I kid you not. The level of stupid here is unprecedented. Forget the UFO theories, or the fact that it is Yamal, which started Climategate through the distortion of tree ring data and the witholding of FOI requests on the issue, or forget that Yamal is roughly translated as ‘End of The World’, no, forget all those. This statement from a supposed scientist takes climate craziness to a whole new level. Video follows.
Anna Kurchatova from the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre, thinks the crater was formed by a mixture of water, salt and gas igniting an underground explosion, a result of global warming.
h/t to WUWT contributor, John Goetz
What person is going to fly over such a mysterious feature in a helicopter with a hi-res camera on-board and …
… only provide 15 seconds of footage.
Maybe that ant lionish thing from Star Wars moved from Tatooine and relocated to Earth?
It is UFOs!
My guess is that it is either something to do with this . . . http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/oct/20/yamal-gas-reserves
or this . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_volcano
Geologist Down The Pub Sez says:
July 15, 2014 at 3:37 pm
It certainly doesn’t look like a sinkhole, with that ring of ejecta.
Yes, I thought the same thing at first, but it doesn’t look like an explosion either. It is very difficult to tell the topography from the video. It occurred to me that what appears to be piles of rock and mud piled above the hole and the surrounding plain, might be a bit of an optical illusion. The piles may actually be below the level of the surrounding plain, but appear to be above it due to their coloring. Then I noticed water flowing into the hole, apparently from the marshy area (to the upper left when the video starts), indicating that the edge of the hole and the surrounding material would be lower than the marshy area. In which case, the material would not be ejecta, but piles of denuded earth that did not wash completely into the hole.
Another factor is the water erosion channels that appear all around the circumference of the hole, indicating that a lot of water went into the hole from all directions. If it was just rain water and snow melt, it would have taken a long time to form those channels, but if the hole was at the bottom of a lake, the channels would have been formed in a matter of hours, as the water drained away.
The combination of the water channels and what certainly appears to be a large, natural cavern in the depths of that hole, make me think it is a sinkhole. If I am right, the sinkhole had to open up a couple months ago, to allow for the vegetation sprout on what was the bottom of a lake. If it is much younger than that, then I am baffled.
Those bloody North Korean’s have been at it again with missile test’s.
@Fred
Yea, they aimed it at the Sea of China.
Those disposal wells in Oklahoma, that salt water’s gotta go somewhere. Stop fraccing now!
/s
Far be it from me to contradict an expert, but to my naive eye it looks like a meteor punched through the roof of a cavern, and that’s why it doesn’t look like a usual impact crater. Hard to tell from the video, but it certainly looks hollow under that rim.
/Mr Lynn
You all saw the melting asphalt in Yellowstone last week. It to could be called global warming according to this definition.
Looks like computer generated movie to me. Strange reflections on the ‘water’, no ripples, low resolution, strange.
Clearly a giant mole hill. What is the UN going to do about the Giant Mole Threat, the GMT?
Mothra emerges
A Google search will give you this: “A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater that is caused by a phreatomagmatic eruption, which is an explosion caused by groundwater coming into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake.” For those who think it’s a sinkhole, think again. Sinkholes don’t have raised rims of debris that was thrown , and out of the hole.
This photo from Google Earth Panaramio of the Yamal landscape makes me think that permafrost zit-pop eruptions might be quite common up there . . . http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/96862505.jpg
My anthem for Global Warming is
‘It’s the End of the World as we Know it (and I feel fine)’
thankyou Michael Stipe
It’s those damned prehistoric gigantic car eating worms from the sci fi movie Tremors. No need to go to Tatoine. Their relatives are here on Earth. They were in the movie. I saw them there myself–so they must be real. No doubt awakened by failed North Korean nuclear tests that reverberated (not) to the Yamal end of the world. The burrow holes are the same!!! Netflix knows!!!
Sarc off/ how can anybody speculate on the geology of a 238 foot diameter hole that looks like a Floida sinkhole or a Greenland moulin but for the appearance of a very modest apparent ejecta rim (which could have several other explanations, and in no way equals the apparent displacement volume of the imaged hole). Before anyone has gotten there to investigate? Ready, fire, aim… Guarantees collateral damage. There will probably be some here.
