Interesting concern and very enlightening.

I clicked the link to hydrates and read the article. I am left with several impressions: 1. It seems that methane hydrates are a much greater risk than CO2 could ever be relating to GW.
2. These hydrates are natural not manmade.
3. The quantity, location, and possible disposition of the hydrates is well known until you look toward the thread comments below the article where it is admitted that essentially all of the "known" items are guesses.
4. The "movie disaster" scenarios are critical to proving the point of the concern of GW.
5. Every question or contrary perspective to the article is incorrect and can be shown to be by making presumptions aimed towards the "movie disaster scenario".
6. It seems that the intent is to present a concept and take it to the most damaging end.

Oh, and by the way, not a single length of time is discussed over how long any of these scenarios may take.

I think this outlines the true fear of the AGW proponents and possibly opens my eyes to the real issue. Human induced CO2 effects may be quite small but just enough to "melt" the hydrate formations. Once this kicks into the atmosphere, an entirely different process occurs that hastens the result. This induces the feared movie disaster scenario. Am I correct AGW crowd?

If I am, I think that the AGW crowd should not stay up late, turn off the movies, and have a warm milk. Conjecture of this sort rarely, if ever, comes to pass. Besides, I have yet to see any movie disaster come to life sans that that occurred 5.5 years ago. And I really think that was just in a video game not really a movie. Even the closest thing, the intentional torching of 700 oil wells turned out to be not too big of a deal in the whole scheme of things.

I mentioned this to Rich the other day when he wrote his illogical manifesto describing how the Earth simply absorbs all of our CO2 like magic. This is one of the enormous positive feedbacks that - if it ever occured - would make our recent warming tiny in comparision.

Predictably, skeptics are going to point to this and say, "See, SEEE...it's been warmer in the past!" Sorry, but Laura's post right here shows the relationship between high CO2 levels and extremely warm conditions in the past, and it shows how warming can cause positive feedbacks (such as methane hydrates) which would drastically accelerate the process.

If the PETM event has happened only once in the past 65 million years and at a rare period in time when the polar ocean was 10+C warmer than today, it seems highly unlikely for a similar event to occur during the modern era.

It is interesting that a mass extinction occurred at the beginning of the PETM. It seems plausible that an astronomical impact caused the mass extinction and also triggered a massive increase in volcanism, which led to PETM.

Therefore, we should be much more concerned about an asteroid impact than some kind of wild greenhouse feedback event. That is, research dollars should be diverted to more worthwhile causes.

Even the type of feedback that the current climate models assume appears to be lacking. If an enhanced greenhouse effect is warming the oceans, which should release even more CO2 into the atmosphere, why are the oceans currently acting as an enormous carbon sink? Of course, the enhanced greenhouse effect has not been observed in the levels of the atmosphere that theory suggests it should.

Is it because, globally, the oceans are not significantly warming and that virtually all of the warming is confined to the arctic land areas. This causes coastal sea ice to melt, which reduces albedo. That could be the only significant feedback event that is actually occuring.

Hey Laura!

It's Friday, so in pure fun:

...if they start to melt, either from permafrost or from vast undersea deposits, climate change will be out of our hands.

I would like to make the argument that by in large, general climate change is always out of our hands. We have evidence that perhaps might possibly (enough qualifiers?) indicate that humans may have added to (but NOT created) Global Warming.

Sorry, I couldn't resist! It's Friday!

darren...right on with how agw'r will tag co2 to a methane release disaster...the post by mark proves your comment...the linked article proves it as well...i think it is really hilarious how "global warming (55 million years ago) started with fossil fuels, of a sort" as quoted from the link...also, "burned in the engines at the end of the Paleocene epoch"...also, "rifting apart of the earth's crust, triggerred the past global warming episode not unlike (you guessed it) the humane-made crisis unfolding today"...what is apparent, as you mentioned, the scare tactics employed by these guys...what is sad, is the insensitivity of this group to prey upon the fears of the many for money because they dont know how to produce anything else...what is scary, is how they will affect our great country with their ploys, schemes, and falsehoods...

The PETM mass extinction is still a mystery. No one knows with any confidence what happened. The release of hydrates into the atmosphere is just one of many theories, but enjoys a kind of cult status with the AGW crowd.

1. Lots of qualifiers in those snippets.

2. Lots of unproven assumptions in the chain of logic, like is atmospheric carbon a following or leading indicator of warming.

3. Looks like nothing on the research that points to tempature to carbon being on a logarithmic scale.

4. Looks like nothing on the known linkage between solar activity and temperature trends.

As was said earlier, nice movie disaster stuff. I can recommend a number of good fiction books if you want to read them.

"Scientists have found evidence that a massive increase in volcanic activity which baked carbon-rich sediments and released enormous quantities of greenhouse gases from the Earth into the atmosphere."

Around 65 million years ago, we had a little event known as the K-T Event. Apparently, this K-T Event was caused by the impact of a large meteor on the Yucatan Peninsula. Amazingly, this K-T Event also caused the extinction of over 70% of the lifeforms on Earth at the time, including almost all of the dinosaurs. Hmmm, I wonder if this little event may have triggered the increased volcanism in the Early Tertiary? There is a feature in India known as the Deccan Traps which are humongous basalt flows that were erupted between 65 and 60 million years ago. I also remember that there was quite a bit of volcanism along the Front Range of Colorado in the Early Tertiary (no, I don't personally remember it). I find it extremely interesting that the temperature increases (PETM) peaked some 10 million years AFTER the initiation of the volcanism (which was initiated by a large meteor impact). Since, very few of us live past 100 years and we haven't had a recent meteor impact of the scale of the Yucatan meteor and that very few of our progeny will be around 10 million years from now; I wouldn't worry a whole lot about this scenario at the moment.

Nice try, though.

Sammy,

It is man's stupidity to buy into this stuff. Sadly as a whole, mankind are blind sheep that follow the media's following with very little ability to think for themselves. Anyone disputing this, think of how many times we are hypnotized by the "scandal sheets" such as the Enquirer just because someone's getting divorced. The media plays a huge part and gets recognition for tainting out minds.

It is sad that we aren't totally informed of all the information coming in, even that that is disputing AGW and scientists use these tactics to get noticed and funded. I do agree that littering the air and land, water, etc will eventually destroy mankind, but not by these doomsday methods of GW. I have seen the results of acid rain and am happy with the progress we have made to reduce these issues, but I for one refuse to believe we are causing AGW and will not spend one penny to support these people.

Again, I just hope this all goes away after the next election.

Well, since we are doing proof by media report, how about: "The world�s food-producing system,� warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA�s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, �is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.� Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. ... But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Ahhh, isn't it great to be able to prove this stuff conclusively with a proper listing of all of the effects of AGW clearly? Crop failures, famines, displaced peoples migrating and if the politicians don't act now, we won't be able to cope with the grim reality!

Oops, I guess we should look at the link, it has a clue: http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

Oh, I'm so sorry, this is a thirty year old article on the imminent ice age we never got around to preventing, the fools that we are.

The snipped bit is funny since it seems that no longer are the AGW crowd willing to admit that any of their schemes are loony tunes, well, maybe the TP one. Also at the link is one to another story surveying the history of AGW climate change rhetoric. It seems it has a long and distinguished history back to the 19th Century. HEY! That's longer than the AGW crowd can manage to read temperature data.

BTW, if anyone feels the urge to say "well, that is how science works and you don't understand", I'll be happy to listen to your flat and/or hollow earth theories too.

I read an article from TIME magazine from back in 1976. Even though the 'ice age' theories were getting all the press, the article made it clear that scientists were split in two camps back then -- one who believed the world was cooling and one that believed that the Earth would start warming. The split was roughly 50/50, meaning there was no 'consensus' back then -- and yes, today there IS nearly consensus. Let's also not forget that climatology as a science was much less developed as it is now.

But hey, Kamu, keep putting up these red-herrings, at least it distracts people from your pathetically weak arguments.