Naturally venting methane discovered venting...

[Missourian]

...from sea floor.

The paper found that the vents, which are at depths from 800 to 2,000 feet, have a sprawling swath. They reach hundreds of miles from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Georges Bank southeast of Nantucket, Mass. “Widespread seepage hadn’t been expected,” the paper said.

The finding raises a number of questions. First on the list: Are there a lot more? The paper says the discovery suggests “tens of thousands” of similar vents could pockmark the ocean floor, emitting vast quantities of methane gas. He told the BBC that their number could be as high as 30,000.

If true, that would mean there is a significant — and heretofore unknown — addition to global carbon admissions, throwing previous estimates into question. “Such seeps would represent a source of global seabed methane emissions that have not been fully accounted for in previous carbon budgets,” the paper stated.

8216 Widespread methane leakage 8217 coming from hundreds of vents off East Coast ocean floor - The Washington Post​

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Methane leakage? Did the ocean floor eat some Olestra potato chips?

 

[Mr. H.]

All the more reason to immediately CEASE all uses of hydrocarbons!
RUN FOR THE HILLS!

 

[Zander]

We must tax the ocean.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Crick]

Most of the seeping vents were located around 500m down, which is just the right temperature and pressure to create a sludgy confection of ice and gas called methane hydrate, or clathrate.

The scientists say that the warming of ocean temperatures might be causing these hydrates to send bubbles of gas drifting through the water column.

They do not appear to be reaching the surface.

"The methane is dissolving into the ocean at depths of hundreds of metres and being oxidised to CO2," said Prof Skarke.

Methane hydrates recovered in the Gulf of Mexico by the US Geological Survey
"But it is important to say we simply don't have any evidence in this paper to suggest that any carbon coming from these seeps is entering the atmosphere."

This research, though, does highlight the scale of methane that is under the waters.

Estimates suggest that these undersea sediments are one of the largest reservoirs on Earth, and contains around 10 times more carbon than the atmosphere.

Carbon budget revisions
Prof Skarke and his colleagues estimate that worldwide, there may be around 30,000 of the type of seeps they have discovered.

They acknowledge that this is a rough calculation but they believe that it could be significant.

While the vents may not be posing an immediate global warming threat, the sheer number means that our calculations on the potential sources of greenhouse gases may need revising.
BBC News - Widespread methane leakage from ocean floor off US coast

Before all you deniers start chortling and guffawing that you've found the source of all the added GHGs in the Earth's atmosphere, you might want to consider a few points:

1) There is no evidence of synchrony with the observed increases in GHGs
2) The sublimation of benthic methane clathrates has been known as a potential GHG source for many years
3) These vents are seeping METHANE, not CO2. Very effective greenhouse gas but shorter lifespan in the atmosphere.
4) The methane gets turned into CO2 in the water. This is increasing ocean acidification and will eventually get into the air.
5) Don't forget that the simple bookeeping tally of the amount of CO2 produced by the amount of fossil fuel humans have burned since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution also shows that virtually every molecule of CO2 above the pre-industrial 280 ppm level is of human origin.