Mother Jones: It was a stunning figure: $60 trillion.
Such could be the cost, according to a recent commentary in the journal Nature, of "the release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia...a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012." More specifically, the paper described a scenario in which rapid Arctic warming and sea ice retreat lead to a pulse of undersea methane being released into the atmosphere. How much methane? The paper modeled a release of 50 gigatons of this hard-hitting greenhouse gas (a gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons) over the space of 10 years between 2015 and 2025. This, in turn, would trigger still more warming and gargantuan damage and adaptation costs.
The $60 trillion figure went everywhere, and no wonder. It's jaw dropping. To provide some perspective, 50 gigatons is ten times as much methane as currently exists in the atmosphere. Atmospheric methane levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution, but this would amount to a much sharper increase in a dramatically shorter time frame.
According to the Nature commentary, that methane "is likely to be emitted as the seabed warms, either steadily over 50 years or suddenly." Such are the scientific assumptions behind the paper's economic analysis. But are those assumptions realistic—and could that much methane really be released suddenly from the Arctic?
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