Comment by jlmorton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jlmorton | Hacker News Reader

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I watched the entire interview with Dr. Peter Carter. At about 19:50 in the interview, he talks about a "Massive! Massive increase in methane." He talks about an incredible eruption of methane, almost in apocalyptic terms, he says he knows of no other source it could be other than methane hydrates, and he is shocked that it hasn't received more media attention.

He then kind of vacillates a bit when asked to quantify it. He talks about historic methane concentrations from ice core samples and then compares that to current methane concentrations in Barrow, AK, the site of the methane eruption.

This was intriguing to me, so I tried to find the original report he's talking about. What it shows is absolutely nothing like he represents. Indeed, there has been large and rapid increase in methane concentrations in Barrow, Alaska over the past few years. But it's a change of about 5-10% [1]. And there were similar-scale eruptions in years past, such as in 2003.

The change is certainly more rapid than the trend. It's probably noteworthy. Clearly something is happening in that area. But this sort of silly exaggeration is one of the reasons why so many dismiss climate science.

If you want people to believe you, don't exaggerate the science.

[1] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/09/arctic-met...

> What it shows is absolutely nothing like he represents

The report you linked doesn't sound much less alarming:

"To spot methane levels breaking the 2000ppb mark so sharply in this fragile region is unprecedented, as the chart below illustrates."

Are you qualified to evaluated what makes a change large or small?

Is it possible that a 5-10% change is actually "massive"?

Perhaps not, I am not a climate scientist. I guess that precludes me from looking at a dataset and forming an independent conclusion. But since I'm not qualified to comment on the data, is Michael Mann qualified enough?

https://twitter.com/michaelemann/status/1172947818069352451

He doesn't argue with increase and only argues what is source of this spike.

Not true. He says:

> The 2019 measurements are consistent with the trend over the past decade. Outliers (i.e. isolated data points that lie well above the average) are seen throughout the record. Do not over-interpret them.

He goes on to say there's no evidence this is from methane hydrates, or permafrost:

> That is not to say that we shouldn't worry about the potential for increased methane release from melting permafrost. But there is no evidence to support breathless claims that we have e.g. crossed some "tipping point" with regard to such processes.

>The increased trend over the past decade is also part of a larger trend.

Right, I don't disagree with the plain fact that methane concentrations are increasing, both globally, and apparently in Barrow. There is a decades-long trend of increased methane concentrations.

The question is whether there has been a massive eruption of methane that is unprecedented, and could only come from methane hydrates.

Michael Mann says the "eruption" is consistent with past outliers and we shouldn't over-interpret the data. He says there is no evidence the increase is from permafrost, and that it appears likely to be from anthropogenic (i.e., non-tipping point) sources.

I'm not making an argument against climate change science. I'm making an argument against Dr. Peter Carter exaggerating climate science.

That sounds reasonable. Thanks for the sourcing!

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