Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb

we have a fish in the great lakes called an alwive *sp?* that dies off by the thousands almost every summer,,, i wonder if this is the cause? interesting

I wonder if this is connected with whales beaching, dolphins beaching, sharks pooling inland...

and remember the "fish parade" last year along the gulf.

i know for a fact that natural gas wells surround the gulf coast, having lived within a mile of one

if they are on the coast, no doubt there are vents on the bottom of the gulf of mexico opening up at the present time as well

Didn't they used to send canaries into coal mines to check for gas?

thus the saying

"Canary in the coal mine"




Golf course bird deaths a mystery
The Paradise Island duck population has been decimated. Tests will be done on water in the two ponds where they died.
By KATHY SAUNDERS
Published August 17, 2005

-------------------------------------------------------------​-------------------
TREASURE ISLAND - Ducks have been dropping like flies at the city golf course at Treasure Bay.

City recreation officials believe the ducks were poisoned and they have hired an environmental consulting firm to test the water.

About three weeks ago, workers began hauling away the carcasses of ducks, egrets and herons from the two ponds at the city's nine-hole course on Paradise Island. They counted at least 40 dead birds.

"We have no duck population left," said City Recreation Director Cathy Hayduke. "We have no clue what happened. It has baffled us.

"Whatever it was, it was only attacking the birds," she said. "We have fish and crabs in the pond and it didn't affect any of them. So we don't think it was Red Tide.

"It's a mystery," she said, adding that city workers were very fond of the ducks.

"We used to bring them bread to eat in the maintenance shed and one of my employees had a little swimming pool for them," Hayduke said.

Neighbors also noticed the dwindling bird population.

[link to www.sptimes.com]

[link to www.godlikeproductions.com]

Earthquake activity on Augustine Volcano remains higher than normal. Several small steam explosions were recorded last week, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported in its weekly Friday update. On the four-color level of concern, Augustine remains at code yellow, indicating the volcano is restless and could erupt. However, an eruption is not imminent, scientists said.

Early last week, scientists visited Augustine, said Jennifer Adleman, media coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists using a forward-looking infrared radiometer confirmed a new fumarole or gas vent high on the south flank. They also measured for the first time since the 1990s sulfur-dioxide gas in a plume coming from Augustine. Sulfur dioxide smells like a lit match. Residents reporting a rotten egg smell several weeks ago were smelling hydrogen sulfide.

[link to www.homernews.com]

in Colorado:
[link to www.longmontfyi.com]
LONGMONT — A stagnant lake that gagged residents south of the city with a rotten egg-stench in August led Boulder County health officials to rethink their strategy for tackling some public health problems.

Brutal summer temperatures helped create an algal bloom in the stagnant pond, which turned pink and emitted stinky but non-toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide.

Dozens of neighbors near the lake complained to Boulder County Public Health about the smell. Some county officials jokingly nicknamed the pond “Stink Lake” when its hydrogen sulfide levels were at their peak.


Health officials set up a hotline and launched a Web site Aug. 25 to keep residents informed on the matter and steer them to a doctor if they experienced nausea or headaches from the smell.

The Web site logged a surprising number of hits from concerned homeowners, said Jeff Zayach, the county’s environmental health division manager.

“We’ve used the Web site, especially with West Nile Virus, to communicate with the public and report data, but this was the first time we’d used the Web site to give a neighborhood updates,” Zayach said. “The neighborhood was very receptive to it. It cut the phone calls we had to handle quite a bit.”

The county began monitoring hydrogen sulfide levels in the air near the lake and posted the data on its Web site to prove concentrations were far below the toxic threshold.

A mix of cool temperatures and a $34,500 solar-powered aerator quickly removed the stench, though the water in the stagnant “prairie pothole” stayed pink for weeks.
Click here to read the original story.

Anonymous Coward
User ID: 676
9/30/2005 1:48 PM
Report abusive post Lake Erie BURPS And Nearby Residents Smell It

Does anyone know what this means?

Lake Erie burps and nearby residents smell it

[link]


"Friday, September 30, 2005
AP

ERIE, Pa. -- State and federal environmental officials are trying to determine the cause of a big stink reported along Lake Erie.

