EcoAlert: "Could the Gulf Oil Spill Trigger a Cataclysmic Global Methane Bubble?"

Current analysis of methane levels in water collected from seven miles to 500 meters from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead show concentrations at some points to be a million times higher than normal John Kessler, a renowned chemical oceanographer in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&M University

"Methane levels ranged from 10,000 to nearly 1 million times higher in some spots than normal concentration," Kessler said.The 10-day reserach cruise, which was funded by a National Science Foundation Rapid Response grant, returned June 21 with nearly 1 million data points gathered. 

Ramifications are multifold, Kessler said. He called the site a natural laboratory in which to better assess the effect of methane on global climate change. Naturally occurring methane seeps have been linked to rapid climate change. For instance, an event occurring 55 million years ago may have caused one of these spikes, scientists believe. This event, the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), lasted about 100,000 years. Large undersea methane caused explosions and mass extinctions. So the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster may, at least, help scientists better understand and perhaps predict methane effects on global temperatures.

Concurrently, a huge ragged gash on the ocean floor hundreds of feet long has been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth. 

That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. It’s 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.

Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total  of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-that’s about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day. 

Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a methane extinction theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago, when masive combustible clouds produced by methane gas trapped under the seas and explosively released could have killed off the majority of marine life, land animals, and plants at the end of the Permian era—long before the dinosaurs arrived.

If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, reports Helium.com, "every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly. An ocean bottom collapse would follow, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives."

Is knowledge of the potential methane threat why the U.S. gov't and BP is trying prevent with the reporting blackout?

Let's hope otherwise.

Casey Kazan

Image credit: boston.com. Smoke billows from a controlled burn of spilled oil off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico coast line June 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner) 

Sources:

http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event

http://geosciences.tamu.edu/communications/geosciences-highlights/at-the-oil-spill-site

Comments

[David]

BP should be punished for that :@ :@ :@

[Christian Rioux]

"mass extinctions"?? I know a lot about mass extionctions and it's the first time I heard this one. I think this is pushed too far, a bit too catastrophic!

[Maura]

Okay, now you're just losing credibility in my eyes, because this was debunked several days ago.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/07/warriors_against_claptrap.php

[Maura]

Okay, now you're just losing credibility in my eyes, because this was debunked several days ago.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/07/warriors_against_claptrap.php

[Tom B]

I would hardly say that woman's blog post "debunks" this in any fashion.

[Paul]

What a poor scare-mongering article.
Pulling together random "facts" to try to scare the crap out of people is writing of the worst kind.
You try to link together individual rumours without any basis to try and contrive a story where there isn't one.
Shame on you.

[Dude]

"Is knowledge of the potential methane threat why the U.S. gov't and BP is trying prevent with the reporting blackout?"

Do you have any facts to back this assertion? Also, if there was a blackout, how is it this storu became available? Oh that's right...because none of this real news.

Ya know, there is a 'tipping point' when it comes to paranoia...you start assuming everything is a conspiracy because of the your almost non-existant evidence requirements.

"Well, there is no evidence that it is NOT a conspiracy...therefore it must be one!"
-if St. Thomas Aquinas was a looney

[Is there intelligent life in the universe]

This story should be removed. It's not credible.

[The Dark Engine]

The original story on Helium has been thoroughly debunked. Kessler himself has disavowed this interpretation of his work. This is what comes from an amateur writing about something he's not familiar with and not doing adequate research. You need to remove this article before this ridiculous, unfounded idea spreads any further.

[Bill Clark]

I have looked up Kazan's resources and went futher to check their resources. From there I can say that Kazan has done a very good job. Kazan's article bears the weight of truth. However, I do not agree that there is a "press blackout." I believe that the burning ocean rig is a dangerous place. Daredevils (including daredevil newshounds) will certainly try to climb aboard. Let us leave this mess to the professionals.

I applaud Kazan's article. It gives us cause to think.

