Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb

Atmospheric methane over the last 1000 years. The plot shows small variations in atmospheric methane during the natural climatic events: the medieval warm period (1000–1300 AD) and Little Ice Age (1550–1800 AD). These contrast with the dramatic increase in methane over the last 200 years.

The blue symbols are measurements from ice; the red line at the end of the record is from recent atmospheric measurements from Cape Grim, Tasmania. (Adapted from Etheridge et al. 1998. Journal of Geophysical Research 103(D13): 15,979–15,993.)


[link to www.niwascience.co.nz]

the arctic melting, caused by persistant condensation trails has led to the release of methane from the bogs in Siberia

the ocean methane story is probably a cover for this "mistake"

Methane and earthquakes


it has been suggested that animals may be responding to the release of gases such as methane just before the earthquake.


Quakes Large and Small, Burps Big and Old
Richard A. Kerr

SAN FRANCISCO--The fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held here last month attracted 8200 earth scientists and a dizzying variety of topics, including the prospects for another large earthquake in Turkey, bursts of methane from the sea floor, and the use of microearthquakes in the study of fault behavior.



And there are hints of another methane burst 90 million years ago that may help account for a mass extinction in the ocean. These results join previous strong evidence of a methane burst 55 million years ago, which marked a major turning point in mammal evolution.



Such a large, abrupt shift points to a methane burp. Only the methane of methane hydrate--a combination of ice and methane formed by sub-sea-floor microbes--would have been poor enough in carbon-13 to drive such a shift; volcanoes could never have emitted enough carbon dioxide in such a short time. Apparently, a few thousand gigatons of methane escaped from the sea floor.


[link to quake.wr.usgs.gov]

HOw about this insanity?

[link to www.casperstartribune.net]

Company: Methane water poses no threat

By JEFF GEARINO
Star-Tribune staff writer
NewsTracker

* Last we knew: Wyoming water officials said they're interested in using coal-bed methane byproduct water proposed for discharge into Seminoe Reservoir to help meet interstate water obligations.

* The latest: The company proposing the drilling project says water quality won't be jeopardized.

* What's next: The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comment through Feb. 3.

Early results from a coal-bed methane pilot project show there should be no problems with plans to pump salty water from drilling operations into Seminoe Reservoir, officials with a Colorado-based company said.

The pilot project leads the company to expect that water produced through methane extraction will meet existing drinking water and aquatic life protection standards, officials said.

The Bureau of Land Management is taking public comment on its proposal to allow Dudley and Associates LLC of Denver to pump water from its planned Seminoe Road coal-bed methane development into the reservoir on the North Platte River.

The company plans to drill up to 1,240 wells over the next 30 to 40 years in the western Hanna Basin.

Last month, Gov. Dave Freudenthal expressed concerns about the company's plans to pump upwards of 12,800 acre feet of water per year into the reservoir as part of the project. Wyoming Water Development Commission officials, however, are considering buying the water to help the state meet interstate water obligations in the Platte River Basin, if the water meets all environmental standards.

Dudley Environmental and Regulatory Liaison Kate Fay said in a news release the company is developing and evaluating a small coal-bed methane pilot project begun in 2000. She said Dudley remains optimistic that the results will, in due course, establish a commercial gas resource.

Coal-bed methane is developed by tapping into reservoirs of gas buried in underground coal beds, in this case about 5,000 to 10,000 feet in depth. The natural gas is trapped in the coal seams by the pressure of underground aquifers, and the gas is released when the water is pumped to the surface, which allows the gas to follow the water up.

The pilot project water contains some salts, Fay said, but associated impacts are expected to be negligible.

The byproduct water will mix with, and become highly diluted by, the Seminoe Reservoir water, Fay said. Moreover, the water is becoming naturally cleaner as production continues.

Fay said Dudley has provided the pilot project produced water to the surface owner for livestock watering and to Carbon County for road construction.

Conservationists expressed concern last month about the production water's high salinity and the possible effects of discharged water on wildlife and fisheries, particularly on the world-class trout fishery known as Miracle Mile, which is located just below the reservoir.

Salinity

The Seminoe Road project area is located on 137,000 acres of public, private and state lands 20 miles northeast of Rawlins. Fay said Dudley has operated in Wyoming for more than 20 years, 18 of them in Carbon County.

To date, Dudley had drilled 16 pilot project wells and one pressure observation well, and has constructed about 20 miles of associated roads, she said.

Fay said the average sodium adsorption rate in pilot project water is about 32. The current adsorption rate level of Seminoe Reservoir is about 1.3.

The company estimates that, at most, the projected sodium adsorption levels in the reservoir could increase only slightly to 1.5 as a result of the introduction of project water, she said.

"Water with an SAR of 1.5 is entirely suitable for agriculture use and will not adversely affect aquatic life," Fay said. "In fact, recent tests conducted by Dudley show that sensitive aquatic life species are not affected by project produced water even before it is diluted by the reservoir."

Fay said daily water production from the planned project is expected to increase at a fairly steady rate for the first seven years of operation, peaking at a total rate of about 42 acre feet per day for about a month. Water production would then steadily decrease for the remainder of the project.

An acre foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre at a depth of 1 foot.

Fay said the sedimentary geology of the Hanna Basin does not support the same high-density well spacing as other coal-bed methane projects in the state.

She said due to the unusually high permeability of the productive coals, Dudley expects to develop the gas resource with 160-acre well spacing, or four well sites per one square mile.

Reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at 307-875-5359 or at [email protected].

Wade, Nicholas; "Petroleum from Decay? Maybe Not, Study Says,"
> New York *Times*, September 14, 2004. Cr. D. Phelps)
>
> *Comments*. ESC16 in our catalog *Anomalies in Geology*, elaborates on
> 11 anomalies associated with methane's origin. Three of these are:
>
> * The extraordinary quantities of methane hydrate present in offshore
> sediments.
>
> * The emission of methane during earthquakes.
>
> * The energy contents of tsunamis require the addition of explosive
> decomposition of offshore, buried methane hydrate during quakes.
> In other words, landslides and stratum shifts are inadequate.
>
>
> SCIENCE FRONTIERS is a bimonthly collection of scientific anomalies in
> the current literature.

obviously, methane will be released more quickly from surface bogs than from the oceans

Siberian Peat Proves Key Player for Greenhouse Gas Production in Past, Future, UCLA-Led Team Finds


Date: January 15, 2004
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( [email protected] )
Phone: 310-825-1046



Vast peat bogs in the Russian Arctic appear to play a much more important role in the creation of greenhouse gases worldwide than previously thought, a UCLA-led team of researchers report in the Jan. 16 issue of Science.

Peatlands of Russia's West Siberian Lowland have been a global producer of methane gas much longer than researchers once believed, and the foul-smelling marshes could accelerate global warming if rising arctic temperatures succeed in drying them out, which could boost their emissions of carbon dioxide as the stored plant materials essentially compost.

"This area is more of a player for greenhouse gases than we ever thought, and it's going to be more of a player in future global warming than we thought," said Laurence C. Smith, the study's lead author and a UCLA geographer.

"This study shows the potential role of Siberian peatlands as a major piece of the greenhouse gas puzzle — both in the past and in the future," added co-author Glen MacDonald, chairman of UCLA's geography department.

The bogs also account for anywhere from 7 percent to 26 percent of carbon reserves accumulated worldwide since the last Ice Age, Smith and MacDonald report in "Siberian Peatland: A Net Carbon Sink and Global Methane Source Since the Early Holocene." If released steadily over the next five centuries, this stored carbon could cause a 4 percent annual increase over the current rate of CO2 rise.

"There are many other large northern peatlands worldwide," Smith said. "If they all dried up, together these bogs could boost the present-day rate of CO2 increase worldwide by 15 percent to 39 percent, depending on the size estimates that you use."