Hundreds of residents called authorities or the National Weather Service yesterday to report the smell, which has been variously described as like gasoline, natural gas or even decaying garbage and rotten eggs. The smell was strongest yesterday morning when a cold front swept through the area, churning up larger than normal waves from Erie to Dunkirk, N.Y., officials said.

Scientists said tests run so far aren´t conclusive, but they believe the churning waters may have released some naturally occurring gases that are normally trapped beneath the lake´s deeper waters. Decaying plants and fish washed ashore by the waves could also be contributing to the stench.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection biologist Jim Grazio said the wave-churning theory makes sense because the smell lessened when the waves diminished.

"It´s like the lake burped, and then the burp passed by us," Grazio said."



[link to www.godlikeproductions.com]

Can anyone here verify these comments?






This statment posted earlier__

If you smell a sewage smell it is methane and if you smell a rotten egg smell it is
Hydrogen Cyanide.







The smell of rotten eggs is hydrogen sulphide, not
hydrogen cyanide, which has a faint, bitter, almond-like odor.

Cyanide is the gas used in gas chambers to kill people. Carbon dioxide is also coming but
this is no problem unless you are on a boat in a lake.

At Lake George in New York a boat
was under a big bubble of Carbon ioxide when it cam up and the boat sank killing 20 people.

If you smell a rotten egg smell head for high ground. Hydrogen Cyanide sinks to the ground.
If you get up high enough you can survive even if it kills all people within miles.

Put on your gas mask and head for the hills when you first smell the rotten egg smell
and stay there until it is gone.

'I used to be an analytical chemist. Methane is odorless.
A sewage smell would be caused by methane carrying other gasses with it to the surface.
It is correct that Hydrogen Sulfide is "rotten egg" gas.'

Fireball lights up Edmonton sky
Dec. 13, 2005. 01:28 AM


EDMONTON (CP) — A fireball lit up the sky west of Edmonton Monday night after an underground crack in an oil well caused unexpected pressure buildup.

Alberta Energy and Utilities Board spokesman Darin Barter referred to the incident as a "kick," and said employees at the well owned by Acclaim Energy ignited the gas for safety reasons and to relieve the pressure.

No one was injured.

The incident came exactly one year after an explosion at another oil well owned by Acclaim Energy forced more than 500 nearby residents out of their homes.

Barter said Monday's kick happened at a oil well two kilometres north of where last year's explosion and leak happened.

He said a kick is nowhere near as serious as an explosion or blowout, adding that the well is classified as sweet. Barter added there may be trace amounts of sour gas, which contains poisonous hydrogen sulfide, in the flare.

Alberta Environment spokesman Robert Moyles said his department had been informed that hydrogen sulfide was present in levels of 111 parts per billion. He said that while that was enough to produce a strong rotten egg-like smell, the trademark odour of hydrogen sulfide, at those low levels it is not dangerous.

Moyles said authorities received two complaints on Monday evening from people in the area who reported they smelled rotten eggs.

"This is not a blowout," Moyles said. "They've got to flare off an event for safety reasons so pressure doesn't build up.

No one from Acclaim Energy was immediately available for comment.

Jim Simpson, chief administrative officer for Parkland County, said no one had to be evacuated and he had been assured that the situation was under control.

"I've been told that there's no danger of emissions," Simpson said, adding Acclaim would notify them if the situation changed.

PetroChina oil well blowout reported in Xinjiang, no casualties
12.28.2005, 08:58 PM

BEIJING (AFX) - A blowout has occurred at a PetroChina well in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, leading to the release of poisonous gas, but no casualties were reported, the official Xinhua news agency said.

PetroChina's subsidiary Tarim Oilfield Co Ltd said that the blowout occurred at a well in the Tarim oilfield on Monday and that hydrogen sulphide gas was released.

It said that all workers have been withdrawn from the area but the situation is under control.

The report added that a highway near the oilfield would be closed for 10 days because of the accident
[link to www.forbes.com]

Date: 2005-03-01
URL: [link to www.sciencedaily.com]

-------------------------------------------------------------​-------------------

Global Warming Led To Atmospheric Hydrogen Sulfide And Permian Extinction
Washington, D.C. -– Volcanic eruptions in Siberia 251 million years ago may have started a cascade of events leading to high hydrogen sulfide levels in the oceans and atmosphere and precipitating the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a Penn State geoscientist.