[Rawry]

This story was initially perpetuated last week by some nutjob claiming that Obama an his "operatives" orchestrated the BP "spill" knowing that the Gulf would explode violently, so he could reform the country's borders or something. Oh, and it said he was the antichrist and the media was his pawn or somesuch. Can't find the news link now, I think google finally dumped the "news" site that started all this.

[BillyHewitt]

BP is a terrorist organization the same as Al Qaeda and BP Corporate officers have committed a terrorist act against America by murdering Americans and destroying the Gulf of Mexico (in process). Simply declare BP a terrorist organization and send all company officers to Guantanamo for daily waterboarding until they confess (Bush & Cheney solution) then introduce them to Cuban firing squad. The patriot act would apply and all problems are solved.The question still remains how many more people will BP murder with corexit 9500 toxic rain or methane & Benzene toxic gas clouds?

[LowOnProzac]

Actually, Bush, Chaney, Clinton, Hillary, Obama, and Osama Bin Laden are all in a giant conspiracy with the Republican party to blow up the world.

[Observer]

Sorry to say but the US doesn't need any other terrorists you already elected and re-elected George W Bush. Americans are perfectly capable of and are destroying their country on their own. BP was greedy and cut costs and are now paying for it, people in these times are at the pinnacle of greed so it's nothing new. Kill the trees, murder the animals and pollute the world all to fill the investors eyes and pockets. Then do what humans do best, sit around and speculate and come up with hair brained theories and throw the blame around without doing ANYTHING to help anything worth helping.

[dirk alan]

british petroelum = shit plume rite bro ? anagrams are true.

[Daniel Cobb]

The pic has a weird, Armageddon (sp) look to it, doesn't it? Wow, cool. Where the hell is Bruce Willis to come and save out butts? Huh?

[Alex]

Guys... I can't even begin to explain what's wrong with this article... A global methane bubble? Maybe this was well researched, but it doesn't make it any more true. It takes a lot more than a few fissures spitting out methane to cause a mass extinction.

to Billyhewitt and Observer: ... Seriously? You think that this was done intentionally? The U.S. government put so many regulations and permits on drilling that BP found it wasn't cost efficient to drill in shallow water, or on dry land, so they where forced to the butt end of nowhere to drill in a dangerous place just to make a profit. Think about it for a minute. What would BP possibly have to gain by intentionally skimping on their safety measures? They have already lost millions of dollars in oil, they have already been coerced into offering the government 20 million dollars to pay for the damage, and Obama himself came out and said "This is only the beginning" as if BP could afford to give up any more money. It's ridiculous. If anybody's to blame for this, it's the congress that passed all these regulations which eventually and indirectly forced BP to drill in unsafe places in deep water, rather than on dry land or in shallow water, which would have been easier, safer, and more profitable.

Rand Paul was exactly right about this. We are a flawed species and no matter how hard we try we will eventually make mistakes in everything we do. It does no good punishing people for their honest mistakes, because there's nothing they can do to prevent another honest mistake from happening. If it really was an honest mistake (Which I have no reason yet to suspect it wasn't) then they should be responsible for it, but they shouldn't be accused of ill intent just because they messed up once... If anybody here is a 'terrorist' it's the people in control of congress right now (and look! They all just happen to be Democrats! na, can't be no connection between democrats and bad leadership!...)

[Isaac]

@ Alex

You don't suppose that BP intentionally skimped on their safety measures to, y'know, spend less money on safety measures?

Such a thing is nothing new. It has been routine practice for people at the top of large business ventures to only care about the numbers as they pertain to their personal wealth and power. This is the reason why anti-monopoly laws and unions arose. This is why we have safety regulations in the first place; because if we didn't, you can be sure that plenty of companies would be cutting out some overhead to make even more money.

I agree that honest mistakes do happen. However, the question is whether this was an honest mistake, or due to negligence on BP's part. Unfortunately, this sort of thing can devolve into a blame game, with people blaming BP for messing up, the regulatory committees for not enforcing their rules properly, the scientific community for not researching the effects of this scenario way back when, members of congress for either not putting pressure on the regulatory committees or allowing BP and other companies with poor safety records to successfully bury safety legislation via lobbying, etc etc. It can seem, from certain points of view, that everyone involved has either made 'honest mistakes' or was criminally negligent from the start.

