From: "Rich Gauszka" 

Bob was talking about the methane being released ( 20 times the potency of
CO2 as a greenhouse gas )

This is the ominous part - not enough by itself to cause mass extinctin but
combined with something like the Siberian Traps super volcano and we are
toast.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2088

The release of massive clouds of methane from icy hydrates buried under
shallow ocean floors is the leading suspect for the most devastating
extinction in the fossil record, according to a new analysis.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.500

Siberia's peat bogs formed around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last
ice age. Since then they have been generating methane, most of which has
been trapped within the permafrost, and sometimes deeper in ice-like
structures known as clathrates. Larry Smith of the University of
California, Los Angeles, estimates that the west Siberian bog alone
contains some 70 billion tonnes of methane, a quarter of all the methane
stored on the land surface worldwide.

His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane
will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs
remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will
be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a
greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.

"Mark"  wrote in message
news:43910f40$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>
> "Robert Comer"  wrote in message
> news:43910c22$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>> Yes those areas are predicted to rise in temperature 1 degree within the
>>> next several decades or so.
>>
>> That's a *lot*, and no, it's not just those areas, it's average global
>> temperature raise of 1 degree, that means that the warmer places warm
>> even more than 1 degree because of the offsetting cooler places.
>>
>> We're not all that many degrees off when the methane under the ocean
>> starts melting, and that's VERY bad...
>
> I dunno if it's really as bad as they want you to believe (actually I
> remain sure it's not):
> ====
> http://www.techcentralstation.com/120205F.html
> In the December 1st issue of Nature magazine, Harry Bryden and colleagues
> at Britain's National Oceanography Centre report that the Atlantic
> meridional circulation (also known as the thermohaline circulation
> (THC) -- the density driven current that carries warm surface water
> northward and returns colder deep water southward -- has slowed by 30
> percent between 1957 and 2004.
>
> The significance of this finding is difficult to assess in light of other
> recent observations.
>
> Climate model simulations estimate that a complete shutdown of the THC
> would result in a cooling of Europe of 4§C or more. So, shouldn't a 30%
> slowdown have some noticeable impacts, such as a pretty sharp cooling
> trend?
>
> Just two days before the Bryden results were published, a report from the
> European Environment Agency detailed all of the ills that Europe has been
> facing recently because of how warm it has been, and prominently
> proclaimed that Europe's four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002,
> 2003 and 2004. And yet, how many breathless news stories, like the one in
> London's Guardian, played the Bryden paper as reflecting a long-term
> (read: anthropogenic influenced) trend in the THC?
>
> ...
>
> Together, all of this points to a far less clear picture about the state
> of the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean than is generally being reported.
> On the other hand, if Bryden et. al. have discovered a real long-term
> change in the THC, then this will in turn change the paradigm as to how
> the THC relates to a huge host of climate parameters -- parameters that,
> at present, don't seem to be behaving like they should if the THC is
> indeed slowing dramatically. Not often does one anomaly break a paradigm.
> It happens -- but rarely.
> ======
>
> As is usual, there is more than one side to the global warming canard; the
> hysterical and the reasoned...
>

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