
Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic - xg15
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0905-7000-underground-gas-bubbles-poised-to-explode-in-arctic/
======
bithive123
Here is a good video about the arctic methane emergency:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9ed5E54s4)

Some summary points:

\- Total amount of methane in the current atmosphere: ~5 gigatons

\- Amount of carbon preserved as methane in the arctic shelf: estimated at
100s-1000s of gigatons

\- Only 1% release would double the atmospheric burden of methane

\- Not much effort is needed to destabilize this 1%

\- The volume currently being released is estimated at 50 gigatons (it could
be far more)

\- 50 gigatons is 10x the methane content of the current atmosphere

\- We are already at 2.5x pre-industrial level, there is a methane veil
spreading southward from the arctic.

\- Methane is 150x as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 when it is first
released.

Here is a longer video for those who have the time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdc75epOEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdc75epOEw)

~~~
Retric
Methane has a short ~5-10 year half life in the atmosphere. So, releasing 50x
current methane levels over 100 years does not triple current methane levels.

~~~
marcosdumay
Yep. Everything depends on how fast that methane will get released. It can
vary from "we are completely fucked up, good bye" to "that's a rounding error,
no big deal".

Methane should be easier to take out of the atmosphere than CO2. Spraying
something at the Stratosphere could be incredibly helpful even if the
substance is short lived. (But I have no idea what to spray there, would water
make any difference?)

~~~
M_Grey
When you look at the many different potential sources of, "Fucked...
goodbye..." the trend is very clear. We're juggling apocalypses and just
waiting to find one that will stick. Will it be ocean acidification first?
Ocean levels rising? Catastrophic weather patterns? Famine? Drought? War
touched off by rapid changed? Mass extinctions?

They're all in play, each with the potential to end us.

~~~
whyenot
Is this why we have not yet found signs of intelligent life in the universe?
Every time a civilization is advanced enough to really screw up (their)
planet, inevitably, they do? Fermi Paradox redux.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know
what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have
the will.

The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you
could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political
situation was around to stop it.

~~~
louthy
> but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of
> political situation was around to stop it.

I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of
1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the
politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found
the political will.

~~~
jnicholasp
I feel like your imaginative capacity could stand to be exercised more. There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which intelligent entities could
meaningfully differ from us, and which would lead to different political
circumstances​.

And we ourselves are not that far from being able to deal reasonably with
problems like this. If nothing else were different about us, except that
average IQ were, say, 120 on the current scale, I think we'd be able to
respond sensibly to non-immediate threats.

~~~
M_Grey
There is no reason to believe that intelligence, in whatever form it takes,
ever stops being energetically expensive. Is it possible to imagine selection
pressures that would select for high intelligence over other factors? How
harsh can an environment get, or how easy, before something like brute
strength or rapidly breeding is _always_ a cheaper strategy?

Some rules are universal, because they're thermodynamic. That's not to say
that your species of intelligent individuals is impossible, but it is
unlikely. When you really take the time to think through these scenarios, you
often find that there is no justification to assume that exceptional
intelligence would evolve.

~~~
jnicholasp
We already know that thermodynamics and evolutionary pressures can allow for
intelligent beings with a population average IQ of 100 (on the arbitrary scale
we've devised for ourselves) to exist, since we humans do exist. I'm
suggesting that a slight increase in that population average might be enough
to make a large difference in how we collectively respond to mid- to long-term
problems.

If you're arguing against that suggestion, it seems you would have to be
arguing that human intelligence exists at a level that is nestled directly up
against some kind of hard thermodynamic limit, even though a non-trivial
portion of our species already exists on the other side of that line. I don't
see how that argument could plausibly be made.

------
brogrammer2
Honest question: Why is Mainstream Media not covering this like it should be
doing? Heck, this should be the breaking news every single day!!

After all, this spells doomsday for the upcoming generations, so shouldn't it
be the news that should be shown/covered almost everyday on the front page.

The people have the right to know that their children and grandchildren will
suffer because of something that is going on right now. I guess, that majority
of people, all over the world, are blissfully unaware of this scenario because
this doesn't get the kind of attention in the MSM that it should. All they get
served is dirty politics and gossip entertainment news.

Maybe people will force the policies to change if they get to know that this
will happen.

It seems that most people today think that Terrorism is the main threat to our
society, when in fact, Global Warming seems to be the real deal.

Let's say it was found that fifty years from now, an Asteroid would hit Earth.
Would the people of Earth react in the same way as they are doing now?

~~~
nroets
Has anything been published in international peer reviewed journals ? Are
there scientists at NASA or ivy league universities who became concerned and
verified it through modeling and simulations ? If the answer is no in both
cases, why should the public be alarmed ?

~~~
vanderZwan
Are you seriously saying only NASA and Ivy League universities matter?

~~~
SubiculumCode
\--the most outrageous part of his comment, imo.

------
LyndsySimon
Well... I guess let's hope the "Clathrate gun hypothesis" is incorrect.

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

~~~
fjabre
If we can't figure out an engineering solution to this problem then it's game
over. It always amazes me how much people and governments focus on prevention
when it comes to climate change, knowing full well it's far too late to change
anything by reducing carbon emissions. If we can't sequester these 'surplus'
gases from the atmosphere then I guess you could say we don't have a chance in
hell, pun intended, of surviving as a species if runaway warming becomes a
reality.

~~~
rubber_duck
Why focus on "fixing" climate ?

Why not just assume it's going to become unstable in close future and start
building with that assumption ? Large scale isolated citiy domes. Nutrient
synthesis that doesn't rely on climate/agriculture. Environment independent
energy generation like micro nuclear reactors. Large scale air filtration and
temperature control.

As the world becomes more interconnected and developed catastrophic outcomes
like super virus/bacteria, large scale nuclear event, etc. become bigger
threats to entire world. Why not start building self sufficient and well
isolated megacities that can function irregardless of climate change ? It's
perfectly possible on 50 year timescale if we don't waste time on shoving our
heads in to the ground and hoping everything will stay great if we stop
burning stuff.

~~~
gnaritas
If you can't mobilize man to fight climate change, you aren't going to
mobilize him to prepare for it either. People are in deep denial about the
problem.

~~~
Razengan
_Preserving_ human knowledge and art [0] won't require mobilizing all of
mankind; it could be done by a few individuals and it's kinda already being
done by Wikipedia, Wikia, "pirates" etc.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944410)

~~~
gnaritas
True, however, the problem is preserving humans from near extinction, not
preserving our knowledge and culture for the few who might survive if we
ignore the problem.

~~~
Razengan
> for the few who might survive

It doesn't have to be for our survivors... We could, and I believe we should,
do it for the next civilization to come after ours, even if it's a few alien
visitors.

If for no other reason than to leave a legacy of our short existence against
the infinity of this universe.

~~~
gnaritas
I and I'm sure most people on this planet don't care about leaving a legacy to
a future species when the problem at hand is our own survival.

~~~
Razengan
Nobody's saying we should give up or not try to survive, _but IF_ the options
came down to: Going extinct — or — Going extinct without any trace whatsoever
of our existence left behind, which would you prefer?

You said it yourself: If you can't mobilize man to fight climate change, you
aren't going to mobilize him to prepare for it either.

~~~
gnaritas
I won't care, because I'll be dead. So let me be clearer, the notion that
anyone will care about leaving proof of our existence rather than themselves
trying to survive I find laughable. It's an easy nonsense thing to say when
living in relative comfort but when the reality of survival kicks in, such
lofty bullshit will go right out the door and you'll be fighting to eat and
live another day, not worrying about humanity leaving traces behind for
posterity.

------
sqeaky
At first I was thinking "stupid click bait title", then I saw the pictures.
Anything making those craters is properly an explosion. Anything heard 100km
away is properly and explosion.

If anything this article plays it down with words like eruption and venting.
This seems super dangerous for people in the area. And dangerous in the
climate change sense for the rest of us.

~~~
yborg
I can't believe that this got 350+ comments and nobody actually recognized the
clickbait here. For one thing, it's a story from that noted climatology
journal "The Siberian Times".

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

They're full of ice, not methane. And what makes those craters is the ice
melting and/or drop in groundwater pressure. The issue of entrained methane
trapped in permafrost is real and the pingo ice most likely also contains
trapped methane, but the implication that these are domes of pressurized
methane READY TO BLOW AND HURL EARTH INTO RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE AT ANY MOMENT is
absurd. The melting of permafrost generally over wide areas is the actual
threat.

------
british_india
This is precisely why Dr. Guy McPherson has predicted human extinction on
earth by 2030. Methane clathrates coming from the Arctic sea floor and from
Canadian and Siberian permafrost. This is the most serious threat we face now.

~~~
ams6110
So, this sort of thing must have happened in past warm periods. Yet life
survived.

~~~
xoa
I can't believe there are people willfully obtuse enough to still be putting
out this strawman. No one credible is or has ever claimed "the end of life" or
even "the end of multicellular life". Humanity could get wiped out entirely
and "life" would be fine for a few billion years until it really would get
wiped out completely without intelligence. But even a few tens of millions let
alone hundreds let alone billions is something we might reasonably want to
avoid don't you think? Is this really such a hard concept for you to grasp?
When "life survived" previous mass extinction events you should read that as "
_SOME_ life survived, and often not the big complex types."

~~~
zyxzkz
Another fun angle to consider. Ocean acidification leading to a die-off of
phytoplankton (the oxygen tank of the Earth, basically).

This could cause a global asphyxiation event.

~~~
mirimir
Archaea are tough.

------
agentultra
It's strange reading about this and realizing that to be able to do something
about it I would have had to have been born twenty some-odd years before I was
born. That it's literally too late to do anything about it. I was raised to
care about these issues, to save the rainforest, to cut down on pollution,
recycle -- to do something about it. And that it would've taken a concerted
effort from everyone to take the same care.

Scientists have been warning about this for decades. And we've done nothing.
Not even to slow down!

 _I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..._

Indeed.

~~~
rhino369
If drastic action is taken now we'd only see 2 degree warming. That is far
from the end of the world.

If we do nothing we'll see 5-8 degrees, which would change the climate pretty
drastically.

It's not too late at all.

~~~
agentultra
From the video linked in another comment it seems like _drastic_ is basically
_impossible_. The speaker, Stuart Scott, had said that we'd have to just drop
$28 _trillion_ worth of fossil fuel assets on the floor and walk away _today_.
It seems more likely that we're going to hit at least 5 degrees over the next
100 years which, if I'm not mistaken, means mass extinction events and the
collapse of civilization as we know it.

2 degrees, from what I understand, is drastic enough to destabilize our
current geo-political situation and threaten humanity with large-scale famine,
water shortages, and mass migrations. It doesn't seem like we can even avoid 2
degrees at this point. It's just going to happen even if we do stop everything
today if I'm understanding this news right.

~~~
rhino369
The IPCC reports don't substantiate those figure. RCP8.5 which assumes
increasing co2 emmisions until 2080 results in 2.6-4.8 degrees by 2100. But
Rcp8.5 is considered pretty much worst case. It is basically what happens if
we just continue to use fossil fuels and have no climate policy.

RCP4.5 which is a somewhat optimistic but still realistic plan would only have
1.1-2.6.

RCP6 which is a realistic scenario where fossil fuels are used heavily but by
2060 we start heavily switching to carbon neutral sources. That leads to
1.4-3.1 degrees by 2100.

There also isn't any scientific consensus on what level of rise would lead to
collapse of civilization. But I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be 5 degrees by
2100.

Even with 5 degrees the bread baskets of the world should still be producing a
ton of food. There would need to be engineering solutions. GMO modified crops
to survive droughts better. Better irrigation in California and the Midwest.

The dooms day projections all assume we just sit around while food production
drops and just starve to death. That's a bad assumption.

It would cause famine in parts of the world where rising food costs means they
can't afford food. But food could go up 5x in America before we'd have
problems affording it.

~~~
agentultra
The estimates are still loose on the methane situation and how that would
affect the IPCC reports. Isn't it called the "methane crisis" because it's
likely going to rapidly accelerate warming?

------
Razengan
If we can't fix, if we can't prevent, and if we cannot prepare either, then
maybe we could at least _preserve?_

• Digitize all human knowledge and as much art/literature as you can gather
(books, music, movies, shows, games, even porn and random YouTube videos and
discussions on online forums :) Most of that work has already been done.

• Store it on the most resilient (and simple/repairable) storage media you
can,

• Bundle it with devices that can read that data,

• Along with instructions for building/reinventing such devices, and
instructions on how to interpret that data (i.e. JPEG and other file formats
:)

• Also include a guide for translating the instructions. Assume that a future
reader may not understand any of our current languages, or even be human at
all.

• Put it all in a silo as physically strong as you can build.

• Make copies of the silo and bury one on each continent and in each ocean.
Maybe even on the Moon?

• Distribute markers and maps to each silo (and instructions for opening them)
all over the world.

• Let fate take its course.

All of this could be done by a few individuals and most of it won't even
require a lot of money.

~~~
xtian
We've constructed a society which is incapable of responding effectively to
even ultimate crisis, and faced with that realization all we can think to do
is devise a way to preserve the leavings of that dead-end paradigm. Very nice.

~~~
Razengan
Others can and could still learn or be inspired, if not from at least SOME of
the things we've made or thought of, then from our mistakes.

~~~
xtian
So these others will have some ability to learn from our mistakes which we
don't possess now?

------
adamtait
There's a team of scientists in the arctic who have an unconventional but
(possibly) effective idea to reduce/slow the release of permafrost methane.
The Zimov's have a Kickstarter up now -
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-
park-an-ice-age-ecosystem-to-save-the)

------
wiz21c
I don't like what I'm reading here. Is there any expert here that could at
least bring in non-panic arguments ?

~~~
mikestew
That's why I keep hitting "refresh" on this page of comments, in the hope that
someone with more expertise than I have comes along and tells me it's not
nearly as bad as I take this to be (i. e., "we're fucked").

Still waiting, BTW.

~~~
dreamcompiler
There is _some_ hope. We could geoengineer a giant shade structure to reflect
sunlight away from earth. It would cost $trillions (twelve zeros) but it could
be done with current technology. And it would cool the Earth immediately.
Unfortunately it would do nothing to fix ocean acidification, which threatens
to starve and/or suffocate us all.

~~~
cafebabbe
That "solution" fucking sucks. We kinda rely on the sun to grow plants and
power life, you know?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Erm, it's not like anyone is suggesting "block all sunlight". We're talking
about blocking at most a few percent.

On this topic, I've always wondered if you could make such a solar shade that
hovers just on the far side of the Lagrange point between sun and earth,
balancing radiation pressure and gravity. Does anyone know if that would be
passively stable?

~~~
samatman
Not quite, something would have be done about lateral motion. L1-L3 are only
stable along the axis between the orbiting bodies. L4 and L5 are local
gravitational minima, but that doesn't help us here.

------
xutopia
The majority of the population does not care about this one bit. They're going
to carry on driving their gas guzzlers. The only change we can make is if we,
who understand what is at stake, invest in renewables to bring their price
down.

When the backwards people will see us all in our cheap to run, fast to
accelerate and cheap to maintain electric pass them on the highway will they
feel dumb buying gallons of gas to keep their guzzlers going.

~~~
dcchambers
Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction of the cause of greenhouse
emissions worldwide. Everyone changing to EVs isn't going to fix anything,
especially when that electrical power can come from dirty power plants.

The big changes need to come from agriculture, commercial, and industrial
industries. The world also needs to quickly phase out coal and gas power
plants and switch to all renewable so new "green" electric vehicles are
actually better for the environment.

~~~
geoka9
> Consumer gas vehicle make up a TINY fraction

According to [1], transportation is 26% of greenhouse emissions, of which over
half is passenger cars and light-duty trucks.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-
emis...](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

~~~
dcchambers
Those are US emissions only. What about China? India? The EU?

As you can also see from that report, 30% of emissions come from electricity
generation. If we all switch to EVs, expect that % from consumer vehicles to
just flip to electricity. That can't be fixed until all our electricity is
100% renewable.

~~~
i2amsam
It can be improved as soon as average electricity generation is cleaner than
internal combustion engines, which it is today.

