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
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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?