Excerpts: "The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed."
Fire from methane gas bubble, 12/12/07. (photo: Geir Drablos, Flickriver)
Shock As Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Methane Gas Levels
15 December 11
Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface.
ramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.
In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.
"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale - I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere - the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."
Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
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You, the longtime 'Independent', do most certainly have a great chance to, via huge turnouts, 1. get the nomination, and 2. get elected in '16. You are the real McCoy change we so desperately need - our current only hope of avoiding a bloody revolution, because it's true...
SANDERS PANDERS NOT, TO THE 1%
I would like to see Bernie woo THIS truly awesome woman: Jessica Tuchman Mathews, daughter of self-taught two-time Pulitzer historian Barbara Tuchman, whose very insightful books focused on what she referred to as we men's "wooden-headedn ess." Tuchman's book, The Guns of August (1914), detailed the male dominant insanity that sparked World War One. It probably saved our planet in 1962: JFK had read it, and during the American Missile Crisis (we started it with missiles in range of Moscow) when advisers were advocating a nuclear first strike, he slammed copies of it on their desks.
Check out Jessica Mathews' AWESOME resume in her Wiki bio. Mentioned last, but certainly not least, she is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group - the Best of the West All Stars who created Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and chose Barak over Hillary in 2008 when they both were summoned to a Bilderberg meeting in Alexandria, VA. Two days later, Hillary withdrew her candidacy. Highlight and right click links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Mathews
Portraits of Bilderberg Members:
http://www.danielestulin.com/wp-content/uploads/portraits_bilderberg.pdf
If the middle class doesn't pull out of it's nose-dive NOW, it will crash and burn in just 3-4 years, and that doesn't serve the purposes of the power elite, who only want it's suppression, not it's disintegration. It took two full generations to create the American middle class in the first half of the 20th century, and it will take two full generations to restore it... it is a long row to hoe, but the hoeing has to start NOW, and the power elite actually knows, this, I believe.
Jimmy Carter foolishly depended upon his "Georgia Mafia" advisers and Washington chewed them all up and spit them out in one term. Lincoln was wiser, bringing his opponents into his admin and thru the force of his mind made them STATESMEN.
Most Bilderbergers are quite familiar with, and are probably deeply invested in, the very successful Social Democratic Northern European nations that Bernie admires so much. These people and nations understand that capitalism can do very well in nations that embrace social economic equality to a great degree. Denmark has the world's most level personal incomes (basically one huge upper middle class) and takes it's unofficial motto of "No Dane is better than any other Dane" VERY seriously.
The key to their system is a fair and strong judicial system that is as hard on white collar crime as blue collar crime. Remember Rumsfeld telling us that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion taxpayer dollars on 9/10/2001? That could NEVER happen in Northern Euro nations that would throw corrupt generals and "defense" contractors in prison so damned fast their heads would spin off, I assure you.
Vote for him and he will win its that simple !
Bernie has been in Washingtoon long enough to know this. He also knows that every admin since Wilson's has had about 400 members of the Council on Foreign Relations in it for a REASON: The U.S. "Aircraft Carrier of State" is not a damned rowboat that one person can alter the course of by yanking hard on an oar.
If Bernie wants to reduce the influence of entities like the CFR (much less the CIA!), he will have to show power elite insiders that he can provide rational alternatives, which most certainly WILL require compromises by Senator Sanders.
He must convince them that he can STEER the Ship of State and be trusted not to DESTROY it. Otherwise, he has a snowball's chance in hell of being elected, my dear.
Celebrate asking the BIG questions.
You will work wonders if you do.
Many thanks!
--- Donate to and support the most progressive liberal candidates that you can find whether they be yours or in some other state (see Progressive Change Campaign Committee - PCCC - for info in locating them.) If we get enough of the real baddies out of there, the rest will see that the tide is turning and the handwriting is on the wall (just to mix my metaphors,) and they'd better be Jack and get over the candlestick before their pants catch on fire and they don't get re-elected. We need to remind these guys who they work for and that the real estate called "The United States of America" belongs to We the People (in writing) and not a pack of wild, paper pigs called corporations. We are still called The United States of America and not The United Corporations of America (yet). So let's get the lead out and do what we do best and get the best ones into office, for the good of all.
We have to only accept an open honest counting of votes. No more funny business behind closed doors or inside black boxes. As I see it, the R's are passing bills to do away with the estate tax, cut benefits to the working class, elderly, children, education, etc. because they feel they won't have to be accountable in the next election.
It was clear to me in 2002 that the Cheney/Bush administration was going ahead with their illegal war despite the public reaction because they knew they would be able to steal the next election. They weren't about to let anything or anyone stop them from doing it or getting caught. When Mike Connell was about to testify about the computer set up to change vote totals in Ohio his plane went down short of the runway days before his scheduled court date. A request for protection was ignored after receiving a tip that his life was in danger.
