A similar worry is methane hydrates. [2]
It seems that the only remaining hopes are rapid progress on carbon sequestration on a vast scale, or risky geoengineering.
[1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-24/thawing-permafrost-co... [2] https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/methane-hydrate...
The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the idea that increases in sea temperatures or drops in sea levels can trigger a strong positive feedback effect on climate: first, warming causes a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and seabed permafrost; second, because methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, temperatures rise further, and the cycle repeats. This runaway process, once started, could be as irreversible as the firing of a gun.
"The researchers believe that soil and marine bacteria that feed on frozen fossil methane as it melts may explain its limited release, by preventing the methane from ever reaching the atmosphere."
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/natural-methane-time-bomb-unli...
The abstract at Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23316
A longer explainer at Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/548403a
"The authors show that the 14C methane signature is relatively constant through this abrupt methane rise. They use a mass-balance calculation to show that this could not have happened if the rise was caused by emissions from geological sources, including hydrates"
"Natural geological methane emissions are expected to have been higher during the past than in modern times12, and so the authors' estimate of emissions 12,000 years ago can be taken as an upper limit for today's climate system."
The closest is the caveat that modern warming may go warmer, and thus further historical analysis and modeling is needed.
The differences between deglacial and modern warming preclude us from unequivocally ruling out the possibility of large-scale natural methane releases to the atmosphere from old carbon reservoirs in the future. Our results do, however, suggest that such releases are unlikely. This is consistent with recent atmospheric observations, which suggest that renewed growth of atmospheric CH4 since 2006 is not driven by emissions from the Arctic29, where the most vulnerable old carbon reservoirs are located today. Instead, our results support the hypothesis that any future increases in natural CH4 emissions to the atmosphere will be driven by contemporaneous sources such as wetlands.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/nature23316
Another piece of context is that the "don't have to worry" quote was from "Scripps Oceanography geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus, who has been involved with this research project since 2000 and leads the study of ice core records at Scripps." He's in no way a global warming skeptic, but rather an advocate of decarbonization by 2050 to reduce anthropogenic warming, yet he says the sudden arctic methane release is something we don't have to worry about.
There is always more context. Basically anything can be "potentially deceptive", but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate. This appears to be a case where the university press release did a pretty good job of remaining true to the paper.
It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
Come on, stop being disingenuous.
> but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate.
The quote you posted bereft of greater context (Which you've now tried to provide. Well done!) could deceive a number of people. It's both potentially deceptive and, in those instances where it deceives someone, deceptive. The linguistic implications alone are... tremendously boring, to be honest.
> It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
How utterly bizarre that you think so.
The face-value perception of the quotes I posted ("'methane time bomb’...is one thing we don't have to worry about" with the link for context) is the actual, correct meaning of the quote and conclusion from the climate scientists.
With the face value matching the deeper conclusion, where is the deception?
It would be less-bad for the climate overall if we didn't get the extra temporary energy bump from methane, and it were "only" carbon dioxide directly. But no, there's no way to do that efficiently. The methane stores are spread over many thousands of square miles. It's just to diffuse to operate on directly.