
Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia - Filligree
https://www.newsweek.com/methane-boiling-sea-discovered-siberia-1463766
======
mdorazio
So have we fired a clathrate gun then [1]? It's getting increasingly difficult
to pretend worst-case global warming scenarios won't turn into reality in the
next 25 years.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

~~~
blhack
What should we do?

~~~
abootstrapper
I don’t mean to pick on you, but this question comes up in every single
climate change post. Answering it is exhausting. We need a climate change FAQ.

The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that? Vote, eat less meat,
bike ride, strike, protest, invest in solar, boycott, reuse, buy less,
telecommute, etc. Use your imagination. Do something, do everything, the end
goal is we all stop releasing sequestered green house gasses into the
atmosphere.

~~~
pdonis
_> The simple answer is end fossil fuels. How do we do that?_

Build nuclear power plants.

All the other things are fine, but if you really want to end fossil fuels, you
need a non-fossil-fuel source of reliable base load power. Nuclear is the only
one we have. Other sources are fine, but they can't produce reliable base load
power.

And, btw, I think we should end fossil fuels even if it turns out not to make
much of a difference to climate change (which might well be the case since all
of the models that have a high sensitivity to CO2 built in have been over-
predicting warming for several decades now).

~~~
daenz
>Build nuclear power plants.

And to all the people who say "they take too long there isn't enough time":
the best time to start nuclear power plant construction was 10 years ago, the
second best time is now.

~~~
zaroth
Except by the time the plant is done being built (10 years late and 10x over
budget) renewables will have surpassed it in terms of cost for deployed GW,
and grid-scale and consumer batteries will be at the point where we can store
and demand shift enough power to use all the renewables we can bring online.

Renewables has already surpassed nuclear in the US. I think the new reality is
the best time to build a nuke plant is _never_.

~~~
daenz
Go into this with an open mind, but it shows a number of ways that nuclear is
superior to renewables, coming from someone who was staunchly against nuclear:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak)

~~~
zaroth
It’s a great video - thanks! I’m less worried about the safety, than the
actual ability to just manage to build the damn things to spec and any kind of
budget in the US regulatory environment.

~~~
credit_guy
Here's a way for nuclear to make a dent: if the defense officials [1] who
claim the climate change is a security threat are indeed serious about it,
they could demand that Congress legislate the US military to be net zero
carbon emitter. The US Navy can then build and operate enough reactors to
achieve that. They already are operating dozens of naval nuclear reactors, and
acquiring new ones at a steady pace (2-3 per year). Their regulatory hurdles
are basically zero.

Currently the US defense emits a non-negligible amount of CO2 [2]: "If it were
a country, it would have been the world's 55th largest greenhouse gas emitter,
with emissions larger than Portugal, Sweden or Denmark." [2]

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700462955/former-defense-
lead...](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700462955/former-defense-leaders-warn-
white-house-its-dangerous-to-downplay-climate-change)

[2] [https://www.livescience.com/65698-defense-department-
climate...](https://www.livescience.com/65698-defense-department-climate-
change.html)

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waste_monk
Could this be mitigated by floating a whole bunch of logs / other flammable
carbon based material and burning them, burning off the methane in the
process?

It would certainly lead to increased local temperatures in the short term, but
it would remove the methane problem, and if we got enough carbon into the air
we would eventually see a "nuclear winter" type cooling effect. This is
obviously Bad and we'd need to burn a fantastic amount of wood to accomplish
it, but as far as I know it's the only readily accessible global cooling
mechanism we have that is practical to implement.

~~~
flukus
This is a vast area, you could float and light the whole amazon rain forest
and it would only make a small dent for a day.

~~~
Ajedi32
In that case, maybe it'd be more effective to just drill for natural gas in
the area and get it out of the ground before it has a chance to escape into
the atmosphere? Might even turn out to be a profitable venture depending on
how difficult it is to extract the gas in that area.

~~~
flukus
It's not a trapped gas deposit, it's methane in a solid form spread across
vast areas of the world so there's nothing to contain it and nothing to drill
into. It's unlikely to have any concentrations for high enough and long enough
to ever be worth extracting.

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kjar
Apparently it’s no longer mitigation, now adaptation. The desire to avoid
nihilism at point is tough. I’m pushing 40 and I hope I get 25 more years,
family kids are in for it.:(

~~~
eloff
I see comments like this all the time, but it doesn't happen that fast. You
won't notice a big difference in your lifetime, and neither will your
children, unless maybe they live in a very low area by the coast. This plays
out over hundreds of years.

