Methane leaks multiplying beneath Antarctic ocean spark fears of climate doom loop
Posted by wanton_wonton_@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 236 comments
wanton_wonton_@reddit (OP)
The Antarctic is now leaking methane from dozens of new seeps beneath the Ross Sea, suggesting a disturbing acceleration of destabilisation as ice retreats and oceans warm. Scientists warn this could mark the beginning of a methane-fuelled climate doom loop, where rising temperatures trigger further methane release, amplifying the very warming that caused it.
Spacecommander5@reddit
“Methane gun” is the term I’m familiar with
hereticvert@reddit
"Clathrate Gun Hypothesis"
snowlion000@reddit
Methane hydrate is more toxic in the short term than CO2. It will exasperate AGW!
Burial@reddit
Is this a bot comment? The toxicity of methane is not the problem.
quadralien@reddit
A bot would not misuse 'exasperate' and would say something about the greenhouse effect instead of 'toxic'. The bot would be correct.
ashhole613@reddit
Seeing so much wrong usage of exasperate when it's exacerbate and it drives me crazy
jibrilmudo@reddit
Does ghe srong usage exacerbate you?
snowlion000@reddit
I edited the spelling error and it will not change to the correct spelling.
snowlion000@reddit
Finally the spell checker worked.
snowlion000@reddit
It is a typo!
snowlion000@reddit
Prove that it is not a problem.
Free_Independent_762@reddit
snowlion000@reddit
You made a statement which lacks links to research etc. Why not back up your claims?
Free_Independent_762@reddit
i'm not the person who originally replied to you lol, i just think it's funny how YOU made a statement which lacks links to research ("Methane hydrate is more toxic in the short term than CO2") and your reaction to someone asking for evidence was to ask them to disprove you. assertions made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
urlach3r@reddit
Great name for a punk band... "Good evening, Cleveland, we're Methane Fueled Climate Doom Loop!"
darkpsychicenergy@reddit
The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis sounds better.
ManticoreMonday@reddit
The Clathrate Gunmen
urlach3r@reddit
That could be the album title.
Collapse2043@reddit
Needs to be shortened. Maybe just Doom Loop.
CaptainBirdEnjoyer@reddit
Methane Loop is a thrash metal band specifically.
burtkurtouten@reddit
hahahahaha astounding name!
Uber_Alleyways@reddit
Methane fuel is the cleanest way to doom.
Idle_Redditing@reddit
It's going to take a lot of active measures to stop that. The largest effort in human history and will require unprecedented levels of funding, materials, labor and international cooperation.
This is looking bad.
ReMoGged@reddit
Expecting "active measures" is like asking someone on a treadmill to suddenly start climbing a mountain. People are locked into the relentless cycle of earning, paying, and surviving. They will resist any change to that rhythm because it's all they know. The sheer scale of what's approaching is beyond their field of vision.
holistivist@reddit
This analogy feels woefully inadequate. A person on a treadmill is at least in decent shape and moving in the right direction.
ReMoGged@reddit
Hope this helps
holistivist@reddit
Using AI hurts the situation, actually
ReMoGged@reddit
Unfortunately most of Google images are AI generated...
ApesAPoppin237@reddit
Well hey, that's a next quarter problem!
Mestre_Supremo@reddit
NervousFunction515@reddit
That image is weirdly fitting for how this whole fuckin enchilada makes me feel. I get it, dinosaur man, I get it 😔
black-kramer@reddit
the finale of that show is dark.
jibrilmudo@reddit
At our rate, it’s more like asking someone “training” at McDonalds to appear on My 600-lb Life if he would like to climb Mount Everest after the shoot.
holistivist@reddit
Much more accurate.
The_Observer_Effects@reddit
Yep. And the energy/matter needed to work on such a scale is more likely to increase the problem overall. Entropy, she is a *itch.
Idle_Redditing@reddit
There is plenty of energy available.
ExtraPockets@reddit
So like the movie Armageddon but the drillers have to plug holes on the sea bed instead
Same_Common4485@reddit
The only active measures you can expect are those that accelerate the ongoing warming, idk like using coal to power and cool data centers for AI
Mouthshitter@reddit
Aka it won't happen
PracticalTank5436@reddit
Hubris of Humanity seems endless.
Flaccidchadd@reddit
Fighting fire with fire lol
Kooky_Beat368@reddit
Welp, we’re cooked.
PracticalTank5436@reddit
Predictable!!!
RightsForRobots@reddit
MooseFloof@reddit
It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves.
ArticulateRhinoceros@reddit
That's nature. Life consumes life so it can beget more life.
holistivist@reddit
Really poor design when you think about it. We have a sun we can get energy from, but some beings have to eat other sentient beings to survive? Constantly inflicting torture and death just to live. Truly an evil existence.
Should have stopped at plants. Just hangin’ out, everything nice, soaking up the sun and rain. That was good.
Original_Art_393@reddit
Finally somebody who thinks like me. Yes, I totally agree. The way life organized itself on this planet is pure evil. Look at predation and what animals have to endure. This is pure hell.
Unfair_Creme9398@reddit
Photosynthesis isn’t that efficient. That’s the main problem.
