How Much Should You Worry About an Arctic Methane Bomb? 416
barlevg sends this excerpt from an article at MotherJones:
"It was a stunning figure: $60 trillion. Such could be the cost, according to a recent commentary in Nature, of 'the release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia... a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012.' More specifically, the paper described a scenario in which rapid Arctic warming and sea ice retreat lead to a pulse of undersea methane being released into the atmosphere. How much methane? The paper modeled a release of 50 gigatons of this hard-hitting greenhouse gas (a gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons) between 2015 and 2025. This, in turn, would trigger still more warming and gargantuan damage and adaptation costs. ... According to the Nature commentary, that methane 'is likely to be emitted as the seabed warms, either steadily over 50 years or suddenly.' Such are the scientific assumptions behind the paper's economic analysis. But are those assumptions realistic—and could that much methane really be released suddenly from the Arctic? A number of prominent scientists and methane experts interviewed for this article voiced strong skepticism about the Nature paper.'"
Dog and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is no 15 year pause in global warming.
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If the current weather is caused by global warming, then I say BRING IT ON!
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Your weather may get quite a bit better. There is a good argument to be made that there are huge land masses which will benefit from warmer weather. But that's a different argument than warming isn't happening.
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You may be interested in this [skepticalscience.com].
After enjoying the review of the creationist tactic of combating science by means of a letter signed by mostly non-experts, scroll down to the plot and consider it carefully. Notice anything?
OTOH, the link contains facts, which may cause you irreparable harm if you click it.
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The "15-year pause" in global warming is bunk:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming [metoffice.gov.uk]
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Would you care to substantiate your claim? Data show no such thing as a 15 year pause in global warming. They show it is accelerating.
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Could you give a citation for that "lowered solar output?" Because wikipedia disagrees with you. [wikipedia.org] Do you work for an oil company or have you just succumbed to their propaganda?
As to should we worry, no. Worrying never solved anything. Worry isn't needed, planning is.
You can worry about global cooling in five or ten thousand years. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Dog and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nasa http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml [nasa.gov]
(And just so you dont have to read that long complicated article here is a link to a nice picture)
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif [nasa.gov]
But don't let real science get in the way of your research via Wikipedia.
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If it's on nasa.gov that's a pretty good start.
Irrelevant data (Score:4, Informative)
Could you give a citation for that "lowered solar output?" Because wikipedia disagrees with you. [wikipedia.org]
Nasa http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml [nasa.gov]
(And just so you dont have to read that long complicated article here is a link to a nice picture)
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif [nasa.gov]
That is a graph of sunspot number. The question was about "lowered solar output."
This is amazingly typical of internet arguments, especially by the greenhouse-effect denying community. When asked to show data supporting their assertion, they show something else entirely, but since it's a graph with numbers and such, it looks scientific. It's a win-win argument for the deniers: readers who aren't familar with the field say "oh, they have data: they must be right." And for people who do understand that the data is irrelevant, in the worst case, it sidetracks the argument onto a completely irrelevant discussion of what the connection between sunspot number is to solar output.
This data [kym-cdn.com] addresses your argument.
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so the piece doesn't explicitly state that there is a relationship, but it suggests there is one.
curiously, an inverse relationship (fewer sunspots = cooler earth)
Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715 (38 kb JPEG image). Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well docu
Sunspots [Re:Irrelevant data] (Score:5, Interesting)
so the piece doesn't explicitly state that there is a relationship, but it suggests there is one.
Correct. The data given as a putative "response" is irrelevant to the question on so many levels it hurts. It doesn't state what the connection between sunspots and solar activity is; it shows the normal 11-year sunspot cycle, not anything different or unusual, and it shows only about one and a half cycles, not enough of a long term time series to even judge whether sunspot number (much less solar output) is going up or down.
So, with respect to the request, "Could you give a citation for that 'lowered solar output?' "-- fail.
But-- as you go on to demonstrate-- it does serve excellently to completely change the subject, and thus does its job of distracting people from noticing that there is no evidence whatsoever for the original assertion by changing the topic to a discussion of the relationship between sunspots and climate.
