Gosh, it’s that “methane ‘splode” again. This time the Guardian makes an easily testable hypothesis emblazoned in the headlines that we’ll be sure to remind them of in two years.
Even Gavin Schmidt is panning this one, see below. From the University of Cambridge
Cost of Arctic methane release could be ‘size of global economy’ warn experts
Economic modelling shows that the methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars — the size of the world economy in 2012
Researchers have warned of an “economic time-bomb” in the Arctic, following a ground-breaking analysis of the likely cost of methane emissions in the region.
Writing in a Comment piece in the journal, Nature, academics argue that a significant release of methane from thawing permafrost in the Arctic could have dire implications for the world’s economy. The researchers, from Cambridge and Rotterdam, have for the first time calculated the potential economic impact of a scenario some scientists consider increasingly likely – that methane from the East Siberian Sea will be emitted as a result of the thaw.
This constitutes just a fraction of the vast reservoirs of methane in the Arctic, but scientists believe that the release of even a small proportion of these reserves could trigger possibly catastrophic climate change. According to the new assessment, the emission of methane below the East Siberian Sea alone would also have a mean global impact of 60 trillion dollars.
The ground-breaking Comment piece was co-authored by Gail Whiteman, from Erasmus University; Chris Hope, Reader in Policy Modelling at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge; and Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.
“The global impact of a warming Arctic is an economic time-bomb”, Whiteman, who is Professor of sustainability, management and climate change at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), said.
Wadhams added: “The imminent disappearance of the summer sea ice in the Arctic will have enormous implications for both the acceleration of climate change, and the release of methane from off-shore waters which are now able to warm up in the summer. This massive methane boost will have major implications for global economies and societies.”
Most discussion about the economic implications of a warming Arctic focuses on benefits to the region, with increased oil-and-gas drilling and the opening up of new shipping routes that could attract investments of hundreds of billions of dollars. However, the effects of melting permafrost on the climate and oceans will be felt globally, the authors argue.
Applying an updated version of the modelling method used in the UK government’s 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and currently used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the authors calculate the global consequences of the release of 50 gigatonnes of methane over a decade from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea.
“The methane release would bring forward the date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees C by between 15 and 35 years,” said Chris Hope. “In the absence of climate-change mitigation measures, the PAGE09 model calculates that it would increase mean global climate impacts by $60 trillion.”
If other impacts such as ocean acidification are factored in, the cost would be much higher. Some 80% of these costs will be borne by developing countries, as they experience more extreme weather, flooding, droughts and poorer health, as Arctic warming affects climate.
The research also explored the impact of a number of later, longer-lasting or smaller pulses of methane, and the authors write that, in all these cases, the economic cost for physical changes to the Arctic is “steep”.
The authors write that global economic institutions and world leaders should “kick-start investment in rigorous economic modelling” and consider the impacts of a changing Arctic landscape as far outweighing any “short-term gains from shipping and extraction”.
They argue that economic discussions today are missing the big picture on Arctic change. “Arctic science is a strategic asset for human economies because the region drives critical effects in our biophysical, political and economic systems,” write the academics. Neither the World Economic Forum nor the International Monetary Fund currently recognise the economic danger of Arctic change.
According to Whiteman, “Global leaders and the WEF and IMF need to pay much more attention to this invisible time-bomb. The mean impacts of just this one effect — $60 trillion — approaches the $70-trillion value of the world economy in 2012.”
Gavin Schmidt says:
He goes on to say:
Translation: bunk.
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue
Related: this paper in Nature from the U.S. Geological Survey and Woods Hole last week:
Nature puts methane hydrate fears to rest – says it will be 1,000 years before they make any impact
Good thing the arctic has been cooling for the last few years.
Chris Hope, Reader in Policy Modelling at Cambridge Judge Business School,
“Reader in Policy Modelling”?
Is that a job?
What’s a “Judge Business School”?
Who pays Chris to do what?
cn
Experts in the field of Chicken Little and rapidly descending skies.
The methane myth finds it’s origine in the Greenland ice cores, where the heavy isotope spikes of the Younger Dryas are accompagnied by similar spikes in atmospheric methane. At that time it was thought that there was a 10 degrees temp change within a decade. Global temperatures of the Younger Dryas however are down nowadays, lacking substantiating evidence from other geologic records, especially in the southern hemisphere were there is little evidence of spectacular temperature changes.
But as the methane concentration is a global feature, why this assymmetry? It does not make sense. So there is no consistent evidence that the methane caused the heavy isotope spikes in the Greenland ice cores. And hence there is no grounds to declare methane the most demonic gas.
Wasn’t the Arctic supposed to be ice free this year? So “they” have just moved the goal posts again…
What is Gavin talking about? I mean, this is a peer reviewed article in Nature, right? Is the guy anti science or something?
…
You know, it felt good to be able to say that for a change. :p
The prior interglacial, the Eamian, is generally agreed to have an ice free arctic and far north temperatures 5 degrees C higher than now, No methane pulse.
There was another peer review paper recently discounting this notion. I think because of the Eamian evidence.
We (Canada) did have dinosaurs all the way to the edge of the northern Canadian land mass – and they thrived. This guys gets paid for junk like this? Heck I can come up with utter rubbish for nothing.
Is someone afraid that someone else gets more grants?
There is a saying somewhere: “Only a thief is afraid of a thief”
There’s a comment about methane and matches that could be made here. Too much?
Quick! Somebody burn that methane for power generation before it hurts somebody!
………..by between 15 and 35 years,”
rotfl…..
Same old same old.
It is a truism that newspapers generate or promote a series of moral and other panics in order to sell newspapers, and intelligent readers must have realised this for years.
The Grauniad is supposed to appeal to such people – they must see through each new catastrophe call, no matter how loyal they are to their rag of choice.
I actually like the BBC, but still despise its partisan position on cAGW and deprecate its news and documentary coverage of science.
Life is much more complicated than politicians would like people to believe, and simplistic binary divisions such as Left / Right are hardly ever sufficient. I find that it is often necessary to hold several seemingly contradictory views at once.
The article is not a scientific paper in the Nature format article or letter, its a comment and does only speculate what will happen if the 50 Gt methane may be lost in the air, starting two years from now. This is certainly in the same league as the World bank report on “what will happen if the world warms with 4°C”. It is basically yet another plea for more money to model what may happen if….
Chris Hope, Reader in Policy Modelling at Cambridge Judge Business School,
“Reader in Policy Modelling”?
Is that a job?
What’s a “Judge Business School”?
Who pays Chris to do what?
cn
In long-established UK universities Readers are senior to Lecturers and junior to Professors. In North America, where grade inflation has made almost every university teacher a Professor or Assistant Professor Readers would probably be classed as Professors.
The Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge is named after its founder, who is called Judge.
@UnfrozenCavemanMD is correct, clearly we must harvest Arctic methane ASAP.
This stuff is always written in the future tense, never the present.
My guess is that Gavin tries to come across as a “long term alarmist” and debunk the testable short term prognoses; so that he can continue fiddling up GISS year after year into the indefinite future.
( which he does: http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/really-giss-dishonesty-continues-in-post-hansen-era/ )
His reason is clear: As long as the illusion of rising temperatures can be maintained, NASA, his employer, makes 1.2 bn USD a year with the Global Warming scare:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/FY12-climate-fs.pdf
The problem is that this is a free ride for all those yapping about imminent catastrophes. A free ride in terms of responsibility, that is. Would they agree to be charged with crimes against humanity if their “certainties” fail to materialize? This is not a flippant option considering they are demanding that humanity (the entire species) re-engineer civilization as we know it… ok, the demand IS flippant.
Implausible for Schmidt but not implausible enough for the Guardian…
This is what happens when you get Nutticelli around…
This is looking more and more like Custer’s last stand.
From the Q&A in the Guardian article, this:
“Our global emissions trajectory is already on track to breach 2C in coming decades. What does a 2C world imply for the Arctic melt and the potential for methane release?
We are already in a 2C world in terms of the heating potential of carbon dioxide that we have already put into the atmosphere.”
Let’s see… we’ve raised CO2 from 280ppm to 400ppm.
That’s a 43% increase, or 0.51 doublings.
For 0.51 doublings to cause 2C of warming implies a climate sensitivity of 3.89.
Alarmist enough?
Didn’t stop Science Daily from prominently displaying it
Don’t worry, this is just to set the stage to blame increasing methane in the atmosphere on YOU, the foolish consumer, instead of the gas fracking industry, which is already spilling methane into the air from drill site leaks and poor site maintenance. Nothing to see here.
Prof Wadhams seems to have produced a wad of… whatever.
The authors write that global economic institutions and world leaders should “kick-start investment in rigorous economic modelling”
No need to say anymore.
In what sense is this alarmist BS “groundbreaking”? I seem to remember reading about it multiple times before. Imagine a catastrophic event (eg Australian Plate movement speeding up to 10 m per day), then run up a simulation of economic cost.Gee-whizzikers! Be very afraid.
RobertInAz says:
July 24, 2013 at 2:29 pm
The prior interglacial, the Eamian, is generally agreed to have an ice free arctic and far north temperatures 5 degrees C higher than now, No methane pulse.
