-Fi signal.

Just wait for it to come close, then piggyback of the South Koreans wifi.

[Esternial]

We already have technologies that could potentially mitigate the underlying causes, but as always governments are more interested in fixing the problems and not the causes of those problems.

I'm really fucking fed up with all of it, frankly I wish I never studied science and just lived my life building houses or fixing bicycles so I wouldn't be confronted with the asininity of mankind all the time, including but certainly not limited to Greenpeace with their anti-GMO policies.

[Dumb Ideologies]

We must have a very strong Wi-Fi signal.

Just wait for it to come close, then piggyback of the South Koreans wifi.

For humanity's survival and unlimited warez!

[Germania-ausreich]

the holy empire of germania-ausreich has a solution "lets grind up refugees for food"

[Mefpan]

the holy empire of germania-ausreich has a solution "lets grind up refugees for food"

This is not an in-character forum and even if it were, that's a rather silly way of presenting oneself.

[Singaporean Transhumans]

the holy empire of germania-ausreich has a solution "lets grind up refugees for food"

While we're at it lets grind people who post ICly in NSG for food too.

---

Seriously this is really depressing.

[Evilland of Evil Business]

>tfw you've only just left high school
>tfw the planet is permanently fucked

This is nice isn't it?

[Deutsch-Sudafrika]

Did someone say
Resource Wars?

[Individual Concerns]

I regret opening this thread now... christ, as if I wasn't fucking depressed enough as is, humanity's eventual extinction comes up.

I do not let political science dictate my world view.
Coupled with a little Celebrex, I stay failry even keel.

[Lady Scylla]

I'm sceptical. I'll have to dig more into it later, however, for the sake of the hypothetical, I don't have a problem with it. A global catastrophe that could affect human civilisation is the perfect motivator to encourage space development and travel. We're not typically known to merely roll up in little balls and await Armageddon.

[Kelinfort]

These findings were ignored or dismissed as alarmist at the time. Since then we have seen massive holes bursting with methane in Siberia. And the world has been heating up at an unprecedented rate.

http://www.sciencealert.com/something-s ... ple-s-feet

Basically, our C02 emissions have warmed the planet enough to melt permafrost containing trapped methane. Which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than C02. We'll see escalating temperatures at a faster rate than expected, as a runaway greenhouse effect occurs. We might see more climate change as a result of the methane than we caused ourselves, and occur faster than we caused it. None of this has anything to do with our behavior anymore, we already pulled the trigger. The methane is going to be released.

Lets be careful not to conflate two different sources of methane here. Permafrost melts can generate abiotic and biotic methane release through the melting of clathrates and through the decay of organic matter trapped in the matrix of the ice. Heightened methane release from rapidly melting permafrost could be the result of either or both processes, and we don't know which is going on here.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-weather-climatechange-science-idUSKCN1061RH?rpc=401

Stochastic phenomena is stochastic. Shock horror.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

So. What do we do now we've pulled the trigger and shot the planets brains out?

Hold your horses there. You've pointed to runaway melting of terrestrial Arctic permafrost deposits as being proof of the clathrate gun firing, but the formation and dynamics of clathrates in terrestrial permafrost deposits are still very poorly understood to my knowledge and we really have no idea just how much methane is trapped in the high latitude permafrost. Don't let your enthusiasm for the apocalypse get ahead of keeping the science in mind.

Seconded.

Also:

In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming on a timescale less than a human lifetime, and was responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last glacial maximum. This is now thought to be unlikely.

[The Serbian Empire]

I'm sceptical. I'll have to dig more into it later, however, for the sake of the hypothetical, I don't have a problem with it. A global catastrophe that could affect human civilisation is the perfect motivator to encourage space development and travel. We're not typically known to merely roll up in little balls and await Armageddon.

The politicians are not interested in anything more than collecting campaign funds from corporate donors.

[Valrifell]

I'm sceptical. I'll have to dig more into it later, however, for the sake of the hypothetical, I don't have a problem with it. A global catastrophe that could affect human civilisation is the perfect motivator to encourage space development and travel. We're not typically known to merely roll up in little balls and await Armageddon.

The politicians are not interested in anything more than collecting campaign funds from corporate donors.

Pretty sure every human being has a vested interest in not dying.

[Kelinfort]

NOAA releases a yearly update about the amount of methane in the atmosphere and the rate of increase: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trend ... bal_growth

2014 and 2015, while seemingly high, are not unprecedented and don't seem to indicate non linear growth. 2016 has yet to be released, but it's unlikely to be markedly higher.

