Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Antarctic may host methane stores

Large volumes of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - could be locked beneath the ice-covered regions of Antarctica, according to a new study.

It says this methane could be released into the atmosphere as ice retreats, contributing to climate warming.

The findings indicate that ancient deposits of organic matter may have been converted to methane by microbes under the ice.

An international team reported the results in Nature journal.

Study leader Jemima Wadham, from Bristol University, said: "This is an immense amount of organic carbon, more than ten times the size of carbon stocks in northern permafrost regions.

"Our laboratory experiments tell us that these sub-ice environments are also biologically active, meaning that this organic carbon is probably being metabolised to carbon dioxide and methane gas by microbes."

They estimate that there could be hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon stored in methane reservoirs under the ice sheet.

The authors say that the predicted shallow depth of these methane reserves means that they could be destabilised by climate change, and might act as a positive feedback on global warming.

Co-author Dr Sandra Arndt, also from the University of Bristol, said: "It's not surprising that you might expect to find significant amounts of methane hydrate trapped beneath the ice sheet.

"Just like in sub-seafloor sediments, it is cold and pressures are high which are important conditions for methane hydrate formation."

In their Nature paper, the authors comment that their "findings suggest that the Antarctic Ice Sheet may be a neglected but important component of the global methane budget".

Original Article
Source: BBC
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