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Keep in mind that this is only scientists talking and not the
official truth that comes from news and talkshow commentators, so take it with a grain of salt.
:sarcasm: :sarcasm:
Large Methane Release Could Cause Abrupt Climate Change As Happened 635 Million Years AgoScienceDaily (May 29, 2008) — An abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, about 635 million years ago from ice sheets that then extended to Earth's low latitudes caused a dramatic shift in climate, triggering a series of events that resulted in global warming and effectively ended the last "snowball" ice age, a UC Riverside-led study reports
~SNIP~
Also called marsh gas, methane is a colorless, odorless gas. As a greenhouse gas, it is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and has largely been held responsible for a warming event that occurred about 55 million years ago, when average global temperatures rose by 4-8 degrees Celsius.
When released into the ocean-atmosphere system, methane reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and can cause marine dysoxia, which kills oxygen-using animals, and has been proposed as an explanation for major oceanic extinctions.
"One way to look at the present human influence on global warming is that we are conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth's climate system," Kennedy said. "We are witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth. But much the same experiment has already been conducted 635 million years ago, and the outcome is preserved in the geologic record. We see that strong forcing on the climate, not unlike the current carbon dioxide forcing, results in the activation of latent controls in the climate system that, once initiated, change the climate to a wholly different state."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080528140255.htm---
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