Armed with funding from the National Science Foundation, Smith and MacDonald led a 22-member international team that also discovered the Siberian peatlands are 2,000 to 3,000 years older than previously thought and may even be responsible for a mysterious spike 9,000 to 11,500 years ago in methane levels in the earth's atmosphere.

The largest peatlands in the world, Russia's Western Siberian Lowlands cover more than 230,000 square miles and are filled with between 1.5 feet and 33 feet of decaying plant material, including sphagnum moss, lichens and tree trunks.

Because of Siberia's chilly climate, the decaying plant material never fully decomposes, causing accumulation of peat. Over geologic time, such reserves of un-decomposed plant material form coal beds and fossil fuel.

But in the meantime, anaerobic bacteria attempt to break down or digest the peat, producing a gaseous byproduct that smells like rotting eggs. The gas consists predominantly of methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases.

"With the close of the Ice Age, a relatively warmer, wetter period emerged," said Smith, an associate professor of geography in UCLA College. "Prior to this point, it was too cold for peatlands to grow. But Siberia never warmed to the point where plant material could fully decompose in any given season — and that's still the case. Peatlands form wherever plant production exceeds decomposition in wet areas, and that happened here."

The researchers, who are allied either with UCLA or the Russian Academy of Sciences, spent three years studying more than 10,000 Siberian bogs, using satellite imaging and GIS analysis as well as core samples from the bogs. The team used 87 such samples and thousands of depth measurements.

Radio-carbon dating showed that most of the bogs dated back between 9,000 and 11,500 years to the early Holocene period, at the close of the earth's last Ice Age. Ice core samples have shown that the earth's atmosphere during that period was characterized by mysterious spikes in methane gases. Based on an analysis of these core samples, the team calculated a range of likely methane production levels during the early Holocene. The average of those values slightly exceeds the magnitude needed to cause the observed spikes, as determined by past researchers.

"Scientists have debated the sources of these methane swings, which caused worldwide methane levels to soar even higher than they are today," Smith said. "Now we suspect these peatlands, which really have not been considered as a major source of methane for that time."

"Since we focus so much today on man-made sources of greenhouse gases, it's easy to forget that global climate changes also occur naturally," he said. "But we're in uncharted territory when it comes to combining man-made sources with natural sources."


Scientists have long discounted the possibility that the Siberian peatlands were responsible because arctic peatlands elsewhere came into existence after an abrupt increase of methane happened in the earth's atmosphere, Smith said. Core samples have shown that arctic and subarctic peatlands in Canada had not yet formed during the methane spike, in part because the area was still covered by glacier ice, and therefore could not have caused the methane increase.

"People just assumed the Siberian situation was similar," Smith said.

In fact, the Siberian wetlands were never covered by glaciers. As a result, the Siberian peatlands formed more quickly in response to the warmer Holocene climate.

"The peatlands started sooner and grew explosively in Siberia," Smith said.

"Methane is a major greenhouse gas and what controls the world's atmospheric methane content is a topic of keen scientific debate and a real concern in terms of future greenhouse warming," MacDonald said.

Certainly, the Arctic has been hard hit by present-day warming trends, Smith pointed out.

"Sea ice is melting so quickly that it's at the lowest extent ever seen before, shrubs are sprouting up in what used to be tundra, the growing season has lengthened and the tree line may even be moving north," he said. "There's no question that the Arctic is really heating up."

If the trend continues, Siberia's peat bogs may dry out for the first time, which would unleash a significant store of the greenhouse gas CO2 into the atmosphere, the article in Science warns.

"As a plant grows, it takes carbon from the atmosphere," Smith said. "After the plant dies, if it doesn't fully decompose, some of this carbon becomes stored in the ground in the form of peat. This process has been ongoing in Siberia for 11,500 years. However, in an extreme warming scenario, the peatlands could go from being this wet soggy bog that withdraws CO2 from the atmosphere to a compost heap, which could then begin to release CO2. People don't realize it but CO2 — and all kinds of gasses — are given off when you compost. That's scary because we've been storing it for 11,500 years. That's a lot of carbon to let loose on the environment."

