[QueenTiye]

http://afp.google.co...bAhYBsnFtXcj_RQ

Quote

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.

According to the article, methane gas is 20% better than CO₂ at trapping solar heat. On aonther site where I learned of this article, people were saying we need to act within 100 months or risk it being to late to act.

Seriously? That's less than the 10 years that Al Gore is clamoring for. I'm not clear what can be done to reverse the trend, and if indeed we have less than 10 years to do it.

Thoughts?

QT

[Nick]

QueenTiye, on Aug 31 2008, 07:26 PM, said:

Thoughts?

Only that this is the onset of runaway global warming and there's little we can do to prevent or slow it.

[D.Rabbit]

If we have the problem of too much methane, then we need to eradicate it's source where we can.
So who is going to volunteer to give up beef so that we can save the planet?

If you don't buy it, they will no longer produce it. The herds will be culled, because there is no point in feeding an animal/product that no one wants. So each of us are responsible if the methane over takes us.

Maybe we should find a way to utilize the methane so that it becomes inert?
Strap balloons on the back sides...oh forget it.

[Orpheus]

Just a guess, but this looks like it *may* be the beginning of the kind of clathrate release I wrote about earlier.

According to the US EPA, methane is 21x as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide but with a relatively short half-life in the atmosphere (25 years) which makes it a target for greenhouse mitigation. Note: 25 years is *still* substantially longer than Gore's timetable, and methane's short half life is due to the fact that it slowly oxidizes to carbon dioxide.

Cow flatulence doesn't hold a candle to 100K (or much more) years of methane hydrate clathrates frozen deep in the ocean

-- Orpheus "and I don't hold a candle to cow flatulence"