Permian-Triassic climate lesson: Don’t even try to adapt to a mass extinction, mitigate – a single plague can kill a planet!

The second part of the new IPCC report, about the impacts of climate change, has been released on Monday. Across the globe dutiful journalists filled the headlines of their newspapers – and as they presume most of their readers are … Continue reading

Flatulent dinosaurs may have been a larger methane source than current human activities

The long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs known as sauropods that lived about 150 million years ago appear to have been rather flatulent. New calculations put the combined methane production of the hulking beasts at 520 million tonnes (Tg). As a comparison the … Continue reading

New source of methane discovered: the Arctic Ocean

It has been know for some time that large quantitites of methane lie hidden in reservoirs under the permafrost layers on the tundra and in clathrates on the continental shelve. It is neither a secret that those large quantities of … Continue reading

Today’s paradox: coal is not worse for climate than natural gas

It´s basic chemistry: coal is mainly carbon, if you burn it you get lots of CO2. Natural gas is mostly methane, and that’s a different story. With methane just ’20 percent of the burned atoms’ are carbon, the rest is … Continue reading

Climate change may release around 3 percent of 2,000+ Gt instable soil carbon from Arctic tundra over this century – as CO2 and methane

Here´s why finding out the Gulfstream could be quite stable wouldn´t necessarily be such good news: under continued warming, the positive feedback of increased tundra peat soil CO2 and methane emissions far outweighs the negative feedback of ‘taiga creep’ and … Continue reading