
Photos Reveal More Than 200 Arctic Lakes Have Started Bubbling with Methane Gas - Keyframe
http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-bright-blue-arctic-lakes-have-started-bubbling-with-methane-gas
======
Pxtl
Worth noting: a massive volcanic eruption of sulfur in Siberia ended almost
all life on Earth once. It rained sulfuric acid with the pH of lemon juice
worldwide and everything died, it took 10 million years for diversity to start
building again.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event)

~~~
agumonkey
Honest question, how far could we live if all human resources were dedicated
to create structure, devices and tech for high pH (and low biomass I guess)
environment ?

~~~
marcosdumay
You mean low pH? High pH would be almost impossible to adapt for.

But, we will probably start living (and growing crops) indoor before we fully
adapt (require knowing about plastics). We can probably adapt crops in a
couple of decades if current science survives.

~~~
agumonkey
yeah, high acidity - low pH

------
Red_Tarsius
Summary points:

> _The lakes are a type of thermokarst lake, which form when thawing
> permafrost causes the surface to collapse and fill in with meltwater. These
> ones are bright blue and bubbling, because of methane that 's leaking into
> them before escaping into the atmosphere._

> _Researchers announced that they 're also monitoring around_ 7,000 _gas
> bubbles or 'pingos', which have formed in Siberia and are at risk of
> exploding to form huge craters._
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941923)

> _Methane is roughly_ 30 _times more potent than_ CO2 _as a heat-trapping
> gas._

> _By_ 2100, _up to_ 205 billion T _of carbon emissions will be released by
> permafrost if climate change continues to intensify._

> _Previous research had suggested that a global temperature rise of_ 1.5°C
> (2.7°F) _would be enough to start the melting of Siberia 's permafrost, and
> scientists are concerned that these lakes and pingos are a sign it's already
> happening._

> _What 's interesting is that the satellite data suggests the leaks are
> happening year-round in these regions, even at temperatures close to_ 0°C
> (32°F).

~~~
ams6110
You left out:

 _They aren 't entirely sure what's causing them, but the hypothesis for now
is that it could be related to seismic activity.

"For example, over one of the gas deposits (in Yamal), lakes are located along
two lines ... looking like a giant cross," Bogoyavlensky told the Siberian
Times.

This suggests "genetic connection of craters with deep faults in the Earth's
crust, but to confirm we need to conduct thorough seismic research"._

~~~
appleflaxen
The future in increasingly clear, and utterly terrifying.

I hope you're right, but suspect the "but maybe not!" discussions about the
local details in different areas are less important than finding solutions to
the big picture that we do understand.

------
macawfish
I can just see it now... natural gas companies decide to frack the arctic,
accidentally triggering hundreds of irreversible methane releases.

Edit: okay I looked this up and of course it's already a thing.

[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-
tech/en...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-
production/frozen-fuel4.htm)

~~~
qeternity
> Edit: okay I looked this up and of course it's already a thing.

As in the concept exists? It's most certainly not a practical or economic
thing.

You should look at how deep sea drilling economics were rattled due to
fracking. O&G prices need to rally a hell of a lot to make this profitable.

~~~
macawfish
The interest exists. If it did become profitable, I wouldn't put it past them
to go for it.

I used to think that stuff like this was crazy, now I'm not so sure:
[http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/pies-in-the-sky-a-
sol...](http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/pies-in-the-sky-a-solution-to-
global-warming/)

~~~
T-A
Once burned... [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-10/big-
oil-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-10/big-oil-
abandons-2-5-billion-in-u-s-arctic-drilling-rights)

~~~
macawfish
May this be the beginning of the carbon bubble pop.

------
EGreg
I have a question

Methane (CH4) is said to be 30-105x more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

But burning it produces energy and CO2 as a byproduct.

So wouldn't it make sense to use it and burn it at these lakes instead of
letting it escape? Even if you do not harness the energy.

~~~
partycoder
The problem is doing it at the scale required.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf alone has an estimated amount of 50 to 800
gigatons of CH4. Current atmospheric concentration of CH4 is about 5.

