Melting arctic ice may release billions of tons of greenhouse gas

Global warming is a contentious issue again because skeptics have pointed out inconsistencies with the data scientists are using to measure how much humans are impacting the environment. Setting that debate aside for a moment, scientists have discovered that somewhere around 7 teragrams of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, has been released each year from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. That’s around 7.7 million tons of methane, and the data was aggregated from 5,000 locations. Sound credible?

In a situation like this the argument over who is causing global warming – man or nature – becomes almost irrelevant. It’s important for us to understand how that much greenhouse gas drifting into the atmosphere will affect the climate. Our ability to adapt or prevent that shift in climate may determine the next step in our collective bloodline.

Right now that gas is trapped in ice within something scientists call “methane hydrates”. Its depth and freezing temperatures keep it contained but destabilization has put those structures at risk. Natalia Shakhova from the University of Alaska says “this is a little alarming. We do not know how massive or sudden this outburst was. We don’t know how many there were. We don’t know how close to the equilibrium we are. A lot of questions are still open.”

Renewable energy, recycling, using fewer materials when possible are all good things to do in the context of a shifting climate and strained global energy resources. Not to mention those things can also provide economic benefits. Something of this magnitude though seems like it will require more.

What kind of more? The way humans almost always adapted to new challenges: technology. Whether that means a massive reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions, or some other way to contain them remains to be seen. Beyond that, at a more basic level, we don’t even understand fully what the causes and effects of climate change are so research like this is critical.