[John Willemse]

This article has not been completely debunked -- all debunkers on Helium (the site where the original article appeared) where citing without any sources as well.

The only thing I want to say is that I hope that all humankind will be wiped off of the Earth by this disaster! We are fucking up this planet and don't deserve to live on it! I sincerely hope we will ALL die!

[Observer]

@Alex Where have you been under a rock for the last couple months ? Have you seen anything on the news about the bulls**t that was happening on the BP rig ? If you understood English language which you obviously don't you would never have come to the conclusion that I was saying the spill was intentional. I said the spill is a product of BP greed, nothing new ! I also don't subscribe to the conspiracy nonesense my point was, before you come up with all these stupid theories of the destruction of America you should realize that Bush wasted over $5 Trillion on wars. You don't need outside malefactors, you elect all your local ones to public office.

[Tom B]

I think there is a severe lack of reading comprehension among most of the posters here. You guys should try reading both articles before you start babbling your nonsense theories.

[desert voice]

This article seems to approach the science fiction. It is true that the Deepwater Horizon released tons of methane. But the methane, largely, escaped to the atmosphere. The damage is probably to the ozone hole, more than to the ocean. The ocean methane slowly oozes toward the surface and escapes without causing Armageddon, not unlike the methane that escapes from the bowels of the cows. My concern is that the Gulf has been polluted enough to damage the shrim and oysters. I do not count BP, which has destroyed a precious oil deposit, by allowing the vital reservoir pressure to belch into the air! The moral is: redouble the efforts that such disasters never happen again!

[waitress1]

it is shocking that anyone would side 'with' BP. They evidentaly
either over or under medicated!
BP was NOT EVER FORCED into drilling in deep waters...
BP was told NO for close in wells being dug, and BP made its OWN
decision to go where the regulations were more lax! so that they
could 'make some money', as he put it...
they didn't get a permit because they couldn't prove safety
and the permit denied...then THEY, BP went willfully, and spitefully, deep into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico,
and are doing the same, elsewhere on the planet. Their
greed, and disregard for this earth, and the people not even
yet born, is repulsive and inhuman. How can these people
sleep at night? Their capacity for denial and rationalization
is endless...OF COURSE they should give (coreced, give me a break!) the 20$ million..and whatever ELSE it costs to 'MAKE IT RIGHT' a concept that BP has very expensively thrown around to perk up their deservedly despicable image...They are already
deducting clean up payments made to fisherman from any insurance
payout they're getting...and all the cases that will be filed
ahis week alone...so many out of work and suffering and all...
BP DOESN'T CARE, no amount of advertising will be able to pursuade
the public into thinking its way...I hope I am right, but kids
are so different than when min were little (20 somethig years ago_)
W only have to STOP and THINK FOR OURSELVES> It will be CLEAR who is at fault, and why...Good luck to all of us..and pray this catastrophe doesn't get any worse.
One lesson here, is "Don't invest in dangerous tecnology, and CERTAINLY DON'T blame/hold financially responsible ANYONE ELSE
BUT YOURSELVES for investing in a non renewable, dirty fuel.
I encourage everyone to back up R & D for tidal power. a very good power source wiion us all....we inherited this beautiful earth, and will
NOT be passing it down to our descendants (at least not in the pristine condition in which we found it). We looked the other
way, as lobbyists slithered in to washington, selling our future
"down the pike", and ushering in the most destructive historical
momnent the planet has ever seeen... so some clever, entrepreneurial young people, took over and went too far....
i pray every day that it doesn't get any worse,

[l sweet]

f this article isn't credible, will an official u s article be ? Anyway, we're in trouble:on the one hand the eventual desaster andthen our administration evt. deceiving us. Sincerely yours, Lou Sweet.