
New 50-metre deep crater opens up in Arctic tundra - wglb
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/giant-new-50-metre-deep-crater-opens-up-in-arctic-tundra/
======
Roritharr
I hope this is not the first sign of the clathrate gun going off.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

~~~
zrail
The Clathrate Gun hypothesis is not plausible. Recent research basically
disproves it.

~~~
tekstar
Link?

~~~
zrail
The “Current Outlook” section of the Wikipedia article gives a reasonable
overview of the literature. This reddit thread has additional links:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/fv5oyh/has_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/fv5oyh/has_the_clathrate_gun_hypothesis_been_debunked/)

~~~
marvin
Is this subreddit reliable? A cursory read of the comments left me with the
impression that human-caused climate change is no big deal, and that makes me
wary regarding whether other claims from there are to be counted upon.

~~~
makerofspoons
The links are often fine, but the sub in my experience is not. The head
moderator also moderates /r/climateskeptics and there is a significant overlap
between the two subreddits' userbases. This wouldn't be a problem necessarily
but many of these users argue in bad faith and derail the discourse on the
sub.

~~~
marvin
This seems like a common climate denial tactic. I’m seeing it in my home
country as well. Lots of truly bad-faith skeptic contributions to climate
change forums on Facebook, made by people who obviously don’t care about
science or evidence.

------
1MachineElf
Reminds me of Siberia's "Doorway to the Underwolrd" (Batagaika crater).

So am I understanding correctly that this is basically a popped methane bubble
that had formed inside the permafrost? I wonder what the greenhouse gas impact
of this was.

~~~
eloff
Basically nothing. It seems like a lot of methane, but on a global scale it's
a drop in the bucket.

However, it's a sign of melting permafrost on a wide scale that is releasing
methane, and that does have an impact which will get more pronounced.

Because methane is more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, there's a risk of a
runaway feedback cycle melting more permafrost and releasing more greenhouse
gases. And that's not thinking about the colossal amounts of frozen methane on
the sea floor which is quite sensitive to temperature changes. We're playing
with fire here, sorta literally.

~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
It's indicative of the change. Between the methane from permafrost and gas
hydrates we are looking at having a bad time for a long time here on Earth.

~~~
neuronic
It might be dismissed as hyperbole but we are looking at extinction and not
just a "bad time". Granted, it will take quite some time, generations even, to
reach that severity but we are well on the trajectory to get there.

It's horrifying to think about the escalating crises of global ecosystems. In
a world, where too many people can't even be bothered to wear a mask during an
ongoing pandemic I have zero confidence in preventing an extinction level
disaster where the truly severe consequences aren't felt for another 2
generations. Some people just do not care if it doesn't directly affect them
right this very second.

It's sociopathy on another scale.

~~~
Ixiaus
We're not facing extinction yet and this sort-of alarmism is actually
unhelpful. I too thought for a while that we're facing extinction but we're
not there yet, I found this helpful to read:
[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/denial...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/denial-
and-alarmism-in-the-near-term-extinction-and-collapse-debate)

I do think, however, that we're living in a "golden age" and that it will come
to an end somewhat abruptly. Many people will probably die but we're not going
to go extinct.

I share your concern regarding the inability of so many people (at least in
the USA) to perform the simple task of wearing a mask for communal good. It
does not bode well for community engagement on totally revamping people's
lifestyles to help mitigate climate change (I can imagine the foaming at the
mouth that would occur with many people around where I live - Austin - if the
government instituted a gasoline car buyback program in exchange for hybrids,
as a simple example.)

~~~
NumberWangMan
But if you think about it, MOST people DO wear masks -- and to mitigate
climate change, the strategy is not to convince everyone to voluntarily change
their behavior, it's to price in the externalities, changing incentives, and
let the behavior changes naturally flow from that. That just takes a small
group of dedicated individuals, and a pretty decent majority of Americans
already support climate legislation (our representatives are kinda lagging
behind in that department).

Imagine if we had a way to magically make everything more expensive to people
who don't wear masks :)

