Massive amounts of methane spewing from the Arctic

Here's one for you....... All of the talk on here about oil and methane seeps being every where reminded me of what is happening all over my neighborhood. The big oil companies come in and drill wells under the guise of collecting methane, then they burn off the methane to get to the more profitable oil. Why not utilize both? What effect, if any, does burning the methane have on our environment?

I like many others do not subscribe to the ideology that HUMANS are destroying the planet.
Rather
It is the METHODS we use which is destroying the planet.

It's basically comparing oil to farts. Shall we finally utilize alternative energy, or have another holocaust?

Choice will soon be ours.

KrzYma:

Scary. So, how much time left till the start of dying?

Well, we are seeing mass die-offs in the animal kingdom, more in recent years I believe. Certainly marine life has been affected, and birds. There have been human deaths from gas escapes in villages in Africa, but not from methane gas, but from toxic hydrogen sulphide gas seeping up out of the ground and suffocating the people of the village.

If you think of the planet as a sealed room full of oxygen, but the floor is cracked and methane is seeping into the room and floating up to the ceiling, where it spreads out. Some of the methane is oxidised by the oxygen so we end up with 3 main gases in the room, and traces of others: oxygen, methane, and carbon dioxide. The methane is still seeping into the room, but the oxygen is not being replenished, so in time, pretty fast in this scenario, one would soon find it difficult to breathe, and eventually one would fall unconscious and suffocate.

Now apply this scenario to planet-scale...it is going to take years, but bear in mind that we only breathe oxygen, all other gases tend to be detrimental to our health and consciousness. Planet-wide, oxygen is being replenished, and as long as oxygen holds sway against the other gases, we can survive. The thing is, we have reduced the oxygen replenishment mechanisms on the planet. The seas acting as sinks for carbon dioxide are saturated, which is why we are seeing slight temperature variations around the globe. What we don't want is methane to be released into the atmosphere. It is a far stronger greenhouse gas, and takes oxygen out of the atmosphere leaving carbon dioxide.

Of course there are other gases, but we can't breathe them. The imperilment lies in the ratio of oxygen to other gases, particularly methane and carbon dioxide. Our life environment is just one layer in various layers of the atmosphere. From sea level to around 8000 metres, very much like a sealed room, only planet-size. The time it would take for methane to become the dominant atmospheric gas could take up to 2000 years, but extinctions of oxygen-breathing life forms would probably start occurring long before that.

What has been causing mass bird deaths? Did they fly into a dense methane bubble in the atmosphere, become unconscious and drop to the ground? Similar occurrences of large shoals of fish and marine mammal deaths, can we attribute these deaths to methane and carbon dioxide causes? If it becomes evidential that we can, then I would say we're in trouble. One would expect to see marine and flying animals suffer first as oxygen begins to lose its dominant ratio.

If we are only seeing methane release in the northern hemisphere, that alone would be a clue to man's direct influence, as the northern hemisphere has been the dominant industrial polluter. If methane release is occurring globally, then the cause may be more natural, with man's influence adding only slightly. Whatever is driving the release is not good, let's hope it abates.

GaryN
reply to post by Rezlooper

 

Once again, I'm not trying to create doom porn here.

Well you should do a little research first then.

I'm just trying to point out the obvious...something is off with mother nature. How do we explain the increase in these events;

Who says there has been an increase? An increase in detection as more and more exploration for oil and gas is performed is much more likely.


@dlbot

For me it is free energy let's get it. I'm really surprised we are not capturing this gas.

Some is captured off the California coast, not sure if it is at Coal Oil Point, but there are others too I think. Oil and methane seeps are found all over the world, and provide the food for organisms at the base of the food chain. Methane Munchers. In the Gulf of Mexico it is believed that without the seeps (500+ at last count) there would be much less life due to the lack of the small organisms the bigger ones feed on.

Coal Oil Point seep field

en.wikipedia.org...

edit on 31-10-2013 by GaryN because: bad link

Well, if you've paid attention or at least read most of my post, you'd see that I've been researching this since my original Dangerous Gas theory thread in December of 2012.

Who says there has been an increase? If your eyes are open, you would see, but obviously they are not. If it makes you feel any better to deny the obvious, then you go right on and continue to do so.

I've been posting links to websites and news stories over the past year that show increases.

