Arctic methane emergency called off?

Things burying AGW seem to be emerging on an almost daily basis now – taking studies such as this and media into account. It gives the sense of a long suppressed protest of dissent starting to emerge.

Most of the Alarmists don’t care how wrong or absurd they are; they just shout loudly in the hope of attracting attention, funds, and creating some action (whatever it is).
We’ll be able to test AMEG in about 7 months or so. They state:
“Climate extremes are all too apparent resulting in food prices rising ominously towards a level which could put over a billion people into starvation next year and provoke food riots all over the world.’
and
“What is happening will seriously impact food, agriculture and the insurance industry in 2013,”

Like the approach of this guy: Georg Delisle – permafrost expert – pulls no punches
“…it is utter imbecility to suppose that the entire permafrost could thaw out by the end of the century. It would take thousands of years.”
His study ‘Near-surface permafrost degradation: How severe during the 21st century?’ was the basis for his presentation.
From http://notrickszone.com/2012/12/01/permafrost-far-more-stable-than-claimed-german-expert-calls-danger-of-it-thawing-out-utter-imbicility/
Geoscientist and permafrost expert Georg Delisle from Hanover presented his research.
He studied time periods from the last 10,000 years when the global temperature was warmer than today for several thousand years by as much as 6°C. Ice cores that had been extracted from Antarctica and Greenland provide exact information about the composition of the atmosphere during these warm periods.
His conclusion: ‘The ice cores from both Greenland and Antarctica provide no indication of any elevated release of greenhouse gases at any time even though back then a deep thawing of the permafrost when compared to today would have been the case.’
http://donnerunddoria.welt.de/files/2012/11/2007GL029323.pdf

The mind boggles at the number of deluded people who think that catastrophe is right around the corner. How in he#$ do these people think that the Earth has reached its benign environment after 4.6 billion years if there were such lethal traps everywhere?

REPLY: I’m not talking about marine sources such as clathrates, I’m talking about earthen sources. Decomp = methane. They point out decomp sped up initially, then leveled off as plant systems started to manage better.
Unless of course you want to refute this headline story too: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/27/501221/arctic-methane-release-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/?mobile=nc
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So rather than admit that your post grossly misrepresents Sistla et al, you divert me to a realclimate-written post that confirms that Arctic methane releases will play a significant role in climate evolution, even if sudden enormous releases of methane are unlikely.

REPLY: My view comes from the way methane has been portrayed in the Arctic. There are numerous essays which suggest methane will be released from tundra. One of the problems in the use of the word “carbon” is it is often shorthand for carbon dioxide or for methane, they don’t make that clear. I read it as a combination of CO2 and methane from soil decomp. For example here’s a story about an NSF press release where Carbon and Methane are used interchangeably in the Arctic. From Think Progress

Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane. Methane is is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!
The carbon is locked in a freezer in the part of the planet warming up the fastest (see “Tundra 4: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss“). Half the land-based permafrost would vanish by mid-century on our current emissions path (see “Tundra, Part 2: The point of no return” and below).

Here’s what the NSF says (much like what Nic Stokes says):

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material (which contains carbon) stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under anaerobic conditions, gradually releases methane.

I’ve long been exposed to this idea, and that is what I thought was going on here since they artificially elevated temperatures. I just recent ran a critique of a story in the Guardian where we talking about how if surface vegetation is disturbed/removed, we end up with the permafrost below it melting which leads to decomp and methane release. In this study, they point out how a 2 degree warming was “expected” to cause issues like this, but instead the vegetation responded favorably, against their expectations.
Now I don’t defer the possibility that I could be wrong, but at the same time I’ll point out that when press releases and news stories are written, when “carbon” is used, it should be made perfectly which form of “carbon” they are talking about. From my perspective, the word “carbon” as shorthand for CO2/Methane in the Arctic needs to be clarified in many places.
Of course it would also help if Science would stop paywalling everything (including those studies done in California where I pay taxes to make it possible, where they should be public domain) so only those with perceived unlimited funds (feeding at the government trough – You and Nick for example) can read the papers. I went to UCSB looking for it, and was denied access. Of course if I had access to the paper, it may have clarified the issue to the point where it was clear that “Carbon” was not shorthand for Methane/CO2 in this case.
Next time there’s a story here at WUWT or elsewhere where “carbon” is used as shorthand, I’ll expect you to complain to the authors. Something tells me you won’t though, because your demonstrated holier than thou critical commentary is always one way.
-Anthony