There was another peer review paper recently discounting this notion. I think because of the Eamian evidence.
—————————–
WUWT had a good discussion on the research which found that at least one part of the Arctic might have been colder during the generally much warmer Eemian than now.
IMO climate science could do with more research & less GIGO modeling. Maybe this study has been conducted, but I’d like to know for instance what share of methane-bearing permafrost is older than the Eemian, ie formed during glacial phases before 130 kya, how much dates from the last Wisconsin glaciation & how much has formed during the last half or quarter of the Holocene, as the world has cooled.
I wish these guys knew history.
It was warmer for longer periods in the Holocene and there was no major arctic methane release. Kindergarten stuff for idiots.
Time taken for permafrost to reach depth
Time (yr) Permafrost depth
1 ______4.44 m (14.6 ft)
350 _____79.9 m (262 ft)
3,500 219.3 m (719 ft)
35,000 461.4 m (1,514 ft)
100,000 567.8 m (1,863 ft)
225,000 626.5 m (2,055 ft)
775,000 687.7 m (2,256 ft)
Mark Bofill says:
July 24, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Nah. Not peer reviewed but “Commentary” in Nature.
It’s being misrepresented as a paper (by lies of omission) all over so easy mistake to make.
A peer reviewed paper debunked this particular climaxtrophy fearporn recently.
Apart from the fact that this was debunked a while ago, and there is no evidence that there is any more methane released, or due to be released, than there ever has been in the past (sorry, cannot remember the article), this is classic spin:
So:
1. Ocean acidification (or being made very slightly less caustic) is somehow affecting “more extreme weather, flooding, droughts and poorer health”? I know it does not actuall say that, but it is strongly implied.
2. “80% of these costs will be borne by developing countries, as they experience more extreme weather, flooding, droughts …” What? How does climate change auto-magically ‘know’ which countries are developing and which are ‘developed’, and therefore cause them to experience more of these (assumed) effects? The reality is. of course, that those ‘eeevil’ people who burn ‘eeevil’ fossil fuels, and are thus richer (aka more developed countries), can more easily withstand the (normal) vagaries of climate.
So much BS in just one paragraph.
Kevin Trenberth himself, single-handedly, is more likely to “trigger costs as high as the value of the entire world’s GDP” …. just by trying to pretend that his career wasn’t all nincompoopery.
Fortunately, neither will happen. It’s still a scary thought though.
Didn’t the Canadians do an experiment lasting 20 years using greenhouses in the tundra area and found there was no release of methane? But there was new growth.
Or have I misremembered?
Where have I seen this kind of rubbish before? Mmmmmm.
What happened to the methane of the past? Catastrophic runaway non-warming Arctic non-amplification mechanism?
In case you missed them here are a whole bunch of papers debunking this stupid scare.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/category/methane/
In two years time we could have a similar headline.
Wacky Wadhams really, really believes in Serreze’s “arctic death spiral”, and also in absolutely boffo geongineering schemes to cool the planet “before it’s too late”.
Oh well, another prediction that will fail. I can tell you that.
I already have got one prediction right. I have also predicted the next 18 months or so but……. who is the slighest bit interested in predictions?
I am so looking forward to 2015
Jimbo says:
July 24, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Ojala!
With so many mainstream media outlets folding, it’s not an impossible dream.
Nobody light a match!
Two years! How stupid can you get? What, pray, could we even complete the planning stages for in 2 years. Chris, my boy, you have blown any chance for getting funding for studying warming impacts that will arrive that fast – and you pretend to be an economic policy specialist- Gor Blimey. At least factor in a gestation period of a dozen years ago before the models start screaming.
I’ve had a theory that when the iron curtain came down, a malignant flock of very doctrinaire socialists were turned loose, worked their way into world organizations, well funded wild life and other eco groups, professorships in world universities and teacher’s training colleges and rising to the top as an alternative method of winning the world over to socialism. However, I forgot that there have been more committed socialists come out of Cambridge than out of the Eastern Block as a whole. How could anyone expect these guys to accept falsification of their models, when they give allegiance to the biggest falsified model of all times – their own ideology.
There will come a time when these days will be known as the era when models almost conquered the world. Ya know, I used to be able to make a goose call with a small, thin-walled wooden box, a lid pinned at one end, a piece of bakelite glued at the end opposite the pin. A little rosin on the bakelite and when you scraped the lid across, it squawked like a Canada goose. This model even fooled the geese but it had little to do with reality. I think this is an analogue of what most of these models are like.
// Begin Sarcasm //
Oh, but I believe it, just like I believe the Y2K bug will get us any day now, if it’s printed, it MUSH be true.
// End Sarcasm //
The Guardian’s circulation is worse than we previously thought. It is now down the toilet, almost like an inverse hockey stick. I actually give them 5 year or less before they fold.
—————–
The Arctic death spiral is finally here.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old_icecover.uk.php
More alarmism.
How about millions of lives have been saved by coal, oil and natural gas? (ambulance fuel, electricity in hospitals, transportation of goods to supermarkets etc, etc.)
“The mean impacts of just this one effect — $60 trillion — approaches the $70-trillion value of the world economy in 2012.”
“Some 80% of these costs will be borne by developing countries.”
How on earth can anyone give such vacuous stupidity any credence whatsoever?
Speaking of ridiculous:
Watch US heat up by 2100: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-video-watch-us-heat-2100-221440308.html
OMG! The North Pole….has a melt pool: http://news.yahoo.com/north-pole-melted-again-221704292.html
Yahoo is in rare form today.
Mark Bofill says:
July 24, 2013 at 2:25 pm
What is Gavin talking about? I mean, this is a peer reviewed article in Nature, right? Is the guy anti science or something?
=================
clearly this establishes that peer review is not in any way an indication of “truth”. peer review only establishes that the “sums were done correctly”. like a second accountant checking that the books add up.
What peer review does not do is to audit the books. To check that the numbers in the books are the same amounts as on the receipts and invoices. Yes, the books add up, but the numbers on the books are NOT the same numbers as the original documents.
In accounting it is called “cooking the books”, “creative accoutning”, “fraud”. In the world or political correctness it is called “climate science”.
Gixxerboy says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:17 pm
“Some 80% of these costs will be borne by developing countries.”
=================
No problem, the developing countries such as China and India are the ones with the money.
The US and the rest of the developed world are so far in debt that they need to take out a loan just to pay the interest on what they already owe. Next year they will need another load, to pay the interest on the loan they took out to pay the interest on the original debt.
You can hardly expect the developed countries to pay the cost, they are broke.
methane from the East Siberian Sea will be emitted as a result of the thaw
=================
perfect. put it in a pipeline and sell it to Europe and Asia. The Chinese are looking for ways to cut pollution from coal power plants. The EU needs some cheap energy to replace their far too expensive windmills and solar panels to help them compete with the US methane from fracking.
One person looks at a problem and sees disaster. Another looks at the problem and sees opportunity.
methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars
================
with good marketing and descent distribution you might even get more selling the gas to an energy hungry world. after all, 60 trillion isn’t what it used to be. in a few decades it might not even buy a cup of coffee.
it isn’t only The Guardian? it’s the entire CAGW-ennabling MSM. u can locate the links simply by searching the headlines:
BBC: Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs
Fox: Climate sticker shock: Arctic thaw could cost $60 trillion
Scientific American: Arctic Methane Release Could Cost Economy $60 Trillion
New Scientist: Huge methane belch in Arctic could cost $60 trillion
Fairfax Media, Australia: Arctic methane release could cost $US60 trillion: Nature
Murdoch Media Australia (from Agence France Presse): Arctic methane release would cost planet $60 trillion, scientists warn
CNN: Climate sticker shock: Arctic thaw could cost $60 trillion
CNBC: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study
Reuters: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study
PLUS all the online crowd, incl Town Hall, Christian Science Monitor, etc etc.
how could i leave out Bloomberg?
25 July: Bloomberg: Sally Bakewell: Arctic Ice-Melt Cost Seen Equal to Year of World Economic Output
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/arctic-ice-melt-cost-seen-equal-to-year-of-world-economic-output.html
“The methane release would bring forward the date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees C by between 15 and 35 years,” said Chris Hope. “In the absence of climate-change mitigation measures, the PAGE09 model calculates that it would increase mean global climate impacts by $60 trillion.”
==================
So, now the damage metric is figured in money, rather than grandchildren ?
Someone needs a lesson in empathy.
Forget the Methane Sword of Damocles, I simply ask to see evidence of mass permafrost loss. All that’s ever presented are anecdotes from road cuts, mines and construction sites. Of course it melts in those situations. Show me the data on widespread mass loss (as a measured present and past event, as opposed to, models that forecast it).
Like the hidden heat, the Arctic methane story is one that fails to provide answers that intersect with reality.
How did Earth survive the other Arctic thaws that are recorded in history?
This University also hired an Irish navy boat to go to the Antarctica, and came back with tales of ice flows breaking off in summer, that heralded global warming was real. I think they also suggested that seeding clouds with sulphur dioxide like what is emitted during volcanic eruptions would also cool the climate. Well hello another university spending grants on nought!
As with most of these reports they fail to tell anyone that Methane has a life cycle and that it eventually breaks down in the upper atmosphere – life cycle is between 8 and 14 years.