On that subject, the best data at the moment seems to show that the onset of the "little ice age" cooling was correlated with volcanic eruptions, and hid little or nothing to do with sunspots.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/02/eruptions-not-quiet-sun-may-have-triggered-little-ice-age/ [arstechnica.com]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=volcanoes-may-have-sparked [scientificamerican.com]
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Then I am a french model.
Now it must be true.
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Then I am a french model.
Do you happen to be dating a ditzy blonde woman who doesn't believe insurance companies have apps for cell phones?
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Mind you, not sure where this seabed warming is supposed to come from, with Global cooling (due to lower Solar output. . . .)
And temperatures during the Medieval Optimum were even higher that the peak of the current warming, and no sudden volatilization of Methane Clathrates. . .
Agreed: nothing to see here. . .
An awful low UID for such a silly post... The current warming is indeed beyond the Medieval Optimum by a significant margin, and Solar output is at a pretty high level (we are at the middle of the current output cycle). Are you trying to troll, or are you literally drowning in Kool Aid and this is the best you could type as you choked for air?
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The current warming is indeed beyond the Medieval Optimum by a significant margin
Where is the evidence for this claim? Need I remind you that no one has actually measured temperatures directly during the Medieval Optimum?
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Re:Dog and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unless you are yelling FIRE because you see someone light a bic lighter.
Based on your projection that it could start a fire and burn the building down.
If you would like we could build a computer simulation as to what would happen if the building was to burn from the bic lighter along with projected death rates and evaluations of proper suppression systems as a feedback.
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Right now the fire is something akin to what is happening in California.
Ok, where and what are these effects we're supposed to be seeing? Haven't you ever heard of confirmation bias [wikipedia.org]?
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I've heard of confirmation bias and I STRONGLY AGREE with it.
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A "15 year pause" has nothing to worry us realists because it doesn't matter if you find a trend that is zero.
Go ahead. Knock yourself out finding as many as you like.
What you have to do is prove that the trend is different from the predictions we've made of 0.16C per decade.
If the trend is zero, then it is different from 0.16 C per decade. That wouldn't threaten realists.
Control (Score:3, Insightful)
I worry about things about as much as I have control over them. Things like this I have Zero control so I have Zero worries. About the same I worry about a comet impacting the planet. It might happen and there is nothing I can do. Why worry?
Re:Control (Score:4, Insightful)
I worry about things about as much as I have control over them. Things like this I have Zero control so I have Zero worries. About the same I worry about a comet impacting the planet. It might happen and there is nothing I can do. Why worry?
According to some studies we've already crossed the tipping point and it's going to happen. So even if every government and every state and every person suddenly did everything they could to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to get that methane anyway.
Where we'll see it is where it affects the flora and fauna directly (altering availability of species in the food chain) and weather - more greenhouse gasses mean more disruption to weather patterns. Some places will get hotter, some will actually get cooler, some will get more precipitation and others will get less, over time this will shape the world we live in and our own food sources.
Time to put REM - End of the World on the iPod and look at housing on higher ground.
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"Some places will get hotter, some will actually get cooler, some will get more precipitation and others will get less, over time this will shape the world we live in and our own food sources."
Isn't that the way it's always been?
Re:Control (Score:5, Informative)
"Some places will get hotter, some will actually get cooler, some will get more precipitation and others will get less, over time this will shape the world we live in and our own food sources."
Isn't that the way it's always been?
Yes, but generally these changes have been gradual. We're seeing significant changes in the start of seasons, insect life cycles, migration of birds, etc. over a short time span.
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The only long term solution for human race is colonizing other planets. Having all our eggs in one basket is a bad idea regardless of who is right about the severity of the impact of global warming.
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Global warming or not, you're absolutely correct. The longest we've got is about 400 million years or so before the Sun starts making it impossible to live on the planet. And an incoming rock or some other unexpected, catastrophic occurrence is likely to show up much sooner than that. We'll need to leave eventually, one way or another, or perish. That is simply a fact.
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Yeah, about that, there's no habitable planets close by, like within even a generation or two of constant travel, and seeing as my weatherman has problems predicting 5 days out, I think terraforming the moon or Mars or whatever is a pipe dream right now.
OTOH, humanity can change it's tactics, if forced to. The only question will that force going to be strong leadership or nature herself? I think strong leadership will be much more forgiving in the long haul.
