One of the regular alarm stories that comes from the global warming machine is that atmospheric methane with soon run amok and cause a tipping point. We are regularly treated to scare stories like this one from The Guardian on November 27th, 2012:
UN: methane released from melting ice could push climate past tipping point
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
The United Nations sounded a stark warning on the threat to the climate from methane in the thawing permafrost as governments met for the second day of climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
Thawing permafrost releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, but this has not yet been included in models of the future climate. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere at present and is estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon – twice the amount currently in the atmosphere. As it thaws, it could push global warming past one of the key “tipping points” that scientists believe could lead to runaway climate change.
Note the word “could” in the last sentence. That comes from models, not observations. Note also this scary quote:
Doha conference is warned that climate models do not yet take account of methane in thawing permafrost
So how do the IPCC methane models stack up against reality? Not so hot…
Clearly, nature isn’t cooperating with IPCC science as atmospheric methane trends have fallen well below even the lowest range of all the IPCC scenarios. The First Assessment Report (FAR) projection has methane at 5 times the current value, and each subsequent IPCC report lowered the projection by about half each time, and they still missed it. Once again, observations trump models. Add this to the other bombshell graph from the same chapter and you have to wonder how the AGW issue continues to have any traction.
But that won’t stop scare stories like the ones below from appearing, because as we’ve noted, alarmists aren’t good at assimilating new contrary factual data in a way that mutes their zeal in spreading the alarm.
Here’s one from a couple of years ago, where naturally occurring methane from decomposition gets ignited by an activist, and Dan Miller at Berkeley turns that into climate alarm:
And yet, despite these alarming stories, according to the IPCC report showing observations versus the models in figure 1.7, atmospheric methane concentration isn’t accelerating, nor is it currently within the forecast bounds of any of the IPCC climate models.
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Oh No: We’re doomed! Quick – set fire to them so they can turn into CO2 fast! Oh wait… not that!
I always laugh when I read alarmist drivel which states things like “…methane, a gas 20 times as harmful as carbon dixoide…”!! At ~1800ppBILLION/v, and flattening out, I won’t be worrying any time soon. If alarmists are now worried about CH4 (And one alarmist I talked to once said CH4 had “…four carbons…”) then they should remove termites and healthy forests.
Hydrogen and Helium do not stay in our atmosphere as gases. They are light and they float up and away into the never-never.
Methane is a light gas, about half way between Helium and Oxygen. For comparison, at Standard Temperature and Pressure, expressed in gram per litre, we have densities of –
Helium 0.18; methane molecular 0.71; Oxygen molecular 1.42.
As a first assumption, methane should float away also, but it is reactive and I do not know its chemical rate of conversion at different temperatures, pressures, light irradiation, catalysis if present and in unspecified surroundings. I guess nobody else is really sure either. Maybe some runs the gauntlet of atmospheric chemistry and floats away. Anyone know?
However, I would think it extremely hard to assign a confident mechanistic significance to the concentrations in the above graph of about 1.8 parts per million, in the context of global change.
I watched the video… I wasn’t alarmed. In fact, I laughed!
These guys are hilarious! Light it! Yeah! WooHoo!
So just out of curiosity, what do they think Natural Gas is? Are they completely unaware that it used to vent, uncontrolled, from various places around the planet in very large quantities until we started locating it, capping it, and distributing it for useful purposes?
That video looks like a great opportunity – NOT for alarm – but for the oil and gas exploration industry.
I forgot to add that an analytical chemist reporting a methane measurement uncertainty of under 1.5 ppb at 1,800 ppb tota in the test tubel, will go blind through repetitive exercise of the hand that holds the tube. (\sarc off).
“20 times as harmful as carbon dioxide” ,,, I have a collection of absorb/emit charts and can’t see any significant methane levels. Anyone got a link for this please. I can post a link to a NASA paper that shows CO2 has nearly 4,000 emission lines centered around 15 microns, never mind all the other CO2 bands THAT ARE ONLY EFFECTIVE WHEN THE SUN SHINES.
Please Dan Miller, Scientists with English as a first language note the spelling “Arctic” and do not pronounce as “Artic”.
Would you please decsribe a plausible scenario in which the oceans become anoxic? If you cannot, please don’t mention it.
Lastly, is Chemistry a subject still taught at University level? Much of what we hear is Elementary, or worse, wrong elementary.
Another one of these methane stories (in the lead up to DOHA) was here:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/where-even-the-earth-is-melting-20121127-2a5tp.html
Rampant scaremongering, with a poll after the article instantly asking the reader if they were scared or not.
I’ve felt that this year with DOHA it was only the most hard left media outlets that tried to once again ramp up the doomsday scenarios.
Where would the alarmists be without their scaremongering? Hysterical predictions of imminent doom that turn out to have no substance and disappear like the morning mist only to be replaced by more scaremongering. Be afraid of the future, the future is a very scary place, change your ways and dont stop to think about it, feel guilty and feel insecure. A very useful political tool for those without the moral integrity that would prevent normal people from using it, its all in a good cause right? The road to hell paved with good intentions and lined with those who tried and failed and yet still people try and try again to walk that road, it must be a very crowded old road.