Even the avid wish-it-were-happening groupies must be tired of this BS by now.
Anthony, please remember to bring this post back up in the summer of 2015 when it absolutely does not happen.
So Gavin shows us the line beyond which it becomes “wacky science” for him. I wonder how far past that line Wadhams took him…
This post would potentially be interesting to me if I had any respect for Gavin Schmidt…but I don’t.
More climate-porn….yawn.
Frank K. says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Seconded.
Schidt and his buddies censored EVERY SINGLE ONE of my posts. I was even polite in those heady days.
Good on Gavin here because climate science needs to start self-policing itself. The outrageous claims need to be silenced and they need to ensure that climate scientists don’t get funded to publish climate-scare-porn (as Andy put it). I mean some people are genuinely scared by this stuff.
Methane is flatlining. It did not rise during the Eemian interglacial when Arctic temps were up to 8.0C warmer than today (Greenland NEEM ice cores). Most of the methane increase is really coming from the oil and gas industry and leaky transmission pipelines and leaky drill-rigs.
The bottom of the Arctic ocean is always going to be 0.0C and methane calthrates there are safe. It is a function of the density of sea water and as long as there is substantive sea ice in the spring summer fall or winter, the bottom of the Arctic ocean is going to be 0.0C. (sea water freezes at -2.0C, and the densest sea water is -1.9999C. by the time it sinks to the bottom, it will warm slightly and make it to about 0.0C. So it is not going to warm up until most of the sea ice is gone in all seasons ie, never).
Permafrost?, well it didn’t melt enough to release any methane in the Eemian at +8.0C in the Arctic so these climate scientists need to go back to climate science school (or they need to be policed and their funding cut-off).
A long time ago, rubbing a few neurons together et al,, I came up with what I thought was the most eminently reasonable question:
“What have the ends of the previous post-MPT interglacials, including those that also occurred at a 400kyr eccentricity minimum, looked like?”
Later, you run up on things like this:
“We propose that the interval between the “terminal” oscillation
of the bipolar seesaw, preceding an interglacial, and
its first major reactivation represents a period of minimum
extension of ice sheets away from coastlines. Given that the
response of the MOC and the strength of the bipolar seesaw
may be modulated by different boundary conditions (e.g.
Green et al., 2010; Margari et al., 2010), it is conceivable that
a non-active bipolar seesaw might not necessarily indicate interglacial
conditions (false-negative) or that an active bipolar
seesaw might not indicate glacial conditions (false-positive).
With respect to the former, however, a terminal oscillation of
the bipolar seesaw appears to be a characteristic feature of
deglaciation (e.g. Cheng et al., 2009; Ganopolski and Roche,
2009; Barker et al., 2011). With respect to the latter, freshwater
fluxes can occur within an interglacial, but are unlikely
to lead to a major disruption of the MOC when the system
is in a “warm circulation mode” (Ganopolski and Rahmstorf,
2001); thus, the first major reactivation of the bipolar seesaw
would probably constitute an indication that the transition to
a glacial state had already taken place.”
Tzedakis et al, 2012. “Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?”, Clim. Past, 8, 1473–1485, 2012, http://www.clim-past.net/8/1473/2012/
doi:10.5194/cp-8-1473-2012
http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:156310
In putting too-fine a point on it, and at the risk of repeating some other folks published thoughts:
“:….thus, the first major reactivation of the bipolar seesaw would probably constitute an indication that the transition to a glacial state had already taken place.”
That paper came some months after I posted this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/16/the-end-holocene-or-how-to-make-out-like-a-madoff-climate-change-insurer/
The Obamanable (snowmann) question literally asks itself…
Do we? Or do we not, strip the heathen devil gas out of the late-Holocene atmosphere?
Well, of the last two post-MPT eccentricity minima interglacials one ran about half a precession cycle, and the other one went 1.5 to 2.0 precession cycles. So there is a 50% chance that we might “go long”, like MIS-11 did. And there’s a 50% chance that we won’t, like MIS-19 did not.
As it so happens the bipolar seesaw may have recently been observed……
But the most interesting question of all is if it was all left up to you, what would you do at possibly the end of the latest post-MPT extreme interglacial that may have just been observed to re-establish the bipolar seesaw at its half-precession cycle age plus a few centuries?
50 Gigaton Pulse would be a good name for a heavy metal band (Imperial units of course).
Nigel S says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:07 pm
“50 Gigaton Pulse” is good !! I also like “Deep Tone of Perseus”. Search it if you like low frequencies.
If you bite and assume a huge methane release, methane shares the same wavelength absorption as water vapor which has already totally absorbed those wavelengths of upward long wave radiation. Nothing left to worry about or for methane to absorb.