What we have to do is put real money into fusion
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Re:Control (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, all he was trying to say is that "global warming" will have unpredictable local results due to the heterogeneous make-up of the atmosphere as well as other features. For instance, Great Britain is on the same latitude as Labrador and Newfoundland, but has considerably more temperate weather. That's because of the circulation of the air in the atmosphere. Things like the Gulf Stream (but not necessarily the Gulf Stream itself) could cause the extra heat to be distributed unevenly.
We need to remember that heat in these cases is energy that powers the "engines" that produce our weather. Much like electricity can be used to heat and cool, if it is pumped through the right engine, there are natural processes that could cool the planet locally if they receive more energy.
Of course, eventually steadily increasing heat in the system will simply overwhelm any cooling features, and you'll get Venus out of it. However, that's not going to happen overnight and not without some unusual effects. It may not even happen at all if there are some special cases of equilibrium for the Earth, but those points may still be at a very uncomfortable place for humans.
So, the guy who is blaming the unusually hot weather this summer directly on global warming is just as misguided as the guy who is suggesting that since this is the coldest year on record, global warming is a joke. Determining cause and effect in weather in the long term is still not as much of a complete science as we'd like.
None of this is meant to suggest that I know the truth of whether a global warming disaster is going to come to pass, but I know enough about climate and weather to know that changes to the former can have interesting, sometimes counter-intuitive effects on the latter.
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Yea, you might as well be worrying about a gamma ray burst from a distant star blasting it's way over the Earth. Or maybe a stray black hole wandering it's way through the solar system.
What point is there in worrying about it.
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I worry about things about as much as I have control over them. Things like this I have Zero control so I have Zero worries. About the same I worry about a comet impacting the planet. It might happen and there is nothing I can do. Why worry?
You actually do have some control over how it affects you based on how you respond to it if it happens.
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Having a better idea of what the future will bring regardless of your control still should be something you think about. What if your doctor told you had incurable cancer and will die within 6 months? Would you continue to go to work as normal, because you have no control over it, or would you party like there is no tomorrow?
What if were studying advanced basket weaving in college and the job market soured in basket weaving? Would you not worry about it because have no control over the job market, or would
"Methane Bomb"? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh god, here come the jokes.
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Hey man, it's funny if you look on the lighter side.
How much? (Score:3)
There seems to be a large part of the US population thinking global climate change is a non-issue. Good luck with all of that!
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So I should be in a pure panic right now because of everything.
There are a lot of issues in the world to worry about. I choose not to worry about global warming, not because I don't think it is a problem, but because I have my own sets of things I worry about and feel like spending my time advocating.
I find that it is a big deal on how American Education puts such little focus on Math and Science, and passes it off as something that is OK not to know.
As far as I am concerned, if my cause got priority, the
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Wait, what? You sound like you believe climate change is problematic, but you're going to leave it for the next generation of people to do something about it. Time is a bit of a factor when it comes to what we can do about climate change, and I don't think even if education instantly became the biggest priority of everyone in the country that it'd still do that much good in, say, the two years till 2015.
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Yes I will leave it to the next generation, however I would like to make sure the next generation has better tools then I do.
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No, no, it really isn't. Remember that all of that carbon was in the atmosphere before. Therefore, Earth had a functioning biosphere even under much worse circumstances than the current state of affairs. The assumption that the greenhouse effect will "run away" and kill all life is preposterous. If it were going to do so, it would have happened billions of years ago, and we wouldn't be here having this discussion.
Instead,
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No, no, it really isn't. Remember that all of that carbon was in the atmosphere before. Therefore, Earth had a functioning biosphere even under much worse circumstances than the current state of affairs.
That carbon may have been in the atmosphere before, but it may not have been the atmosphere *at the same time* at these levels. And more to the point, if it ever was at those levels, the climate might not have been quite as calm as we might like it to be.
Plants and other lifeforms have been working for hundreds of millions of years to sequester large amounts of carbon in the crust. We are putting that back into the system in just a few centuries. It is possible that a rate of change like that could cause
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worry 1000%? what the fuck.
that makes as much sense as the methane "costing" the worth of world economy.
let's triple worry on a sorry lorry, that'll make it better.
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At least most of them live near the coast.
I am sitting pretty at over 200 meter above sea level.
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It's ok for scientists to examine hypothetical scenarios. Nature and Science both are general interest science magazines (where 'general' means people who are somewhat science literate). They published this story because people might find it interesti
Catastrophe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does it seem that around every corner there is a new totally natural and cyclical process that the news is going to kill us? I am tired of all this. The Earth is a very complex system and we and it will adapt. I think we should actually understand the natural cycles and integrate ourselves so we are not fighting against it all the time.
Permaculture is the future.
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Because pending DOOOOOOM is News.
The problem I see it, is that we already passed the threshold. But we didn't know where the threshold was until we passed it. Now we just need to factor in how are we are going to adapt to the changes, not as much trying to stop it.
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We're all doomed. Some are more doomed than others.
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For the same reason that the media loves to use the word pandemic at every opportunity. How many people actually died from SARs or Bird Flu? Compare that to how many die on the highway every single day. Scare people, and they'll always come back to hear more.
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For the same reason that the media loves to use the word pandemic at every opportunity. How many people actually died from SARs or Bird Flu? Compare that to how many die on the highway every single day. Scare people, and they'll always come back to hear more.
More than all these and others, the media loves the comparison like a war zone Perhaps the media are behind the increase in conflict linked to global warming - so they can use those words more often.
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Exactly.
When was the last seabed warming, and how devastating to life on earth was it?
Over the history of earth, there were much warmer periods with far smaller ice caps.
Do those periods correspond with huge species die off?
Or was it exactly to opposite?
Re:Catastrophe? (Score:5, Informative)
The most likely candidate for the last seabed warming of this potential magnitude was about 55 million years ago during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. [wikipedia.org] That period did coincide with a lot of extinctions.
Re:Catastrophe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
When was the last seabed warming, and how devastating to life on earth was it?
Over the history of earth, there were much warmer periods with far smaller ice caps.
Do those periods correspond with huge species die off?
Or was it exactly to opposite?
How many mega-cities were right by the seashore during those previous times?
Re:Catastrophe? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Catastrophe? (Score:5, Informative)
I think we should actually understand the natural cycles and integrate ourselves so we are not fighting against it all the time.
The whole point of climate change is that it is not natural that we put large quantities of CO2 into the air.
Sounds like a lot of methane. (Score:4, Funny)
Seems like a resource, not a threat (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Seems like a resource, not a threat (Score:4, Insightful)
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True. If it can replace other forms of fossil fuel that have no chance of causing sudden uncontrollable climate catastrophes (like super-filthy coal, ideally), it might be a good idea to burn it even if we're not too sure about the odds of a "methane bomb." No chance of methane bomb + energy that's the same or less dirty = win-win.
Thinking outside the box (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of the Arctic, let's work with the Antarctic, to get opposite results. Less methane, and more good news all round., leaving the cows to rejoice at still being Number One methane producer.
You shouldn't (Score:2)
Not a crisis! (Score:3)
This is no crisis, it's an opportunity! I vote we send the entire TSA to the arctic right now with orders to pat the polar bears down for arctic methane bombs! We'll get those terrorists this time!
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Grandpa, tell us the story again, about why you hate polar bears?
Doesn't seem likely but (Score:2)
Law of Headlines (Score:2)
According to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, this is a question, so the answer is "no". I'm not sure how well that works, though...
(Though my favorite unexpected use of that "law" was a thread a few months back titled something like "Will your computer run Crysis 3?")
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Thanks, that was intersting
A slashdot search (wow, didn't have to resort to google!) showed that is here: But Can It Run Crysis 3?
Since Betterigde is mentioned so much, I'll share what I found on Yammer (a social network I haven't heard of here): 5 Data Insights into the Headlines Readers Click [moz.com]
There are various headline types, and they "resonate better". Pasting their reasons (go to article to see numbers and stuff):
Explosion in content competing for readers' attention
80% of readers never make it past the h
Been there (Score:2)
Economic Bonanza (Score:2)
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Except I'd rather spend my $80T on electronic gizmos, food and shelter instead of $20T on those things and $60T helping you losers who insist on living on flood plains move to higher ground.
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It's not like we're going to get free money. We're going to have to divert resources from other things to take care of this.