[The Serbian Empire]

The politicians are not interested in anything more than collecting campaign funds from corporate donors.

Pretty sure every human being has a vested interest in not dying.

Their financial interests in benefitting the corporations and lead to the extinction of humanity is probably even stronger still.

[Ostroeuropa]

NOAA releases a yearly update about the amount of methane in the atmosphere and the rate of increase: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trend ... bal_growth

2014 and 2015, while seemingly high, are not unprecedented and don't seem to indicate non linear growth. 2016 has yet to be released, but it's unlikely to be markedly higher.

The Siberia article about the methane-blisters seems to imply that much of it is under the soil and leaking slowly, but no longer completely trapped, and blisters may burst on occasion. Global temperatures are rising quicker than anticipated, as shown by the other article. In any case, we need to expand our environmental policy discussions to account for this and stop limiting it to simply reducing C02.
More research into climate control countermeasures, actually develop a climate collapse protocal dealing with refugees/relocation, etc.
"Stop doing the thing" may no longer be sufficient, especially as C02 has a 40 year lag on influencing temperatures, and we've released more in the last 40 than all our previous efforts combined.

We don't want to get caught with our pants down.
In any case, it should be extremely concerning that there are now groups of scientists reaching the conclusion. That either means activist scientists (unlikely), or that we've reached the stage where the clathrate gun firing is now within the margin of error for studies.

I'm sceptical. I'll have to dig more into it later, however, for the sake of the hypothetical, I don't have a problem with it. A global catastrophe that could affect human civilisation is the perfect motivator to encourage space development and travel. We're not typically known to merely roll up in little balls and await Armageddon.

I don't think we'll be able to develop space travel in response before we deal with the consequences on earth. While it's possible that we'll see space travel as an eventual consequence, the more immediate result will be having to deal with less food, higher population density, unrest, water shortages, etc. Ambitious space travel projects could become a pacifier of the population through propaganda though.

[Internationalist Bastard]

Good, another problem on my conscience.

[Hydesland]

Ostro, why are all your posts so shit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/com ... hrate_gun/

[Arcipelago]

Think of all that wasted gas. Obviously this rate of warming is 'unprecedented', but no actually the climate while us humans were around has been some of the most stable in earth's history. Even for civilization this kind of change isn't drastic or uncommon. Perhaps we caused this change, but if anything it was a change back to the norm. We shouldn't at all be concerned about this.

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/l ... 00-new.png

[Lady Scylla]

The susceptibility of gas hydrates to warming climate depends on the duration of the warming event,
their depth beneath the seafloor or tundra surface, and the amount of warming required to heat
sediments to the point of dissociating gas hydrates. A rudimentary estimate of the depth to which

sediments are affected by an instantaneous, sustained temperature change DT in the overlying air or
ocean waters can be made using the diffusive length scale 1 = √kt , which describes the depth (m)
that 0.5 DT will propagate in elapsed time t (s). k denotes thermal diffusivity, which ranges from ~0.6
to 1x10-6 m2/s for unconsolidated sediments. Over 10, 100, and 1000 yr, the calculation yields
maximum of 18 m, 56 m, and 178 m, respectively, regardless of the magnitude of DT. In real
situations, DT is usually small and may have short- (e.g., seasonal) or long-term fluctuations that
swamp the signal associated with climate warming trends. Even over 103 yr, only gas hydrates close
to the seafloor and initially within a few degrees of the thermodynamic stability boundary might
experience dissociation in response to reasonable rates of warming. As discussed below, less than
5% of the gas hydrate inventory may meet these criteria.

Even when gas hydrate dissociates, several factors mitigate the impact of the liberated CH4 on the
sediment-ocean-atmosphere system. In marine sediments, the released CH4 may dissolve in local
pore waters, remain trapped as gas, or rise toward the seafloor as bubbles. Up to 90% or more of the
CH4 that reaches the sulfate reduction zone (SRZ) in the near-seafloor sediments may be
consumed by anaerobic CH4 oxidation (Hinrichs & Boetius 2002, Treude et al. 2003, Reeburgh 2007,
Knittel & Boetius 2009). At the highest flux sites (seeps), the SRZ may vanish, allowing CH4 to be
injected directly into the water column or, in some cases, partially consumed by aerobic microbes
(Niemann et al. 2006).

