Climate scientist drops the F-bomb after startling Arctic discovery

[greiner3]

58. I attended an IPCC lecture;

In 2008.

The lecturer stated that their recent report was damning enough (not to mention the newest report), but it did not contain estimates for one major category; methane releases from permafrost and also future mining of;

"Climate change impacts on methane hydrates

Huge amounts of methane are stored around the world in the sea floor in the form of solid methane hydrates. These hydrates represent a large energy reserve for humanity. Climate warming, however, could cause the hydrates to destabilize. The methane, a potent greenhouse gas, would escape unused into the atmosphere and could even accelerate climate change.

How methane ends up in the ocean

People have been burning coal, oil and natural gas for more than a hundred years. Methane hydrates, on the other hand, have only recently come under controversial discussion as a potential future energy source from the ocean. They represent a new and completely untapped reservoir of fossil fuel, because they contain, as their name suggests, immense amounts of methane, which is the main component of natural gas. Methane hydrates belong to a group of substances called clathrates – substances in which one molecule type forms a crystal-like cage structure and encloses another type of molecule. If the cage-forming molecule is water, it is called a hydrate. If the molecule trapped in the water cage is a gas, it is a gas hydrate, in this case methane hydrate.
Methane hydrates can only form under very specific physical, chemical and geological conditions. High water pressures and low temperatures provide the best conditions for methane hydrate formation. If the water is warm, however, the water pressure must be very high in order to press the water molecule into a clathrate cage. In this case, the hydrate only forms at great depths. If the water is very cold, the methane hydrates could conceivably form in shallower water depths, or even at atmospheric pressure. In the open ocean, where the average bottom-water temperatures are around 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, methane hydrates occur starting at depths of around 500 metres."

We're fucked, worse, if mining the hydrates begins.