"The recent dating of the Siberian trap volcanoes to be contemporaneous with the end-Permian extinction suggests that they were the trigger for the environmental events that caused the extinctions," says Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences. "But the warming caused by these volcanoes through carbon dioxide emissions would not be large enough to cause mass extinctions by itself."

That warming, however, could set off a series of events that led to mass extinction. During the end-Permian extinction 95 percent of all species on Earth became extinct, compared to only 75 percent during the K-T when a large asteroid apparently caused the dinosaurs to disappear.

Volcanic carbon dioxide would cause atmospheric warming that would, in turn, warm surface ocean water. Normally, the deep ocean gets its oxygen from the atmosphere at the poles. Cold water there soaks up oxygen from the air and because cold water is dense, it sinks and slowly moves equator-ward, taking oxygen with it. The warmer the water, the less oxygen can dissolve and the slower the water sinks and moves toward the equator.

“Warmer water slows the conveyer belt and brings less oxygen to the deep oceans,” says Kump.

The constant rain of organic debris produced by marine plants and animals, needs oxygen to decompose. With less oxygen, fewer organics are aerobically consumed.

"Today, there are not enough organics in the oceans to go anoxic," says Kump. "But in the Permian, if the warming from the volcanic carbon dioxide decreased oceanic oxygen, especially if atmospheric oxygen levels were lower, the oceans would be depleted of oxygen."

Once the oxygen is gone, the oceans become the realm of bacteria that obtain their oxygen from sulfur oxide compounds. These bacteria strip oxygen from the compounds and produce hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide kills aerobic organisms.

Humans can smell hydrogen sulfide gas, the smell of rotten cabbage, in the parts per trillion range. In the deeps of the Black Sea today, hydrogen sulfide exists at about 200 parts per million. This is a toxic brew in which any aerobic, oxygen-needing organism would die. For the Black Sea, the hydrogen sulfide stays in the depths because our rich oxygen atmosphere mixes in the top layer of water and controls the diffusion of hydrogen sulfide upwards.

In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide catastrophically. This would kill most the oceanic plants and animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would kill most terrestrial life.

"A hydrogen sulfide atmosphere fits the extinction better than one enriched in carbon dioxide," says Kump. "Carbon dioxide would have a profound effect on marine life, but terrestrial plants thrive on carbon dioxide, yet they are included in the extinction."

Another piece in the puzzle surrounding this extinction is that hydrogen sulfide gas destroys the ozone layer. Recently, Dr. Henk Visscher of Utrecht University and his colleagues suggested that there are fossil spores from the end-Permian that show deformities that researchers suspect were caused by ultra violet light.

"These deformities fit the idea that the ozone layer was damaged, letting in more ultra violet," says Kump.

Once this process is underway, methane produced in the ample swamps of this time period has little in the atmosphere to destroy it. The atmosphere becomes one of hydrogen sulfide, methane and ultra violet radiation.

The Penn State researcher and his colleagues are looking for biomarkers, indications of photosynthetic sulfur bacteria in deep-sea sediments to complement such biomarkers recently reported in shallow water sediments of this age by Kliti Grice, Curtin University of Technology, Australia, and colleagues in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal, Science. These bacteria live in places where no oxygen exists, but there is some sunlight. They would have been in their heyday in the end-Permian. Finding evidence of green sulfur bacteria would provide evidence for hydrogen sulfide as the cause of the mass extinctions.

"In Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a number of eruption of geysers appeared abruptly these few days.
Strikingly similar incident occurred in a different place but similar latitude here in Japan almost simultaneously.

A City of Oita, located near the internationally _____famous hotspring paradise Beppu,______ and since this July the hotspring boring has been conducted in the field of Nakasone Hospital with the hope of finding a good hotspring to make money essentially. But instead of finding a hotspring, they just find a natural gas leakeage and the fire in sequence.