Methane emitted at the seafloor only rarely survives the trip through the water column to reach the
atmosphere. At seafloor depths greater than ~100 m, O2 and N2 dissolved in ocean water almost
completely replace CH4 in rising bubbles (McGinnis et al. 2006). Within the water column, oxidation
by aerobic microbes is an important sink for dissolved CH4 over some depth ranges and at some
locations (e.g., Mau et al. 2007). These oxidizing microbial communities are remarkably responsive to
environmental changes, including variations in CH4 concentrations. For example, rapid deepwater
injection of large volumes of CH4 led to dramatically increased oxidation in the northern Gulf of
Mexico in 2010 (Kessler et al. 2011, Yvon-Lewis et al. 2011). Water column CH4 oxidation mitigates
the direct GHG impact of CH4 that is emitted at the seafloor, but it also depletes water column O2,
acidifies ocean waters, and leads to the eventual release of the product CO2 to the atmosphere after
residence times (Liro et al. 1993) of <50 years (water depths up to 500 m) to several hundred years
(more profound water depths).

While there exists methane hydrate stores in areas such as permafrost, it is currently estimated that the most significant (in volume) of methane hydrate stores reside in sub-surface sediments and rocks beneath the ocean. And due to a variety of factors, methane that is released during 'eruptions' is mostly absorbed through aerobic oxidation of methane hydrate by microbes in the deep water, and other filtering elements related to the actual composition of the water. This would suggest that what CO2 (a byproduct of this oxidation) and methane reaches the surface is of low yield comparative to the initial volume of the 'eruption' and does so at an un-alarming rate over the course of <50 years, or even longer (such as centuries).

Based on observations and research of core samples from past warming events.

Deep gas hydrates beneath capping, permafrost-bearing sediments are stable over warm periods
that endure more than 103 yr (e.g., Lachenbruch et al. 1994), even under scenarios of doubling
atmospheric CO2 (Majorowicz et al. 2008). Only gas hydrates at the top of the GHSZ, nominally at
~225 m depth for pure CH4 hydrate within permafrost, might be vulnerable to dissociation due to
atmospheric warming over 103 yr.

Only gas hydrates at the top of the GHSZ, nominally at
~225 m depth for pure CH4 hydrate within permafrost, might be vulnerable to dissociation due to
atmospheric warming over 103 yr. Such shallow, intrapermafrost gas hydrate has been sampled in
the North American Arctic (Collett et al. 2011, Dallimore & Collett 1995), but is not necessarily
ubiquitous at high latitudes.

And despite the discovery of stores within permafrost around the arctic, it isn't commonly found everywhere in the poles. These stores, however, being the most likely to release methane into the atmosphere at faster rates, and in greater volume, than that of the larger deep ocean stores.

And to add;

Warming Arctic temperatures tracked in deep boreholes since the 1960s
provide no evidence for climate perturbations reaching as deep as 200 m (Judge & Majorowicz 1992,
Lachenbruch & Marshall 1986) in normal (e.g., not beneath lakes) continuous permafrost. Some
researchers have argued that gas hydrates formed during previous periods of ice/water loading may
persist today at subsurface depths as shallow as 20 m in areas of continuous permafrost (Chuvilin et
al. 1998). Although their existence is controversial, such shallow gas hydrates would clearly be highly
susceptible to dissociation in response to climate warming.

Overall, and in short -- it is estimated that 95% of the stores of methane hydrate exist at great depths under the ocean, and are trapped beneath the sediment and rock of the sea-floor. Because warming is more likely to affect the littoral zones of the ocean, seas, and deep lakes -- methane hydrate stores beneath the surface in these shallow regions (~3%) is the most likely to be susceptible to global warming. Should warming cause the release of this methane, it wouldn't be able to cause any further reactions in deeper water, especially beneath the GHSZ (Gas Hydrate Stability Zone) -- meaning that the largest stores, and thus the greatest danger to the global climate, would not be affected.

http://pm22100.net/docs/pdf/enercoop/en ... Change.pdf

As far as whether melting permafrost may cause rapid dissociation of methane hydrate, well, NASA got a surprise.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4804

The water trapped in the soil doesn't freeze completely even below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), he explained. The top layer of the ground, known as the active layer, thaws in the summer and refreezes in the winter, and it experiences a kind of sandwiching effect as it freezes. When temperatures are right around 32 degrees Fahrenheit -- the so-called "zero curtain" -- the top and bottom of the active layer begin to freeze, while the middle remains insulated. Microorganisms in this unfrozen middle layer continue to break down organic matter and emit methane many months into the Arctic's cold period each year.

After analyzing the data, the research team found a major portion of methane emissions during the cold season were observed when temperatures hovered near the zero curtain.

"This is extremely relevant for the Arctic ecosystem, as the zero curtain period continues from September until the end of December, lasting as long or longer than the entire summer season," said Zona, the study's first author. "These results are opposite of what modelers have been assuming, which is that the majority of the methane emissions occur during the warm summer months while the cold-season methane contribution is nearly zero."