How much propaganda overload can the public absorb before realizing nothing is happening?
I am still waiting for Obama to balance the budget to save the planet.
Nafeez Ahmed, who wrote this methane story, is also a ‘truther’. He has two books out explaining that 9/11 was probably an inside job. For a short while, I was half-persuaded by his first book. Then I saw through it.
Rod McLaughlin says:
Nafeez Ahmed, who wrote this methane story, is also a ‘truther’.
And that comes as a surprise?
I think the basis for claims like this is what will happend if UNFCCC is lost “like a fart in the horizon” as a tool to “fundamentally” change the world?
Absolutely now need for a whole bunch of crap supporting UNFCCC/IPCC etc international and nationally?
This is just wild speculations with job protection motives?
Respect to Gavin for speaking out against this alarmist BS.
I’m ashamed that my alma mater has produced such activist nonsense. Wadhams and Hope are a disgrace. Wadhams of course is the guy who says “The entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse … It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015.”
OMG!
Be very afraid immediately, tremble at this alarming prediction!
Obviously the only way to stop this happening is to immediately start recycling…… the Guardian….by the fastest available route…..usually down the pan, in an environmentally friendly way of course.
The authors of this paper must be greatly reassured due to the fact that Arctic temperatures have been below average for the whole of the summer. They also seem to have failed to identify a mechanism by which the slightly warmer Atlantic currents that are responsible for the melting of Arctic ice from below will be able to melt permafrost (which is by definition on land).
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.’ This was clear to see on the poster he used for his presentation. Obviously CO2 and methane are much more stable in the ground also when it thaws, Poster Bad Honnef.”
Delisle is an expert on permafrost. …… what Delisle said:
‘…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. It had been peer reviewed and has not to my knowledge been refuted to this day.
http://donnerunddoria.welt.de/files/2012/11/2007GL029323.pdf
Watching them spend the remnants of their credibility with such patently ludicrous claims is becoming the spectator sport of 2013.
Pointman
Is it not usual in such cases to multiply the potential damage/impact by the probability of it happening and then discounting to net present value (NPV)?. I worked on cost-benefit analysis of flood mitigation measures back in the 80s. If the probability of a 50 gigaton methane ‘pulse’ in 10 years time is about 0.0001% then the cost-benefit of doing anything about it in any one year doesn’t stack up.
Oh no, yet more modelling! A Policy Modeller, an Ocean Physics guy, who else for goodness sake! Oh & the Stern Report! Now tell me, how come an economist of dubious note, writes a report telling a Socialist guvment what it wants to hear, gets a gong for doing so, & was so busy telling us how we’re all going to die & go to hell in a hand-cart over the next 100 years unless we do what guvment tells us to do, yet failed miserably to warn us of impending economic doom a few years down the line???? Yeah right, confidence value 0%! FYI,don’ believe anyone from Cambridge University, the producer of 4 of the most notorious (Burgess, Filby, Maclean, Hunt) privileged privately educated Socialist Soviet spies responsible for sending people to their deaths at Soviet hands, in British History! Thanks a bunch Cambridge Uni!
Yup! Just on new here in Aus. As well as the methane being released, it will cause bad weather over the next 10 years. And the icing on the alarmist cake, Sandy was caused by…the melting ice in the Arctic.
Its that word ‘could ‘ again , which is a amzingly useful word which means nothing and everything at the same time , and in this case gives them all the get-out they will need when this blows up in their face . Or so they very much hope.
See here:
have no expertise to have an opinion on this, but found some of it – such as the boxcars – hilarious, & the one comment! LOL:
24 July: Los Angeles Times: Geoffrey Mohan: Antarctica permafrost melt spurred by solar radiation boost
The tenfold increase from ancient melt rates evident in a dry valley near McMurdo Bay over little more than a decade comes despite a local two-decade cooling trend.
Cliff-face measurements of the buried ice in the four-mile-long Garwood Valley revealed melt rates that shifted from a creeping annual rate of about 40,000 cubic feet per year over six milleniums, to more than 402,000 cubic feet last year alone, according to the report published Wednesday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. (That’s a leap from the capacity of about eight standard railroad boxcars to 77.).
“We think what we’re seeing here is sort of a crystal ball of what coastal Antarctica is going to experience,” said geologist Joseph Levy, of the University of Texas, lead author of the study. “When you start warming buried ice and other permafrost in the dry valley, it’s going to start to melt and it’s going to start melting in a style that’s consistent with permafrost thaw in the Arctic.”…
They calculated the volume of ice missing since it was deposited some 6,300 years ago, arriving at a melt rate of about 40,000 cubic feet per year. From 2001 to 2010, that rate accelerated to 190,000 cubic feet, then jumped to 247,000 in 2011, and about 403,000 last year.
