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Old 06-04-2016, 05:31 PM   #29
Bruno
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Global warming could take a massive sudden upswing if hypothetical large methane containing clathrate deposits in the ocean melted.
They aren't really hypothetical. Well, in the sense that there is definitely a lot of methane locked up like that, but you could be referring to individual, large deposits, as opposed to the widely scattered small ones.

The "laziest" way to get this condition is just warming the oceans enough, but for that to happen in the time period asked for by the OP would mean some really NOT lazy thing already happened.

But here's a nice cold-war idea: methane clathrate is lighter than water (much like normal water ice) - it's only at the bottom of the ocean because it's trapped under sediments. Posit a series of sub-oceanic nuclear tests that blasts the sedimentary layers off of a giant deposit. Clathrate floats up to the warmer layers at the surface and melts. It might take a decade before people really understood the gravity of the situation, after all they thought the Doorway To Hell was going to be a short methane burn off :)
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