People send me stuff. This made my day, so I thought it was worth sharing. Remember this?
New pictures of the hole in Yamal – and Pingo was its name-o
Matt Sexton writes via our contact form:
I just wanted to share with you a story that happened to me last night. My HOA had a community potluck and someone brought up the holes that “Had suddenly begun appearing in Russia”. Thanks to your site and the story about those holes, and was able to inform him about the real facts behind what was happening there. I was a little shocked, he is an otherwise intelligent guy, but, I couldn’t believe that he had latched onto the sensational aspects of the story without reading all the facts.
Either way, I thought you would like to hear that your site has positive effects even around small time, everyday things like a HOA potluck.
– Matt
Thanks Matt.
Unfortunately. Denver Post this morning had a featured “world news” article on this today & never even mentioned that there were other interpretations; All they presented is the most alarming position they could (basically saying this is just the beginning & these will be popping up all over the place) and left no doubt that this could only be caused by global warming.
It is evident that this is the sort of thing warmists fantasize about.
Once again, emotion over science.
I’ll add my experience. I work at a hotel in Pennsylvania’s ridge and valley system. We have a newish windmill farm. One day one of the guests mentioned how beautiful the windmills are. My first comment was that they are bird killers (I could have mentioned other rebutals on my mind, this is what came out first). He asked, “How do you know?” I said because they do dead bird counts at the base of the windmills. He changed the subject and said we would be extinct in 500 years because of the increase in extreme weather. I mentioned number of major hurricanes, tornados, etc. are down. He changed the subect again and said we would all be drowned. I mentioned tidal guages don’t support that theory. He finally walked away and as he walked away he said, “I don’t want to talk to you, you know too much.”
Careful Tom, you’ll know too much to stay employed when the guests complain….
Yes, we all have smart friends who have been completely duped by the AGW cabal. Last year one of them asked me if I still thought AGW was a fraud, and I in turn asked him if he could think of anything that might have changed my mind. His only response was, but they keep talking about it…” So in his mind the Leftist truism that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth really is true.
I am convinced that the problem isn’t our friends are stupid, but that they are sheeple and want to be led. They don’t care that it is propaganda or fraud because it is repeated by their valued experts (leaders). What else that says about them is an all-day discussion.
I never really thought of “…and pingo was his name-o” but I did think “the pingo ate my global warming”.
Anywho, for a detailed study of growth and collapse of pingos see:
http://www.erudit.org/revue/gpq/1998/v52/n3/004847ar.pdf
The sides of the pingo (and yes it is a pingo) are vertical and smooth. Only a large plug of ice could produce such an effect. Those who doubt that this could be a pingo have no alternative to offer except some sort of “explosion”. But an explosion could not produce such smooth, vertical sides.
Bill P;
And alsow should definitely be spelled “also”.
Muphry’s Law strikes again!
Mark Luhman says:
August 6, 2014 at 9:40 pm
Oof. Try to do better. We deserve it:
to the most part it been good → for the most part it’s been good
each ot → each of
with a addition premium for lot → an additional premium for a lot
60% of the lot owner whom voted → of the lot owners who voted
association build their → association built their
have a operating gold course → have an operating golf course
time will tilll → tell
both homes I own in the HOA do not abut → neither home … abuts the golf course
13 in a short paragraph makes for unpleasant reading.
Regarding attempts to discuss things with the brainwashed – having been a life-long democrat, I have seen the rest of the democrats morph into Marxists. I am the only one left, I believe.
To get all democrats to segue their views from decent political views to superficially benign totalitarianism, a process similar to cult-indoctrination has been under way.
Cult thinking is sustained in a few distinct ways. If you go study how a cult works, you will see how what we have going on today is quite cult-like.
People feel themselves to be virtuous by having the special knowledge.
They alone have the secret to save the world.
The illogical thought structure must be protected from scrutiny –
so, you need an echo chamber, and to define anything and everything else as bad.
Drudge just today has a story about the some of the architecture of the echo chamber:
A secret google group for journalists, where they hash out how things will be spun.