The team included Levy, then at Oregon State University, and researchers from Portland State University, Brown University, Boston University and UNAVCO, a multiuniversity geoscience consortium.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-antarctica-ice-melt-20130724-dto,0,2931766.htmlstory
Reblogged this on CACA and commented:
The lack of convergence between climate models and observed reality, leading to ever more catastrophic and alarmist climate predictions by the day!
In two years time many, when polar ice will NOT have melted, people will remember this bogus story. Receiving the Nobel price, Al Gore made a speech and he predicted an ice-free North Pole by 2013. Now it is 2013 and the North Pole is far from ice-free. In the magazine Standard http://www.pinoyden.com.ph/index.php?topic=282120.0
there was a much smarter story. Climate change was predicted to influence the growth of the buffalo. Climate models predict that it gets warmer and the buffalo’s will get less proteine. Therefore in 50 years from now, the buffalo’s will get smaller and lighter in weigt. Professor Fritz Vahrenholt from KalteSonne http://www.kaltesonne.de called the authors smart. They get a lot of money for their pseudo-science now. And when it will be 2063, nobody will remember this article. And even when some people might remember it, the authors will be either pensioners or already dead. So if you want to get a lot of money from the CAGW bandwagon, predict the most terrible things to happen in 30-40 years (if you are somewhat older) and to happen in 50 years (when you are quite young).
So with the Gore effect the Arctic sea ice should be growing over the next couple of years.
I remember first hearing about the threat methane threat about 6 or 7 years ago on a BBC documentary not long after leaving school and not knowing what I know today it made me apprehensive and a little worried. But now I know better. Methane is relatively short-lived in the atmosphere and breaks down rapidly into CO2 + H2O, especially under UV-radiation, so even if huge amounts were suddenly outgassed, it would be scrubbed out the atmosphere quickly. It also currently exists as a tenuous trace gas whose concentration must be measured in parts per billion, so I see no reason for alarm. I was discussing this with people on Real Climate and they suggested that methane’s short residence time was not important, because they said it virtually insoluble in water, so if excessive amounts were released into the atmosphere it would not be easily soaked up by the oceans, as is the case with CO2.
ferd berple says:
July 24, 2013 at 6:56 pm
methane from the East Siberian Sea will be emitted as a result of the thaw
=================
perfect. put it in a pipeline and sell it to Europe and Asia. The Chinese are looking for ways to cut pollution from coal power plants. The EU needs some cheap energy to replace their far too expensive windmills and solar panels to help them compete with the US methane from fracking.
One person looks at a problem and sees disaster. Another looks at the problem and sees opportunity.
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And another person fudges the problem to ensure opportunity as a disaster preventer.
(or is that preventor?)
Am I mistaken or is this system as rigged as an oil well?
cn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7139797.stm
“”Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.
“So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.””
The GUAF theory (Giant Uncontrollable Arctic Fart) has been thoroughly debunked in an article appearing several years ago… in Nature, of all places…
http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/methane-hydrates-and-contemporary-climate-change-24314790
I think this whole theory can safely be said to have been discredited at this point.
Discarded?
CNBC has picked this up and is hawking the president’s message
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100912062
NBC is the official propaganda arm of the progressives.
You might like to read this before you continue your ignorant mocking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/07/18/snow-and-arctic-ice-extent-plummet-suddenly-as-globe-bakes/
You are all ludicrous, intellectually challenged right wing nuts who just don’t want to give anything up. This is your hissy fit, and it’s most illuminating, since few if any of the commenters here have any science knowledge that would come close to Gavin Schmidt. In fact, added together it wouldn’t come close. Your group total IQ appears to be in the tens.
It’s not a Paper as such at all but a comment piece. Not Peer reviewed either.
Peter the Printer says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:34 am
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Wow Peter. That’s quite the powerful argument you’ve laid down there.
Lets see. You link an article that says a lot of snow melted, and insult everyone here. hmm. Let me think that through for a second.
By golly, you’ve persuaded me! I’m a low IQ right wing nut throwing a hissy fit because you’ve linked an article that says a bunch of northern hemisphere snow melted! It conclusively demonstrates it, I see it now! Genius!
Thanks so much for taking your valuable time out to bring the light to us poor benighted souls.
2 years to an ice free Arctic ??? At current melt rates we will be almost there in 2 weeks lol
Hey Pete; Considering that the arctic above the 80th parallel hasn’t been above average in about 100 days; (ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php) and the earth hasn’t warmed in over 15 years (vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.5), I think it is you who ought to go review your IQ and gullibility index.
