Opening Remarks
Sixth Annual Summer Institute of the World Nuclear University
Christ Church
Oxford University
5 July 2010
John Ritch
Director General, World Nuclear Association
President, World Nuclear University
A salient example of positive feedback is the expectation that continued global heating, by melting the arctic tundra in Siberia and Canada, will cause a sudden release of the methane gas trapped within that tundra. This single development could itself be cataclysmic – because the amounts will be massive and methane gas is 20 times more potent in its greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
We can rightly regard our accelerating rush toward this expected tipping point as the most dangerous development in the long history of humankind.
h/t to Marc Morano
Obviously hasn’t seen the methane tipping point report yesterday on “Haunting the library” (q.v)
Err – the World Nuclear Association would not somehow be shilling for the Nuclear Power Industry by any chance?
No I am sure I am being much too cynical.
Wouldn’t massive amounts of methane have already been released during the Minoan, Roman and other warmer than now periods previously experienced during the Holocene?
They all survived the “cataclysmic” result yet had problems with the cold later…maybe…in case cold is a result of warm…etc.
Taco Bell is responsible for massive amounts of methane. Will EPA license them?
Asphalt volcanoes as a potential source of methane to late Pleistocene coastal waters
Every year, natural petroleum seepage emits 0.2–2?Tg of oil to the ocean1. Significant oil seepage can build large underwater mounds, consisting of tar deposits with morphologies similar to volcanic lava flows, known as asphalt volcanoes2, 3. Such events are typically accompanied by large fluxes of the greenhouse gas methane4, 5.
The timing and volume of erupted hydrocarbons from the asphalt structures can explain some “””or all””” of the documented methane release and tar accumulation in the Santa Barbara basin during the Pleistocene.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n5/full/ngeo848.html
………….or all
Can’t begin to compare with all those dinosaur farts way back when. But at least those were natural, not a result of evil humanity!
And what I find so annoying is that these retards never even consider that bacteria WILL respond to the presence of all that lovely freebie energy and eat the methane as fast as their little teeny tiny metabolisms will allow — just as they did in the gulf of mexico.
Morons
BioBob,
I am not versed in microbiology but am fascinated by what happened to the petroleum in the gulf spill – apparently eaten my microbes…wow that is amazing. And little critters eat methane as well. I wonder how well we understand these bio-mechanisms – I guess not too well if it is predicted that methane release in the arctic spells certain doom. Hmmm.
Well, there is no such thing as a free lunch – but bacteria come close, lol. There are two sides to the bacterial equation
methane generation by one set of bacteria then methane consumption by another set.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph
Hey they’ve renovated the Clathrate Gun again. I wondered when they’d get to it, since ocean acidification is running out of puff. What next, hmm, lessee. Ozone! They haven’t done ozone for a while. Hah, that ultra dangerous greenhouse gas will be generated in increasingly large amounts from vehicles as the temperature rises, in turn causing dangerous positive feedbacks and exploding schoolchildren. You read it here first.