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No, that's not how value works. In this hypothetical you would end up with 60 trillion dollars that are worth less than they were before. There's no such thing as a closed economy in the sense of a fixed amount of value. Total value always fluctuates.
don't worry about it (Score:2)
There is no realistic way of stopping the warming that would lead to such a release; short of imposing some kind of totalitarian worldwide government and destroying the world economy, people are not going to stop burning fossil fuels in massive quantities.
Compared to that basic fact, the fact that these predictions are pure guesswork based on many untested assumptions doesn't even matter that much.
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This. Apart from the totalitarian world government you mention (and there's honestly no guarantee even that would work), there is no way to significantly alter the rate of consumption of fossil fuels, let alone stop it.
If you truly believe that catastrophic warming is going to happen then the only rational response is preparation, not prevention.
the answer is Bean-O (Score:2)
Worry - not as much as some other problems (Score:2)
In related news (Score:2)
What's DHS doing about this? (Score:3)
Why haven't we heard about this from the Department of Homeland Security? What are they hiding?
It's just a matter of time before al queda gets its hand on this methane bomb. $60 trillion is just the kind of impact they'd like to unleash on us heathens and infidels.
Not at all... (Score:2)
I have my bug out needs all in order, Looking forward to the collapse and the resulting thunderdome.
Welcome to the new age!
Revenge of the Mammoths (Score:2)
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Cue bean eating scene from Blazing Saddles.
How 'bout some more beans, Mr. Taggart?
Taggart: [fans his hat in the air] I'd say you've had enough!
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2. It will inevitably go up as you age.
3. Very likely, but if this affects you so much you are ether driving decades-old car (and realize savings from not buying a newcar) or you over-spent on something and now living paycheck-to-paycheck with no margin or savings for raising costs
4. There is very little reason to suspect that on-going decline of Detroit will reverse. Thing
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2. Is my health insurance premium going to go through the roof.
My company just announced a 20% increase in health insurance premiums. Seems Obama care is kicking in and it is going to cost us more (Managements explanation)
So, yes it is going through the roof.
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I completely understand your prioritization of concerns and worries. But I sometimes wonder whether the humans on earth will end like bacteria growing on a Petri dish. You grow bacteria on a plate and at first, things are great-- more resources than bacteria, so no worries and gangbuster (exponential) growth. As the population density increases, competition grows for nutrients so growth starts slowing. Perhaps some bacteria do better than others. Allow me to anthropomorphize the little buggers and lets say
Re:More hoax maskerading as "science" (Score:5, Insightful)
Global warming my ass. It's fucking cold and raining here in Wyoming.
If a cool spell disproves global warming, does a warm spell prove it? Or do you prefer to focus on the details that you think support your beliefs?
Ask people who spent June in Phoenix or Las Vegas how they liked the weather this year.
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So far this summer has been nice. We had a few really hot days, but fewer than normal. We didn't get enough rain from our "monsoon," but that's what I say almost every year. It's going to be somewhere between 103F and 107F today which is on the low side of normal.
And looking at our electrical use for the summer, it's about 15% lower than last year which means our A/C units haven't been running as hard.
But go ahead and hype how hot it has been here, especially to anyone in California. We like that, it help
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Damn straight! I've had it up to here with these so called scientists. If it's not hot out, right now, in the exact location where you live, we can all put this global warming fear mongering to bed!
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Now what would happen if a stream of methane developed which was ignited by, say, a lightening strike, there would be a rapidly growing forward feedback loop which would release more methane and generate more heat, and more methane, etc.
Possible, but unlikely. Surface fires, especially something short lived like a gas burnoff, would not have a great effect on subsurface temperatures.
How much oxygen would this methane use up
Two oxygen molecules for each methane molecule assuming complete and pure combustion.
and how much heat would be dumped into the atmosphere?
About 891 kJ/mol.
Would this be shrugged off by the earth
Yes.
or would it spell a species killing catastrophe?
I'm fairly sure some of the local species would be done for, but would it be an extinction level event? Doubt it.
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What if as population and energy increase so does our ability and willingness (due to cost effectiveness) to attain resources (including shelter) from more and more expensive sources? You know, like it has throughout history. The Malthusian Scissors don't exist.
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should read energy *requirements*
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Efficiency improvements have never been able to compensate for growth. They aren't even today in the US. All reduction in energy consumption was due to the recession, as the recent record numbers for oil consumption show.
Malthus was only delayed by the fossil fuel bonanza which is coming to an end.