AnOnlineHandle@reddit
It's in the nature of a lot of assholes to destroy the rest of us, and mock us as they do so, and cry massive crocodile tears if you point out how they can change.
holistivist@reddit
You say this like the majority aren’t daily filling their Amazon shopping carts, happily handing all our money to those evil polluting billionaires, using AI for every little thing, eating factory farmed beef, and having more kids than the planet can sustainably house without requiring the ridiculous amounts of fossil fuels needed to support the supply chain.
This is a collective choice. It may be one made largely by inertia and a good dose of cultural propaganda, but enough people know about the consequences of these actions and still make them that it’s not something we get to collectively pretend we share no responsibility for.
At this point, I’m fairly convinced the whole “climate change is caused by the wealthiest x%” was a talking point coined by big corporations in an attempt to get us to focus on guiltlessly pointing our fingers instead of taking personal responsibility and boycotting those corporations. They don’t care if we hate them, so long as we’re still giving them our money.
Original_Art_393@reddit
Not just the wealthiest x%. Look around, in the US, people delight in driving 2 ton gas guzzlers. They keep the temperature in their house around 73Fm and they keep eating processed food, particular beef that we know release huge amount of methane. The wealthiest are just providing that stupid zombie crowd with what they want. Keep in mind civil aviation is responsible of about 3% of CO2 gases. So wealthy bastards with their private jets are not polluting that much as what people think they are. Your local redneck barely making ends meet contribute to the 15% of green house gases released by meat eating. So no, we're all responsible, not the filthy rich.
Relative_Yesterday_8@reddit
You don't think large corporations and BILLIONS of advertising dollars have shaped the views perceptions and beliefs of this crazed consumer culture? I argue most humans have little to no armor against the propaganda machine at scale. Maybe 10% can overcome it to some degree.
holistivist@reddit
I agree with you and I believe we’re complicit too. We are up against monumental forces, yes, but the nearer obstacles are that we’re more selfish and lazy than we are existentially self-preserving. Most people know better and just don’t care. They don’t even get to a point where they have to fight against anything but their own inertia.
Relative_Yesterday_8@reddit
I agree most humans are on survival autopilot.
AnOnlineHandle@reddit
As I said, it's in the nature of a lot of assholes. Not all of us.
holistivist@reddit
You say that like these are completely disparate things that aren’t financially dependent on one another. Experimental training doesn’t exist without people using AI, and vice versa.
If people stopped using it, it would grind to a halt.
AnOnlineHandle@reddit
True but by that same logic people should stop doing many things which are largely harmless because others will invest in R&D to try to sell more.
BrightSimple1694@reddit
Where do these people come from? From our greed obsessed society.
-Calm_Skin-@reddit
Then blame everyone else when the jig is up.
Orolol@reddit
No, capitalism isn't in our nature.
theCaitiff@reddit
Modern humans (genetically/anthropologically) have been around for at least 200,000 years. We have fossil remains of early humans with evidence of healed broken legs or skulls, which could only have healed if someone else was doing the hunting and gathering for them and keeping them alive while it was healing.
Anthropogenic climate change tracks back only about 300 years, capitalism only about 500 years. "Kings" are only about 2500 years old, maybe 3,000.
But sure, let's ignore 197,000 years of human history to define "human nature" as requiring a hierarchy of haves and have nots, to say that destroying the environment for the sake of green slips of paper is an inevitable part of humanity.
Orolol@reddit
Wolves killed wolf since forever. It's not a proof of any wolf nature of killing themselves
Gyirin@reddit
That's not what that comment said.
FuccboiWasTaken@reddit
Who's nature specifically? If I recall my American history, weren't Natives and Indigenous people were notorious for living harmoniously with their environment? Who came in and destroyed 90% percent of their population and killed their bisons? Are there any connections to be made?
KingRBPII@reddit
I can live in harmony
unoriginal_user24@reddit
We know it was us who scorched the sky.
Rare-Leg-6013@reddit
Capitalism is not in our nature.
Active_Evidence_5448@reddit
Papa Roach knew
Throwawayconcern2023@reddit
"I'll be back"
Yes, you will be on your back as you expire.
m0nk37@reddit
~~people~~ all life. It will have to all start over.
iSkynette@reddit
Oof.
NyriasNeo@reddit
There is no fear unless you have false hope. We already passed 1.5C and blew through 2C briefly. In a world where "drill baby drill" won, is anyone gullible to expect any changes in our trajectory?
Escudo777@reddit
As someone indirectly involved in oil and gas,I am sad we were unable to find an alternative fuel source because of greed. A lot of money is invested,and they do not care if we go extinct or not.
Idle_Redditing@reddit
Alternatives do exist but they're not the cheapest options that are the most profitable for an unconscionably wealthy few.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
There is no large high quality alternative energy source that exists without a dependency on fossil fuels. Therefore stating alternative energy sources "exist" is quite misleading.
Idle_Redditing@reddit
Yeah there is. It's nuclear power and it has tremendous untapped potential for improvement.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
Why are you claiming nuclear is not dependent on fossil fuel?
Idle_Redditing@reddit
No lies. Nuclear power is not fundemantally dependent on fossil fuels like coal power. Its supply chains can be adjusted to not use fossil fuels.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
Bullshit. It's completely dependent on fossil fuels. Why do you continue to lie?
No it cannot with current level of technology. It's never happened so asserting it can without proof is a bald faced lie. Depending on deus ex machina for your argument to be true is a lie. The power of your faith does not make things true.
AnyJamesBookerFans@reddit
I don’t know enough about nuclear to know who is correct. Can you inform me what part(s) of nuclear are completely dependent on fossil fuels and can’t be replaced by clean or renewable energy sources?