So until the election system is fixed, not rigged, congress will keep raping the people, planet and economy.
--- I don't have any qualms about his age, either. He meets the qualifications: he's standing, is warm to the touch, is a fighter and he hates injustice. He gets my vote and my donations, too.
--- Whatever works....
Or do you think those who scream against the science are committing a fraud?
Please clarify.
And, may I ask, what kind of scientist are you? I suppose one could call Rand Paul (a physician) a "scientist".
I am a nuclear scientist.
--- Nobody is "forcing" Elizabeth Warren to do anything (good luck with that; she's an independent woman with a mind of her own.)
We are only hoping and wishing for the best candidates we can get so we don't get stuck with either a Scott Walker (gag, choke, cough) or sHillary Clinton (or another brain-dead Bush who likes to spit on mothers and flip American citizens the bird... Jebbie)
But I totally agree we need to get behind Sanders and run with it.
I just happened to be listening to "Best of Car Talk" from NPR this morning (the only thing I catch from them any more). They played a clip from the next show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and it consisted of the announcer saying "Well last week at this time we had Hillary Clinton as the only viable Democratic candidate for the 2016 presidency, then Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont declared that he was running. So now we have --Hillary Clinton as the only viable Democratic candidate".
-Supposed to be funny in a snide but still revealing way.
Sadly and disappointing but predictably -THAT'S what he's up against already, and from a supposedly "Liberal (although not in my books), public" or at least centrist media outlet, partially financed by contributors funds -but of course REALLY funded by "Grants From" the same corporate monopolies -including US media- that Sanders (and Warren) have been attacking for years.
So PBS has written him off already and I'm now waiting on the first owner-media station or rag to accuse him of being a "Communist" -or perhaps some of his TeaThuglican opponents will be shoving each other aside to get to the closest mic and puke that out!
Hope so; but don't forget, he's preaching to the already-convert ed on RSN.
Can't wait until ol' Roland gives us his usual reactionary barf on Sanders.
'Nah.
It's already a 'fait accompli' (I call it infestation rather than invasion) and is handy to reveal up front, how the reactionary establishment power structure and their finks like R' and a his cowed but complacent ilk are thinking -if you can call it that.
After all, RSN actually practices free speech, which is always open to abuse by those who'd take it away from those who don't fall in line with their own boxed-in, blinkered world view.
You are correct to think that it is probably a result of the 'grants from' syndrome. Remember, the film Citizen Koch (which everyone should see, available among other places from Netflix) even though financed and produced on PBS in Boston was NEVER SHOWN on PBS because of undue influence from the Koch Bros., especially David Koch.
The offhand and denigrating unfunny remarks on WWDTM were disappointing and shocking, until one realizes that one of their newest people is Bill Curtis (those of us with long memories still see his ear-to-ear grins on CBS News as he showed us all the coffins and dead soldiers every night during the Vietnam war... .) He has in fact, turned out to be amusing....but the choice of Bill Curtis was at first unnerving, considering his history.
As for Bernie Sanders not being viable --- that does indeed remain to be seen; tens of thousands of small contributions and a lot of intelligent [and ACTIVE] support for him to counteract the right wing fascist/Faux Noise"socialist " = 'Communist' meme can go a long way to minimize the oligarchical Kochian /ALEC media takeovers. Bernie too must stand up and take down the ignorant comments along this line repeatedly and OFTEN.
So please explain.
I'm going to find their contact info, and point out to them that those kinds of statements are why they have no clout.
I don't listen to it -just heard that clip.
"Car Talk" on the other hand, cracks me up, especially the "credits".
I know it's off the subject but one of today's was a "stoatir" as we say in Scotland; "Our trans-gender specialist counselor is "Ben-hur" (Bin-her).
I don't think PBS has written Sanders off. Clinton has lots of baggage.
--- I wrote PBS off when they became the Public Broadcasting Corporation.
I finally wrote them off when Michael Powell (Son of Colin ditto) became FCC chairman and dictator.
I was a programmer (I dislike the expression "D.J.") doing World Music and Jazz on a local station at the time and was both slammed and applauded for groaning spontaneously into the main mic' "Oh Gawd, please tell me this ain't nuthin' but a joke"!
If the Clintons' perfidy gets any more publicity, the impossible may happen after all. And, I agree that Warren would be the perfect running mate. Go Bernie!!!
--- Thank you for taking the time to share this with us; especially about the reason he gave for why he isn't running as a Progressive. This information was straight from him with no spin in the middle and it gives us a clear view into the man. (Run Bernie run!)
--- We've got twenty-seven months to do something about this. People need to learn the value of the Absentee Ballot, even if they have to go visit the trees in another venue to get the job done.