The ends justify the means right? Lie and cheat your way to a brave new world and when there the architects can shrug off the moral corruption that built it like an unwanted coat or so they have conned themselves into believing. People who use lies and deceptions to serve their own ends often deceive themselves that they can sink to the depths of moral depravity and somehow find their way back out of that sewer with a clean soul not realising that once you lower yourself into that abyss there is no coming out of it at all let alone clean. Perhaps the real socially learned truth of the ‘devil’ and his works comes in the form of a false temptation in all of us that using those methods gets quick and easy results with no negative consequences, a folk warning passed down in the only way our ancestors knew how.
This alarmist scare story is so stupid because:
1. Natural gas (methane) has been escaping from deeply buried gas and coal deposits for tens of millions of years, whatever the Earth’s surface temperature is, this rate of escape will not change.
2. Almost all the methane trapped in permafrost areas was deposited/created there by decomposing vegetation since the end of the last ice age, circa 10,000 years ago.
3. During the last ice age, our planet’s higher latitudes areas were: i) either scoured clean by glaciers, or ii) because of their much higher elevation (compared to the then prevailing sea level) exposed to much higher levels of erosion.
So, almost all this methane was created by decomposing vegetation less than 10,000 years old, which in turn was created from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, also in the last 10,000 years.
Are there any indications of this supposedly huge amount of carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere overe the past 10,000 years?
Answer: Absolutely none.
Conclusion: Typical alarmist BS.
Surely if methane, or any gas, was bubbling up through the sea-water any ship at that place would sink. The density of the water gas mixture would be too low to support flotation. Would this not be the real hazard, not the approach of some tipping point.
When ever I hear that term I think of a group of COP delegates finishing off their postprandial ports, pretending to be in deep discussion, while ignoring the waiter and the bill in his hand, hoping that some other more generously subsidised associate will cough up for both bill and gratuity
CH4 rate of Thermal dissociation?… Electron dissociation imposed by magnetosphere density created changes adapted with increases in the influx of cosmic rays?
How much of time period dependent CH4 that has escaped into the atmosphere remains as a trace feature of the atmosphere?
I don’t know what it means to pass muster is but these UN flunkies apparently don’t know either.
Why did the Methan survive the Minoan and Roman warming period? (and the polar bears of course too)
A question they can’t answer
i like my climate fiction over easy
but the best i’ve ever gotten
is a scrambled narrative that’s over-ripe
and over-wroughten…
-mr.sugar
So if the permafrost didn’t release methane and decaying organic matter continued to decay and add to the permafrost then, call me simple, but eventually all the free carbon on the planet would become trapped in permafrost and we’d be doomed, and the lack of CO2 would not only stop organic life but would cause massive cooling. Little puppy dogs and pussy cats would all be dead.
It’s too horrid to contemplate. I hope methane continues to vent.
Bill Irvine says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Surely if methane, or any gas, was bubbling up through the sea-water any ship at that place would sink. The density of the water gas mixture would be too low to support flotation. Would this not be the real hazard, not the approach of some tipping point.
Yes in theory
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20031020/methane.html
But no proof just modelling 🙂
Another thought just occurred to me.
Methane obviously oxidises in our atmosphere to carbon dioxide and water, but how long does this process take?
Answer: About 8.5 years. See link below:
Also, CH4 has a mass of 16, while CO2 has a mass 44. So, if all the methane in the atmosphere today was suddenly oxidised, then the CO2 level would increase by: 1.75 x 16/44 = 0.64ppm.
Current CO2 levels are around 394ppm, so this would represent an increase of 0.16% – hmm, that’s scary.
So just for fun, let’s say this alarmist BS was correct and suddenly 10 times the amount of all the CH4 currently in the atmosphere was suddenly released from permafrost areas, this would ultimately increase CO2 levels by around 1.6%.
Here, the point is we are dealing with a gas CH4, which has a miniscule concentration of 1.75ppm in our atmosphere and which completely oxidises away over a period of about eight years.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=methane%20oxidation%20rate%20atmosphere%20earth&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CGAQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.washington.edu%2Fjaegle%2F558%2Fox_capacity.pdf&ei=WyzQUOr5JseP0AWHkIHgDA&usg=AFQjCNHgZUeintTcP32Sfsd8kGaC_pkHZw
“”Bill Irvine says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:59 pm “”
Hmm… I remember reading about this effect many years ago when I lived in South Africa. It was suggested that methane bubbles sank the SS Waratah.
As someone who is not as confidently skeptical as most of the visitors here, I find that graph to be a big releif!
It’s interesting that the colors in this chart descend in the same order as the four assesment reports with the observations on the bottom — certianly suggests confirmation bias or possibly an agenda.
What you have forgotten is that flatulent termites will breed expontentially when the missing heat is bubbles to the surface (thank goodness for that Nobel Laueate Trenberth!). You will then witness a large increase in methane which will then match the projections.
This chart is obviously not final as AR4 projections would have to match the observation in 2007 as that is the starting point. And for those who wish to pile on, I’m not saying the AR4 projections are accurate, but simply that this chart cannot be representative.
Oops, I got the maths wrong – just like a climate scientist.
But unlike a climate scientist, I admit I was wrong.
If all the methane currently in the atmosphere were to oxidise, the CO2 level would increase by 1.75 x 44/16 = 4.8ppm; that’s a scary 1,2%.
My apologies.
Amazing how models which cannot get within shooting distance of the correct temperature can somehow predict the tipping points of a chaotic non-linear system with several hundred mutually dependent variables.