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
Mining, transportation, steel production, concrete, plastics and rubber materials, etc.
AnyJamesBookerFans@reddit
Plastics require fossil fuels, yes, but can't the rest be all done with clean/renewable sources of energy? I get that it isn't that way today, but thinking ahead.
What are the other energy sources that we need besides electricity? I know that there is a neat for heat energy, but don't nuclear plants generate a lot of heat? And can't electricity be used to create heat?
breatheb4thevoid@reddit
When the younger and reckless put two and two together it will not be a good time to be petroleum production. Most will sit back idly and just watch the slow suffocation but it will not be all.
@ me with your Reddit cares or violence flag. I don't care anymore.
xPonzo@reddit
The young and reckless have joined us, and in fact use more than any generation before…
The young about boomers etc, but you cannot deny the level of consumption, fashion, travel and materialism is on another scale these days.
Each subsequent generation is more than happy to join in… and yes, I’m only 30.
MeateatersRLosers@reddit
I’m old and jaded, but don’t exactly blame the youngins. Every subsequent generation gets more and more divorced from our roots and nature — usually not by choice.
But still, if you know better, do what you can to remedy it.
Be kind to animals.
breatheb4thevoid@reddit
The young have no choice to use more fuel as they're hustling to make ends meet under economic conditions they were told when even younger would never be an issue. The lobbying to kill solar and wind and even nuclear power initiatives is the undoing of ourselves.
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
The only real solution is massive degrowth now and a huge reduction in what is considered a "decent standard of living". Who's ready for that?
spareparticus@reddit
Much of the reduction in consumption can be achieved by stopping constantly changing trash fashion and consumption of trash food. People miss them for a while but they would get used to it. None of that crap existed when I was young.
BrightSimple1694@reddit
Can you say some examples of trash food ?
Conscious_Yard_8429@reddit
Anything that is actually transformed by more than one step. Natural foods are raw. One step transformation is basic cooking. This we have become adapted to since the discovery of fire to make foods more efficiently assimilable. Anything else is so recent our bodies cannot really cope on a long term basis. Even just adding salt is a transformation, so most of the items bought in the supermarket are transformed - including most of the vegetables which have undergone treatment in some way to stop them deteriorating during storage / transport. We evolved to eat fresh fruit and vegetables and some animal protein (including fresh insects!)
RainBoxRed@reddit
Refined sugar
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
also vegetarian/vegan diet
Idle_Redditing@reddit
There are better courses of action than implementing the mass impoverishment of humanity and largest mass murder in human history. I'm not ready for that.
Sober_Alcoholic_@reddit
Not the billionaires, they’re fucking terrified of a population drop.
Because if there aren’t more people to exploit their growth stops, their shares devalue and they lose money.
You can only enshittify a product so much to increase margins.. there’s a limit. So they need overpopulation to continue this insanity that is “infinite growth with finite resources.”
potsgotme@reddit
Me me me
the_itsb@reddit
nobody will be ready for that until there are no more billionaires making a comfortable middle class lifestyle look like poverty
Ulyks@reddit
Driving electric is already cheaper, much cheaper.
For flying we are still looking at solutions but we should go all in on EV's.
nate-the__great@reddit
Funny you should say that, I just saw a new design of aircraft engine using no fossil fuels. It uses focused microwaves to strip the electrons from the atoms in the air and create plasma. It looks promising to say the least.
SwissChzMcGeez@reddit
They ARE the cheapest if you factor in negative externalities. But our economic system doesn't.
CompostYourFoodWaste@reddit
Not just greed. Also because no true alternative exists.
Masterventure@reddit
It’s like Dawkins coined it, memes, just like viruses ideas reproduce and their reproductive cycle is inside the human mind. The „unlimited growth and greed is good“ meme is exceptionally good at infecting humans in power.
And it builds a system that selects for the people who are most easily infected to be put into positions of power.
pagerussell@reddit
I know what sub this is, but I'll try anyway.
I know drill won the last US election, but it's reasonable to call that the death throws of fossil fuels. They cannot compete economically, so they are throwing themselves into politics to preserve their power.
That only works for a time, because the economics of renewables are overwhelming. The political play in American politics won't stop renewables, it will only ensure that Americans buy renewables from other countries instead of making them here.
The only question is how much damage gets done before the inevitable full switch. It's not unreasonable to think we are at or around peak carbon, but how long will we stay there, and are the feedback loops already locked in or not.
JustAnotherYouth@reddit
They cannot compete economically but every single ship, airplane, truck, and almost all cars run on them…
Fossil fuels are extremely economical so long as you ignore the environmental costs.
It’s so inevitable that not a single commercial airline flies on electricity, or “biofuels”, or anything like that. Yeah that’s what “inevitable” looks like to me.
kylerae@reddit
People also forget about how the refinement process works for oil. When you refine a barrel of oil you get gasoline and by-products. For a long time we would essentially throw away the by-products, but over time we have learned how to use them. Whether it be for diesel, fertilizer, plastics, pharmaceuticals, etc. We essentially utilize an entire barrel of oil. If we reduce gasoline and diesel usage, but need the same amount of things like fertilizer, plastics, and pharmaceuticals, we still need to refine essentially the same amount of oil. Or let's just say we reduce gasoline/diesel, fertilizer, and even plastics (because let's be honest this is a big one), the by-product we use to synthesize pills will still be needed in the same quantities which essentially means we need to refine a similar amount of oil to have the same amount of pharmaceuticals. So what do you do with all of the other stuff we don't need anymore do we store it? We are still going to be damaging the environment by continuing to drill.