[link to newsroom.ucla.edu]

In August 2005, climate re-searchers reported that a large area of western Siberia was undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, as melting permafrost injects additional carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Permafrost across a million square kilometers, an area as large as France and Germany combined, has already started to melt, reported Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand of England’s Oxford University. What was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat had turned, during the summer, into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometer across. Kirpotin told the Manchester Guardian Weekly that the situation was an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming.”

By the end of this century, temperatures may reach a level that may melt solid methane in the oceans. During past periods of rapid warming, tens of millions of years ago, methane in gaseous form (called “clathrate”) has been released from sea floors in intense eruptions, following an increase in temperatures of up to 8 degrees Celsius, which is within the range projected by many climate models for the end of this century. Scientists call these explosions the “clathrate gun” or “methane burp.” Once such reactions begin, they feed themselves, dramatically accelerating the rate of warming in the atmosphere.


[link to www.progressive.org]

NATO and the IPCC are scared shitless that people will realize that their little experiments with persistant condensation trails (NATO Open Skies Treaty) will be held accountable for the melting of the northern bogs

they know they caused it, but for some reason, they are not taking responsibility for it

and then to top it off, they have the gall to blame the cars and trucks of citizens for this sudden warming and melting of the arctic

ABC


Undersea Mounds May Host Gas Pockets Ready to Burst



Underwater Mounds Suggest Deep Sea Gas Pockets




By Lee Dye
Oct. 31 - When Edward A. Keller got his first look at some recent high resolution images of the ocean floor off Santa Barbara, Calif., he saw things that were surprising, exciting, and a little unsettling.

For openers, he saw what he believes to have been an ancient island, buried under the sea for thousands of years.

And he saw huge craters, one measuring at least 1,500 feet across, scattered along an earthquake fault zone like a series of open pits left behind by some aquatic miners.

He also saw mysterious mounds pushing up from the ocean floor, one more than 600 feet in diameter, and at first he didn't have a clue as to what they were. After many months of pondering the evidence, the UC Santa Barbara geologist is fairly convinced now that the mounds conceal pockets of gas that could rupture through the ocean floor with possibly disastrous consequences for anyone unfortunate enough to be directly over them.

A huge pocket of methane, suddenly bursting to the surface, would create a gaseous hole in the water so large that even an oil tanker could plunge into it and sink, Keller says.

"If enough bubbles come up, the water loses its buoyancy, and you can imagine a huge amount of methane coming up in a concentrated area," he adds. "If there was a boat there, it would lose its buoyancy and sink."


excerpt from
[link to abcnews.go.com]

can you say outgassing?

Terraforming Earth IV: The Question of Methane | Jamais Cascio


Methane remediation

So what about methanotrophic bacteria? Such bacteria have long been recognized in freshwater areas and soil, and have had limited use in bioremediation efforts. Methanotrophic Archaea -- similar to bacteria, but a wholly different kingdom of organism -- were recently identified in the oceans; research suggests that methanotrophic Archaea may be responsible for the oxidation of up to 80% of the methane in the oceans. Methanotrophic microbes can also be temperature extremophiles, as they were among the various species found after the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed.

We recently began to learn much more about how methanotrophic bacteria function, as a team from the Institute for Genomic Research sequenced the genome of the methanotroph Methylococcus capsulatus. The scientists discovered that Methylococcus has the genomic capacity to adapt to a far wider set of environments than it is currently found in. They also looked at the possibility of enhancing the microbe's ability to oxidize methane, although admittedly for purposes other than straight methane consumption.

You can see where I'm going with this.

Freshwater methanotrophs are increasingly well-understood, but present a limited means of methane remediation. Methanotrophic Archaea have demonstrated ability to act as a major methane sink, at least in the oceans, and to live in extreme temperature conditions. Neither is a good fit for Siberia. The Siberian arctic, while warming, remains damn cold, but the melted permafrost lakes will be freshwater settings.