I jokingly ask associates, every time something that does not fit the cult view, how it will be spun, or what talking point I am supposed to repeat. An example would be this horrible encouragement of children migrating alone to the U.S. -This is terrible foreign policy. Yet, it is all smiles and sunshine for the liberals, and I am labelled racist.
You also need a bad guy to sustain an illogical virtue-cult thought structure. So, when an uncomfortable question comes up, you support your illogical thought architecture with a diversion.
The global warming skeptics keep getting painted as funded by big oil, and or being un-scientific knuckle-dragging Christians. Or both. Those are caricatures, or boogey-men, that liberals have been trained to believe in. Without question.
My point in all of this is to encourage people to talk to those who are only peripherally invested in this virtue cult. But, when encountering a true believer, you have to realize you cannot have a logical discussion with him or her. You will go right down the rabbit hole, and your head wil hurt from the illogic.
It is not stupidity; it is virtue-cult in operation.
“Aphan says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:15 am
Careful Tom, you’ll know too much to stay employed when the guests complain….”
They do complain. If we have Fox News on, they want CNN, if we have CNN on they want Fox (not to mention those who want ESPN). We gladly honor all channel requests for our lobby TV, but if soneone then asks to change the channel we tell them someone still present had already requested what was showing. We have had only one negative review based on ideology. Someone complained we had the tv locked on Fox, That person did not at any time request a channel change. A lot of people will talk and I usually just listen, but something got me going with that person.
BTW, if someone (at the hotel or elsewhere) in a conversation does seem open or asks for more information, I often will recommend this webstie
Jimmy says:
August 6, 2014 at 10:55 am
“The scientists based their methane eruption hypothesis on the fact that methane concentrations were quite high at the bottom of the hole”.
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HA HA, …. that very thing currently happens like 100+- times per week in OH, PA and WV. (see Marcellus Shale)
Like every time a drill-stem “punches” a hole into a pocket of methane.
And on rare occasions that methane concentrations at the bottom of the hole is high enough (>6,000 psi) to “push” that drill-stem back outta the hole …. if it wasn’t connected to the drilling rig.
====================
The above was a touch of trivia, … so as to better explain the following quandary, to wit:
—————
Philip says:
August 6, 2014 at 12:07 pm
“The odd thing to me, is that the hole seems to have very steep, smooth, regular walls, and resembles a very deep well.
I can not see any explosion leaving a crater like that”.
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Iffen the culprit was methane (CH4) then I don’t think any per se fire n’ boom “explosion” occurred.
If the permafrost melting opened up a wee small “hole” into an EXTREMELY high pressure “pocket” of methane …… the force of that NG rushing out thru that wee small “hole” would QUICKLY erode and enlarge the hole’s diameter to look pretty much like what you see in that picture.
Cool, I didn’t think my little anecdotal story would get put on the site 🙂
This is an excellent resource and I respect very much that it presents so much information, including resources to opposing viewpoints. It’s very refreshing to see this, when so much of the internet and media has been dichotimized into an adult version of a grade school argument over which crayon color is best.
Thanks, Anthony, and keep up the great work!
I, too, have offered WUWT to those who had accepted the CAGW narrative because, hey, scientists say so. At a New Years party with the temperature here about -35C, it was a conversation topic and most had bought into the “weird weather” baloney. I countered this with the 17 year pause and recent years cooling globally, discussed the LIA, MWP, glacials and interglacials, higher CO2 levels in the geologic past, etc. and invited them to go to WUWT, visit the resources section, use the search panel, and educate themselves on the topic. A good number of them did do this and were surprised at the information available debunking the hysteria. Yeah, WUWT is special. I’m sure even some of the trolls have even rebooted in reality here.
For those of you that are not convinced that these are pingos : these are actually collapsed pingos. Pore pressure causes permafrost to bulge, starting pingo formation. They grow vertically faster than horizontally and eventually the permafrost at the core of the pingo melts and it collapses, this is what these are. It will soon be a lake, just like the many thousands of lakes in the area. Simply get on Google Earth or Flash Earth and look at the Yamal Peninsula.
