Mother Earth Terrorizes Radical Environmentalists

Forget terror in the Middle East. As all of the victims of terror know "there is no terrorist threat"... except from Mother Nature: Exclusive: The methane time bomb.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists. ...

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. ...

"We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.

And wouldn't you know? All the methane comes from the millions of tons of dinosaurs and vegetation which dominate the Arctic ice caps: Steve Connor: The ultimate gas leak that scientists have long dreaded.

Methane is produced naturally by the decay of water-logged vegetation. Over thousands of years it has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes and has effectively been taken out of circulation by the permafrost acting as an impermeable lid.

Apparently the millions of tons of vegetation migrated to the North Pole to die. Curiously, however, they avoided decaying in the Southern latitudes which makes sense if you think about it. Why would vegetation want to die in the Southern latitudes? The Arctic climate is so much more hospitable for millions of tons of vegetation.