I think our best interest is to stop or slow down the process and try to find
out a solution. And that is achieved by keeping the permafrost frozen.

One solution could be using metanotrophs, which are unicellular organisms that
eat methane. The advantage over reacting chemicals is that they reproduce on
their own. Maybe we enhance them through GMO to make them have a higher
fertility rate.

~~~
EGreg
But the fire would just spread and burn it all.

Your idea is good too, they also engineered bacteria to eat plastic in the
great pacific garbage patch.

~~~
partycoder
Problem is that fire would also increase temperature reinforcing the methane
release.

------
M_Grey
If this somehow magically inspired people around the world to literally
abandon modern life, you'd still be seeing the current trends coast for at
least a couple of _decades_. Needless to say, far from anything like radical
change, we're continuing full steam ahead.

------
DougN7
I'm not a survivalist, but it seems that at some point you just have to start
preparing for the inevitable. So buy land and water rights inland??

~~~
dkarapetyan
How do you supposed you are going to survive without all the affordances of
some kind of civilization. Do you imagine some kind of postman or waterworld
type of thing?

I'm pretty sure either we all make it or none of us do. There is no escaping
the inevitability of mammalian biology. You need to keep your body at a
certain temperature and it's looking more and more like that is going to be
impossible in the new climate regime.

~~~
candiodari
Why the armageddon claims ? You realize humans have previously coped just fine
with water levels meters higher than they are now I hope.

So given that the worst IPCC predictions only predict about a 2m water level
rise, and that so far the first 20 years of those predictions turned out to
have been WAY overblown, I think we'll do just fine as a species, even long
term.

In fact, even if worst comes to worst, medieval water management techniques
will in fact be able to prevent any coastline encroachment until well into the
2200s. At that point, I think we may put some thought into adapting, and I bet
we'll be able to come up with something (or we could just move a few cities.
That too has been done before. Okay, okay, more than "a few". And no, we won't
run out of arable land, or water, or ... I mean it's unknown of course, but
it's not out of the question that the planet actually becomes more hospitable
to humans with higher temperatures. Certainly in a few regions that will be
true, and maybe globally).

TLDR: you will be perfectly fine, even under the worst of the worst
predictions, and so will California beachfront property, or Manhattan, or ...
at the very least for 4-5 generations.

~~~
mrow84
This figure [0], which you can read more about in this summary [1] compares
the predictions from the IPCC third assessment report with satellite
observations. It shows that the observations track the upper end of the
predicted range from the third assessment. If you want more detail you can
find the original report here [2].

It is difficult to resolve that observation evidence with your claim that "the
first 20 years of those predictions turned out to have been WAY overblown" \-
if anything, the predictions were too conservative.

[0]
[https://skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif](https://skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif)

[1] [https://skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-
predictions.htm](https://skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-predictions.htm)

[2] [http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/](http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/)

~~~
candiodari
You know it's posts like this that give climate science a VERY bad reputation.
I've got a degree in statistics, so I read your post and immediately 3 alarm
bells go off.

It is WIDELY known in scientific circles that IPCC predictions have a bit of a
nasty habit of having, firstly, very dubious statistical underpinnings (which
is another way of saying their methodology is complete shite). Secondly,
without making any political claims, they systematically overstate the problem
by a LOT. This is purely a statement based on the numbers they put out, and I
imply no ulterior motive on their part. But their predictions do all seem to
error on one side, never the other.

And yet here you are, making the exact opposite claim to what I know to be
true. But there are a few alarm bells. You disagree with how I thought I know
the world to be, and you make an oddly specific cherry-picked argument. Here's
what I mean:

1) broad claim that would barely gain support from the rest of your argument.
Illustrating correctness from cherry-picked data points is an argument that
does not belong in science.

2) very weird pick of the predicted and evaluated variable (obviously the main
predicted climate variable is "temperature anomaly", so why don't you go for
that one ? Is this a case of "we got the basics of our prediction wildly
wrong, but in this long list of things we touched on sideways we lucked out !
We were right after all !" ?)