@Taphonomic at 8/7 10:36 am
Anywho, for a detailed study of growth and collapse of pingos see:
http://www.erudit.org/revue/gpq/1998/v52/n3/004847ar.pdf
Thanks for that. The collapses they document are really only partial dimpling of the crest.
Pingo 23 (Figure 65, page 46) is as close as we get to the Yamal holes, and with Pingo 23 is a lake with the hydrostatic water table at lake level at just below the surrounding surface. I saw no evidence of any pingo shaft in any of the pingos studied in this paper in the Canadian Mackenzie Delta. There is no evidence that the water table has significantly changed in the pingos studied in this paper.
Anyone who doubts that pingos are associated (sometimes at least) with artesian systems, look at Fig. 5 on page 9. It is a 2.6 meter geyser from a 7.5 cm drill-hole to a depth of 22 m.
I agree these Yamal holes are collapsed pingos, but at Yamal there is something very unusual about the change in the hydrostatic water table that supports the pingo ice. I read it as the hydrostatic water table has fallen by over 100 feet. It is either that or something caused several thousand tons of water to “erupt” out of the hole (which I don’t buy at all).
What might have killed the artesian system in the area? Gazprom’s development of the nearby Bovanenkovo super-giant gas field is at the top of my list of possible causes.
Eric Sincere says:
August 7, 2014 at 7:17 am
1. Gordon Ford says: August 6, 2014 at 12:00 pm
>They look.like the pintos I studied in Geomorphogy back in the 1960s
Yes, Pintos explode. (I know you posted a correction…)
Only when crashed into while stopped on the highway by a truck doing 55 mph (one of the ME profs at WU@StL was a witness for the defense and told us the fact of the famous flaming Pintos).
In one of the SCCA regions, they had a regional class, GTP – Gran Tourismo Pinto – the cars were pretty peppy. I thought it would been more than fun to have a bumper sticker on one of those cars, “Hit Me, I am wearing Nomex.” Sick, but funny.
As for H Grouse…. so you buy into that whole 9-11 Truthers stuff too? Physics is not for you.
Stephen Rasey says:
August 7, 2014 at 4:58 pm
“I agree these Yamal holes are collapsed pingos, but at Yamal there is something very unusual about the change in the hydrostatic water table that supports the pingo ice. I read it as the hydrostatic water table has fallen by over 100 feet. It is either that or something caused several thousand tons of water to “erupt” out of the hole (which I don’t buy at all).”
It may not require the water table to drop that much. It could be something like the pingo ice plug floating and growing on a hydrostatic water table that only varies by a few meters to tens of meters. Over time as the hydrostatic head varies it pushes the ice plug up (or possibly even letting it down as the water table drops) and the ice plug continues to grow. The hydrostatic water table potentiometric surface may never be higher than the land surface. The pingo finally grows to such an extent and a large amount of snowmelt adds to the hydrostatic head pushing the pingo up to break the surface. When the surface is broken, the ice plug is no longer protected by the soil permafrost layer and the plug melts. You wouldn’t see pingos like this on the delta because the potentiometric surface doesn’t vary that much.
@Taphonomic 8/8 11:13 am
Largely in agreement, but…
The hydrostatic water table potentiometric surface may never be higher than the land surface.
Yes, but it will need to be close to the surface. So why do we see a lake at the bottom of a 100+ foot shaft?
To hold up even a 2 meter pingo surface height, will require about a 35 meter thick ice plug, AND a hydrostatic water table at surface level. It’s like an iceberg; 7% of the ice sticks up above the hydrostatic surface. If it is a 70 meter ice plug, you can get 4 meters above the hydrostatic level, so that allows for a hydrostatic surface 2 meters below the ground surface. We cannot escape that leverage.
