between 5 and 10 years ago, couldn't find the link but I remember the fear tickle it set off in me. I think there is more of this happening than we are aware of. Can they globally identify these via some kind of imaging from satellite? Seems possible. I'll read the article, maybe they are doing just that. Anyway, a very unhappy K & R to this OP.
It's time, people, we have to change this society, ASAP.
To the people who claim India and China are the real problems, ever think about whose goods they are making over there? Plenty of them are made for us, by multinational corporations that were formerly U.S. corporations, who offshored their manufacturing to get cheap labor and unregulated polllution for their facilities.
This offshoring activity is directly supported by the corporate owners of both of our major parties. Our own party is fully onboard with this system, offering only slight disinsentives which are far outweighed by the corporate incentives to go the other way. They pretend to be on our side while cashing the campaign donations from the perps, and behind doors they laugh at our concerns.
Meanwhile, methane plumes from the seafloor. Polar ice melts. We're in big trouble here, and need to vote like it.
edit to add perspectve after reading the article, we're still in huge trouble but perhaps these plumes aren't the beginning of the end. I'm far from convinced. Anyway here is an excerpt:
But, according to Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist who is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, that doesn't mean much when put in the bigger context of global warming.
"These are interesting but they are minor issues," Schmidt said of the plumes. "People have detected methane seeps all over the place off the continental shelves and mostly they are in equilibrium with what is going on. So if the water is warm, you will get a little bit more or a little bit less … The overall constraints are such that it's really hard to see how in the present climate situation how it could be a big effect."
Related: A Massive Amount of Death Is Plaguing the World's Oceans
But Kevin Schaefer, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center who studies emissions from permafrost, was not as dismissive. The challenge, he said, was that so little is known about these methane plumes including just how much is being released on a global scale.
"It's a potential risk but I'm not sure the scientific community has a good estimate of how much this might be in the future," he said. "We don't know. It could have an impact. Whether it's radical, I would probably say not."
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