Bill Illis says:
July 15, 2014 at 4:04 pm
What person is going to fly over such a mysterious feature in a helicopter with a hi-res camera on-board and …
… only provide 15 seconds of footage.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nor land and get some close ups?
REPLY: Might have been a heli crew whose job it was to survey gas or oil lines for problems, and they noticed this. They have a schedule to keep and would have to defend a landing for such a curiosity not connected to their primary mission. – Anthony
Spice worm !!
Oh Mann!
This puts a completely different perspective on one of the articles that solidified my suspicions of climate science.
Go figure!
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
Also…watching the waterfalls in the real-time portion of the video gives me the impression that this thing is really massive. Large rain drops fall at about 29 ft per second. The water flowing into the hole would likely break up into bigger drops than that, although that process would continue until the drops reached the size of large rain drops. There are subtle variations in the curtain of water. I tracked one for about 5 to 7 seconds before loosing it in the darkness, so it wasn’t the entire drop. If we assume an average speed of say 34-40 feet per second, I watched that ripple in the curtain of water fall somewhere between170 to 280 feet. Again, that wasn’t the whole drop. I am guessing it was about 2/3 of the total distance. That gives a total drop of about 230 to 420 feet for the waterfall. The natural looking cavern in the back looks much deeper still. (Of course, I could be completely full of it, but is kinda fun to to take the clues at hand and try to come up with good description of this thing.)
Is it just a whole in the ground, or perhaps the opening to one of the largest cave systems ever discovered? I am hoping for the latter.
REPLY: Might have been a heli crew whose job it was to survey gas or oil lines for problems, and they noticed this. They have a schedule to keep and would have to defend a landing for such a curiosity not connected to their primary mission.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
I suppose. On the other hand, I’d think that a hole that big in the vicinity of oil and gas lines would be considered a potential problem…. 😉
On a possibly related topic, here is a google search-results page for “Washington state mystery divot”.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=washington+state+mystery+divot&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
well…the water is not flowing up the ejecta and then back down….doesn’t look like that much stuff was ejected
Dennis Cox says:
July 15, 2014 at 5:05 pm
“For those who think it’s a sinkhole, think again. Sinkholes don’t have raised rims of debris that was thrown , and out of the hole.”
Watch the video again and freeze it around the 30 sec mark. Try to imagine that the vegetated area on the right is actually higher than anything between it and the hole. You can also do this using the wet area in the upper left. It certainly appears that the water is flowing from that wet area down into the hole. A close examination shows that the ground appears to sloop down towards the hole from the outer fringes. Advance to about 40 seconds and this becomes even more apparent.
Now imagine what would happen if this hole opened up under a large, shallow lake. The water would pick up speed as it approached the hole, washing away all the soil down to the bedrock. Nothing would grow in these areas. Move away from the hole, where the water wasn’t quite as fast, and you would have a mixture of rock and gravel, with more and more topsoil thrown in as you moved away from the hole. Vegetation would take root in the areas were some soil still remained. You would also have ‘steps’ leading down into the hole as different layers of sediment were washed away. Isn’t that what you see when you freeze it around the 50 second mark?
The more I look at it, the more I am convinced that it is a hole in the bottom of a depression, and it is only an illusion that the lighter colored rock is above the surrounding plain.
My God!
What is the matter with you people?
It is obvious that this was caused by giant ants.
Don’t you remember that there was a documentary made about those giant ants in the 1950’s? Everybody laughed and the government and the CIA secretly tried to cover it up.
Not only that, but there is a secret committee in Congress that has a deal going with the ants to supply them with humans (especially the pneumatic, blonde types) and use them for slaves. Especially if they like cigars.
In exchange some of them go to Area 51 where they are irradiated by the Men in Black, and then get elected to congress, or get tenure as Climate Scientists.
Do you think it is accidental that the White House has numerous sub-basements? That is where they hang out and which are connected by tunnels to the main hive in Siberia.
Do you think it is an accident that for years they have been growing weird anty stuff behind the White House? And that they have been shipping the stuff to Area 51 in exchange for tree rings that cause global warming?
Now that the truth is coming out we should be afraid. Very afraid..
Run! Run while you still can…….
I don’t see a sink hole when watching the footage. The elevation of the ground around the hole appears to be clearly higher than the surrounding land, and in way of relatively freshly piled soil, with boulders or large clods of soil visible as well.