3) You pick the "third assessment report". How did the first 2 predictions
fare ? (this is useful in more ways, because those can of course be evaluated
against more data than this one)

4) You picked the third assessment report. Was this even a prediction ? The
comparison stops in 2002 on your linked graph. When was AR3 released ?

Let's take the easiest one of these questions and check it out. The fourth
one:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Assessment_reports)

Okay so the prediction of the IPCC from 1970 to 2002/2006 (different datasets)
has a publication date of 2001. Whereas from all the IPCC predictions there
are plenty available to do better checks of their accuracy. Very, very
suspicious. So really, there's only a single datapoint in there (for both
series) that is actually a prediction (ie. not known at the time of
publication, and only 1/7th of any of the data is predicted. Furthermore, the
graph neglects to point out where this prediction actually started, which
probably led you to make the wrong conclusion)

Now let's look at alarm signals 2 and 3 and let's actually evaluate IPCC
accuracy. Blogposts made by others you probably found by Googling your wanted
conclusion are apparently allowed in support of one's argument, so:

[https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-
cli...](https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-
reality/)

Oops ...

"Based upon these and other lines of evidence (laid out in our numerous
scientific publications, books, blogs articles, social media (see publications
listed here and here for example)), we conclude that future global warming
will occur at a pace substantially lower than that upon which US federal and
international actions to restrict greenhouse gas emissions are founded."

So in conclusion, your main claim, that the IPCC reports contain accurate
predictions, aside from being overly broad, is weakened by your listed
sources. It is also widely known to be wrong, and indeed on closer observation
it is wrong.

(I have in fact ran the numbers myself, and concluded that IPCC methodology is
crap, and it has in fact had predictable results : disastrously wrong
predictions. The IPCC would have to be correct for tens of thousands of years
from this point forward to make their "95%" predictions actually correct in
95% of cases)

Another non-political interesting factoid: the IPCC has stopped giving values
for the climate forcing variable in their latest report. I would just like to
point out that this is not the correct way to inspire confidence in one's
predictions.

And there are people, even in my own university that won't just make claims
like yours, outrageous and wrong, but actually use the administration to
suppress people correcting them. A decent portion of the statistics/math and
some in the physics department have suddenly found themselves defending basic
math. Whilst none of this of course reflects directly on the science behind it
I would just like to make a final point that climate science was recently (few
years ago actually, I'm getting old) relocated in my university. It used to be
part of the science department. It is now part of the humanities. You know,
where theology and philosophy goes.