I don’t think pingos can possibly form when the water table is 30 meters below the surface. It would require a 500 meter long ice core. But when we look at the images of these mysterious holes in Yamal, the water table today is low at least 30 meters below the surface.
These holes are not common, but apparently there are at least three in the same area — probably the same hydrostatic environment.
I might be stuck in some mental recursive loop, but I cannot get around the conclusion that the pingos formed with an artesian or near ground level hydrostatic water table. Then somehow this summer (or possibly last year), the hydrostatic ground water levels have dropped by 30 meters (100 feet) or more. That is a lot when the high point on the Yamal peninsula is only about 240 feet. Could it be a natural, seasonal drop of the water table? Then why don’t we see these things for many years? If it is not a natural seasonal phenomena, what changed? Oh, look, Gazprom is developing a super-giant natural gas field on the horizon, a day’s walk away. Where are they getting their fresh water?
For the CAGW people out there, I can give you this consolation: These Yamal holes are a sign of increases in anthropomorphic greenhouse gas. They are caused by people pumping out freshwater from surface aquifers in the course of developing and increasing methane reserves for future production.
Taphonomic says:
August 8, 2014 at 11:13 am
“It is either that or something caused several thousand tons of water to “erupt” out of the hole (which I don’t buy at all)””.
—————-
Has no one ever heard of “hydraulic mining”? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_mining
The same principle applies but instead of gravity or a mechanical pump being the source of the “pressure” that drives/forces the “flow of water” …… the source of the “pressure” is the underground “pocket” of methane (NG, CH4).
Methane instead of steam like Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Park, WY.
If the gas pressure decreases, melt-water will fill the hole back up and an ice-plug will form …. and thus the process is “primed” to repeat again. Either next year or a 1,000 years from now.
@Samuel C Cogar 8/9 6:17 am
Hydraulic Mining leave evidence, such as massive tailings deltas and large runoff. We don’t see that. The creek leading away from the hole is covered in vegetation suggesting a slow, clean runoff from summer melt.
As for Methane eruptions instead of steam…
Geysers are driven by heat engines coupled to a positive feedback in the phase change of water into steam as a function of pressure. Liquid water is heated underground in the hydrostatic pressure of several atmospheres. When it begins to boil at those conditions, it spills some water out the top, lowering the confining hydrostatic pressure, lowering the boiling point. More water flashes to steam at depth, spilling more water out the top. It is a positive feedback that creates the geyser until there isn’t enough water left in the system to spill out the top.
I know of no such mechanism that can work for methane, even methane dissolved in water. Even if Yamal had an obvious source of concentrated geothermal energy. The thick permafrost layer we see exposed in the holes argues against a geothermal source.
@ur momisugly Stephen Rasey – August 10, 2014 at 12:03 pm
“Hydraulic Mining leave evidence, such as massive tailings deltas and large runoff. We don’t see that. The creek leading away from the hole is covered in vegetation suggesting a slow, clean runoff from summer melt”.
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Stephen, I think I said “same principle”, thus your criticism of me was directly contrary to what I was responding to.
Here, see for yourself, to wit, picture and story:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/opinions-divided-over-mysterious-80metre-wide-crater-in-northern-siberia-20140716-ztqvi.html
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@ur momisugly Stephen Rasey –
“I know of no such mechanism that can work for methane, ”
—————
Hopefully you are young enough …… and thus still have plenty of time to learn.
So start with this, to wit:
“13. One of the most troublesome gushers happened on June 23, 1985 at the well #37 at the Tengiz field in Atyrau, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union, where the deep, 4209 metre well blew out and the 200-metres high gusher self-ignited two days later. Oil pressure up to 800 atm and high hydrogen sulfide content had led to the gusher being capped only on 27 July 1986 [13 months later] when the well was closed by the shaped charge.
The total volume of erupted material measured at 4.3 millions metric tons of oil, 1.7 bn m³ of natural gas, and the burning gusher resulted in 890 tons of various mercaptans and more than 900,000 tons of soot released into atmosphere.[17]”
Source ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_(well_drilling)
@Samuel C Cogar at 3:24 am
Well you got me with the blowout example.
