This is very damning. I have also asked John several times to clarify the membership of the group and he has not done so. Bearing in mind the high media profile of the AMEG group, the issue is a major threat to the public credibility of the entire geoengineering research community.
Arctic Methane Emergency Group? Posted on: March 17, 2012 4:16 PM, by William M. Connolley
From Climate 'tech fixes' urged for Arctic methane I find ameg.me who say:
AMEG POSITION DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY We declare there now exists an extremely high international security risk* from abrupt and runaway global warming being triggered by the end-summer collapse of Arctic sea ice towards a fraction of the current record and release of huge quantities of methane gas from the seabed. Such global warming would lead at first to worldwide crop failures but ultimately and inexorably to the collapse of civilization as we know it. This colossal threat demands an immediate emergency scale response to cool the Arctic and save the sea ice. The latest available data indicates that a sea ice collapse is more than likely by 2015 and even possible this summer (2012). Thus some measures to counter the threat have to be ready within a few months.
So who are these bozos? (Note: I've been fairly dismissive about methane before). Aunty says "Scientists told UK MPs this week... At a meeting in Westminster organised by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (Ameg), Prof Salter told MPs that..." so I think the first thing to realise is that there is less to this than meets the eye. If you follow their "about" link you come to:
ABOUT AMEG In the preparation of the 2010 workshop report and AGU conference poster presentation, scientific and/or engineering advice was sought and obtained from the following people
and there follows a list of distinguished-looking folk, whose only misfortune was to have talked to these people. Lower, we come to
a position statement on the Arctic methane emergency, proposed by the chairman, John Nissen, was agreed by the following: Graham Ennis Doly Garcia Jon Hughes Veli Albert Kallio Graham Knight Dr. Brian Orr Prof. Stephen Salter Prof. Peter Wadhams
Salter will be familiar to Old Folk as the inventor of the Duck, a doubtless noble project but which has, as far as I know, been perennially unused. Wadhams is a climate scientist - well, he is a sea ice person. The rest I don't know. Wadhams has some credibility. Unfortunately, we don't know what the position statement they agree was. They don't directly link to it. It is possible that the text I've quoted is part of it, but its impossible to know.
Wadhams clearly believes something, see Rebuttal: Imminent collapse of Arctic sea ice drives danger of accelerated methane thaw (thanks B for reminding me). I see that page relies heavily on the Piomas graphs, whose extrapolation I've disagreed with before and do now. But onto what W says there: Archer clearly acknowledges the vulnerability of methane hydrates to thawing in response to rising Arctic temperatures. Given that ice loss is accelerating, which in turn will only accelerate that temperature rise through the albedo effect, one has to wonder why he does not perceive an imminent and urgent crisis, which certainly suggests that W does indeed believe in "an imminent and urgent crisis". I think that is well over the top; I don't think anything he says there supports it, nor do the links.
I've worked with Wadhams a little bit, in the past. Wadhams knows about sea ice, indeed as far as I know its his main specialism. But perhaps in a local-processes sense. He was involvedin garnering thickness data from UK submarine cruises. What I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't really trust him to have a great deal of feel for the connection between sea ice and global-scale methane; I'd expect him to care for the Arctic, but quite possibly to over-emphasise local detail.
And apart from Wadhams I can't see this group has any credibility.
Update: bottom-trawling, I ran across a comment at JEB (thanks VB) talking about "invaded by out-and-out nutters such as the UFOlogist and Arctic methane expert Graham Ennes (AKA 'Omega Institute')". Well yes, GE (though with an "i") is on that list. And yes, if you search for his name you'll find some weird stuff. Wadhams ought to remember that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
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I'm with Stoat, Ken Caldeira, David Keith, Alan Robock and others who see this "emergency" effort to rush cloud intervention in the Arctic on behalf of sea ice (and indirectly seabed methane) as undermining the case for a serious push on geo-engineering options, impacts and policy issues. You're getting headlines and the attention of factions in Parliament now, but just wait until the variability kicks the other way.
"Yelling fire on a hot planet" <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23revkin.html?_r=2> can have unanticipated consequences.
There was a good study at WCRP which showed that much of the inter annual variability is wind related, as ice is moved towards the Atlantic in certain years.
I don't know if It's in print yet.
Veli has made this point before, and the modelling seems to support his view.
This is worrying, as It's a non thermal process. SRM can't predictably change the wind, so unless we can rapidly rebuild the ice to a continuous mass, it will tend to get blown away when the winds dictate.
A
--
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs
There was a good study at WCRP which showed that much of the inter annual variability is wind related, as ice is moved towards the Atlantic in certain years.
I don't know if It's in print yet.
Veli has made this point before, and the modelling seems to support his view.
This is worrying, as It's a non thermal process. SRM can't predictably change the wind, so unless we can rapidly rebuild the ice to a continuous mass, it will tend to get blown away when the winds dictate.
A
On Mar 19, 2012 1:15 AM, "Mike MacCracken" <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:
Just to note, however, that we really do not have a good sense of how big or small variability can be at this melting trend continues�variability is very unlikely, in my view to be much of a saving influence on the decadal scale unless some strong cooling influence results�whether from a major volcanic eruption, lots more sulfate pollution on the global scale, or climate engineering. With world warming, it is hard to have the Arctic go very far or very long in the opposite direction.
