I staked out 2012 in the last thread on this topic.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

(...)

Sea floor methane hydrate ice and methane released as permafrost tundra melts.  That is a nearly unrecognized extra powerful GHG climate disaster.  How would it interact with the gulf stream conveyor stopping?

Would the additional greenhouse warming prevent a little ice age, or would it just delay it?  Would they cancel each other out in North America and Europe?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

amazingdrx, the possibility of a major shutdown of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic has been pretty well excluded by recent work.  Bear in mind that the present ice (Greenland plus sea ice) doesn't contain anywhere near as much fresh water as the ones that melted 10,000 years ago, plus present geography doesn't appear to allow for a large meltwater lake that could drain suddenly.  There could still be an effect, but likely no more than just a temporary slowing of the warming trend in northern Europe.

The possibility of a significant hydrate release from around the Arctic Ocean margins has yet to be ruled out, but there's no reason to expect it to be huge.  Methane release from permafrost melt may be more important.  The big open question with both of these is how fast they could happen.
   

Methane hydrate ice exists in the sea bed.  And as we all know by now, methane is a 23 times worse GHG than CO2.

Which conveyor research showed this result?  I did see some information claiming that the stppoage would only shift Europe's climate to that of Canada.

I'm wondering if denier propaganda is starting to affect this and other scenarios?  It seems a shift from denying human caused GHG climate change to merely denying the severity of the effect is underway.

First we saw an article here that claimed that the cure for GHG climate change was much more expensive that the effects were likely to be.  the latest one says that simply buying "insurance" in the form of "more study" of GHG free energy sources was a proportional investment to the risk posed by GHG, than actually going ahead with mass production of renewable energy devices.

It's an un-interesting new direction, but with similar rsults to the old denier talking points.  Continue the energy policy status quo, with huge subsidies to fossil and nuclear corporations, let them adapt at their own "free" market speed.  Trust monopoly corporations to care for the climate, government can't be part of any solution anyway, it is too inept and corrupt.

This new improved sophistry takes advantage of IPCC silence on many of the possible effects, like ice melting, and their speed.  methane hydrate and tundra entrapped methane hardly gets a notice.  The same with the typical melt rate of ice, it generally proceeds to accelerate at an exponential rate.

We can't just cede these points to the corpor-right.  They will take them and run for the goal, as we have seen them do in articles here recently.  Relying on the usual rhetorical shock and awe, and the traditional appeal to authority informal fallacy so dear to the hearts of corporate jetset wannabees everywhere.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The actual word used was "hedge", this additional study of GHG free energy sources is purportedly  a sufficient hedge against GHG effects.

It seems a minor point, but is it really?  Bernanke met with hedge fund operators, according to the NYT, so they could try to explain the complex arrangement of lending (they have arranged) that has the world economy tottering on the brink of disaster.

As with the Cheney administration secret energy meeting early on after the first bush appointment (never call it an election), where Cheney met with the robber barons of fossil and nuclear energy to chart the demise of renewable energy policy.

So this meeting with the perpetual robber barons of the investment world, the completely unregulated insider trading thieves, that brought on this global credit emergency; was also designed to serve their own interests.

"Hedge" funds, the incremental financial "insurance" crowd, that justified their non-regulated status as part of some kind of "free" market response to risk.  Now the climate change deniers are using the very popular buzzword too.  Let's "hedge' the risk of climate change.

How?  Well just let hedge funds do it, through carbon trading and weather furtures options.  Of course the free market, left to operate efficiently (unregulated) knows the best of all possible ways to proceed.  It is the only accurate predictor of the future.  The market knows all.  The omniscient god of the corpor-right, it justifies anything they want it to.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog