RealClimate Commenter:  Methane alarmism will not be dissuaded by any reasonable means. But nice try David. ;)

Response [by geophysicist David Archer]: Well, to be honest, sometimes I do get spooked myself. There is a lot of carbon up there. David. PS: On further reflection, I don’t think I want to be fighting being alarmed about methane bubbles in the Arctic. I am alarmed too, but perhaps I’m alarmed for a longer time frame than some. David]

Whether or not you should be alarmed by Arctic methane depends on your definition of “alarmed.”  And it depends on how much you follow the other areas of climate science, many of which are, for me, considerably more “alarming” (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“):

Something truly alarming (via M.I.T.):  Inaction (our current “no policy” strategy) eliminates most of the uncertainty about whether or not future warming will be catastrophic.  Aggressive emissions reductions — fatally rejected by deniers, the breakthrough bunch, and the ignorati — dramatically improves humanity’s chances.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.   Concern about methane emissions has risen in recent years because methane levels have been risen in recent years after a decade of little growth and because there have been reports of massive methane plumes of the Arctic coast and because the carbon-rich permafrost is thawing.

Fortunately, the best NOAA analysis “suggests we have not yet activated strong climate feedbacks from permafrost and CH₄ hydrates,” a finding Climate Progress first reported 3 years ago.

But much more rapid ice loss in the Arctic than expected, accompanied by rapid permafrost warming, has convinced leading experts now say that frozen carbon is likely to start being released at a large-scale in the next few decades –  some of it in the form of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 — causing 2.5 times the warming of deforestation.  That would complicate any efforts by humanity to reduce emissions and avert multiple, simultaneous catastrophes (see below).  This largely unmodeled amplifying carbon-cycle feedback is, obviously, worrisome and even alarming.

As an aside, the word “alarm” literally meant “a call to arms” — as in, there is imminent danger folks, saddle up.  So we have “alarm” defined as “a sudden fear caused by the realization of danger” or “a warning of existing or approaching danger.”

An another aside, the do-little crowd and their enablers/stenographers — you know who they are — have two big tricks to poo-pooh “alarmists.”  First, they attack alarmists as predicting “certain doom,” pointing out that the models are filled with uncertainty and predict a large range of impacts.  But they don’t tell you that their preferred course of action — doing very little — cuts out most of the uncertainty, sharply narrows the impact range, and thus dramatically increases the probability of the catastrophe (see MIT’s wheel of misfortune above).

Second, the snooze button pushers attack alarmists for supposedly saying we are experiencing a real-time catastrophe, but they are really hiding behind the lags in the energy and climate system.  The climate realists are alarmed not because the doom hits in the next few years, but because if we don’t act aggressively in the next few years, the “doom” becomes exceedingly difficult to avoid.

In short, the do-little crowd and their enablers/stenographers have won the day politically, which means the alarmists have “won the day” scientifically.  Put another way, anyone who isn’t alarmed right now, simply doesn’t know what they are talking about.  As but one piece of proof:  The historically staid and conservative International Energy Agency has joined the ranks of the “alarmists” — see IEA’s Bombshell Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy.”

The notion it’s alarmist to say that where we are headed is catastrophic is, well, just laughable … or cryable.  As the chief economist for the IEA said in November about the fact that the world is on pace for 6°C (11 F) warming “Even School Children Know This Will Have Catastrophic Implications for All of Us.”

Darn you alarmist school children!

So we should retire the term “alarmist” and its variations.  We are climate realists — or climate hawks, if you prefer.  The snooze button pushers, well, they are still asleep at the wheel, which I wish were a mixed metaphor, but I guess those warning in the ads for Ambien are right — those pill-popping politicians and pundits driving the national and global SUV are sound asleep but don’t know it.  And that’s not even counting the disinformers, who I guess in this extended metaphor are working desperately to unplug the alarm clock or encase it in tar sands.  I digress.

Recently, geophysicist David Archer, an expert on the carbon cycle and methane hydrates, wrote three pieces on Arctic methane for the must-read website RealClimate.  The first is titled, “Much ado about methane,” though it would have been better titled “Much ado about methane hydrates.”  The second is “An Arctic methane worst-case scenario.” The third post discusses a model he created that you can play around with if you want an even worse case or a better one.

I am generally a fan of analyzing worst-case scenarios for two reasons.  First, in real life, individuals base a considerable amount of their planning and spending on worst-case scenarios (fire burning down your house,  catastrophic  healthcare problem) and so do governments:  Just think about how much money and material and manpower the U.S. has devoted since 1945 over the possibility of a Russian nuclear attack or tank invasion of West Europe or the need to fight two wars  simultaneously, and so on.  Second, many of those pesky worst-case scenarios somehow seem to keep happening where humans are involved — Fukushima being a classic example — which isn’t a big surprise given that ignoring warnings, which are sometimes called alarms, pretty much guarantees things are going to be worse than folks thought.

So here is what Archer finds in his worst-case scenario — if “the Arctic started to degas methane 100 times faster than it is today”:

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