"At 8:30 a.m. on the 12th of December, as was usual the workers started operating the boring machine, though the direct causes were not so sure a fire started at the site by igniting the natural gas methane that abruptly erupted from a gap of the diametre 54 mm pipeline that dug into 370 m under the ground within a diametre 80 mm pipeline that dug into 800 m under the ground. At the beginning of the prior small explosions, they had 5-6 metre high fire columns. After 9 hours the fire was put down but the leakeage of methane and vapour had been there. Before 4 o'clock p.m. on the 14th of December, gas leakeage was put down by injecting mud water into the smaller pipeline, it took about 55 hours after the fire.
I watched the scene in the local news, it was like a burnt small oil rig or well, shaft. I was unable to find a photo, though here is the link in Japanese. Probably you can only confirm the figures I mentioned above."

[link to technocrat.net]

Study Finds Evidence For Global Methane Release About 600 Million Years Ago



December 17, 2003 -- Scientists at the University of California, Riverside and Columbia University have found evidence of the release of an enormous quantity of methane gas as ice sheets melted at the end of a global ice age about 600 million years ago, possibly altering the ocean's chemistry, influencing oxygen levels in the ocean and atmosphere, and enhancing climate warming because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The study was published in today's issue of the journal Nature.




excerpt

. "The identification of a methane-derived isotope signal and widespread seep-like deposits indicate the massive passage of methane through the sediments," he added. "We now have an important record of the role methane plays in climate change and the global carbon cycle."

Methane clathrates are increasingly thought to play a role in mass extinctions associated with significant climate change in the Earth's history, and they are a large and exceedingly unstable source of greenhouse gas, greater than the equivalent of instantaneously burning all the oil reserves on Earth.

"Linking these dramatic climate events to changes in the methane clathrate pool has important implications for the stability of our current climate," said Martin Kennedy, an associate professor of geology at UC Riverside. "The Earth has a large unstable pool of these clathrates in ocean sediments today, and it is thought that a few degrees of ocean warming could trigger large-scale release into the atmosphere. We now have strong evidence of this doomsday scenario in one of the most important intervals of Earth's biologic history".

[link to www.sciencedaily.com]

Methane Release Raised Earth Temperatures 180 Million Years Ago


Methane Release Raised Earth Temperatures 180 Million Years Ago
Sep 19, 2005 - Open University researchers have uncovered startling new evidence about an extreme period of a sudden, fatal dose of global warming some 180 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. The scientists' findings could provide vital clues about climate change happening today and in the future.

The OU Department of Earth Sciences team, PhD student Dave Kemp and supervisors Drs. Angela Coe and Anthony Cohen, along with Dr. Lorenz Schwark of the University of Cologne, discovered evidence suggesting that vast amounts of methane gas were released to the atmosphere in three massive 'methane burps' or pulses. The addition of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere had a severe impact on the environment, warming Earth about 10 C, and resulting in the extinction of a large number of species on land and in the oceans.

Dr Angela Coe says: "We've known about this event for a few years through earlier work by our team and others, but there's been a great deal of uncertainty about its precise size, duration, and underlying cause. What our present study shows is that this methane release was not just one event, but 3 consecutive pulses. Importantly, our data demonstrate that each individual pulse was very rapid. Also, whilst the methane release was very quick, we've found that the recovery took much longer, occurring over a few hundred thousand years".

The methane came from gas hydrate, a frozen mixture of water and methane found in huge quantities on the seabed. This hydrate suddenly melted, allowing the methane to escape. The OU researchers based their findings on geochemical analyses of mudrocks that are preserved along the Yorkshire coast near Whitby, UK, and date from the Jurassic Period of geological time.

Dave Kemp, whose PhD is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), says: "The methane was released because slight wobbles in the Earth's orbit periodically bring our planet closer to the Sun, warming the oceans sufficiently to melt the vast reserves of hydrate. We believe that this effect was compounded by warming from greenhouse gases from volcanoes. After the methane was released into the atmosphere from the seabed it reacted rapidly with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also a powerful greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years, and it was this gas which caused such a massive global warming effect".

[link to www.universetoday.com]

Natural gas in the marine environment

excerpt


Methane impact on water organisms and communities

Water toxicology of saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons of the methane series has not been developed thus far. This gap cannot be filled by available materials on the toxicity of other gaseous poisons (e.g., carbon oxide, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia) for fish. Clear behavioral specifics of each of these gases in the water environment do not allow us to extrapolate these data to predict the biological effects of methane and other saturated hydrocarbons. However, the toxicity data on different gaseous poisons can help to reveal some general features of interaction between gaseous traces and marine organisms [Patin, 1993].