It appears to me that what will be the most effective means of mitigating and remediating the gargantuan methane excursion from the Siberian permafrost melt would be using genetically-modified forms of methanotrophic bacteria, with greater oxidation capacity and the Archaea-derived resistance to extreme cold (these may well go hand-in-hand, as one way that deep sea methanotrophs survive the icy depths is through internal energy production from methane consumption). Given the size of the region, we'll need lots of them, but that's another advantage of biology over straight chemistry: the methanotrophs would be reproducing themselves.

It's unlikely that abundant reproduction of GMO methanotrophs would pose a larger risk -- at the very least, they'd be limited to the post-permafrost lakes, as they'd be based on freshwater-only species -- and a mass of methanotrophic organisms would undoubtedly be helpful for reducing overall atmospheric methane beyond the Siberian release. More importantly, the successful introduction of such organisms would give us practice for what would be a far, far greater problem: the undersea methane clathrates, which are believed to contain upwards of 500 billion tons of CH4. Undersea clathrate melts have been implicated in mass extinctions in the geologic past; the significant climate warming that would result from an unmitigated Siberian release would pale in comparison to the effects of a clathrate melt.

What are the outstanding questions we need to answer before we could consider creating GMO methanotrophs?


Is it physically possible? Could a sufficient number of methane-eating bacteria even be produced to counter a fast release of methane from the Siberian bogs?

Is it biologically possible? Could a species of methanotrophic bacteria be engineered to be able to thrive in Siberian conditions and consume large quantities of methane?

What are the unrecognized risks? What are we missing in an initial risk analysis? Saying "we don't know the risks" doesn't, in and of itself, mean "we should not attempt this," it means "we need to do more research." Clearly, if the risks from enhancing the methane consumption and environmental adaptation capacities of a methanotroph could lead (through species-hopping genes or simple mutation) to even harder-to-manage problems than gigatons of atmospheric methane, this isn't an option. Boosting OH levels in the region would be the fallback position, as we have more experience with managing CO and NOx pollutants.

If you think I'm suggesting this option in a casual or flippant manner, you need to read Terraforming Earth essays one, two and three. Planetary engineering -- including the widespread release of genetically modified organisms to combat atmospheric changes -- should only be considered when more readily reversed and managed solutions are no longer available or functional. In the case of the Siberian methane, the more cautious options are extremely limited. We're no longer in a position to stop the melting, even by ceasing all greenhouse gas production today; the temperature increases we're seeing now are the results of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere decades ago.

In a way, among the different scenarios forcing us to consider "terraforming," this is probably close to the best choice. Failure would be drastic, but not utterly catastrophic (unless the resulting warming, in turn, melts the undersea clathrates, at which point all bets are off). The engineering options are enhancements of natural processes, as opposed to something beyond current experience (such as putting a "solar shade" between the Earth and the Sun to reduce overall insolation). At least with current understanding, a "runaway" condition for the terraforming effort would not mean widespread extinctions (such as would the "runaway" scenario for boosting phytoplankton blooms in the oceans). And, as noted, this would allow for better refinement of technique and understanding of choices in the face of a similar-but-greater in magnitude problem down the road (in this case, the aforementioned clathrates).

full text
[link to www.worldchanging.com]

alot of this remediation is done with atmospheric aerosols
too bad we have to breathe whatever they use to remediate the pollutants

alot of this remediation is done with atmospheric aerosols



ding~ding~ding

we have a winner~

(MOBILE, Ala.) Jan 19 - It wasn't an earthquake, but it felt like it to many of you.

What sounded and felt like an intense explosion rocked much of the local area around 2:30 Thursday afternoon, shaking homes and businesses and shaking up a lot of residents.

"I heard a shaking and a rattling,” said Lana Cook, who experienced the boom in her home off Moffet Road. "It was like someone pounding with their fists."

The boom created some scary moments for residents throughout much of the local area, who experienced what sounded and felt like an explosion.

"This was hard, loud and continuous,” Cook added.

Mobile County's Emergency Management Agency says crews were dispatched to check for any type of explosion or industrial accident.

