Some Climate Scientists Warning of Human Extinction in Ten Years (Arctic News Blog, Counterpunch) - Polidicks

[quote=Counterpunch]This latest blog post, written by Arctic News editor Sam Carana, draws on research by a number of scientists (linked in his article), who report on various feedback loops that will result from a dramatically warmer north polar region. But the critical concern, he says, is methane already starting to be released in huge quantities from the shallow sea floor of the continental shelves north of Siberia and North America. That methane, produced by bacteria acting on biological material that sinks to the sea floor, for the most part, is currently lying frozen in a form of ice that is naturally created over millions of years by a mixing of methane and water, called a methane hydrate. Methane hydrate is a type of molecular structure called a clathrate. Clathrates are a kind of cage, in this case made of water ice, which traps another chemical, in this case methane. The concern is that if the Arctic Ocean waters, particularly nearer to shore, were to warm even slightly, as they will do as the ice cap vanishes in summer and becomes much thinner in winter, at some point the clathrates there will suddenly dissolve releasing tens of thousands of gigatons of methane in huge bursts. Already, scientists are reporting that portions of the ocean, as well as shallow lakes in the far north, look as though they are boiling, as released methane bubbles to the surface, sometimes in such concentrations that they can be lit on fire with a match as they surface. [Harold] Wanless, who has for some time been predicting ice melting rates and resulting sea level rises that are far in excess of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting — as much as 10 feet by 2050 and 15 or 20 feet by the end of this century, vs. just three feet for the IPCC — says, “Scientists tend to be pretty conservative. We don’t like to scare people, and we don’t like to step out of our little predictable boxes. But I suspect the situation is going to spin out of hand pretty quickly.” He says, “If you look at the history of warming periods, things can move pretty fast, and when that happens that’s when you get extinction events.” He adds, “I would not discount the possibility that it could happen in the next ten years.” Making matters worse, Wanless adds, is the fact that a large enough methane eruption in the arctic, besides contributing to accelerated global warming, could also lead to a significant reduction of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere (currently about 21%). This is because methane in the atmosphere breaks down fairly quickly, over the course of a decade or so, into water vapor and CO2, but in doing do, it requires oxygen atoms, which it would pull out of the atmosphere. That reduction in oxygen would lead to reduced viability and growth rates of plants and animals, as well as to a significant reduction in crop productivity. This dire trend would be enhanced by a second threat to atmospheric oxygen, which is the oxygen-producing plankton in the ocean. If sea temperatures rise much, and increased acidification of the ocean continues apace as the oceans absorb more CO2, plankton, the earth’s main producers of new oxygen, could shut down that source of new free oxygen.[/quote] Yes fringe sources, but the fact that this methane pocket is bubbling up at all should scare the fuck out of people [url=http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/]Counterpunch summary of blog post[/url] [url=http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html]Arctic News Blogpost (science nerd shit in here)[/url] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSnrDRU6_2g]RT Video[/url] :) [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Unreliable sources (shit site ref. a blog/a blog/RT)" - Sgt Doom))[/highlight]

Well, what do we even do?

[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;51867003]Well, what do we even do?[/QUOTE] Mostly preventive stuff that buys us time. We got to let the ozone repair itself.

Cool I guess Tbh sounds sensationalist as fuck, there's no way that global warming can cause human extinction We might have the population reduced drastically but not extinction level

None of those sources are reputable and this is incredibly click-bait bullshit. I'm just as worried about climate change as the next guy but this is ridiculous

Geoengineering and space colonization when.

Arctic News is a blog, Counterpunch is leftist FUCK THE SYSTEM bullshit and RT is just Russian propaganda. All those sources are bad.

[QUOTE=1239the;51867043]Geoengineering and space colonization when.[/QUOTE] Or you know we can stop fucking up our own planet before we decide to run off to others?

[QUOTE=Svinnik;51867019]Cool I guess Tbh sounds sensationalist as fuck, there's no way that global warming can cause human extinction We might have the population reduced drastically but not extinction level[/QUOTE] [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster"]In 1986 Lake Nyos in Cameroon overturned (huge volumes of CO2 that were trapped in the lake erupted out of it), killing some 1700 people.[/URL] This is what can happen when a [I]lake[/I] overturns. Imagine this but across an entire sea or ocean. Also, add in the fact that methane is flammable in an oxygen environment whereas carbon dioxide isn't and you have yourself a perfect recipe for disaster.