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that during the cold seasons they studied, the relative methane emissions were higher at the drier, upland tundra sites than at wetland sites, contradicting yet another longstanding assumption about Arctic methane emissions. Upland tundra was previously assumed to be a negligible contributor of methane, Zona said, adding that the freezing of the surface inhibits methane oxidation, resulting in significant net methane emissions during the fall and winter. Plants act like chimneys, facilitating the escape through the frozen layer to the atmosphere. The highest annual emissions were observed in the upland site in the foothills of the Brooks Range, where warm soils and a deep active layer resulted in high rates of methane production.

So, what about those arctic stores? Well.

Carbon pools in permafrost regions represent a large reservoir vulnerable to change in a warming climate. While some of this carbon will continue to persist in soils and sediments over the long term, our understanding that a substantial fraction of this pool is susceptible to microbial breakdown once thawed has been verified at the landscape scale (Box 1 and the Box 1 Figure).The exponential nature of microbial decomposition and CO2 and CH4 release over time means that the initial decades after thaw will be the most important for greenhouse gas release from any particular unit of thawed soil. Our expert judgement is that estimates made by independent approaches,including laboratory incubations, dynamic models, and expert assessment,seem to be converging on ,5%–15% of the terrestrial permafrost carbon pool being vulnerable to release in the form of greenhouse gases during this century under the current warming trajectory, with CO2-carbon comprising the majority of the release. There is uncertainty, but the vulnerable fraction does not appear to be twice as high or half as much as 5%–15%, based on this analysis. Ten per cent of the known terrestrial permafrost carbon pool is equivalent to ,130–160 Pg carbon. That amount, if released primarily in the form of CO2 at a constant rate over a century, would make it similar in magnitude to other historically important biospheric sources, such as land-use change (0.9 6 0.5 Pg carbon per year; 2003–2012 average), but far less than fossil-fuel emissions 88(9.7 6 0.5 Pg carbon per year in 2012).Considering CH4 as a fraction of permafrost carbon release would increase the warming impact of these emissions. At these rates, the observed and projected emissions of CO2 and CH4 from thawing permafrost are unlikely to occur at a speed that could cause abrupt climate change over a period of a few years to a decade 1,9. A large pulse release of permafrost carbon on this timescale could cause climate change that would incur catastrophic costs to society 8, but there is little evidence from either current observations or model projections to support such a large and rapid pulse. Instead, permafrost carbon emissions are likely to occur over decades and centuries as the permafrost region warms, making climate change happen even faster than we project on the basis of emissions from human activities alone. Because of momentum in the system and the continued warming and thawing of permafrost, permafrost carbon emissions are likely not only during this century but also beyond. Although never likely to overshadow emissions from fossil fuel, each additional ton of carbon released from the permafrost region to the atmosphere will probably incur additional costs to society.

5-15% of the stores are at risk of being released due to global warming and melting of the permafrost in arctic regions. While substantial, and enough to impact the global climate, instead of a sudden eruption, it will seep into the atmosphere at a less rate than we dump CO2 emissions into the atmosphere already.

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14338.epdf

Finally, what about the Permian extinction? That was caused by methane, right?

Not exactly.

Interestingly, the only way for deep ocean methane to hit the surface at an alarming rate is through the thinning of methane-consuming bacteria, a drastic increase of methane-producing bacteria, and large volcanic activity on the sea floor. Our climate impact on ecosystems on the sea floor is negligible at best. Volcanic eruptions can cause rapid disociation of methane hydrate in the seabed that results in large methane eruptions, but this takes a lot of volcanic activity, and today is still counteracted by aerobic oxidation by methane-consuming microbes. However, volcanic activity is the most likely culprit for why methane may reach the surface of the ocean. These conditions, however, have not existed on our planet since the Permian (+200ma), and even then, it is questionable.

During the Permian extinction, it was observed through study and research that there was a rapid 1% decrease in the 13C/12C isotope ratio in carbonate rocks. A sign of collapsing ecosystems that took around 10-60 thousand years. We've already learnt, however, that the stores for the greatest risk of release of methane are those around littoral zones and shallow water with depths less than 500m at most.

During the Permian, there was significant volcanic activity (largely a result of Pangaea starting to form where the continents began to press together). This meant that shallow seas trapped by the converging continental shelves, possibly uprooted from the deep ocean, would have been scattered throughout Pangaea, noticeably around Siberia where volcanic activity was very high. This activity would've caused massive dissociation of methane hydrate, destabilising the methane clathrates and explaining the sudden reduction in the isotope ratio aforementioned, as oceanic anoxia started to destroy ecosystems. Except that, despite this, these zones would've still been rather small comparative to the total stores of methane hydrate in deep ocean reservoirs.

