Methane seeping

Perhaps you've read the various reports this past week on methane being released into the atmosphere from an area of the East Siberian Sea equivalent to more than four times the area of Sweden. Permafrost in the seabed has been previously assumed to act as an effective cap for the enormous amount of methane in the area, which, if released, could lead to an abrupt global climate warming. Man made global warming is being credited with the permafrost problem, of course, with the disclaimer that they don't really know that for sure, however the authors of the accounts don't even question it. But after seeing the affects of the recent Chile earthquake which moved one of its cities 10 ft. and recalling that it wasn't as strong as the Alaskan earthquake of 1964, I'm wondering why the disturbing of the permafrost in the sea has to be attributed to human industry and not to the affects of the most powerful earthquake in recorded history? We visited Alaska in 2001 and you can still see the affects it had on the permafrost and forests.

They can blame human activity all they want, but if this is as serious as as sounds, things will heat up very fast, and we can't do diddly squat about it.

Global warming? Scientists find methane source in Arctic seas. / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Methane releases from Arctic shelf may be much larger and faster than anticipated (3/9/2010)

Update: "The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west coast of Chile last month moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, and shifted other parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil. These preliminary measurements, produced from data gathered by researchers from four universities and several agencies, including geophysicists on the ground in Chile, paint a much clearer picture of the power behind this temblor, believed to be the fifth-most-powerful since instruments have been available to measure seismic shifts." OSUToday, Mar. 9, 2010.

If an earthquake can do that to a city, imagine what it can do to permafrost!

Methane release in reverse

Interesting article at the Alchemist newsletter. Sounds like Archaea are a lot more important than polar bears. Isn't God amazing.

"Two microbes, known as Archaea, consume 90% of the greenhouse gas methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from melting methane hydrates. However, these anaerobic microbes, which live in the ocean sediments, do so using a sulfur compound, methyl sulfide, rather than simply reversing the biochemistry of methane-making microbes. According to Christopher House and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University: "The Archaea take in the methane and produce a methyl sulfide, and then the sulfur-reducing bacteria eat the methyl sulfide and reduced it to sulfide," explains House. Understanding how these symbiotic organisms remove methane from the oceans is important because without them the average global atmospheric temperature would likely be warmer by about 10 degrees Celsius." (To convert Celsius (Centigrade) to Fahrenheit, multiply by 1.8 and add 32.)

Is your constipation contributing to greenhouse gases?

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2004/es399/lec02.html
Another thing to worry about! OH NO! "The degree of breath methane production in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) correlates with the severity of constipation, Los Angeles-based researchers report in the April issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology 2007;102:837-841." [from Rueters story on Medscape.com]

Not to worry, though. The sufferers with IBS who have diarrhea instead of constipation have less methane produced by the bacteria in their intenstines, so maybe you can work out an exchange (we won't call it carbon credits--have to think on that one--maybe a stool swap?).