People rarely understand how oil refinement works and don't think about the myriad of other products we get from oil that currently we have no real alternatives to switch to. It makes me think of a story in the UK when they closed down their fertilizer factories. They had alternative sources for fertilizer and didn't need to keep their factories anymore. The factories polluted and they didn't believe it would impact the economy significantly, however they didn't realize one of the byproducts, CO2, was sold to animal slaughter houses to be used in their bolt guns. It was such a small line item on the companies financials it was overlooked. This caused a huge problem in the meat industry that was unexpected and caused shortages. We very rarely do a good job of fully understanding the down-river impacts of these types of decisions. I am not saying we should not be switching to renewables and electric transportation, but we also need to be very diligent about understanding what else will be impacted and how to prepare.
pagerussell@reddit
New car sales will be entirely electric by the early 2030s.
Airplanes will be more resistant, yes, that is true. Fine, you get that win.
But I was mostly thinking about utilities when I wrote that, and renewables are absolutely cheaper than everything else and getting cheaper all the time. Same for grid scale battery.
So yes, renewables are inevitable, save for maybe airplanes.
nate-the__great@reddit
I just have to chime in, aviation professional here, a workable electric aircraft jet engine was just invented. microwave jet engine uses plasma to reach previously undreamed of efficiencies.
jackierandomson@reddit
Extremely doubtful. Right now they only make up like 20 or 25 percent of sales and their growth is slowing.
the_itsb@reddit
and the subsidies :)
Py687@reddit
It's death throes, by the way.
BoysenberryMoist6157@reddit
Let's be clear. For the transition to work, people need to live in fully or at least mostly electrified societies. You cannot refill a ICE car with a power cable. You can't heat an oil or gas heated home with electricity. That is the first part. The second part is that the electricity needs to be produced with renewable means, such as solar, wind & hydro.
As we stand right now, globally, the share of electricity in total final energy consumption is approximately 21% of our total energy usage. That includes electricity produced with fossil fuels. Meaning that 79% of our energy is used as fossil fuels, in other words not even converted to electricity.
China is the world's forerunner when it comes to renewable energy production. They have also electrified their country in a rather rapid pace. Domestically, Chinas Electricity consumption stood for 7.6% of total energy consumption in 1990 to be compared with 27.4% in 2024.
But it is equally important to focus on how that electricity is produced. According to IEA, the breakdown for Chinas electricity production is the following for 2023:
Source: https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity
China uses a large amount of Coal for electricity due to its abundant domestic reserves. It is cheap for them.
Dfiggsmeister@reddit
China is leading the charge of renewables and they’re doubling down on it with their investments. They know that fossil fuels are a finite resource that will eventually dry up, so they’re switching their grid to renewables and nuclear.
The worst part about all of this is that the U.S. could have led the charge and we started to do so but then Trump happened. So yeah, I’d say the U.S. is set back by at least another decade and by that point it will be too late.
Old-Adhesiveness-156@reddit
At least China is doubling down on green initiatives.
NyriasNeo@reddit
and they are building more coal plant and emitting more.
But I guess there are people gullible enough to believe our trajectory may change just because China did a little on the margin.
Old-Adhesiveness-156@reddit
Actually, their fossil fuel is predicted to have peaked.
JustAnotherYouth@reddit
They say that every year, and every year it goes up…
Ulyks@reddit
Old-Adhesiveness-156 is wrong, it's not just projected to go down it already goes down.
Also it doesn't go up every year, there have been three years in the past 10 when it went down.
Old-Adhesiveness-156@reddit
Doesn't make me wrong, just out of date.
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
Emissions actually went down in the past 1 year in China. Lets hope it becomes a trend.
JustAnotherYouth@reddit
It’s flat at best, also emissions reporting is based on a series of accounting rules.
Things like the emissions of military activities are not accounted for (not in China not in the US).
China’s emissions will remain very high and their “renewable” energy growth will also remain high. Renewables are a supplement to fossil energy they do not replace it…
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
Its like 1% decrease in the past year, 1,5% in H1/2025. I hope it continues though. Things you mentioned are a real hurdle though - military, increasing renewables while and not phasing out fossil fuels. Induced demand be like.
Still I prefer economy to be planned, well regulated, has a better chance of meeting SOME kind of macro goals in my opinion.
PracticalTank5436@reddit
The US has destroyed the climate as well as human society. All about War destruction and greed.
Cautious_Put9964@reddit
to quote one of my favorite metal bands, Soulfly- No Hope, No Fear
Striper_Cape@reddit
Gave up back in March. Wish I woulda went to Ukraine.
skyfishgoo@reddit
another doom loop
we are doomed.
again.
I_Am_Mandark_Hahaha@reddit
It's only doom for humanity. The earth will heal, and life finds a way. In maybe 500 million years, Earth will hardly remember humans that existed in a blink of a cosmic eye.
karajinay@reddit
There is a good possibility that humans will be the cause behind the most destructive (and final) mass extinction that has ever come before. I have that strange gut feeling. The universe becoming conscious and seeing itself through our eyes, as they say, is a colossal price to pay
Ubericious@reddit
One day, we will be the oil
Ulyks@reddit
not really.