In fact, microbes may have had the largest contributing factor, with volcanoes being the initial spark.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3992638/

There was a much greater prevalence of methanogens (methane-producing bacteria) during the late-era of the Permian around the same time that the extinction began, because of an increase in nickel -- due to volcanic activity having brought it to the surface from deep within the Earth via eruptions.

Our principal observations—a superexponential burst in the carbon cycle, the emergence of efficient acetoclastic methanogenesis, and a spike in the availability of nickel—appear straightforwardly related to several features of end-Permian environmental change: Siberian volcanism (7, , marine anoxia (5, 12, 13), and ocean acidification (14–16). A single horizontal gene transfer (17) instigated biogeochemical change, massive volcanism acted as a catalyst, and the resulting expansion of acetoclastic Methanosarcina acted to perturb CO2 and O2 levels. The ensuing biogeochemical disruption would likely have been widespread. For example, anaerobic methane oxidation may have increased sulfide levels (47), possibly resulting in a toxic release of hydrogen sulfide to the atmosphere, causing extinctions on land (48). Although such implications remain speculative, our work makes clear the exquisite sensitivity of the Earth system to the evolution of microbial life.

Given these potential causes, it can be surmised that the formation of Pangaea increased volcanic activity exponentially (causing one of the largest eruptions in Earth's history, the Siberian Traps, which covered over 2,000,000 sq. kilometres [770,700 sq. miles] with lava). Sea-beds containing high concentrations of methane hydrate that were safely deep under the ocean were shifted upward by the tectonic activity, either exposing them to the atmosphere, or leaving them in shallow seas of <500m. This tectonic, and subsequent volcanic activity would have dumped carbon, sulfur, and nickel into the ocean, and also destabilised the seabed where methane reservoirs were, triggering large dissociation events of methane hydrate.

All of which, in shallow seas (which most of Siberia was under), would have caused anoxia (deprivation of oxygen) of oceanic water, further carried by deeper oceanic currents in regions where waters were shallow, but still connected to the larger ocean. This anoxia would have killed off ecosystems reliant on aerobic respiration, giving microbes with anaerobic respiration (such as methanogens and sulfate-reducing bacteria a perfect opportunity to take over).

There were already signs of already large populations of methanogens notably in Siberia due to volcanic activity; which would have only furthered the saturation of methane in the ocean, and atmosphere, where waters were shallow. Sulfate-reducing bacteria (a very old anaerobic bacteria that lives near deep-water thermal vents) would have also seen a drastic increase in their population to feed off of the volcanic byproducts, and in return, producing hydrogen sulfide that would have killed plants, and weakened the ozone layer, exposing the planet to harmful levels of UV radiation.

The combination of these factors caused one of the worst extinction events in Earth's history that affected nearly every living organism on the planet. However, the conditions for this have not existed on Earth since the Permian, over 200 million years ago. Earth's tectonic, and volcanic activity is significantly less than what it was for the time, and microbes that counteract methane release into the ocean have flourished since then in deep waters. Methanogens, since then, had significantly decreased because of the lack of available nickel, which was depleted by their own consumption and the decrease in volcanic activity.

Furthermore, the Permian dissociation of methane hydrate deposits can be blamed for why the concentrations of current reservoirs in littoral zones (those most likely to be affected, and thus release methane) are much lower than those found in the deep ocean. So the likelihood of a catastrophic 'methane clathrate gun' destroying life as we know it, is highly unlikely. We've a higher chance of wiping our selves out through a thermonuclear war, I think.

So, overall, the conditions necessary just do not exist. That doesn't mean that methane release into the atmosphere by permafrost melt shouldn't be a concern, because it will impact our biosphere, but not at an alarming rate that would result in extinction events of all known life, in say, the next few centuries (Keep in mind, the Permian extinction took over 10 thousand years).

[Vedilia]

GLOBAL ANTI-GLOBAL WARMING DICTATORSHIP 2016-2552!

Pretty sure every human being has a vested interest in not dying.

Their financial interests in benefitting the corporations and lead to the extinction of humanity is probably even stronger still.

I think they'll start to come around when their buddies get killed by starving, sweaty, heatstricken and thirsty mobs.

[Hydesland]

increased permafrost carbon emissions in a warming climate are more likely to be gradual and sustained rather than abrupt and massive