....I might even say your bet could be payable in less time if there are any methane contributors in the picture !!!
I think a scary aspect of "tipping points" is that we won't know for sure, until years afterwards, when one has been tripped.
I ran across this
Guardian report about ...another newspaper's email???
...whatever.
Arctic 'methane chimneys' raise fears of runaway climate changeResearchers say evidence suggests that the frozen seabed is perforated and is starting to leak methane, but other scientists urge cautionScientists claim to have discovered evidence for large releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen seabed stores off the northern coast of Siberia.
...
"As long as the scientists in the Siberian Arctic are not able to report very strong increases in submarine landslides and slope failures, I wouldn't expect that the release into the atmosphere is so severe that it is really very serious at the moment," Schwark added.
...
Örjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden told the
Independent newspaper in an email from the vessel: "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane.
"Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instrument]."
At some locations he said concentrations of the gas were 100 times the background level. These anomalies were documented in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres.
Gustafsson added: "The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place.
"The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leaking methane."
Estimates for the amount of carbon locked up in the hydrates vary from 500 to 5000 gigatonnes....
...from...http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/23/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange1J. Randerson, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday September 23 2008 13:52 BST So maybe there will be some more Arctic updates ...before next year's minimum.~