Most oil and coal was formed at the bottom of the seas. Pressure is needed to form oil.
We'll only leave traces of teflon in the far future
RottenFarthole@reddit
At least the ones of us who take our lives by drowning will become something in the future?
OePea@reddit
gargar7@reddit
Just like life found a way on Mars!
420Wedge@reddit
Any day now, Venus will bounce back from its runaway greenhouse effect. It's only hundreds of degrees on the surface. Cmon life. Do living things.
vinegar@reddit
I_Am_Mandark_Hahaha@reddit
The earth has experienced several mass extinction events. It will experience more.
OkMedicine6459@reddit
But there’s the possibility that it won’t. We’re fucking up all the systems that make life on Earth possible.
aurora_996@reddit
I really wonder if 100% of mammals will go extinct. Rats might hang on, and eventually we'll get new branches of mammals in 50 million years or whatever. I vote that we should let whatever plants + fungi survive have their go at being dominant lifeforms, if the planet can still sustain them. Let them get big and complex enough eventually to become conscious. A greenhouse full of giant plants and insects, managed by intelligent fungal webs beneath the surface. They might have a shot at being sustainable..
Unfair_Creme9398@reddit
You should write a spectulative evolution book about that.🙂😉
Ulyks@reddit
Only traces of teflon will still be around as our lasting signature...
zefy_zef@reddit
Gas for a future civilization.
blastermckaster@reddit
Hahaha probably in a lot less than that.
MrBingis@reddit
Sun will be too hot for complex life to survive on Earth in like a billion years.
LurkFarmer@reddit
Is it bad that I think 500 million years out but here we are LOL
TheStoneMask@reddit
And countless lineages we drag down with us.
CannyGardener@reddit
So the clathrate gun has been fired. Whew...
Meltlilith1@reddit
Just looked this term up on wiki and stuff why did everyone think this wasn't possible anytime soon? Or is this happening in a different way than scientists thought?
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
Neither.
The Arctic and Antarctica (though mostly the Arctic) always had some methane seeps, however most of them are new. The methane can come from frozen gas hydrates on the seabed and underground.
Two things keep methane stable, temperature and pressure. In the deep waters, water is cold and pressure is immense so they're stable. But in the shallow waters of both poles, things are different. Global warming makes waters warmer, especially shallow ones. But it also makes ice retreat, which reduces the pressure on the seabed and allows cracks to open up. That is what these new seep sites are.
The Arctic was melting for a while so we had a lot of these sites, but Antarctica's ice cover was unexpectedly stable until around 2015. Soon after, more of these seeps started to appear as ice extent declined. (though interestingly, some are under massive ice sheets, that is what the 'potential rapid release to the atmosphere' in the article means, the ice above it is a bottle cap)
The reason you see the clathrate gun being disputed is not because these seeps weren't supposed to happen, it's about the way methane is released from them. The gun hypothesis was that it's extremely fast, and accelerates constantly, creating an explanation for some past warming events.
That was a good hypothesis, so it sparked a lot of new research. The behavior of the gas deposits that were examined over 20+ years didn't follow the proposed non-linear behavior, so this hypothesis was classed as very unlikely.
kylerae@reddit
This is very interesting to me. We have always assumed these changes happened slowly (at least compared to a human lifespan), but we should never have assumed that. I mean let's say we look at past mass extinctions. We know some of these changes happened between rough dates, typically between a few thousand years. It seems to me this made people assume these changes took thousands of years, but our error margins that far in the past (although small on a geological time scale) allow a lot of uncertainty. Let's say we know large plants disappeared during a period of a few thousand years. That doesn't necessarily mean it took a few thousand years, it could have, or it could have taken a few hundred, or even less. We just know it happened sometime in that few thousand year period.
We have been working under the assumption these changes take a significant period of time. We understand tipping points and feedback loops, but what is to say once you cross that threshold the changes happen rapidly.
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
I believe this a bit more nuanced than just assuming things based on a blurry error bar. I doubt the researchers who spend their lives on this haven't considered these things and did nothing to narrow down uncertainties. And a lot of the feedback processes can be tested on site. Not all of them of course, but for instance, methane behavior on ground and underwater can be monitored under varying test conditions.
I can't speak on the majority of these processes, you would have to ask a professional to detail how they do it.
Though just as a thought experiment, if all of these processes against all of our consensus are actually far faster, doesn't this kind of undermine the devastating effect of today's rapid climate change?
The Earth experienced more climate disruptions than mass extinctions, so this faster feedback cascade would imply today's situation is not as much of a historical outlier as we thought.
kylerae@reddit
Although I agree the experts know far more than we do. I’m not arguing the extinctions were faster. What I am saying is it could be possible that it took thousands of years to reach the tipping point in the past but once reached the collapse of that system was faster than we expect. We are heating and adding greenhouse gases much faster than other extinction events, so that could mean we reach those tipping points faster.
Something that took thousands of years to reach the tipping point of may only take us a couple hundred years. But because we assume the loss of a vital system like forests take thousands or even tens of thousands of years, we may be severely underestimating the severity of our current crisis. For example we know during the End Permian Extinction the loss of the trees took somewhere between 10,000 - 20,000 years but we don’t know how rapid it was for the final mass die off. What I am arguing is it could be possible it took let say 10,000 years to reach the tipping point causing the death of all the trees. You would have increasing die off during that period, but it is entirely possible once we reached the tipping point the rest died off rapidly perhaps in a few hundred years. If we are heating significantly faster, as we are, it is entirely possible we reach that tipping point fast and once we hit it the die off doesn’t take the thousands of years we estimate based off past extinctions because we have already crossed that tipping point but maybe hundreds of years or less.
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
I got what you originally meant, my reply just sucked and didn't sufficiently get across what I was thinking. My bad.
Basically what I meant to say was that we know climate tipping points were triggered many times before, and caused large systemic changes. But this happened more often than mass extinctions did, many of which are characterized by rapid changes to the climate system.
So I was wondering if tipping points unfolding far faster than we think, and bringing large changes in say, a few decades, is how they always worked, then these large and rapid system disruptions wouldn't be as unprecedented as we now think.
Like, methane release from geologic sources is commonly associated with ice age terminations. And if this feedback is really fast, shouldn't it cause mass extinctions each time it occurs, due to the sheer speed of change?
It's just a thought experiment though, please don't take me too seriously on this \^\^;
kylerae@reddit
You could be right, but I think probably the biggest difference between times it caused mass extinctions vs not is the totality of the failing systems. It could be possible that when something like the AMOC collapsed before or when temperatures went high but there was no extinction was because it was only one or maybe a few failing systems vs actual mass extinctions where it is near all of them. I would argue we are very likely breaking most all of the earth systems we have. It could also be there are some earth systems that if broken can be pushed through whereas there could be others that can’t.
Plus we have to remember the biggest difference between any of those times and today is us. All past extinctions were caused by natural changes in earth, except the K2 extinction. We have been damaging our Earth in ways it has never experienced before. We release greenhouse gases in unnatural ways, we deforest in unnatural ways, we destroy our biodiversity in unnatural ways like through deforestation or our monoculture agriculture. To me this makes it much more likely it fails faster and harder than most other times in history and very likely could be the worse although that is uncertain again because the Earth has never experienced a collapse like this and because humans really are the unknowable factor. If our economic system collapses significantly and fast humanity may be in bad shape but the Earth could recover better than expected because the biggest factor causing it is mostly gone. Granted that may not be possible if we cross most or all of the tipping points and are past the point of no return.
Ok-Tart8917@reddit
What are you trying to say?
-Calm_Skin-@reddit
Yet we seem to be going always faster than expected
Low_Complex_9841@reddit
But even slowly adding methane on top of everything we did (and doing, and doing!) still a bad news, because good luck to plug those kind of leaks ....
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
Yes, it is still horrible news either way. It's a geologic feedback, it may be slow but if you want a truly unstoppable feedback system, this is it.
Even refreezing the sea ice wouldn't stop it, since that extra pressure won't press the ground faults shut again.
ShyElf@reddit
They don't determine whether it's calthrates or not. It could also be decomposition of newly melted permafrost or normal methane reservoirs released by permafrost melt.
I remember the hydrate stability consensus being pushed most strongly by the people last familiar with them, by the climate people and not the geophysics people or the oil and natural gas people. I don't really have a good explanation for how it made it into the IPCC reports with such certainty.
Methane calthrates generally need a pressure equal to about 300m or more of water to form. This means that on land it takes a really long time for heat to diffuse down that far, and in the ocean it also takes something like 500-1000 years to see the full temperature effect, and additionally the methane might get eaten by bacteria before it makes it to the surface. Those points seemed to carry the day for the consensus.
The deep ocean starts warming almost immediately, though. The release from deposits near the ocean floor should really ramp up quadratically with time following a temperature step-change, or cubicly with a linear temperature increase, so just setting it to zero for 500+ years doesn't make much sense. Much of the largest changes are near the ends of glaciers, where the existing circulation rapidly pulls the released gas up to the surface.
On land, the temperature transfer doesn't need to be all due to diffusion. In many places, if the surface melts, a new temperature profile gets set by new groundwater movement. There can be short-medium term feedback loops due to geothermal heat sources melting new water paths.
The calthrates can also be melted by pressure reductions instead of warmer temperatures. This can also have geothermal feedbacks, and the gas flowing upwards fills pathways with gas instead of liquid, sometimes setting off a feedback loop as in a geyser. I remember seeing a paper apparently observing this at a small scale without attribution to clathrates as the methane source near a recently melted out marine glacier bottom in Greenland. We don't have a good idea how much of the calthrates these types of feedbacks should apply to.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
It's from the ocean vents, it's not "newly melted permafrost or normal methane reservoirs released by permafrost melt".
ShyElf@reddit
Why else would new vents suddenly appear everywhere?
The two statements are not in conflict. Sub-ocean permafrost is common, at least close enough to land to get freshwater groundwater.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
So common it's never been found before recently huh amazing.
YoSoyZarkMuckerberg@reddit
find any slowed down video of a gun firing. That's what's happening The trigger was pulled on the clathrate gun years ago and it's been firing in slow motion relative to how humans experience geological events. The days are coming when that video is going to speed up, mate. Mark my words.
a_dance_with_fire@reddit
Am going to pour one out for FishMahBoi
Venus by Tuesday
GenProtection@reddit
Checkov's Clathrate Gun, they brought it in in season 2015 and keep having scenes with it on the table, on the fireplace mantle, in the fridge, in the glovebox, it was getting really stressful
urlach3r@reddit
Tonight, on the season finale of "Earth"... Remember that gun we mentioned that one time?
cool_waterz@reddit
Sounds like an especially poor Steven Moffat plot.