------
TeMPOraL
Ok, so how do we unfuck this? What are the promising options, who's working on
them, and how can one contribute?

~~~
codecamper
go solar. & EV

~~~
TeMPOraL
This won't help clear out methane in the short term, though.

~~~
notatoad
clearing out the methane is the problem. you really, really don't want it to
clear out, you want it to stay frozen under the arctic permafrost. the problem
is if the ice that's currently keeping all that methane sequestered melts, it
releases the gas. We need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
from other sources to curb global warming and keep all that gas frozen away.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I used a wrong expression. What I meant is clearing it out of the atmosphere
if it happens to get there, and/or making sure that the currently sequestered
methane stays that way (including by locking it down harder somehow).

------
gph
I know it's stupid and crazy, but would carpet bombing the arctic work to burn
up the methane trapped below the permafrost before it leaks out into the
atmosphere and causes worse problems? Or maybe we should send out expedition
crews to find and preemptively explode these methane bubbles.

Perhaps the way things are going they will become too plentiful to really do
anything realistic about it.

~~~
brians
It burns to CO2. Not enormously helpful?

~~~
vkou
Pound for pound, methane is a much stronger GHG then CO2.

~~~
ams6110
Breaks down more quickly though I'd expect?

~~~
philipkglass
Methane naturally breaks down _to_ CO2. Transforming it to CO2 faster is
unambiguously better.

------
perfunctory
Suppose one has already cut his own consumption as much as possible and has
some free money left. What's the most efficient way to spend it to combat
climate change? Buy EV; donate to environmental lobby group; invest in a
vegetarian restaurant around the corner; isolate your own house? Any ideas?

------
lutusp
This is a particularly dramatic methane release, but methane is being released
regularly in the high latitudes. I visit Alaska in the summertime and I see
methane releases in many locations -- for example (taken from my kayak):

[http://i.imgur.com/rRs3fQU.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rRs3fQU.jpg)

It's important to say the only reason you can see this outgassing is because
the source is underwater. The entire landscape is releasing methane this way,
but without any clear signs.

------
partycoder
Excellent time to defund the EPA. Natural selection at its best.

------
tabeth
So, assuming we're screwed, where's the best place to move preemptively? I
know Boston isn't that place.

\- I assume the coasts are a nonstarter.

\- Moving inland could be nice, but the ground would need to be pretty arable
to restart civilization there. I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet,
given the lack of resource exploitation there, but then again, there's not
much infrastructure at the moment.

~~~
wamsachel
> I'm guessing somewhere in Africa is a safe bet, given the lack of resource
> exploitation there,

...what?

~~~
tabeth
AFAIK Africa has a ton of natural resources still available compared to the
rest of the continents (other than Antarctica)

------
alvern
Here is a list of articles so far about methane capture and biogas. This is
lab based experiments in small quantities (~50ml) but it could be scaled up.
So in a foggy smog future where we all live in domes, these methane processors
could slowly grab the energy back from the atmosphere.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18977-innovation-
meth...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18977-innovation-methane-
capture-gives-more-bang-for-the-buck/)

[2]
[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2008/CC/b80440...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2008/CC/b804405h#!divAbstract)

[3][http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/cc/b8/b804405h/b804405h.pdf](http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/cc/b8/b804405h/b804405h.pdf)

------
CoffeeDregs
Unfortunately, few of the photos have anything to indicate scale and those few
seem to range from 100m (small trucks on the far side) to 2-3m (the guy
stepping on one). Still, those are incredible photos...

------
deanclatworthy
If you find this interesting, VICE did a 15min segment on their show recently
about this very issue.

~~~
serg_chernata
Thanks for the mention, love Vice. Would you mind providing a link?

~~~
loader
I couldn't find a youtube video of it but here's the HBO.com link
[http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/57-when-the-earth-
melts-...](http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/57-when-the-earth-melts-and-
the-displaced/index.html)

------
BrailleHunting
Another bigger problem, raised by VICE reporting, is tundra thawing, leading
to ground collapsing 10-30 meters into huge sinkholes. Appearently, one of the
possible solutions is replacing tundra forests with grasslands by megafauna
and macrofauna grazing, including, potentially, cloned mammoths, because
grassland freezes harder in the winter and keeps the permafrost froze during
the summer months.

