-> On 08 May 09  00:36:00, Jeff Binkley got back to Dan Ceppa 

 DC> DC>> Do you have any idea what happens when the tundra thaws out?
 DC> 
 DC> EH>> It that so? Feel free to explain it, Mr. Science.
 DC> 
 DC> DC> It releases methane, Mr Neophyte.
 
 DC> EH> fuel source to petroleum is quit easy. It's also a cleaner fuel
 DC> EH> that petroleum products. 
 
 DC>Jesus fucking Christ.  Do you have even the slightest clue as to 
 DC>how much methane is in the tundra?  Any at all?  

 JB> Please educate us.

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Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb
by John Atcheson

The Arctic Council's recent report on the effects of global warming in the far
north paints a grim picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and
other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries.  But it ignored a ticking time bomb
buried in the Arctic tundra.

There are enormous quantities of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses trapped
in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the bottom of the
seas.  These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as
is in the atmosphere.  Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse
gas as carbon dioxide.

Now here's the scary part.  A temperature increase of merely a few degrees
would cause these gases to volatilize and "burp" into the atmosphere, which
would further raise temperatures, which would release yet more methane,
heating the Earth and seas further, and so on.  There's 400 gigatons of
methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain
reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient
to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Once triggered, this cycle could result in runaway global warming the likes of
which even the most pessimistic doomsayers aren't talking about.

An apocalyptic fantasy concocted by hysterical environmentalists?
Unfortunately, no.  Strong geologic evidence suggests something similar has
happened at least twice before.

The most recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in
what geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane
burps caused rapid warming and massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for
more than 100,000 years.  

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