What I meant was I knew of no example of a methane geyser. But on second though, a drilling blowout is a positive feedback system very similar to a geyser where by once the heavy mud is spilled out the annulus, the confining pressure drops and flow increases. Methane is also in solution at depth, so there is also the phase change from dissolved gas in liquid to free gas as the confining pressure drops. So, a blowout is indeed a geyser, though it doesn’t recharge like a hydrothermal geyser.
Certainly, if you drill into a geopressured gas reservoir with insufficient mud weight, all that stands between you and a blowout are the blowout preventers. And while the example you cite was at 4200 meters, it can happen much shallower, too. 0.8 psi/ft is a good rule of thumb for the lithostatic gradient, the ultimate confining pressure of gas in a reservoir.
But are you suggesting the Yamal 20+ meter diameter, 30+meter deep hole is a methane blowout? That is a lot of earth volume that has to be scattered across the countryside. Sub permafrost gas pockets would only be in the range of 200-300 psi.
Still, I have to admit mud-volcanos have been triggered by drilling operations connecting a high pressure reservoir with a fault that allows blowout pathway to the surface. Gazprom is drilling for gas a few km from the holes. It not impossible Gazprom had a temporary underground blowout where the gas eventually escaped through a pingo weakpoint. I qualify it as temporary because there is little evidence of sustained methane escape from the lake at the bottom of the hole. So, it is possible that Gazprom had an underground blowout that they controlled within a few hours or days, but the escaping gas worked its way to the point of the holes and blew out. But if this were part of the puzzle, I’d expect high concentrations of methane at the vicinity of the holes today from gas depressurizing in the system.
@ur momisugly Stephen Rasey – August 11, 2014 at 11:48 am
Gas wells are like water wells, you really don’t know what’s down there until you “punch” a hole in the ground. When I said a “pocket” I didn’t mean like a pressurized balloon. The NG is distributed throughout the rock, gravel or whatever is down there and thus the reason for “fraking” a well, which simply means to “fracture” the rock so that the NG will flow toward the well. Thus “fraking” will, hopefully, increase the pressure at the well-head along with flow volume. But some wells have horrendous pressure on them (>6,000 psi) from the “get-go” and thus the reason for the terms “screamer” or “blowout”.
Now I don’t know much about drilling in the far north and the permafrost, etc. But I do know that the NG underneath that permafrost has … potentially …. been accumulating there for the past 3,000 to 7,000 years, starting at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum (see below) when the permafrost started to per se “re-freeze”. And no one knows how deep that gas is, how much is there or what its psi is until they “punch” a hole.
But iffen it’s a “naturally” formed hole, like the one pictured in the “link” I provided above, I figure it could not possibly have been created by an “explosion”. Thus I figured it had to have been “high pressure” NG escaping, carrying with it liquid water, which eroded the hole’s diameter thru the permafrost with its vertical side-walls as seen in the picture. The high(er) temperature of the water being blown out would have melted the permafrost “lickety split”. (Kinda like peeing into a snowdrift).
And the “outgassed” watery residue would have been dispersed over a wide area …. leaving very little “tale-tale” signs of what had occurred.
But keep in mind now, …. my logical “figuring” is sometimes in err.
“Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia
Radiocarbon-dated macrofossils are used to document Holocene treeline history across northern Russia (including Siberia). Boreal forest development in this region commenced by 10,000 yr B.P. Over most of Russia, forest advanced to or near the current arctic coastline between 9000 and 7000 yr B.P. and retreated to its present position by between 4000 and 3000 yr B.P.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589499921233
@Samuel C Cogar 8/12 at 4:22 am
Thus I figured it
had to[could] have been “high pressure” NG escaping, carrying with it liquid water, which eroded the hole’s diameter thru the permafrost with its vertical side-walls as seen in the picture. The high(er) temperature of the water being blown out would have melted the permafrost “lickety split”.I’ll agree this is a possibility. In part, it explains why every pingo in the area hasn’t collapsed. If an underground blowout with leakage up a fault to escape via a nearby pingo, it helps answer why it is localized (if it is localized… there are now three). If it was from a general lowering of the artesian water table, I would expect to see many pingo collapses in the near future. So this and later observations about future pingo collapses can resolve the theories.