The animal die offs here 2013 known mass die-offs

The website also has a page for all the 2012 die offs and the 2011 die offs. You can simply compare the drastic increase over the past three years. I go into percentages in my other threads. This past week between Oct. 25 to Oct. 31, there were only 9 die offs. That's a slow week. The week prior, Oct. 18-24, there were 23 die offs. That should be alarming...that's more than 3 known mass animal die-offs per day.

The site here tracks many things having to do with possible hydrogen sulfide or methane gas explosions and fires Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis

Let's take a look at one such event that's tracked...cars that just suddenly and for no apparent reason at all, burst into flames. Most of these aren't even running and sometimes parked inside a garage. They just erupt into flames. On October 29 alone, there were 10 car fires and on the 28th, there were 11. That's a lot of cars simply erupting into flames. Unfortunately, one of those car fires claimed four lives in NY on the 29th.

Mount Vernon blaze kills 4 residents

Startled awake at 3 a.m. on Tuesday by a small explosion outside his family’s apartment in Mount Vernon, N.Y., he quickly discovered that his brother’s car — parked only a few feet from their home — was on fire and that the flames were spreading to the two-story, multifamily house. He rushed to wake his brother, Jesus, 21, and his sister, Mariselis, 18, and the three fled before realizing that their parents, Alcedo, 60, and Nancy, 39, were trapped inside. The three ran back to rescue them. Only Raymundo would make it out alive."

Story states it remains unclear why the car erupted into flames but they suspect it was because of wiring in the car stereo. Maybe, maybe not. We can't rule out gases.

I've posted other sites such as the AMS site for tracking fireballs. For several months earlier this year I posted a thread here that tracked the sinkholes but I fell behind because of work...just got too busy.

After the past year of research...I'm convinced that these events are increasing and that it's not better communications or more population.

I've read most of your methane threads and am on board with your theories. I want to dig more deeply into the literature but for now these were Internet finds. I would like to know more about the signs we will see as this accelerates. I would also like to know precise measurements during other extinction level events to compare them with today. I'm so tired I probably missed that in this thread, and am unable to convert the data from the charts I'm finding. Will need to do that tomorrow or this weekend if no one else can provide.

Indeed they believe it will happen in one generation at the rate we are going.

arctic-news.blogspot.com...

Since July 2013 it has risen to 2571 ppb.

arctic-news.blogspot.com...


geology.gsapubs.org...

TextThe sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gases, and the scale of (historically) modern biotic change, makes it likely that we have entered a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in any previous Quaternary interglacial. The nearest parallels seem to be earlier episodes of high atmospheric pCO2 and global warming (e.g., Toarcian; the PETM), but the ice volumes then were small, and melting caused only modest sea-level rises (~20 m at the PETM, partly through thermal expansion; Speijer and Marsi, 2002; Speijer and Wagner, 2002). The mid-Pliocene, at 3 Ma, may be a closer analogue: atmospheric pCO2 levels may have reached 380 ppm, and the polar ice caps were somewhat smaller than present, with global sea level higher by 10–20 m (Dowsett et al., 1999; Dowsett, 2007).

www.mindfully.org...

The above article explains why the earth has not warmed more thus far. As of today the CO2 levels are just below 400 ppm.

I am seeing some pretty serious claims about this all over the place. It's not something to be ignored.

reply to post by elysiumfire


Great post Elysium, thanks for all the info. I have to think things are already happening just based on the amount of animal die-offs, both sudden and from disease outbreaks. There's a good chance that these birds and fish swam or flew into gas plumes (methane or hydrogen sulfide), as well as some of the land animals. For instance, the herd of elk in New Mexico a few weeks back. Over 100 elk died nearly at the same time, as best as anyone can know, and there were no known causes such as man, poisons, or disease.

But also, one must wonder why there is such an increase in drug-resistant bacterial infectious diseases and viruses that are becoming stronger, mutating. There are many cases of these disease outbreaks among humans as well as in the animal kingdom, which is another cause of all the die-offs. I've suggested that the methane levels are the cause, as microbial bacteria feed on the methane, and the more methane releasing it is becoming a feeding frenzy, and of course, what happens when they can feed more, the bacteria themselves flourish, which is affecting all different types of bacteria, not just methane munchers. This may also affect the viruses as well.

Unity_99
The methane is one of the biggest problems facing us if solutions aren't found.

Also the H2S.
I remember there being a "rotten egg smell" thread (a couple of them I believe) around/in California.

Navy sailors at sea to wear flame-resistant coveralls

Since I've posted about all the mysterious fires and explosions which I believe could be from plumes of methane and hydrogen sulfide gases, I find it kind of strange that the US Navy will now require all sailors at sea to wear flame-resistant coveralls. This will be the new uniform they wear at sea...at sea? Of all places, doesn't seem odd that they would be worried about flames?

