The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: rangerrebew on August 11, 2023, 11:09:01 am
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Oceans Retain Methane: New ‘Nature’ Study Finds Very Little Danger Of Methane Reaching Surface
By P Gosselin on 9. August 2023
A Nature study finds there’s very little risk that global warming would lead to more methane escaping from the oceans into the atmosphere.
Global warming alarmists have often used the scenario of increased methane in the atmosphere accelerating warming and climatic change.
But a recent study appearing in Nature, Negligible atmospheric release of methane from decomposing hydrates in mid-latitude oceans, dumps a lot cold water on this scenario. This is good news, which unfortunately the media refused to report.
At the bottom of the sea, there are large deposits of naturally occurring methane hydrate. There’s a fear that these ice-like deposits could melt and be released into the atmosphere if the oceans warmed. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. The researchers looked at the concentration and natural radiocarbon content of methane dissolved in the water column from the seafloor to the sea surface at seep fields along the US Atlantic and Pacific margins.
No methane reached the surface
https://notrickszone.com/2023/08/09/oceans-retain-methane-new-nature-study-finds-very-little-danger-of-methane-reaching-surface/
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Just my thoughts on this, but I find it more likely that those hydrates would be released during an Ice Age, when the hydrostatic pressure exerted by the oceans is reduced along with sea level as the continental ice sheets accumulate and spread.
During the last glacial maximum for instance, Sea Level was about 400 ft. lower, and I'm not sure the 176 psi or so lower would have made a critical difference in the stability of the hydrates.
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Their measurements revealed no evidence of seep CH4 reaching surface waters when the water-column depth is greater than 430 ± 90 m. “Gas hydrates exist only at water depths greater than ~550 m in this region, suggesting that the source of methane escaping to the atmosphere is not from hydrate decomposition,” the authors add.
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Methane is a naturally occurring fact of life in our universe. It exists in liquid and frozen forms on planets and their moons. It existed well before humans evolved. It's nothing new. Stop losing sleep over it.
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In the end, Doom is inevitable; so, worrying about it is a waste of time and resources.
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Just my thoughts on this, but I find it more likely that those hydrates would be released during an Ice Age, when the hydrostatic pressure exerted by the oceans is reduced along with sea level as the continental ice sheets accumulate and spread.
During the last glacial maximum for instance, Sea Level was about 400 ft. lower, and I'm not sure the 176 psi or so lower would have made a critical difference in the stability of the hydrates.
Which suggests that this is part of the long-term geologic scale climate self-regulation - the methane stays locked in the seabed, regardless of water temperature, until there is a sufficient freeze that a significant amount of ocean water becomes ice on land, at which point the methane is released due to the decrease in water pressure and, once released, helps to re-warm the atmosphere to counteract the ice age that led to the freeze in the first place. The released methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere forever, however, because it ultimately gets broken down into CO2 and water vapor.
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Which suggests that this is part of the long-term geologic scale climate self-regulation - the methane stays locked in the seabed, regardless of water temperature, until there is a sufficient freeze that a significant amount of ocean water becomes ice on land, at which point the methane is released due to the decrease in water pressure and, once released, helps to re-warm the atmosphere to counteract the ice age that led to the freeze in the first place. The released methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere forever, however, because it ultimately gets broken down into CO2 and water vapor.
That was my figuring.
Considering there have been multiple glacial Epochs and interglacial periods just since the Cambrian, some sort of self-regulating mechanism is likely present to prevent "Iceball Earth".
The Methane Hydrates are my first and best suspect. The more ice cover, the higher the albedo, so some other mechanism than raw variations in insolation would likely be present, and at the point where ocean levels were reduced enough, the Methane Hydrates would become unstable and de-gas, providing a mechanism for warming independent of surface absorption of energy, and reversing the glaciation.
Incidentally, that is why I am not in favor of using those same Methane Hydrates as an energy source.
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That was my figuring.
Considering there have been multiple glacial Epochs and interglacial periods just since the Cambrian, some sort of self-regulating mechanism is likely present to prevent "Iceball Earth".
The Methane Hydrates are my first and best suspect. The more ice cover, the higher the albedo, so some other mechanism than raw variations in insolation would likely be present, and at the point where ocean levels were reduced enough, the Methane Hydrates would become unstable and de-gas, providing a mechanism for warming independent of surface absorption of energy, and reversing the glaciation.
Incidentally, that is why I am not in favor of using those same Methane Hydrates as an energy source.
:thumbsup: