Update: Steve Hawyward has a must read compendium up at the Weekly Standard, not to mention the above excellent artwork showing the high priest of AGW has no clothes. H/T Powerline.

Update: added link to source article – my bad! – end update

When you have drunk the AGW Kool Aid you see human made global warming everywhere – its like hallucinating on LSD spiked in the Kool Aid. All of sudden winters without much snow are a sign of AGW, winters with record snow are AGW, increased rainfall is AGW, reduced rainfall is AGW, ice falling off one side of Antarctica (near its volcanoes) is AGW, ice growing on the other side is AGW. Earthquakes and tsunamis are AGW, disease and war. It’s quite pathetic really.

Recently a Russian report on methane gas in Siberia came out, and all the Kool Aid drinkers were claiming it was all AGW!

But if one knew what the science was reporting one would see that what we have is more evidence  recent warming is a natural part of the normal Earth cycle. Moreover, much of what we are seeing is the world coming out of the recent Little Ice Age, which supposedly “ended” right before the global temperature record began. I say ‘supposedly’ because no one knows when or if we passed ‘the end’. If we assume the ‘end’ was the return to the prior Medieval Warm Period, then we may not have passed ‘the end’ yet. Yes, it is getting warmer since the Little Ice Age – so what?

What we do know is that as the Earth warms from these cold spells it out-gasses. Gases once frozen in the Earth and colder oceans are released as temperatures rise, and that alters the chemical make up of our water and air. Basic chemistry at work here. Why this is a shock to so many PhDs puts into question the quality of some PhDs.

So this study in Siberia discovered one of these geological out-gassing sites producing massive amounts of methane – a much more powerful Green-House Gas (GHG) than little old CO2.

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

Or it could not trigger warming. Ice cores show how green house gas production lags temperature increases (click to enlarge):

The blue line is temperature, and the CO2 is clearly rising after the temp rises, sometime 100’s of years after. Again, basic chemistry at work here.

This is not the first time the Earth has warmed and outgassed, it won’t be the last. The report goes on to note some interesting facts that need to be understood:

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.

The reasons for my highlights are as follows. The report goes on to show the Siberian Shelf is producing more methane than all the world’s oceans combined. With methane being 30 times stronger than CO2 combined with the theory that GHG is driving the warming (and satellite measurements of heat radiation into space do NOT support this) one has to ponder the role of this large area of methane deposits on climate. Is it the cause of the warming in Eurasia which does not show up in North America (thus not being global)?

There is no proof shown in any of this that the sea-bed has warmed (unless its due to local volcanic action). We don’t have any measurements of the seabed temperature or sea surface anomalies, this study was performed from the air. There is no way to prove this is due to recent warming or has been going on for decades, centuries or millenia.

What we do know from chemistry and physics is this (and why I emphasized the ‘oxygen-free’ note above):

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water,methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere.

This statement is inaccurate. When the ice covers the region the methane is trapped and produces large amounts of CO2, which moves with ocean currents to open water and escapes. For this region of the word ice cover is clearly a common state (just ask the 1,000 or so people now stuck n the arctic ice).

What we have is a newly discovered geological phenomena of outgassing. It happened before when this region warmed to these temperature levels (which are not unique in historic time). The fact it is happening again is NOT another sign from Al Gore’s Green God that humanity has sinned and must repent its fossil fuels.

Anymore than the Yellowstone giant volcano (which also is out gassing) is due to AGW.

Tags: Global Warming, Methane, Siberia