Do you wish to retract your statement ?

~~~
mrow84
>> You know it's posts like this that give climate science a VERY bad
reputation. I've got a degree in statistics, so I read your post and
immediately 3 alarm bells go off.

You've got a degree in statistics, and I have a PhD "in" Oceanography, does it
make a difference? Not really.

>> It is WIDELY known in scientific circles that IPCC predictions have a bit
of a nasty habit of having, firstly, very dubious statistical underpinnings
(which is another way of saying their methodology is complete shite).
Secondly, without making any political claims, they systematically overstate
the problem by a LOT.

The IPCC produce assessments of published research, but do not, as a body,
perform research, or make predictions. Their methodology is to assess existing
research, and to attempt to construct a representative summary. This is pretty
much the only way one can conduct a literature review, so it is difficult to
see why you would describe it as "complete shite".

>> And yet here you are, making the exact opposite claim. But there are a few
alarm bells. You strongly disagree with how I thought I know the world to be,
and you make an oddly specific cherry-picked argument. Here's what I mean:

I haven't made any claims, or disagreed with anything, I simply referred you
to published literature on the subject which you mentioned.

>> 1) broad claim that would barely gain support from the rest of your
argument

I don't understand what this means - I was only trying to provide you with
some of the observational evidence relating to your claim.

>> 2) weird pick of the predicted variable (obviously the main predicted
climate variable is "temperature anomaly") so why don't you go for that one ?
(Ie. is this a case of "we got the basics of our prediction wildly wrong, but
in this long list of things we touched on sideways we lucked out majorly and
see ! We were right after all !" ?)

I "picked" the variable you were talking about: sea level rise ("So given that
the worst IPCC predictions only predict about a 2m water level rise, and that
so far the first 20 years of those predictions turned out to have been WAY
overblown, I think we'll do just fine as a species, even long term." for
reference).

>> 3) You pick the "third assessment report" (which is actually the fourth,
because counted from 0). Pray tell, how did predictions 0, 1, and 2 go ?

Your claim (which I read as being that the first 20 years of sea level rise
predictions were "WAY overblown") is incorrect (putting philosophical points
about the nature of truth to one side). I know it is incorrect, because I have
read so many papers, and been to so many talks, that describe evidence to the
contrary. I typed "sea level rise predictions" into google, because I know
that skepticalscience have good articles that explain the various issues, and
I found the one that I wanted. I can go and find more, if you really need it.

>> 4) You picked the third assessment report. Hmmmm. Was this even a
prediction ? The comparison stops in 2002 on your linked graph. When was AR3
released ?

See above. But: it is the tide gauge data (in red) that stops in 2002, not the
predictions. The comparison I referred to was with the satellite data (in
blue), which continues to 2009. If you can't be bothered to find out what
happened to the tide gauge data then let me know, and I'll look into it for
you, for both our sakes. I can, however, be fairly confident in suggesting
that it's probably not a grand conspiracy.

>> Let's take the easiest one of these questions and check it out. The fourth
one:

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

>> Okay so the prediction of the IPCC from 1970 to 2002/2006 (different
datasets) has a publication date of 2001. Whereas from all the IPCC
predictions there are plenty available to do better checks of their accuracy.
Very, very suspicious. So really, there's only a single datapoint in there
(for both series) that is actually a prediction (ie. not known at the time of
publication, and only 1/7th of any of the data is predicted. Furthermore, the
graph neglects to point out where this prediction actually started, which
probably led you to make the wrong conclusion)

I can't understand what you're trying to say here. What does "different
datasets" refer to? What is the "single datapoint"? The prediction on the
graph I linked to is the gray band - it is fairly clearly marked, and I would
recommend reading the article to understand the context. You seem to have
misunderstood what was prediction and what was observation. I haven't made any
conclusions, only referred you (both indirectly and directly) to the
conclusions of experts in that sub-field.

>> Now let's look at alarm signals 2 and 3 and let's actually evaluate IPCC
accuracy. Blogposts made by others you probably found by Googling your wanted
conclusion are apparently allowed in support of one's argument, so:
[https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-
cli...](https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-cli..).

>> Oops ...

You do understand, right, that the graph I showed you demonstrates that the
models are underestimating sea level rise? In other words, it is showing that
the models used to compile that figure, which were state of the art at the
time, were relatively poor (though not terrible) predictors of sea level rise
- something we can probably agree on!

>> "Based upon these and other lines of evidence (laid out in our numerous
scientific publications, books, blogs articles, social media (see publications
listed here and here for example)), we conclude that future global warming
will occur at a pace substantially lower than that upon which US federal and
international actions to restrict greenhouse gas emissions are founded."

You can claim that the page I linked to and the page you linked to are
comparable if you wish. One reports the synthesis of the efforts of thousands
of scientists around the world who are ostensibly apolitical, the other the
work of a group of people who have an explicit political agenda. You can draw
your own conclusions about their respective credibility.

>> So in conclusion, your main claim, that the IPCC reports contain accurate
predictions, aside from being overly broad, is weakened by your listed
sources. It is also widely known to be wrong, and indeed on closer observation
it is wrong.

You seem to have misunderstood the figure - I described how above. The only
sources I listed were those for the figure.

>> (I have in fact ran the numbers myself, IPCC methodology is crap, and it
has in fact had predictable results : disastrously wrong predictions. The IPCC
would have to be correct for tens of thousands of years from this point
forward to make their "95%" predictions actually correct in 95% of cases)

What numbers have you run yourself? Your second sentence must be misphrased,
or I am simply incapable of understanding it - it appears to fundamentally
misunderstand the meaning of a predictive distribution.

>> Another "non-political" interesting factoid: the IPCC has stopped giving
values for the climate forcing variable in their latest report. I would just
like to point out that this is not the correct way to inspire confidence in
one's predictions.

You should review Chapter 8 of "The Physical Science Basis", titled
"Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing". Find it here:
[http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/](http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/)

>> And of course, there are people, even in my own university that won't just
make claims like yours, outrageous and wrong, but actually use the
administration to suppress people correcting them. A decent portion of the
statistics/math and some in the physics department have suddenly found
themselves defending basic math. Whilst none of this of course reflects
directly on the science behind it I would just like to make a final point that
climate science was recently (few years ago actually, I'm getting old)
relocated in my university. It used to be part of the science department. It
is now part of the humanities. You know, where theology and philosophy goes.

Which university is that?

>> Do you wish to retract your statement ?

See above.