Also, even if everyone were willing to make the necessary changes voluntarily,
I wouldn't have much confidence in our ability to accurately calculate which
actions have the most impact on our climate footprint, without involving
market mechanisms in some way. We'd probably focus on stuff that feels
important over stuff that's mundane but actually has a much bigger impact. As
an example, I'm kinda thinking of people who do that "zero-waste" thing
(refers to landfill waste), which is fine, but you can live "zero waste" and
still have a pretty substantial climate footprint, and vice-versa.

~~~
Ixiaus
It seems you were downvoted for reasons I don't understand but I think your
comment is important.

I agree that aligning economic incentives is a good (and probably the only?)
way to steer hordes of people in directions that will either help or harm the
"community".

I'm not actually sure whether most people are or aren't wearing masks. While
driving out to camp in the desert, stops to get gas provided (very limited
anecdata) that people generally don't care at all about mask wearing. Which is
why I think it was the right move where I live to force businesses to deny
service to people not wearing masks but these people tend to only do it in
settings where they become pariahs if they don't (so they're only doing it to
conform, which is better than not at all). e.g. in some places, the people
running the place don't even care so therefore it goes unenforced (if not
procedurally, definitely not socially).

I also agree with your concern about our/my/your ability to accurately
estimate anything of importance. But this isn't a good reason alone for not
encouraging thinking and care about these things, even if it means reeducation
later on (harm reduction as opposed to some form of "getting it perfect",
which is exceedingly hard).

However there is one important point: moving people cognitively towards
thinking about these issues in a moral framework of care and purity is
probably better than not, even if it means slightly more carbon output due to
higher calorie consumption because of bicycle riding instead of driving a car
(e.g. I support a carbon tax much more now than I did before I got rid of my
car, it wasn't a cause mind you but it certainly co-occurred with my beginning
to care more about the sanctity of our natural environment).

So, I agree with you generally, but we shouldn't fall into the trap of
thinking only in terms of economic or technological solutions because not
focusing on the social domain can have consequences (read: conservatives now
becoming science deniers and buying gas guzzling trucks to stick it to the
libs, for example).

------
Udik
The entire Yamal peninsula is densely dotted with round ponds and lakes, some
even kilometres wide. Is this the same mechanism that has shaped the entire
landscape?

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yamal+Peninsula/@69.559821...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yamal+Peninsula/@69.5598217,70.6358768,38983m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x449055f4f8dea577:0x8ae223c41688bebf!8m2!3d70!4d69.9999999)

~~~
season2episode3
A lot of these appear to be kettle lakes made by the melting of dead ice
blocks
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_(landform)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_\(landform\))

------
devindotcom
I remember writing these up for NBC when a new set appeared in 2014. Those
articles did traffic like you wouldn't believe, and the Siberian Times was on
it back then too. I believe the conclusion from experts at the time was that
it was natural gas trapped in the permafrost being released by global warming.

------
mehrdadn
How/why is it such an incredibly "clean" and round hole?

~~~
titzer
Why are bubbles round?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Bubbles are round because of air pressure. But that doesn't really apply to
large holes in the ground. The ground is a lot more difficult to move than a
thin soap film is. Most caves aren't round. Most mountains aren't round, and
when they are, it's for different reasons.

~~~
tejtm
tundra is peat

peat of made of decaying moss

moss is permeable like a sponge

sponges can hold stuff

stuff can change state with changes in temp/pressure

stuff in a new state can occupy increased volume

increased volume can cause increased pressure

increasing pressure increases temperature

changing the state of more stuff ...

(wavefront) path of least resistance contains most square inches with least
circumference

~~~
nitrogen
HN's formatting engine requires two newlines between paragraphs.

That way you can separate points and make them more readable (punctuation also
helps).

------
drdrey
I find it amazing that there's something called "The Siberian Times" and that
it's in English.

~~~
082349872349872
So I've been desultorily following
[https://www.youtube.com/c/Murzilki/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/Murzilki/videos)
for overview, [https://www.aif.ru](https://www.aif.ru) for depth, and
[https://ria.ru](https://ria.ru) for the official line. Any russophones have
better suggestions?

~~~
jetzzz
FYI aif is owned by government of Moscow. If you want more independent Russian
media here are some of them:

[https://meduza.io/](https://meduza.io/) \- also has an English version.

[https://theins.ru/](https://theins.ru/) \- these are the ones who
deanonymized Salisbury poisoners.

[https://zona.media/](https://zona.media/) \- focuses on the judicial, law
enforcement and penal system. A lot of very dark and depressing news.

[https://www.proekt.media/](https://www.proekt.media/) \- rare but deep
investigations.

------
Xophmeister
So do these things explode — they’re just in the middle of nowhere, so no one
notices — or does the “roof” of the bubble just collapse? If they exploded,
there would presumably be significant seismic activity and you’d probably
expect to see debris around the crater, but they’re very clean.

~~~
ceejayoz
The subtitle of the article:

> Blocks of soil and ice thrown hundreds of metres from epicentre of the
> funnel at the Yamal peninsula.

------
zeristor
One of the pictures in the article shows the ground swelling outwards,
presumably before it bursts.

Could these be detected by Remote Sensing images from satellites, assuming
they would be taking pictures of the tundra at high enough resolution and
frequency.

------
divbzero
The surface of the swelling pingo before the methane bubble pops looks like a
giant loaf of freshly baked bread.

------
zeristor
Does this happen in the rest of the Arctic tundra too? Northern Canada,
Alaska, and the rest of Siberia?

Or has it just been missed?