And the “outgassed” watery residue would have been dispersed over a wide area …. leaving very little “tale-tale” signs of what had occurred.
But if there is outgassing of warm gas+water, it would rapidly and differentially melt the ice core of the pingo. But I would still expect the “plop” of the ice core into the shaft (created by pingo formation over hundreds of years) as it shrank under accelerated melting, rather than significant material shooting out the hole to be deposited far and wide. The outgassing of gas+water is a mechanism for the water level in the hole to be temporarily low. The water level in the holel ought to rise if the regional water table hasn’t changed. Another prediction to help resolve possible theories. I don’t see a plume of melted permafrost soil ejecta as mechanically likely, no in evidence in the reports.
Addendum to 11:03am:
Concerning the crown, or circular moraine, of material around the first Yamal hole.
I still believe this is material extruded as the pingo grew over hundreds of years. The tundra cover was ripped off this material as the ice core “plopped” into the hole. A gas+water leakage under some pressure and velocity would have melted the ice core to accelerate it’s collapse.
Could that gas+water+soil ejecta be the crown of bare material around the hole? I think not, for four reasons:
1. I would expect such ejecta to be deposited more as a slurry, a viscous liquid with solids.
2. In the pictures, the crown looks quite piled up and relatively solid
3. If there was a gas+water+soil ejecta, then the run-off in the creek ought to be choked with sediment. It isn’t. Nearby the hole it is a narrow, steep sided creek, more what I would expect from clear water run-off.
4. The crown is relatively close to the hole and terminates quickly. If it was ejecta, I’d expect it to be more diffuse.
@ur momisugly Stephen Rasey : August 12, 2014 at 11:03 am
“If it was from a general lowering of the artesian water table, ”
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Do not compute. Do not compute. …. Please explain or define: “artesian water table”.
Artesian “pressure” is a function of gravity. See: http://www.ngwa.org/Fundamentals/use/PublishingImages/aquifer_types.gif
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“But if there is outgassing of warm gas+water, it would rapidly and differentially melt the ice core of the pingo. But I would still expect the “plop” of the ice core into the shaft (created by pingo formation over hundreds of years) as it shrank under accelerated melting, ”
————-
Me seriously thinks that you should reconsider what you stated therein the above because it appears to me that ….. “you don’t have your ducks lined up in the correct order”.
The correct order is:
1. High pressure outgassing of warm gas+water thru the permafrost creates the pingo, which is little more than the physical hole in the permafrost.
2. Over time, surface water and/or ground water will “seep” into the newly created pingo (hole).
3. Freezing temperatures will cause ice to form on the surface water in the pingo and/or will cause all the water in the pingo to freeze ….. but only if the “water level” in the pingo is close to the land surface. (Well water … WILL NOT FREEZE ….. as long as it remains in the well).
4. If #3 keeps repeating, your per se “ice core plug” will form in said pingo hole.
5. If temperatures, either above or below said “ice core plug”, increase enough to cause melting of said “ice core plug”, ….. said “ice core plug” will not go “plop”, “kerploop” or “kerbang” …. simply because ice is lighter than water.
==============
“Could that gas+water+soil ejecta be the crown of bare material around the hole? I think not, for four reasons:
2. In the pictures, the crown looks quite piled up and relatively solid
4. The crown is relatively close to the hole and terminates quickly. If it was ejecta, I’d expect it to be more diffuse.”
——————
Maybe you would like too explain the crown of ejecta that has built up around these holes, to wit:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/21/article-2511115-198D58C000000578-128_634x939.jpg
Sea floor “Black Smokers”: http://latindex.ru/upload/iblock/8c5/kur.jpg