4n0m4l7@reddit
We were doomed decades ago but no one listened… Now its knocking at the door…
vltavin@reddit
It's in the kitchen warming up a nice cup of iced tea
potsgotme@reddit
Who issss it??
4n0m4l7@reddit
The grim reaper…
potsgotme@reddit
Go away!
trickortreat89@reddit
It truly is going fast downhill from here… it is accelerating even. I haven’t seen this many extremely bad news in one week before. Everything from coral reefs now dying, rainforest turning into carbon sinks, the AMOC already collapsing to now this. It is hard to believe, but things are gonna change now, faster than what we are ready for.
Formal_Contact_5177@reddit
Say what you will about him, but Guy McPherson has been warning for a while that climate change will be non-linear; speeding up significantly as more and more feedback loops are triggered, resulting in runaway climate change.
Peripatetictyl@reddit
‘Exponentially’ says that if it takes 100 days to cover a pond with lily pads doubling every day after starting with 1 on day one, it will be day 99 that 50% of the pond is covered.
Slow at first, and then all at once.
PracticalTank5436@reddit
Bingo!!!
trickortreat89@reddit
Yeah I guess it was all in the cards. We were warned about this… but it seems this is happening even faster now than the original warnings. Which is also why it is starting to feel truly useless for me to try and stop this
Ubericious@reddit
We were never ready for any of it
UffTaTa123@reddit
yeah, of course it will. That's not a question in any way, that's just basic physic. And we knew it since many years. I don't need to talk further, i'm so disappointed of any so called "leader" in any way, ....
Applebreadx55@reddit
Fucking idiots think AGI or the singularity will save them. I'm sure your poorly made HIGHLY bias bot who mostly pulls from reddit will discover the secrets of the universe.
Old-Design-9137@reddit
The AI Messiah cult are utterly, utterly intellectually bankrupt. People like Travis Kalanick and Eric Schmidt literally thinking a jazzed-up chatbot is going to produce new research in fundamental physics, or solve climate change.
Even if some real AGI gave humanity feasible solutions for climate change, we'd just ignore them as we always have.
Cautious_Put9964@reddit
there's an estimated 20 gigatons of methane trapped in the arctic. methane is much more effective at trapping heat than CO2- warming the planet 29.8 times greater than CO2 in a 100 year period.
that's a wrap
snowlion000@reddit
Here is one link for anyone that wants to research further.
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/methane/
Struckmanr@reddit
That is disturbing to the bone
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
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Ulyks@reddit
Isn't methane unstable after 4 years and falling apart into CO2?
Also we add 53 gigatons of CO2 last year
So the methane, although much more dangerous is the equivalent of 20 * 29.8 = 600 /4 = 150 per year for 4 years so about 12 years worth of normal CO2 added if it were released all at once.
It's bad but I don't think it's a wrap.
Relative_Yesterday_8@reddit
Was Guy McPherson sort of right ?
ttystikk@reddit
Both ends of the planet are now doing it at an ever accelerating pace.
Both poles are warming some six times faster than the rest of the planet.
I hope to live another 30 years, just in time to see the planetary sea level rise collision happen.
If we want to have any hope of heading off this catastrophe, we must revolt against the rich TODAY. I mean, it's already too late to avoid effects but the sooner we act, the more we can blunt the coming temperature spike.
zefy_zef@reddit
We need to rebuild civilization... now. Think about it. Either we do it now, with the tools and technology available -or- we have to do it after most of humanity is wiped out and we have no anything.
ttystikk@reddit
I've BEEN thinking about it and developing the necessary tech to help for most of my career.
The problem is that the rich in the West have lung since captured the government and have bent it to their goal of helping them profit from fossil fuels as much as possible, which includes destroying any and all alternatives, from wind and solar projects to Nordstream.
The buffoon in the White House changes now and again, but the direction of our country is still straight to hell with our foot flat on the gas pedal.
zefy_zef@reddit
Glad to hear that, honestly. I wish I'd done something like that for the past 20 years and not retail. Now, I'm not much in a position to do that, when before maybe I could have.
Going to not do that anymore, but I don't have background enough to get hired at a company that would help build towards a future I feel we need.
ttystikk@reddit
DM me
Alena_Tensor@reddit
Don’t forget the collapsing tundra all across Siberia and the clathrates in the Arctic Ocean just at the temperature tipping point. Just saying…
missinglabchimp@reddit
The Antarctic Ocean is a myth invented by Big Doom to sell you more methane
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
👍👍🤣🤣
Flaccidchadd@reddit
There is an inherent lag time between short term benefits of civilization/progress and long term consequences of civilization/progress. Every day from now on the benefits will be less/decelerating and the consequences will be more/accelerating. This is very clearly outlined in the limits to growth graphs. The average person lacks the cognitive ability to determine causation at this scale and the multipolar trap ensures a shitshow of negative collective outcome. The idea that 8 billion people are going to "come together" and mitigate these outcomes while they are all in direct competition for declining resources is absurd and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
The MIT/Club of Rome report timeline is still pretty much on the money.
We're boned.