------
bamboozled
Good thing things we are all totally focused on COVID-19 and the election I
guess ?

~~~
takeda
It's not like the current ruling party would change anything accounting for
this news even if we didn't have covid or election.

------
p1necone
I hold out hope that eventually there will be widespread buy in to combating
climate change before it's too late. But it seems that we need obvious
impending doom for everyone before people stop voting for right wing
politicians.

~~~
rconti
I think our experience with Covid-19 has revealed any such hope to be 100%
unwarranted. At least in the US, "that's China, it won't happen here", "that's
Italy, it won't happen here", "that's New York, it won't happen here", "that's
California, it won't happen here" attitude.. and it even circled back on
itself, when it did happen in many "heres" and the attitude became "it won't
happen again".

I'm not speaking of those who weigh the consequences of lockdowns or debate
the viral reproductivity. I mean the people who outright deny what is
happening right in front of their faces. Those who have easy access to good
information, and ignore it in order to seek out bad information.

There's just no way something such as climate change, which is much more
abstract, will get that kind of buy in from this kind of populace. Even if you
got everyone to agree on it, we'd hear the familiar debate; "we shouldn't be
forced to cut our emissions until country Y does it first". And conversely,
"why does our poor country have to suffer from these restrictive limits when
the rich world profited off their pollution for decades?"

~~~
evan_
Not to mention a huge percentage of people simply saying “it’s not happening”
despite all evidence

~~~
PakG1
These people are the really weird ones to me. They think they are more experts
than the people who have studied this stuff for years. I don't understand the
arrogance.

~~~
evan_
They attribute it to malice, not ignorance.

The people I see speaking about this believe either there is no virus, or it’s
overblown- and most or all of the deaths are either misattributed car
accidents and natural cause deaths, or made up from whole cloth. Doctors and
hospitals are supposedly being compensated to falsely report deaths as having
been caused by COVID.

Obviously there are not large numbers of misattributed deaths or hospital
conspiracies. This mirrors the theory held by basically the same people that
climate change is just something used to push a political agenda and that
scientists fake the data for grant money.

~~~
rvense
> scientists fake the data for grant money

This one's the weirdest. If I had climate science credentials and wanted to
cash in I'd be shilling for oil companies. Like that old Tom Lehrer joke about
a doctor who specialized in diseases of the rich.

~~~
PakG1
Well, never let it be said that conspiracy theories go with Occam's Razor,
they can get really convoluted. Like the jump from Gates wanting to inject
everyone with vaccines to Gates wanting to inject everyone with vaccines and
chips so that he can control the world.

------
gregjw
It begins

------
nsandell123
Global warming at it again

~~~
cranekam
Move along, nothing to see here.

How many more scary warning signs will we need to see before taking climate
change seriously?

~~~
cameldrv
I don't think this is the warning sign. This is the consequence happening.

~~~
cranekam
Well, so much the worse then. This stuff is happening _right in front of us_
and we’re still doing ~nothing about it.

~~~
konjin
It's worse than nothing. Even the people who supposedly take this seriously
don't understand how much trouble we are in. When I've talk to people who
'believe' in climate change they still think that it's the increase in CO2
emissions that's the problem, not that CO2 emissions exist.

The atmosphere is like a clogged toilet, you can do your business it in only
two or three times before you end up with a mess everywhere. And even if you
only use it once going into the bathroom will be unpleasant. Right now it's
like a family of 5 is arguing at breakfast if they can use it whenever they
feel like it, or only once a day.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills listening to people argue if we should
limit our emissions to 90s level by 2050. We should be at zero now, and
working on CO2 extraction from the atmosphere if we want to have a planet that
can sustain industrial civilization in a century.

Playing around with renewables and batteries completely misses the point. We
need fission power plants yesterday and going full steam ahead on hot fusion
plants today. Even if we build nothing but Chernobyl style plants and one
blows up every two weeks, we will still kill fewer people in the long term
than if we continue the way we are now, and that's with the rosiest renewable
power projections that ignore things like base load.

------
pauljurczak
Mother Earth is farting!

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've
been doing it repeatedly, and we're trying for something different here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
maCDzP
Is the surface of the earth boiling or getting blisters? Either way. Creepy.

~~~
briga
Events similar to this are fairly common in the Earth's crust. This definitely
isn't the first time that some noxious fumes rose up from the Earth's
interior. I bet this is how a lot of lakes in the northern hemisphere were
formed

~~~
gostsamo
Nope, glaciers. Baikal is an exception, because it is formed in the rift of
two tectonic plates.

The current crater is possible because the tundra is lots of frozen mud with
gas in it. Gets warm, bubbles form, gas goes out. Edit: The gas is the result
of biomass decaying. The cold had stopped the process for thousands of years
but when the environment gets warmer, the bacteria activates and resumes the
process.

