/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8784432
Climate scientist here, actually the consensus has been shifting away from the clathrate gun hypothesis. Just last month, a review study was published by Carolyn Ruppel the Chief Scientist of USGS (United States Geological Survey) Gas Hydrate Project. Here is the press release for the study
https://www.usgs.gov/news/gas-hydrate-breakdown-unlikely-cause-massive-greenhouse-gas-release

Before this review, which is kind of a nail in the coffin, several other studies like analyses of CH4 isotopes in ice cores,
>http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.465.6061&rep=rep1&type=pdf
>http://faculty.jsd.claremont.edu/emorhardt/159/pdfs/2007/Sowers%202006.pdf
>http://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5790/1109
have shown that there was no trace of clathrate release in the past, so it is unlikely that this will happen in the near future. Moreover, study from the latest catastrophic clathrate explosion we had, the deepwater oil spill shows that all of the methane got eaten by bacteria in the water column and none of it made it to the atmosphere
>https://9bb9afe9-a-017ed1b7-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/uw.edu/ess-418-geoscience-communication/Science-2011-Kessler-312-5.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7coTSjSfBv_XVogThgRCYYwFVgYiVkWE8KW-cJsCcHixN0viZTivh76-LBNirCpw-cpp97TaBIEsrvl62Zs79Cf4Wo1FYjt0bcOsvaCLi-GORlL6O9Vfiv6ulD2sWM9b5ZMQ7JFGjRKK1Ie8yNe6xmOc8pcsW4DaP11iZKJHYCFgGABtC_DKeZnqSARqf7LqgXA4stKhrTIUa7ReCq4FCcysm33-8cwnJq2siKzT0MWjeL45K9sr5x809P5EAZKuqb7hKGZK&attredirects=0

As a result of these series of recent studies, the IPCC AR5 synthesis shifted the prediction on catastrophic methane hydrate dissociation to UNLIKELY which means less than <1% chance of it happening in the near future (defined as 100yr from now)

>>8778371
When Natasha Shakhova from University of Alaska Fairbanks reporting tons and tons of potential clathrate dissociation in the East Siberian Arctic shelf, she got a pretty harsh repudiation letter almost instantly
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5996/1146.2.short

When the idiot economists without good understanding further take her number, and came out with a comical cost of $60 trillion on global economy, both Nature and the New York Times who cover the study got blasted instantaneously by everyone else in the field.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/arctic-methane-hydrate-catastrophe

Carolyn Ruppel who's the leader of Methane Hydrate project from USGS went on NBC News to shoot down the estimate.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/claims-arctic-methane-disaster-stir-controversy-6C10786434

Ed Dlugokencky the big boss who run the NOAA lab that measures CH4 all over the world also releases a press statement saying that the study was a crockpot of malarkey

Even the usual pro AGW climate blog like skeptical science called this shit out
https://skepticalscience.com/toward-improved-discussions-methane.html

So what do these people do? They got some asshole non scientist Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development to write an alarmist article on the Guardian saying that all these experts who spent their lives studying these very things are wrong
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/05/7-facts-need-to-know-arctic-methane-time-bomb
>All this proves that the $60 trillion price-tag for Arctic warming estimated by the latest Nature commentary should be taken seriously, prompting further urgent research and action on mitigation - rather than denounced on the basis of outdated, ostrich-like objections based on literature unacquainted with the ESAS.

And at that point there's not much else you can do. There are extremists on both sides for sure.