Global Warming Game Over

For me the basic element in science is doubt, all evidence for a theory has to be placed on the table and tested time and time again by qualified independent researchers. This is especially important given that there has been a lot of gnashing of teeth on the conservative news outlets about a possible "climategate" in which thousands of evil commie scientists are working night and day to perpetuate an international hoax to sabotage all the honest and hardworking American capitalists and destroy the American economy.

Now I have no problem with real and honest doubt and debate about a very complex and difficult subject such as the theory that human activity is altering the Earth's climate. Although I do find it funny that the morning morons on Fox and Friends seem to be able to boil such a complex subject conveniently down to propagandist allegations. Then again the fat afternoon drug-addicted radio talker does break away from his ultimately self-serving and narcissistic rants as well to do his share to poo-poo the basic theory. Don't know about anyone else but myself but for some reason neither the morning morons or the oxycontin hero of the radio waves nor any of their media kinfolk impress me very much with their scientific credentials.

Yeah, they can drag out a few scientists whose bottom line usually has them receiving a paycheck from some oil company or other special interest looking to protect themselves from the tree huggers. Then you have occasional fruit cake out to challenge scientific dogma. Believe me, I'm righteously cool with that but you have to be careful or pretty soon you will be denying hard proof facts like that HIV causes AIDs and that there might be a scientific basis to astrology like Nobel winner Kary Mullis.

Now comes the much tortured point to my little rant and it involves methane. Frozen in the arctic tundra and the seafloor of the Arctic ocean are vast amounts methane which everyone with IQ points in the double digits knows would be a stark and global nightmare if it was released into the atmosphere.

The scary thing is that sections of this uber-greenhouse gas are showing signs of instability:

"...research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming."

Here is the meat of the article:

"Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material -- which contains carbon -- stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean. It is more than three times as large as the nearby Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Shakhova's research results show that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is already a significant methane source: 7 teragrams yearly, which is equal to the amount of methane emitted from the rest of the ocean. A teragram is equal to about 1.1 million tons."

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated arctic levels.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn't have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

"The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times," Shakhova said. "The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict."

Now we are dealing with some serious shit here and even the strongest opponents of humans being the cause of global warming will grudgingly admit at times that the climate is changing, its just that we are not the cause. My issue is that while these people can drag out a few scientific bitches and the oddballs believing in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and Area 51 aliens the vast majority of the respected scientific community believes that we have a huge problem that will ultimately engulf everyone on the planet. Lets just hope we get serious about it before we start seeing plumes of methane being released from the tundra and the ocean floor, cause when it happens its game over for everyone including the morning morons and Oxycontin wonder.