Sink Holes in Russia are a Dragon's breath, a term for large volumes of methane gas escaping into the atmosphere. If these are happening more and more, this would mean climate models are way off and the runaway climate might be a lot closer than we think.
I hate to say this, but I'm nearing a point where I truly believe we will not stop or even slow this enough before billions die and we have mass extinction events. I wish I could be more optimistic, but we as a planet are so slow to react to slow changing events and this one is unforgiving to us not taking action.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/en...-1227006746397
Quote:
EMPTYING AN ANCIENT CARBON DUMP
Siberia’s Yamal region contains some of Russia’s largest gas reserves. It’s little coincidence that the first vent hole appeared about 40km from the nation’s largest gas field — Bovanenkovo.
Since then another crater has been identified nearby. This one is smaller: Some 15m in diameter. Locals first found it in September last year, but it has only now come to the attention of authorities. A third — this time only 4m wide — was found several hundred kilometres away on the Taymyr Peninsula.
Russian scientists examining the first blowhole found it to be 60-80m wide and some 70m deep. It runs into the permafrost of ice and mud. There is an icy lake at its bottom.
It was a process which took millions of years to create the world as we know it.
But the methane left trapped under the Arctic permafrost is a ticking time bomb — set to send the world into a mass extinction and set the climate clock back by millennia.
“We have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate calamity; runaway climate heating,” Dr Box writes.
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