In a joint message, the commanders of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets said that while major shipboard fires are uncommon, they can be dangerous or even fatal and the new coveralls can improve protection.

“We operate in an environment that contains inherent risks,” Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, said in a news release. “We are trying to make shipboard environments safer,” he said, adding that the coveralls will “help reduce the risk of injury aboard a ship.”

They even admit that on board fires are rare, but yet they are requiring their sailors to wear new outfits that are flame proof. In the Jumping Jack Flash website he states over and over again that most of these fires and explosions will occur near to the oceans or in land water areas where these gases come up from the hydrates.

We have to ask ourselves...Does the US Government know something we don't? Is the US Navy concerned about fires out over the open seas or at least, more fires on board their ships in the future, which they admit are currently rare?

This ongoing methane event signals the end of the line for humanity.

elysiumfire

Whatever is driving the release is not good, let's hope it abates.

It doesnt seem likely. The tipping point is when these methane clathrates begin to sublimate, which it seems they started doing several years ago. After that with our current technology, its just a matter of when it will happen, as in a major extinction event, not if.

To the other guy who asked how long we have: theres no way to tell for certain. Even if this is an event essentially exactly like the Permian one, each event will always be unique and different, and there are no time-tables that they must follow.

However if you want to use the Permian ME as a blueprint, if it took 13 years from trigger event to almost everything dead, then I guess we are ~6 years in, so have 7 left.

It could be more, if the methane clathrates sublimate relatively slowly ( but even so, what is fast or slow we cannot determine, having never witnessed this before), or it could be much quicker if there is some threshold point exists that once breached allows for a veritable explosion of methane into the atmosphere.

We are already seeing accelerating sublimation, which in turn to leads to more acceleration, until the point there is no more methane to sublimate.

Figures are constantly being revised downward with regards to when the climate will be done for. 2100... 2050... 2040? 2020?

The problem with predicting the arrival of a moving target that is experiencing acceleration is that the human brain isnt designed to do it. We experience linear time and are programmed in a hardware sense for prediction of events that follow a linear progression. While in linear time but observing a target changing position in an exponential fashion and not a linear one, the farther away that target is the exponentially less accurate the prediction usually is going to be.

Point being: a semi-accurate prediction will only usually be made very close to when that target traveling through time reaches our current location.

See how as we get closer and closer to the target, its estimated arrival time is reduced again and again?

Personally, Ill be surprised if humanity is still around in a decade.

Rezlooper:

I have to think things are already happening just based on the amount of animal die-offs, both sudden and from disease outbreaks.

You've made available some pretty good statistics. I'm not a doom-merchant nor a sensationalist, nor do I consider yourself to be one. The facts and figures are alarming enough. I wasn't aware for instance that the current observed methane releases are not small, one-off events, but are colossal in size and are continuous in their eruption into the atmosphere...if these methane eruptions were occurring world-wide on the scale in Northern Russia, extinction events would be happen within 20 years. That's how deadly this scenario is.

I would think it would be advantageous to view methane release like a volcano eruption. The longer it continues to erupt the more severe the potential for life imperilment. If we are seeing time-limited eruptions, the scenario is not that bad, the released methane can be dealt with by natural mechanism, but if it is continuous, the methane release would overwhelm the local environment.

For instance, the herd of elk in New Mexico a few weeks back. Over 100 elk died nearly at the same time, as best as anyone can know...

That is alarming. A land-based animal of that size succumbing to whatever caused their deaths in a group of that size definitely requires investigation. These are nomadic animals, they tend to move around a lot, would be interested to know what was the actual cause of death?

This is a link to a report on what the US might expect under a sudden climate change. For some reason unable to copy/paste on ipad and don't want to pull out the computer.

www.climate.org...

Basically wars for resources, extreme temperatures in both directions, and extreme weather. Global conflict and stiffer management of the masses.