~~~
candiodari
So you make a dubious and suspect, wrong, claim, and you refuse to retract it.
So now we know. So I guess this is not a mistake, you have a conclusion and
you're ok with misdirecting people to show you're "really right".

Got it.

I'd ask you to just stop talking about science, but I guess that'd be too much
to ask ?

~~~
sethrin
Your refusal to engage with the points enumerated by the parent poster erases
your credibility. Dunning and Kruger are vindicated once more.

~~~
candiodari
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say ... there is a simple reason I
refuse to engage. Here's how, at an extremely high level, IPCC predictions
work :

A = state of the world (co2 levels, climate, current avg temp, ...) "input" so
to speak

B = temperature anomaly ("output" of the model)

C = sea level rise, and other consequences

IPCC models work like this A -> B -> C.

They got B wrong. Therefore arguing about how C is really matching quite well
is both wrong and, frankly, somewhere between very misguided and dishonest.

This is also a fraudulent way people sometimes defend their models, especially
in economics. Sure they got the thing they predicted itself wrong, but out of
the 100 things they made claims about using their faulty model, they got one
or two right ! See ! They were right all along ...

Particularly bad examples are the many economic models that predicted
productivity recovery since, oh, since 2000 at least. They got everything
wrong, but they got, oh, say they got the gold price rise right they predicted
due to their prediction of rapid inflation. Unfortunately there was a gold
price rise, yes, no rapid inflation was observed though. If you believe models
like that you will die a poor man.

Unfortunately, no, they weren't. It is perfectly normal for a few out of large
amounts of claims to hit bullseye, even if they're based on entirely wrong
data. Obviously their results, even the ones that -so far- hit bullseye, have
zero predictive power.

~~~
sethrin
If you understood the models well enough to critique them you would be a
scientist in that field, and presumably your criticism would be in the form of
an academic paper. However, you are merely a pseudointellectual science denier
with an exaggerated sense of your own expertise.

------
pastaking
Can we harvest this methane gas and use it as an energy source?

~~~
dredmorbius
That's what natural gas is. So, in theory, yes.

The problem is that, as a gas, and as a gas that's emerging in an uncontrolled
fashion across a large area which is poorly developed, far from
infrastructure, and in many cases hostile to development.

Most natural gas is harvested from the same types of formations as those which
form oil-bearing rock: a reservoir covered by some trapping (nonpermiable)
formation, which releases gas only when tapped by a drill pipe. That is, the
point of emission is very much a point.

The areas are also _already_ being developed for oil, have access roads,
labour, and infrastructure. As such, it's generally easier to capture and
store the natural gas.

And _even then_ , for much of early oil extraction, natural gas was flared
off, because it was too difficult to capture, store, and transport it. Excess
oil could be (and was) stored in impromptu open lakes formed by bulldozed
earth. Gas requires airtight containers, and is far easier to manage when
pressurised (300 atmospheres) or liquified (-162C).

Doing _all_ of this in the Siberian tundra is a major challenge.

Flaring off the excess would be far more viable, and even _that_ is a
challenge.

------
AlexCoventry
> high sulphur levels caused by the leaking methane.

What does this mean?

~~~
mirimir
Biogenic CH4 often contains H2S.