~~~
adamtait
The Zimov's (Russian scientists) are behind this effort. Check out their
Kickstarter:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-p...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-
park-an-ice-age-ecosystem-to-save-the)

------
buzzybee
Every time I see stories about runaway climate catastrophe, I stop and
consider the scenarios and how it might affect how I lead my life, and none of
them really change how I plan to do things. I'm working and training in ways I
believe will contribute, and that is sufficient to calm myself.

Basically, either we make all the turnarounds necessary, on every front -
policy, technology, engineering, culture - to beat this stuff by a huge
margin, or it's all over. I don't see a middle ground of "things kind of suck
for a while and then it's okay" happening. And that guides a lot of my
thoughts on other topics: I want survivability, and of a form which preserves
key freedoms. I believe massive reforms to the economic and political system
are needed to do it. I believe our existing social network structures and
cultural norms are insufficient to address this. There's a lot of room to
change in all directions.

------
cjensen
A lot of the photos in the article sure looked like pingos[1], which are
common in the Arctic and subarctic, rather than something exotic. Horses
before Zebras and all that.

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

~~~
wcoenen
Pictures of pingos are shown in the article because some of these craters
formed where there were previously pingos. The term is mentioned 6 times in
the article.

------
stefek99
Highly recommended:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck)

How Soon Is Now?

The book outlines the changes to our technical infrastructure - agriculture,
energy, industry - and our social, political, and economic system that
Pinchbeck deems necessary to avoid the worst consequences of global warming,
species extinction, and so on.

------
Keyframe
Could one pierce a bubble and syphon/concentrate the gas into a tank with a
pump? Might be too late, considering how many there are and how remote they
are.

edit: nm, I saw that conference where they've shown Methane releasing from the
submerged Siberian plane. We're fucked.

~~~
delecti
Naively, it seems like that would be a bit like trying to pop a helium balloon
and recapture the helium.

Though I'm certainly not an expert, and it's possible it'd be more akin to
natural gas drilling, which we have some experience in.

~~~
Keyframe
If you look at the video in the article, there's a dude poking a hole with his
boot in one of the smaller bubble. It looks like a possibility to capture the
gas, maybe drill from top on the smaller ones and from side or bottom on the
large ones... but, I'm not an expert. Also, top comment here linked to a
conference where they've showed a submerged Siberian plane bubbling gas from
beneath sea surface - 500 to 5000G of Methane. So long, and thanks for all the
fish :/

~~~
delecti
I saw that video. It makes me think that the individual bubbles aren't big
enough to be cost effective to harvest.

------
xg15
Here is another article about the same event (in german) that has an aerial
view supposedly showing the distribution of the craters over one of the
islands:

[http://www.spektrum.de/news/7000-gasblasen-woelben-sich-
in-s...](http://www.spektrum.de/news/7000-gasblasen-woelben-sich-in-sibirien-
auf/1443175)

(The craters filled with water, hence the dark color. The picture doesn't say
anything about the craters' depth)