They say they're looking at the incident as most likely a sonic boom whose intensity was amplified by local weather conditions. Chris Norton was at work at a warehouse off Moffett Road when he felt the boom.

“I kind of felt like the walls had expanded,” Norton said. “You could feel the walls and doors sort of blow open. Iit was pretty intense."

For the time being, the exact cause remains unknown. The National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado registered no unusual activity, and officials at Eglin Air Force Base say they had no high-speed flights that would have caused a sonic boom.

No injuries or structural damage was reported after this afternoon's boom.

Oldie but a goodie!!

I might be a good idea to add some of the recent stories to this reference thread.

"The Earth's core...it is out of balance"

- Maria Esperanza, holy mystic of Venezuela

Now everyone better pay attention here ... there's a group of us, "truthwarriors" that have been around here a long time. And this core group that formed over 10 years ago was linked in with Kent Steadman & others and began after a few started learning about chemtrails, etc and that opened huge cans of worms & down into deep rabbit holes (like CERN and stuff few can believe even possible!).

And all along some of us been researching more & more into all sorts of stuff - and one of the most freaky things we discovered 4 years ago was how the global warming was causing huge threats of methane being being released from the ground & seabeds ... talking very severe threats - like TEOTWAWKI type events !!! (Note: global warming = meaning the whole solar system is warming as ice caps melt on planets around earth & many think this is due to massive energy inflowing into our region of galaxy from increasing frequency of GRB's + also the dense plasma field, also cosmic dust, etc and NOT the NWO propaganda agenda that claims our planet warming is strictly due to humans).

Anyhow, study this thread from 2006, please, folks and then connect the dots & post here .. let's see how this info we found back then now fits in and hopefully it may give us some glimpses of the real truth concerning what is actually going on now with this Gulf oil crisis & other factors too: earthchanges & ancient prophecies & Illuminati NWO (evil demonic Darth Vader ET's + their ptb elite puppets) and so on.

Thanks - Blessings - Prayers!!!

RED ALERT FOLKS! COPY & SAVE ALL THESE METHANE THREADS FOR ARCHIVES AS THIS IS SMOKING GUN INFO .... AND THIS ONE + ALL OTHERS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS ARE NOT COMING UP AT ALL WHEN DOING A SEARCH FOR METHANE ON GLP SEARCH ENGINE NOW! HMMMM!

Did BP cause a Burp?

Interesting.

March 1, 2018: An unusual observation has been noticed in the Gulf of Mexico as a persistent heat anomaly continues to appear on weather maps. Last reading was 133 degrees!

[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]

My ultimate, ongoing concern with the climate problem is Methane. The northern permafrost areas are melting back at an accelerating rate and releasing as much CO2 as humans did in 1950. Add that to what we humans emit now. There are millions of square miles of it and it is loaded with the stuff. Micro organisms in the soils eat carbon and emit carbon dioxide. Added to that are countless pockets of methane that have begun to explode out of the permafrost along Northern Siberia leaving large craters.

Excerpt from:
The Methane is Rising and Humanity’s Time on Earth is Growing Much Shorter | Robert Heston
June 2, 2017



[link to sungraffix.net]

Enormous Underwater Methane Domes Could Be Warning Signs Of Imminent Explosion

It's bad enough that we have to deal with toxic levels of CO2, now it looks like we'll probably have methane gas to contend with too.

June 10, 2017 <<<<

What’s so bad about underwater methane domes exploding? Simply, methane is nearly 36 times more toxic than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse (or heat-trapping) gas. This means that if a methane dome explodes, it can potentially release an enormous amount of toxic methane gas not just into our sea waters but possibly to our atmosphere as well. And we’re not just talking about a single dome here, because there are a number of them under the Arctic Ocean as we speak.

[link to wallstreetpit.com]

Whooops!!!
[link to arctic-news.blogspot.no]

It is what the CH4 becomes when it rises in the atmosphere, and where it goes that is the real issue being completely ignored. And it's the reason for all the 'chemtrails' too.

I would take a listen:

The Arctic Methane EMERGENCY



[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]