The End is Inevitable

[Soviet]

It's too late. We've gone past the tipping point.

*imbibes dangerous amount of vodka naked*

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[Nekota]

There are active monitors for methane and the level had stopped rising a decade ago but with an uptick starting in 2007.

I have a wait and see attitude - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[CWO4Mann]

It's too late. We've gone past the tipping point.

*imbibes dangerous amount of vodka naked*

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sto? Eta nice bottle of Stoly made for the Nomenklatura purchased at Biroska Store with illegaly-held amerikanskii dollars traded from one greasy hand to another in brush passes at Dom Kneigi Moscova, then passing out forever on the front steps of the Rossiya after plundering a visiting Trabant auto of the precious cuban rubber wiper blade. Ahhhhh ... "dangerous amounts of vodka"? nyet, cannot be possible.

 

[AndyH]

There are active monitors for methane and the level had stopped rising a decade ago but with an uptick starting in 2007.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi_2009.fig2.png

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20111109_greenhousegasindex.html

A continued recent increase in methane: Methane levels rose in 2010 for the fourth consecutive year after remaining nearly constant for the preceding 10 years, up to 1799 parts per billion. Methane measured 1794 ppb in 2009, and 1714 ppb in 1990. Pound for pound, methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but there’s less of it in the atmosphere.

After acting as a strong greenhouse gas for its lifetime, methane degrades to CO2 to continue working for about 1000 years...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/arctic-methane-on-the-move/

Methane is like the radical wing of the carbon cycle, in today’s atmosphere a stronger greenhouse gas per molecule than CO2, and an atmospheric concentration that can change more quickly than CO2 can. There has been a lot of press coverage of a new paper in Science this week called “Extensive methane venting to the atmosphere from sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf”, which comes on the heels of a handful of interrelated methane papers in the last year or so. Is now the time to get frightened?

No. CO2 is plenty to be frightened of, while methane is frosting on the cake. Imagine you are in a Toyota on the highway at 60 miles per hour approaching stopped traffic, and you find that the brake pedal is broken. This is CO2. Then you figure out that the accelerator has also jammed, so that by the time you hit the truck in front of you, you will be going 90 miles per hour instead of 60. This is methane. Is now the time to get worried? No, you should already have been worried by the broken brake pedal. Methane sells newspapers, but it’s not the big story, nor does it look to be a game changer to the big story, which is CO2.

More on methane at Real Climate:
Methane Search at Real Climate