Saturday, August 22, 2009

Watch out for the methane monster

Runaway global warming coming soon--if the ocean bottom starts releasing methane.

It's the scare story of the decade, and there's scary news just out. Ocean farts are leaking methane already, sooner than expected.

How does this work? The ocean bottom has methane stored as methane hydrates, stable at cold temperature and high pressure as found in the deep ocean. But only slightly stable. Warmer temperatures make the methane hydrates melt and the methane is released as a gas...ocean methane farts. Enough farts and the methane can contribute to global warming. And so on...and so on...until we're all melting. Read the book.

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