GreenHeretic@reddit
Lets not forget Mount Erebus, a currently active volcano on the edge of the Ross Sea. My understanding is that melting ice can increase seismic activity but I'm not educated on how. So on top of the already warming waters, we've got a major active heat source speeding up the process.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
It's the sheer tonnage of water being moved from one place to another and changing the pressure of the tectonic plates form one place to another.
The earth is 70% water. And the great continents are nothing but very large islands. That move.
SomeGuyWithARedBeard@reddit
I feel like the theory that the sun can microwave the internals of the Earth (especially as the magnetic field weakens) is what is causing an increase in seismic activity and thus volcanos makes more sense than the air being warmer from trapped warmth. For all we know that could also be the cause of the increase in methane being released, which would in turn ask the question whether global warming like this is just a natural cycle when the magnetic field weakens, that we are just exacerbating an existing problem for us that we have no control over.
gobeklitepewasamall@reddit
That’s why they call it the clathrate gun
The most terrifying (& yet stultifying dense with geology speak) is
Ward, Peter, “Under a Green Sky, Global Warming, The Mass Extinctions of the Past and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future” 2007
Moneybags99@reddit
Cool cool, I love to see more and more things come true from "The Deluge"
Designer_Valuable_18@reddit
Can't we just send meth addicts there to save the day ?
jwoodruff@reddit
So, how manny years we got, give or take?
potsgotme@reddit
Less than a lot. Not much more than a couple
bernpfenn@reddit
all of a sudden that is a problem?
Nettwerk911@reddit
Stock up on toilet paper?
GreenHeretic@reddit
Lets also consider Mount Erebus, on the edge of the Ross Sea
PracticalTank5436@reddit
I remember like it was only yesterday in the UK when climate protesters were dragged off the Road and given a good kicking for making people late for work/School...😂😂😂😂😂😂😂THAT'S who we are! So fuck em, Im outta here soon and have no kids.. My heart only aches for the animals.
Honeydew-Ecstatic@reddit
Isn't this what that one Guy was raving about a decade ago? Anyone wants to speculate timescales for the unfolding doom?
Dazzling_Dig4416@reddit
Venus...zat you?
Slamtilt_Windmills@reddit
Kaining@reddit
this one is getting more and more pixelated by the days.
Way too many repost :s
Marmom_of_Marman@reddit
Like a feedback loop…
Idle_Redditing@reddit
Is it the feedback loops?
Slamtilt_Windmills@reddit
That's part of it. And also multiple iterations of censored studies and models. And also just some old fashioned mistakes
Jimmie-Rustle12345@reddit
Love that I’m not the only one to notice this.
TheLostDestroyer@reddit
Well it was a good run while it lasted. Wait that's not true, it was a shit show the whole time and we uniquely were not able to get our shit together to SURVIVE. Probably the only species on the planet that knew about climate change and were aware we were affecting change and we still fucked it up. Lol. We're just the worst.
FluffyWuffyy@reddit
I wrote a research paper on this back in 2008 for a high school elective. As permafrost across the planet thaws, methane will be released. It is not preventable, and it sucks for us.
butiusedtotoo@reddit
Sooooo the clathrate gun hypothesis is entirely possible… right? How is that not the take away?
Salt-Elephant8531@reddit
It’s inevitable. Pole shift is starting. The rich have known for a long time and have been preparing their bunkers. The methane is all part of the process and it has happened before. Civilizations come and go.
Delicious_Injury9444@reddit
I survived ice v.
shenan@reddit
Its time they start using real sugar in our doom loops. its better, youll see!
aurora_996@reddit
No more artificial dyes in my sweet, sweet doom loops™
VenusbyTuesdayTV@reddit
Interesting... 5-10 years ago methane bomb was considered fringe science
Idle_Redditing@reddit
It should be a simple matter of physics. Methane is held in ice by low temperatures and high pressures. Raise the temperature of the water while keeping the pressure constant and see at what temperature the ice falls apart and releases the methane.
If the equipment is provided it should be doable in high school physics and chemistry labs along with things like titrating acids and bases and measuring how long it takes for a ball to hit the ground when dropped from different heights.
Elpickle123@reddit
Justice for my boy MethaneSAT, gone but never forgotten :(
-Calm_Skin-@reddit
They such pussies
Jack_Flanders@reddit
Here's the original paper in the journal Nature Communications
<—which way to attach an image link; will edit:—>
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-025-63404-3/MediaObjects/41467_2025_63404_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp
an image
What I'd like to see is some quantification of the amount that's coming up now versus all that's there to come up eventually. Projected timelines based on models would be good too; maybe they're working on that paper now.
Beneficial_Lawyer170@reddit
how long before shit hits the fan?
ninewindjump@reddit
Methane clathrates - burning ice
farmingjapan@reddit
lock and load the Clathrate Gun!
Far_Out_6and_2@reddit
Saw a vid where scientists were walking around in the tundra lighting methane seeping from the ground and even lighting flames on water so it’s been happening for a while now just sayin
Admiral_Cornwallace@reddit
Add it to the pile
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/wanton_wonton_:
The Antarctic is now leaking methane from dozens of new seeps beneath the Ross Sea, suggesting a disturbing acceleration of destabilisation as ice retreats and oceans warm. Scientists warn this could mark the beginning of a methane-fuelled climate doom loop, where rising temperatures trigger further methane release, amplifying the very warming that caused it.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1o7vwd1/methane_leaks_multiplying_beneath_antarctic_ocean/njqm2nk/
slifm@reddit
Yay!