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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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.
——————————————————————————————————
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
—————-
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?