Re: Global "Flood" (kinda)

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 06:40:16 MST


EvMick@aol.com writes:

> I dunno if the above is true or not...(I have no internet connection any
> longer....just email...so I can't check it out) .it certainly sounds
> feasible to me.

Yes, methane clathrates are real and are being studied both in climate
and as energy sources. See for instance http://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
http://www.dnai.com/~patwilde/sing95.html
 
> If it IS correct...and if a huge amount of methane is suddenly released into
> the atmosphere.....then presumeably there would REALLY be some global
> warming.

I liked Mother of Storms precisely because this quite logical chain of
meterological reasoning (otherwise, far too much sex and violence but
satisfactory amounts of singularity :-) However, I'm not certain his
whole extrapolation holds - if just one part of the chain (like the
size increase of the hurricane spawing zones) doesn't hold the rest
doesn't happen, which I guess is a boring but likely guess.

There have likely been some pretty bad events in the past, like
seaslide-induced tsunamis (one apparently drenched parts of Scotland a
few thousand years ago and another hit northern Australia with a
100-meter wave) and perhaps also superstorms. They might not have
caused mass extinctions but locally they were definitely deadly.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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