[QUOTE=Socram;51867056]Or you know we can stop fucking up our own planet before we decide to run off to others?[/QUOTE] climate change is an inevitable force; all that we've done is accelerate it, and the acceleration is the problem-- it makes it more difficult for us to adapt. space colonization on a permanent and expanding basis solves climate change on a permanent basis, instead of being a delaying tactic to hold off the irresistible.

Methane gas has been escaping into the atmosphere forever. Why is it making news all of a sudden?

[QUOTE=false prophet;51867073]Methane gas has been escaping into the atmosphere forever. Why is it making news all of a sudden?[/QUOTE] From what I understand, this specific pocket of gas is trapped under ice, and contains hundreds of thousands of gigatonnes of methane. That ice is melting. It's enough methane to do bad ish.

[QUOTE=so;51867077]From what I understand, this specific pocket of gas is trapped under ice, and contains hundreds of thousands of gigatonnes of methane. That ice is melting. It's enough methane to do bad ish.[/QUOTE] so basically it's like when a condom breaks and all hell breaks loose.

Eh, this is bullshit. We have till after 2038.

I wonder how viable it is to burn it. Worked great for the hell hole in Derweze: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_toNHvH1eus[/url]

The Clathrate Gun hypothesis is still widely debated. Some scientists say Earth will experience Venus-like runaway warming if all the ice-trapped methane were to be released, while more conservative scientists say we'd only see a warming of 5-10 degrees Celsius (which is not at all a negligible amount, as it would render great portions of the tropics uninhabitable deserts) over five hundred years or so. A human extinction event is highly unlikely. Plant and animal extinction events are inevitable. But a ten-year timespan is sensationalist and likely wrong. We've got far more time on this rock, even if it does become a watery sauna. At accelerated rates, climate change is merely an engineering issue.

Well it better fucking get going then.

Posting stupidity like this just encourages more climate-change denialism.

Can we have an actual reputable source for this please?

[QUOTE=Svinnik;51867019]Cool I guess Tbh sounds sensationalist as fuck, there's no way that global warming can cause human extinction We might have the population reduced drastically but not extinction level[/QUOTE] A drastic reduction from 7 billion huh. Wonder if it's worth stopping, it's not like it's an extinction though... That would [I]actually[/I] be bad.

The Clathrate Gun is not something we should necessarily be worried about, at least not drastically more than the prospect of climate change itself. Real life isn't a Roland Emmerich movie. This distorts the broader issue of climate change and this fear-mongering helps exactly no one. [quote=http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/arctic-methane-hydrate-catastrophe] A number of prominent scientists and methane experts interviewed for this article voiced strong skepticism about the Nature paper. "[B]The scenario they used is so unlikely as to be completely pointless talking about[/B]," says Gavin Schmidt, a noted climate researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Schmidt is hardly the only skeptic. "I don't have any problem with 50 gigatons, but they've got the time scale all wrong," adds David Archer, a geoscientist and expert on methane at the University of Chicago. [B]"I would envision something like that coming out, you know, over the centuries." ...[/B] "It's weird for me to be saying, 'Oh, it could never happen.' It's always the wrong side of things when you're talking about nature," says David Archer of the Arctic methane catastrophe scenario. "But," he adds, "nobody's come up with a defendable way of it happening all at once." [/quote]

Interesting thoughts, I've heard of the clathrate gun hypothesis before. However, when discussing climate change, it's best to get most of your information about climate change and the various bits from the IPCC, or official organizations that contribute to the IPCC. Remember that Blogs, while the information contained therein may not necessarily be false, they do not carry the academic weight that official bodies do.

[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;51867003]Well, what do we even do?[/QUOTE] Well for a start we don't vote for climate change deniers. At the risk of sounding cliched, people really need to wake up and see that climate change is the biggest issue facing humanity today.

[QUOTE=laharlsblade;51867030]None of those sources are reputable and this is incredibly click-bait bullshit. I'm just as worried about climate change as the next guy but this is ridiculous[/QUOTE] Yep. This shit just adds fuel to the flame that is republican climate-change denialism. "Hey we're not dead yet, [I]TAKE THAT SCIENTISTS![/I]"

[QUOTE=Svinnik;51867019]Cool I guess Tbh sounds sensationalist as fuck, there's no way that global warming can cause human extinction We might have the population reduced drastically but not extinction level[/QUOTE] Good. Then maybe we can finally stop having redundant debates on hate speech and other things that don't matter. Go back to talking about only survival and further human advancement.

[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;51867055]Arctic News is a blog, Counterpunch is leftist FUCK THE SYSTEM bullshit and RT is just Russian propaganda. All those sources are bad.[/QUOTE]To make matters worse, the first source and the RT video references the blog as a source. Please check your sources before posting, people.