The science does not support the hype but the journalists aren’t astute enough to realize that. You aren’t smart enough to read the science and so must rely on journalists to tell you what to think.
Then you somehow feel a need to come tell us we’re not smart enough to understand anything, since we hold some level of contempt for someone you idolize, specifically because he is an advocate rather than a scientist and tell us what a great and powerful scientist he is.
Wow. Just wow.
Catcracking,
I saw that CNBC article too and noticed they left out what Schmidt and Lenton statements.
“Not everyone agrees that the paper’s scenario of a catastrophic and imminent methane release is plausible. Nasa’s Gavin Schmidt has previously argued that the danger of such a methane release is low, whereas scientists like Prof Tim Lenton from Exeter University who specialises in climate tipping points, says the process would take thousands if not tens of thousands of years, let alone a decade.”
Peter the P,
Are Schmidt and Lenton considered “deniers” now?
Well that’s the whole thing: pay us half and consider yourself lucky…
fred says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:40 pm
“I am still waiting for Obama to balance the budget to save the planet.”
I nominate this the best comment on WUWT in weeks!! It’s funny and true. And a world of clowns is trying to put the US under (I’m not from the US, but I pray for them everyday, selfish slob that I am).
It must be news to Pete the Printer that Northern Hemisphere snow and ice tend to melt in Northern Hemisphere Summer. I guess they didn’t teach him that in school.
Peter the Printer says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:34 am
“few if any of the commenters here have any science knowledge that would come close to Gavin Schmidt. In fact, added together it wouldn’t come close. Your group total IQ appears to be in the tens.”
So, why does the biggest scientific hero of all times, Gavin Schmidt, continue to fiddle the temperatures in the GISS temperature record upward?
( which he does: http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/really-giss-dishonesty-continues-in-post-hansen-era/ )
Please, Peter, explain it to us ignoramuses. I really can’t think of any reason but personal greed.
Sounds like petertheprinter needs to take his meds and go have a lie-down.
Science fiction is so much better when it includes laser beams and time travel…
(1) No one is mocking Gavin Schmidt here. In fact, if you read Schmidt’s tweets, you should understand that he is mocking the Cambridge paper, citing their claim of trillions in damage as “Only under their implausible scenario. This is not a study about ongoing Arctic warming impacts.”
(2) You should have followed WaPo’s Capital Weather Gang this AM. Because what they just published comports with WUWT above.
Peter, the previous four interglacial periods were so warm at their peak that the Arctic sea ice completely melted during the summer. You know what an interglacial period is right?
What about this prediction
“Why Arctic sea ice will vanish in 2013”
http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/AdultDiscussionPlease
“By Paul Beckwith
On March 23, 2013, I made the following prediction:
“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean.”
and there’s more
“My prediction above was based on understanding of the inter-related Artic/climatic system obtained through in-depth research conducted as part of my Ph.D. studies on abrupt climate change, and through my academic work as part-time professor in climatology/meteorology at the University of Ottawa”
Glad I don’t have to go to his lectures
James at 48 says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:07 pm
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Exactly! where is the dramatic pictures of the sluicing Arctic? No imaging from satellites to expose the massive release of methane? Which would produce very large clouds!
Is anybody keeping an eye on the Arctic rowers? Micheal Crichton’s State of Fear comes to mind.
I have a kayak business. I’d not actually mind so much if the coast came closer and more water means more kayaks probably sold. Pity it is bulldust because if we could, I’d vote for it.
That was an entertaining read. I’m curious about $60 trillion. Why not $59 trillion? Did you account for inflation over the next 2 years? (sarc)
The guy who did the obedience training on my Siberian Husky said something like this: “If you want one thing and the dog another, the dog will act up and bark to get your attention. Ignore her. There will be a period of more barking and acting up that you have to keep ignoring until she accepts reality, quiets down, and behaves.”
This article? Woof woof. “Sharknado” is more believable.
Peter the Printer says:
July 25, 2013 at 6:34 am
… few if any of the commenters here have any science knowledge that would come close to Gavin Schmidt …
Gavin Schmidt’s a mathematician. Whose IQ looks in the single digits now?
I wouldn’t worry about the ice melting to much, what is to happen will happen, the earth and the people on it are heading into Gods judgement and men cannot stop it, the thing to do is get ready for the return of Christ, everything else is the nonsense of man. God will translate us out of here to heaven while the rest of humanity with all the sins it has piled up to heaven will stand for judgement . their is nothing you and I could do and I wouldn’t want to interfere in gods judgement on mankind which it rightfully deserves. man has become filthy and depraved of mind and every filthy thing they dream up comes to be.