From: Michael Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jan 22 2001 - 07:55:49 MST
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> "Michael S. Lorrey" <mlorrey@datamann.com> writes:
>
> > Raising temperatures which melts more ice and raises sea
> > levels only increases the pressure on the hydrates and thus makes them
> > less likely to release.
>
> According to one of the sites I posted (I think it was the third),
> raising sea levels would also warm arctic clarathe beds on land and
> cause release, so the situation depends a lot on exactly where the
> stuff is distributed.
This is true, however the vast majority that are methane hydrates (and
not just clathrates in general, since its the methane molecule that
really matters, not the water structure that holds it) are in the state
they are in specifically due to pressure. Arctic clathrates come in a
range of molecular content in the tundra (which is what I assume you are
referring to in land based deposits). Methane content in land based
clathrates is released on a constant basis, there are ground formations
that are formed by this percolation process. The people promoting this
idea are the cataclysimic folks at the U of Washington that just got
their scholarly butts handed to them by my cousin's Antarctica work (for
which he was just awarded his Masters degree from the U of Maine and was
awarded the Antarctica Service Medal of the United States by the
National Science Foundation) of the last few years.
Land based methane hydrate deposits are miniscule compared to sea bed
deposits, and undergo constant cycles of storage and release with the 11
and 60 year solar cycles. Don't confuse methane hydrates specifically
with clathrates in general. This is a typical bait and switch tactic of
the leftists, trying to inflate the problem by implying that all
clathrates are methane hydrate, which they are not. Saying there are 10
million tons of clathrates that could release with warming when on 1
million tons of methane hydrate involvled (as an example), demonstrates
how they lie with statistics, and how they try to inflate the fear to
further their agenda (If residents of California have not figured out by
now that they are full of it, then there is no hope there).
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