I don't know about the source though, so I guess it should be taken with a
grain of salt.

~~~
theseadroid
Source of the image
[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6034](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6034)

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dcgoss
This is the first time I've heard about this issue. If this is as severe and
terrifying as these comments are making it seem, why has this not been covered
more?

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earthtolazlo
What do you think climate scientists have been screaming about for the past
several decades?

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dcgoss
It always seemed like CO2 was the biggest issue. Call me naive but I didn't
hear anything about massive underground methane bubbles ready to explode and
destroy humanity imminently.

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cafebabbe
I heard about that problem ten years ago, without specifically looking for it.
It's probably known for decades.

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mattmanser
Honest question, if it does turn out that these have a bad effect, and they
can detect the bulges, can't they start draining them before they pop?

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porker
It's really hard to get the scale of the domes from the photos. Are the top
photos 30cm across or 100m?

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emiliobumachar
Well, the first photo has a cloud in it. I don't remember ever seeing tiny
clouds that stuffy, so I think we can rule out anything below tens of meters.

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sinkensabe
So they can explode at any time from now and possible end us? Is that how I
should wrap my head around it?

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harwoodleon
The news services wont report this because it's not an immediate threat.

This surely is a case now for stopping flying. If everyone made a conscious
decision not to fly, be a bit inconvenienced, this would lessen the chance of
this and other catastrophic events taking place.

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gragas
It's pretty amazing that that website emails you your password in plain text
when you register.

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emiliobumachar
Serious question: would we be better off finding a safe way to burn all this
methane before it leaks? Even detonating it in place and wasting the energy
seems advantageous, since CO2 is much less greenhouse-y than unburned methane.

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warredale
Why wouldn't we preemptively pump them out? Draw them down.

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basicplus2
don't forget the termites, as it is not a one off that has a half life, but a
continuous process of production.

"production of CH4 by termites is probably <15% of the global yearly
emissions."

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v301/n5902/abs/301700a0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v301/n5902/abs/301700a0.html)

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executive
burning off the bubbles is fun
[https://youtu.be/15tPaV_j0CU](https://youtu.be/15tPaV_j0CU)

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kahrkunne
Is there way to harvest these? We could burn the gas for a lot of energy, and
the CO2 released would be a lot less bad than the methane.

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finid
One thing the Russians have going for them is they're not denying climate
change. That lets them sit down and think things through.

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signa11
silly question: burning it / these is not an option? it produces co2, but that
is far less worse than ch4.

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andrewflnr
Why do the craters have those sheer sides?

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jacquesm
I was wondering about that myself. I suspect this has to do with the violence
of the explosion cutting a path to the outside that is a circle because that's
the shape the underlying gas bubble would have had.

Which makes me wonder what this landscape looks like during a thunderstorm
with lightning hitting the occasional methane deposit.

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mrlaserOO
So here is a solution: send a drone overhead and just ignite the methane via
laser. no more methane!

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otempomores
Could those methan bubbles be burned off with a torch drone.?

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helloburin
This made me think of methane powered rockets that Elon Musk has mentioned:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\))

Can we use the methane to get us to another planet?

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lolive
God is nice. God won't let that happen.

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1propionyl
This sounds like the start of a Dan Brown novel...

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jlebrech
who/what will this affect?

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maerF0x0
so arctic russia has acne?

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Daishiman
Well this is pretty much the beggining of the end then.

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randyrand
The consensus is that unchecked GW would _not_ be a human extinction event.

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philipkglass
Correct, I don't believe that human extinction is in the cards from unchecked
GW. Though it could well still be the greatest and most prolonged disaster in
recorded history. There is an _enormous_ gulf between minimum thresholds for,
respectively:

    
    
      - "Not a big deal"
      - A catastrophe, comparable to World War II
      - The greatest catastrophe in recorded history
      - The extinction of industrialized civilization
      - The extinction of the human species
      - The extinction of multicellular life
      - The extinction of all Earthly life
      - The destruction of Earth as a planet
    

It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of those
later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn't worry about
AGW at all.

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TeMPOraL
> _It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of
> those later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn 't
> care about AGW at all._

Yeah, the thing is, that your list roughly translates to:

    
    
      - Not a big deal
      - Many of us are dead
      - Most of us are dead
      - Almost of us are dead and everything is fucked
      - Remaining list items aren't even worth considering
    

Hyperbole is never good, but it's important to realize that anything above
"Not a big deal" means _at least_ a serious degradation of life quality for
everyone on the planet.

So maybe let's rewrite the list to show how your and mine lives will look
like:

    
    
      - Everything is much more expensive, no more extravagant meals
      - European refugee crisis, except you're the refugee
      - Like the above, except everyone wants to shoot you
      - The Walking Dead, just without the zombies
      - Everyone dies

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philipkglass
_Hyperbole is never good, but it 's important to realize that anything above
"Not a big deal" means at least a serious degradation of life quality for
everyone on the planet._

Agreed! I believe that AGW could prove as disastrous for humanity as a large
scale nuclear war. Its effects might even lay the ground for a nuclear war. It
is not something to take lightly. Yet I can't resist an eyeball-roll toward
comments like "human extinction on earth by 2030."

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ganfortran
Let it crash. Human need a lesson.

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cafebabbe
This would be a "lesson" like death is a "momentary setback"

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bbcbasic
That depends on your religion I guess.