The first important feature is the quick fish response to a toxic gas as compared with fish response to other dissolved or suspended toxicants. Gas rapidly penetrates into the organism (especially through the gills) and disturbs the main functional systems (respiration, nervous system, blood formation, enzyme activity, and others). External evidence of these disturbances includes a number of common symptoms mainly of behavioral nature (e.g., fish excitement, increased activity, scattering in the water). The interval between the moment of fish contact with the gas and the first symptoms of poisoning (latent period) is relatively short.

Further exposure leads to chronic poisoning. At this stage, cumulative effects at the biochemical and physiological levels occur. These effects depend on the nature of the toxicant, exposure time, and environmental conditions. A general effect typical for all fish is gas emboli. These emerge when different gases (including the inert ones) oversaturate water. The symptoms of gas emboli include the rupture of tissues (especially in fins and eyes), enlarging of swim bladder, disturbances of circulatory system, and a number of other pathological changes.

These general features of fish response observed in the presence of any gas in the water environment are likely to be found for saturated gas hydrocarbons as well. Available materials derived from the medical toxicology of methane and its homologues support this suggestion.

Medical toxicology distinguishes between three main types of intoxication by methane:

light, results in reversible, quickly disappearing effects on the functions of central nervous and cardiovascular systems;
medium, manifests itself in deeper functional changes in the central nervous and cardiovascular systems and increase in the number of leukocytes in the peripheral blood; and
heavy, results in irreversible disturbances of the cerebrum, heart tissues, and alimentary canal as well as acute form of leukocytosis.
These types most likely adequately describe the general patterns of methane effects in vertebrates.

[link to www.offshore-environment.com]

obviously the earth is outgassing

this is what the sun is doing in record proportions currently also

Students' home explodes
Athens Banner-Herald (subscription), GA - 10 hours ago
... A University of Georgia student escaped with minor injuries ... 1:30 pm, according to Oconee County Fire ... from the pine trees surrounding the house Wednesday evening ...

natural gaslines are exploding all over the world
maybe they are placing too much pressure on these lines?

Additional ZetaTalk added Dec 14, 2005.

Yesterday, London had some oil tanks explode in a massive explosion. The British government had a bulletin from Al Queda 4 days ago about a similar type of event planned. Officially, it is ruled an accident. Do the Zetas want to comment on this?

As with the Stretch Stench that occurred in the eastern portions of the US this past Fall, the evidence that the North American continent is being torqued continues to emerge. Is there a correlation between a bursting dam in the Ozarks on Dec 14, sudden geysers in Oklahoma on Dec 11, and an oil refinery explosion near London on Dec 11? All are in the stretch zone. Is there a correlation also to the earthquakes that occurred in Africa's stretch zone, the Rift area, on Dec 5? Indeed, as the Torque Effect on the Earth is increasing, tearing the Atlantic apart, twisting the North American plate into a diagonal with New England pulled East while Mexico is pulled to the West, dropping Africa into the Indian Ocean as the African continent is likewise pulled East while its tip is held firm near Antarctica, and sinking the western edges of Great Britain as the Atlantic Rift widens and stretches under the curve of the Earth so the land along the edges sinks.

Confused investigators look for reasons for disasters that have their etiology in Earth quietly pulled apart, rock flakes pulled away, rather than pressed together, so that no quakes occur. The stretch zone is that sinking feeling, where support weakens, the ground sinks, and silently so. Thus gas and water mains explode, because the ground under them shifts, factories or refineries with gas line joints firmly sealed explode as these joints are pulled apart, and bridges fall as their mooring lose their firm footing. What also happens when rock flakes are pulled apart is that any underground reservoirs of gas or water lose their firm cap, and vent. In the case of the London explosion, the rumbling heard by witnesses ahead of the explosion was certainly not terrorism, but the ground adjusting, and more than the ground adjusted. Fittings in the refinery adjusted, metal on metal scraping into sparks, and boom!