TextNewest2 Now, human global warming is beginning to unlock a monstrous store of methane in the Arctic. A source that, in the worst case, could be many times the volume of the initial human emission. To this point, areas around the Arctic are now showing local methane levels above 1950 parts per billion with an ever-increasing frequency. The issue is of great concern to scientists, a number of which from NASA are now involved in an investigative study to unearth how large and damaging this methane beast is likely to become. (You can keep account of these methane spike regions in real time using the Methane Tracker Google app linked here. ) In late June and early July, Barrow Alaska showed two methane readings in excess of 1975 parts per billion. Sadly, this most recent methane spike is likely not to be an outlier.

robertscribbler.wordpress.com... r-of-troubling-spikes/

Text Already measurements along the Siberian shelf uncover enhanced methane release. In 2010 a Russian marine survey conducted more than 5000 observations of dissolved methane showing that more than 80% of East Siberian shelf bottom waters and more than 50% of surface waters are supersaturated with methane. Atmospheric methane levels (during glacial periods: 300–400 parts per billion; during interglacial periods: 600–700 ppb) have recently reached 1850 ppb – the highest in 400,000 years (see Figure 2b).

www.geoengineeringwatch.org...

The ocean floor is full of frozen methane at depths, if the ocean floor at this area were to start becoming warmer, due to change taking place beneath the ocean floor. In this area could cause release of methane.
Maybe there has been a change in the current in the water, such as the case of what the Gulf Oil Disaster caused in the Gulf Stream and what ever else.
Like said a underwater volcano.
If global warming were correct and the oceans released all the frozen methane on the bottom we would all die, just don't lite match if happens.

colddeadhands
Here's one for you....... All of the talk on here about oil and methane seeps being every where reminded me of what is happening all over my neighborhood. The big oil companies come in and drill wells under the guise of collecting methane, then they burn off the methane to get to the more profitable oil. Why not utilize both? What effect, if any, does burning the methane have on our environment?

Yea they use to just burn it off in Alaska as a junk, now the user it in part to power large generators to power harrp.
Are they still working on gas pipe line from, in Alaska?

reply to post by OOOOOO


Your reply made me think of Fukushima and earthquakes. Would that leak into cracks and cause heating? It would be difficult to find anything published on this I'm sure. It seems as if it could but that also is just my initial impression. Maybe it's too deep to be reached without a major splitting.

reply to post by Rezlooper



I always thought this would be a kinda feed back loop kinda thing. And this methane release could just get this party rolling. That sulfide thing makes for a dead ocean, and even more rotting organic material. Real and significant affects could began to be felt soon. Remember most living things on this planet exists only within a very narrow climate temperature range.

Ah s**t just when I was getting my social security check.

reply to post by Rezlooper


You should know that methane becomes combustible at 4% of atmosphere. That is 40,000,000 ppb. The current level of methane is 1700 ppb on average. How could this possibly be the cause of random mysterious fires? Maybe you could research the physics first.

reply to post by 4chi11e


So you think that flammable methane will not cause fires until the ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE is at 4%? LMAO. It isn't equally distributed, obviously. Derp.

reply to post by webedoomed


Why don't you move at the abandoned village near Fukushima, Sinse you claim there was no nuclear disaster, and zero people affected by it.

It is easy talking bs when your a$$ is safe, right?

Certainly from the ‘disaster’ perspective there was a financial disaster for the owners of the Fukushima plant. The plant overheated, suffered a core meltdown, and is now out of commission for ever. A financial disaster, but no nuclear disaster. - See more at: www.cfact.org...

Of course, only the money of the rich, matters anyway.

the rise of thyroid cancer in the population of japan doesn't matter...
www.japantoday.com...
the polluted sealife, in a Country mainly feeding from fish, no big deal right?
enenews.com...

reply to post by Rezlooper


Viruses are not comparable to bacteria and are not affected by atmospheric methane. Most bacteria strains are also unaffected by methane. There is almost zero possibility of correlation methane to disease. Feel free to look into it.

Mass animal deaths are a legitimate mystery. If you are interested in the subject, maybe you could look into why only one species at a time seems to be affected. If the cause of death is methane suffocation, there would be obvious signs of oxygen starvation. Is there evidence or not?

It's not that I mean to be rude by pointing out these flaws. Your understanding of reality is very inaccurate and I feel that anything you speculate about should be severely discounted.

The issue of large scale methane releases could be significant. The first thing needed is to define the known constants and variables. What is the volume of atmosphere, volume of methane, weight of atmosphere, weight of methane, volume and weight of methane clathrates, current temperature of local clathrates, clathrate temperature of sublimation, current known rate of sublimation, extrapolated rate of sublimation for past and future based on local temperature averages, effect of ppb methane on atmosphere temperature. Then, start a new thread based on science.

reply to post by JonnyMnemonic


Clathrates are located in under permafrost and continental shelves. Not random cars and warehouses. I didn't think that needed explaining DERP.