Mike MacCracken
On 3/18/12 3:43 PM, "Andy Revkin" <rev...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm with Stoat, Ken Caldeira, David Keith, Alan Robock and others who see this "emergency" effort to rush cloud intervention in the Arctic on behalf of sea ice (and indirectly seabed methane) as undermining the case for a serious push on geo-engineering options, impacts and policy issues. You're getting headlines and the attention of factions in Parliament now, but just wait until the variability kicks the other way.
"Yelling fire on a hot planet" <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23revkin.html?_r=2> �can have unanticipated consequences.
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Cooling water will help, but if the ice has already disintegrated then we may have passed a tipping point where wind clearance is ultimately inevitable.
I'm certainly not denying a steep downward trend, but there's also inter annual variability about that trend.
We also must be careful because the area data is solid and the mass data isn't so solid.
My money is on a total collapse within a decade or two at most, irreversible without geoengineering. Whether this triggers a methane emergency is uncertain but possible, imo.
A
Andrew
If we can cool water flowing towards the Arctic it must delay the loss of ice.
The word 'variability' implies increases alternating with decreases in roughly equal proportion. Do you think that this fits the figure below?
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland Tel +44 131 650 5704 Mobile 07795 203 195 www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs
On 19/03/2012 07:51, Andrew Lockley wrote:
There was a good study at WCRP which showed that much of the inter annual variability is wind related, as ice is moved towards the Atlantic in certain years.
I don't know if It's in print yet.
Veli has made this point before, and the modelling seems to support his view.
This is worrying, as It's a non thermal process. SRM can't predictably change the wind, so unless we can rapidly rebuild the ice to a continuous mass, it will tend to get blown away when the winds dictate.
A
On Mar 19, 2012 1:15 AM, "Mike MacCracken" <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:
Just to note, however, that we really do not have a good sense of how big or small variability can be at this melting trend continues—variability is very unlikely, in my view to be much of a saving influence on the decadal scale unless some strong cooling influence results—whether from a major volcanic eruption, lots more sulfate pollution on the global scale, or climate engineering. With world warming, it is hard to have the Arctic go very far or very long in the opposite direction.
Mike MacCracken
On 3/18/12 3:43 PM, "Andy Revkin" <rev...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm with Stoat, Ken Caldeira, David Keith, Alan Robock and others who see this "emergency" effort to rush cloud intervention in the Arctic on behalf of sea ice (and indirectly seabed methane) as undermining the case for a serious push on geo-engineering options, impacts and policy issues. You're getting headlines and the attention of factions in Parliament now, but just wait until the variability kicks the other way.
"Yelling fire on a hot planet" <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23revkin.html?_r=2> can have unanticipated consequences.
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We would first note that we have never stated that the reason for the currently observed methane emissions were due to recent climate change. In fact, we explained in detail the mechanism of subsea permafrost destabilization as a result of inundation with seawater thousands of years ago. We have been working in this scientific field and this region for a decade. We understand its complexity more than anyone. And like most scientists in our field, we have to deal with slowly improving understanding of ongoing processes that often incorporates different points of views expressed by different groups of researchers.
Yes, modeling is important. However, we know that modeling results cannot prove or disprove real observations because modeling always assumes significant simplification and should be validated with observational data, not vice versa. Much of our work includes this field validation. Last spring, we extracted a 53-meter long core sample from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, to validate our conclusions about the current state of subsea permafrost. We found that the temperatures of the sediments were from 1.2 to 0.6 degrees below zero, Celsius, yet they were completely thawed. The model in the Dmitrenko paper [link] assumed a thaw point of zero degrees. Our observations show that the cornerstone assumption taken in their modeling was wrong. The rate at which the subsea permafrost is currently degrading largely depends on what state it was in when recent climate change appeared. It makes sense that modeling on an incorrect assumption about thaw point could create inaccurate results. [Dec. 29, 9:28 a.m. | Updated Dmitrenko disputes this reading of his paper. See comment below.]
Observations are at the core of our work now. It is no surprise to us that others monitoring global methane have not found a signal from the Siberian Arctic or increase in global emissions. [This refers to the work of Ed Dlugokencky and others; see his comments in my Dot Earth post.] The number of stations monitoring atmospheric methane concentrations worldwide is very few. In the Arctic there are only three such stations — Barrow, Alert, Zeppelin — and all are far away from the Siberian Arctic. We are doing our multi-year observations, including year-round monitoring, in proximity to the source. In addition to measuring the amount of methane emitted from the area, we are trying to find out whether there is anything specific about those emissions that could distinguish them from other sources. It is incorrect to say that anyone is able to trace that signal yet.
All models must be validated by observations. New data obtained in our 2011 cruise and other unpublished data give us a clue to reevaluate if the scale of methane releases from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf seabed is assessed correctly (papers are now in preparation). This is how science works: step by step, from hypothesis based on limited data and logic to expanded observations in order to gain more facts that could equally prove or disprove the hypothesis. We would urge people to consider this process, not jump to conclusions and be open to the idea that new observations may significantly change what we understand about our world.