What has happened recently that the stretch zone is so obviously under increasing tugging? We have repeatedly stated that the Earth changes will not diminish, but will increase going into the pole shift. This is not a lineal matter, as the closer Planet X comes to Earth, an inevitable path, the more the torque effect and the polar wobble where the N Pole of Earth is pushed away violently on a daily basis, occur. The wobble will become more pronounced, more violent. The plates are tugged back West of the Atlantic, pulled forward East of the Atlantic, during the daily rotation of the Earth. The North American continent is allowed to roll East during rotation while the S Pole is pulled West, creating the diagonal pull likely to trigger the New Madrid fault line into an adjustment, and soon. The N Pole is pushed away and allowed to bounce back, daily, as the Earth rotates, a wobble that puts stress on all fault lines when the plates are suddenly in motion, and suddenly stopped!

As there is no other explanation for the effect on the stretch zone, lacking any earthquakes to blame, and as these stretch zone accidents will continue to emerge, and with ferocity, this is a certain clue to those on the fence, that the influence of Planet X is the cause. Or is it Global Warming?

nancy is disinfo

but, you knew that

Thanks 301 for adding all those links to the thread.

Suffocation suspected for greatest mass extinction

09:30 09 September 2003

NewScientist.com news service
Jeff Hecht


excerpt~~~

Retallack knows the effects of low oxygen levels all too well. "I've just about died of mountain sickness at [the equivalent of] 12 per cent oxygen" while working at high altitudes, he told New Scientist. "I know exactly what it's like."

Lungs used to higher oxygen levels strain desperately for oxygen, and fill with fluid. The lack of oxygen would have left most Permian land animals gasping for breath, suffering from nausea, headaches, and inflamed lungs. Marine life would have suffocated in the oxygen-poor water.

Short nostrils
Yet the ungainly meter-long reptile Lystrosaurus survived because it had evolved to live in burrows, where oxygen levels are low and carbon dioxide levels high. It had developed a barrel chest, thick ribs, enlarged lungs, a muscular diaphragm and short internal nostrils to get the oxygen it needed. Retallack says Sherpas have developed some similar adaptations by living at high altitudes for generations.

While most Permian animals died gasping for breath, Lystrosaurus spread rapidly. In some areas, it accounts for 90 per cent of the fossils found after the extinction.

Oxygen depletion also could explain why coal swamps and coral reefs disappeared for millions of years after the extinction, says Retallack, as both are highly sensitive to oxygen levels.


[link to www.newscientist.com]

Earth's Wobble Burps Bring Mass Extinctions
NASA -- Open University researchers have uncovered startling new evidence about an extreme period of a sudden, fatal dose of global warming some 180 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs. The scientists' findings could provide vital clues about climate change happening today and in the future.

The OU Department of Earth Sciences team, PhD student Dave Kemp and supervisors Drs. Angela Coe and Anthony Cohen, along with Dr. Lorenz Schwark of the University of Cologne, discovered evidence suggesting that vast amounts of methane gas were released to the atmosphere in three massive 'methane burps' or pulses.

The addition of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere had a severe impact on the environment, warming Earth about 10-degrees Celsius, and resulting in the extinction of a large number of species on land and in the oceans.

Dr Angela Coe says: "We've known about this event for a few years through earlier work by our team and others, but there's been a great deal of uncertainty about its precise size, duration, and underlying cause. What our present study shows is that this methane release was not just one event, but 3 consecutive pulses. Importantly, our data demonstrate that each individual pulse was very rapid. Also, whilst the methane release was very quick, we've found that the recovery took much longer, occurring over a few hundred thousand years".

The methane came from gas hydrate, a frozen mixture of water and methane found in huge quantities on the seabed. This hydrate suddenly melted, allowing the methane to escape. The OU researchers based their findings on geochemical analyses of mudrocks that are preserved along the Yorkshire coast near Whitby, UK, and date from the Jurassic Period of geological time.

Dave Kemp, whose PhD is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), says: "The methane was released because slight wobbles in the Earth's orbit periodically bring our planet closer to the Sun, warming the oceans sufficiently to melt the vast reserves of hydrate.



We believe that this effect was compounded by warming from greenhouse gases from volcanoes. After the methane was released into the atmosphere from the seabed it reacted rapidly with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is also a powerful greenhouse gas that persists in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years, and it was this gas which caused such a massive global warming effect".

