Methane
 

I read a lot of SciFi and, some 20 years ago, I read a couple of books by David Brin (although I cannot recall if it was Earth or Existence) where he talked about methane hydrates. Global warming had warmed the oceans sufficiently that methane hydrates started to thaw and we were in a desperate battle to refrigerate the poles (and sea bed) to cool the planet although this was not the main subject of the book.

I decided to investigate some of the details in his novel and yes, there are between 1000 and 5000 Gigatonnes of methane stored in a stable hydrate form at the bottom of the oceans. Stable, that is, until the temperature rises.
(https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-...hane-hydrates/)

I told my kids 10 years ago that there wouldn't be a problem unless global methane levels started to rise because that would then signify something really bad was beginning to happen.

I read this today:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-w...227052679.html

Most of my SciFi books I re-read, I never read these particular books again because they started to feel like a (gloomy) documentary.

Re: Methane
 

The planet has been changing since it solidified from a dust cloud, for 99.99999% of that time it has been uninhabitable for mammals - we have been in a Goldilocks period for a very short time, the planet will do what it wants, we are just temporary passengers on a lump of rock spinning at 1000mph and travelling through space at about 66,000mph, the fact we are here at all is an unbelievable thing that is stranger than any sci-fi novel. So enjoy while it lasts......

Re: Methane
 

think about this... would you pump your car/bike exhaust fumes into your home and breathe the air?

no i guess you would not but thats exactly what we are doing but on a global scale. there can only be a certain number of PPM in the air before it becomes saturated and deadly.

yes you are right about mother nature doing what it wants but we are not helping.

Re: Methane
 

The earth is a very active planet and has plenty of volcanoes that can do a better job than us of polluting the atmosphere, in fact plants need CO2 to grow so the extra CO2 is doing a fine job of greening the planet and making food grow faster and larger. The real culprit is human overpopulation and no one seems to mention it, all the larger religions encourage their followers to have plenty of kids, as if they are trying to make their religion the largest one, perish the thought :(

Where there are plenty of trees the CO2 rises in winter but falls in summer as the trees take it in, deforestation put a stop to this natural cycle.

As Seeker says methane is much better ( worse) green house gas than CO2, so if that starts bubbling up we are really in trouble, maybe we should capture and burn it to produce much more friendly CO2....

Re: Methane
 

On a side note about methane, scientists have speculated that some unexplained shipping losses (new ships in good weather) could be explained by methane "burps". We know these burps happen and if a ship happened to be above one it would lose buoyancy and sink immediately or if partially over one, its back would break...and sink.

We crossed another threshold a couple of years ago - we can no longer plant enough trees to save us from rising CO2. https://www.businessinsider.com/so-m...save-us-2017-5

Most climate scientist think that reducing CO2 output is no longer sufficient, we need to start capturing it although the technology to do that (economically) is in its infancy.

In all the 650+ SciFi books I've read, not one of them predicted that we would actually put a value on our continued existence, like we are doing right now, and worse still - decide it's too expensive to save ourselves.

Re: Methane
 

Humans only exist as a step in the evolutionary process, extinction is inevitable and natural, we shouldn't be concerned about it at all because we won't be here to see it.

Re: Methane
 

+1

we think we are somehow special, but just a naked ape with very destructive tendencies in reality..