It's still a serious problem and we need to address it, but I keep seeing
emotional reactions that ignore the science and the current predictions.

~~~
milofeynman
There's been a difference in the last 15 years... Look at the ocean currents.
Look at the hurricanes stalling. That didn't use to happen. Look at tornado
alley moving west. Look at the mass migration out of Siberia.[0] If you
haven't noticed anything you aren't paying attention, or you're a gas company
shill spreading misinformation.

[0]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climat...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-
environment/climate-change-siberia/)

~~~
eloff
I didn't say nothing is happening, I said it's not the end of the world.

The effects so far are small compared to the direct damage caused by the air
pollution itself, which kills over a million people a year.

I don't expect that will change in my lifetime. The predictions are not so
dire that it is likely to take a million lives a year.

Over a period of several hundred years, it's a lot harder to say.

At no point is it likely to be the end of civilization. But we could get there
if we're stupid enough to keep this up for a few centuries more.

~~~
ageofwant
This worldview is hyper human-centric. There are ~7735776725 people alive now.
A million less is 7734776725. To keep this population alive billions of other
lives are sacrificed. Yes humans and human civilization will be less affected
in the short term, perhaps, or at least those that matter: i.e european
northern hemisphere types. Short to medium term biosphere collapse will
absolutely impact human civilization, but that is way to late for most other
species.

~~~
eloff
The biosphere is not about to collapse from a couple degrees of warming. The
earth has been a lot hotter, there was a time you could grow ferns in the
Arctic circle.

The 10 degrees warming after the last ice age makes climate change small by
comparison. Let's not forget the 400ft of sea level rise. In fact if you look
at the climate record the last ten thousand years, the current level of
warming is lost in the noise. It will take centuries before it's enough to
really jump out on the graph.

Life will adapt and carry on, climate change is possibly only a temporary blip
for the earth itself. It may even turn out to be a good thing on long enough
time scales, because it's been a little too chilly for comfort here the last
few million years. Repeated cycles of ice ages are no joke. If you want to see
how bad that can get, lookup snowball earth. Warming is no joke either, see
Venus, but a little warming might not be the end of the world.

I'm Canadian, my county was buried under 2km of ice that scoured it to bedrock
just as civilization was beginning elsewhere in the world. If you are in the
US, you grow your food in what used to be Canadian soil. I'm more afraid of
the cold than the heat. People from Australia and the middle east likely have
the opposite view.

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ngold
The tipping point of massive frozen methane bubbles melting and that's it. We
better get really good at somehow containing them. Good luck humanity.

~~~
sieabahlpark
Time to use it as fuel for space ships

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xvilka
Urbanization, high-rises and city bubbles might be the answer to survival.
Probably also the floating and underwater cities. Everything that protects
from the hostile climate outside. It's better to prepare the technology and
economy today, while there are still enough resources and manufacturing power.

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Grue3
Looks like Bernie's "false solutions" like geoengineering and carbon
sequestration are in fact the only solutions.

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DoreenMichele
It makes me think of stuff I've seen suggesting that release of methane gas
bubbles might explain disappearances (of ships, planes) in the Bermuda
Triangle.

[https://www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda2_0000a1.htm](https://www.bermuda-
attractions.com/bermuda2_0000a1.htm)

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throwaway5752
It's a good time to point out that coordinated global action is required.
Trump withdrew us from Paris. Harper withdrew Canada from Kyoto. Russia is a
petrostate that will benefit more from global warming than any other country
in the world, so look at 2016 through that lens.

Only 40% of conservative Republicans even believe climate change is happening
([https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-...](https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-
global-warming-march-2018/2/))

They will drive us all off this cliff and then expect us nerds to fix it. We
should do something first.

~~~
pdonis
_> coordinated global action is required. Trump withdrew us from Paris. Harper
withdrew Canada from Kyoto._

Neither of those were coordinated global action that will make any difference.
"Symbolic" agreements don't fix anything; they're just a way for politicians
to punt the problem (if you think it's a problem) further down the road so
they can stay in power. Not to mention that none of the countries that signed
up for Kyoto came anywhere near meeting their targets (which were already too
permissive to make a difference) anyway, and it looks like the same will be
true of Paris. The US prefers not to sign agreements that we know we won't
keep and that won't make a difference anyway; that's why we didn't ratify
Kyoto and why Trump pulled us out of Paris.

The kind of draconian "coordinated global action" that would be necessary to
actually stop CO2 emissions is not going to happen; nobody will accept that
drastic a hit in standard of living. Not to mention that doing that would
condemn all of the currently developing countries that have the most to lose
to staying in poverty, which will make it so much harder for them to adapt.
The best thing we can do is to create more wealth and bring more people out of
poverty, and make our infrastructure more decentralized and robust. That will
benefit everyone regardless of what kind of change comes.