Dr Anthony Cohen adds: "One of the most important aspects of the study is that it provides an accurate timescale for how the Earth, and life, reacted to a sudden increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Today we are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.



It is possible that the rate at which carbon dioxide is being added to the atmosphere now actually outstrips the rate at which it was added 180 million years ago. Given that the effects were so devastating then, it is extremely important to understand the details of past events in order to better comprehend present-day climate change. With this information, we are better informed about what action needs to be taken to mitigate or avoid some of the potential detrimental future effects".

-----

On the Net:

NASA

Open University
[link to www.redorbit.com]

bump to note ~

the Mystery Mountain explosions in another thread.

The WV mine explosion

and a second mine explosion in China

[link to news.bbc.co.uk]

stop belching and ing please

interesting work to mitigate cow belching...excellent product and happier more energetic cows

Since most of the world's volcanoes are underwater, is it fair to say that most of the methane would rise from the bottom of the ocean floor?

The articles reference large "pulses" or releases


~~~Geochemists speculate that the methane escaped from sea-floor clathrates, methane-trapping ice-crystals that are distributed in sediments on the outer edges of continental margins worldwide. For reasons that remain unknown, the clathrates suddenly began to decompose on a massive scale at the time of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, increasing the amount of methane in the atmosphere and oceans.

~~~~
discovered evidence suggesting that vast amounts of methane gas were released to the atmosphere in three massive 'methane burps' or pulses


~~
If we trigger this runaway release of methane, there's no turning back. No do-overs. Once it starts, it's likely to play out all the way.

~~

We've known about this event for a few years through earlier work by our team and others, but there's been a great deal of uncertainty about its precise size, duration, and underlying cause. What our present study shows is that this methane release was not just one event, but 3 consecutive pulses.

~~The methane was released because slight wobbles in the Earth's orbit periodically bring our planet closer to the Sun, warming the oceans sufficiently to melt the vast reserves of hydrate. We believe that this effect was compounded by warming from greenhouse gases from volcanoes. After the methane was released into the atmosphere from the seabed it reacted rapidly with oxygen to form carbon dioxide




reference articles
[link to www.energybulletin.net]
[link to www.universetoday.com]

At the ocean floor lies a sleeping monster, one that millions of years ago devastated the Earth, causing a mass-extinction, and today could be released again. It is silent, invisible and deadly, and contains double the energy of the entire world's fossil fuels combined. It is the frozen methane reserves at the bottom of the sea; capable of causing massive rises in global temperatures and igniting the atmosphere.





What is methane?
Methane is an extremely flammable and explosive gas. At the bottom of the ocean it is found in a form called 'methane hydrate', when the particles are locked in a lattice with water. When this melts, it releases methane gas with 160 times this volume. Methane hydrate is found deep in the oceans, more than 350m down. It is estimated that there is more than 200,000 trillion cubic feet of this gas at the bottom of the ocean; 80,000 times conventional natural gas reserves.

How is it released?
Small bursts of methane hydrate can be released by sudden events that break the lattice, such as landslides and earthquakes on the ocean floor. This releases a large amount of methane from the local area. This has been suggested as a possible explanation for the Bermuda Triangle - an area of ocean in the South Atlantic where dozens of ships and planes have disappeared without trace.

The theory goes that landslides release the methane, which explodes on contact with, for example, a plane's engines. This shows how dangerous even small bursts can be.


[link to armageddononline.tripod.com]

The Bermuda Triangle and natural gas.

All 5 airplanes of flight 19 are missing and are never heard of again. Also another plane that searched them is missing. But this time there is evidence it exploded. People saw the explosion and later found oil on the water. This points to methane gas involved. When methane gas is ignited by an airplane engine this must cause a massive explosion.




methane can destroy a plane in two ways:
High concentrations of methane gas can let an airplane fall down because the light
gas does not support the plane.


Low concentrations of methane gas can explode because it becomes a mixture of methane
and oxygen. An airplane flying through such a mixture might ignite it.



1981 was the first time someone suggested that gas was involved. Richard McIver discovered that there are often landslides off the coast of Florida, deep down in the ocean sea. Such a landslide can release a lot of underwater gas:


[link to volker.nannen.com]