Any Truth To The Methane Death?

According to this article: http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event

we’re possibly screwed.

What I want to know is if there’s any veracity to this “methane bubble” theory.

Sorry, my search-fu fails me but Cecil did a column on this, IIRC.

ETA: Here ya go.

Gee, and I was hoping that it was Nibiru that was going to kill us all…

Lots of innuendo but no detailed evidence to substantiate the author’s view. Unfortunately, Time magazine has jumped on the hype, quoting the Helium article.

Then there’s this from today:

Gizmodo | The Future Is Here
I can’t wait for The Onion to grab this story:

The Permian and Paleocene extinction events did occur. The Paleocene event is generally thought to have been due to methane; the causes of the Permian event are more controversial but methane is likely to have played some part there as well.

The possible destabilization of undersea methane has been a concern of many scientists. I am, however, skeptical that an apocalyptic event could be triggered by a single well.

The Helium article is basically a grossly irresponsible joke. It is filled with scientific howlers, such as the claim that the formation pressure at the Macondo reservoir is 100,000 “pounds psi”, whatever a “pound psi” is. If the author meant to say just psi, well, 100,000 is simply an impossible number for that depth, full stop.

Another claim in the article is that thousands of square miles of the seafloor in the Gufl of Mexico has risen as much as thirty feet, presumably in the short period since the April 20th blowout. No verifiable sources seem to be listed for this claim, but even if there were, I’m curious why there seems to be no evidence of the thousands of earthquakes that would surely result from such a rapid change of elevation. I guess the USGS is in on the coverup.

As others have noted, there seems to be evidence that large-scale releases of trapped methane have occurred in the past, but there is nothing verifiable in the article that supports the notion that such a release is imminent, nor that there is any credible reason why the Macondo blowout would precipitate such an event.

It is distressing that the some of the major media seem unable or unwilling to make a minimum effort to sort Internet bullshit from fact. Someone mentioned Time picking up on this one, and a few weeks ago Keith Olbermann treated with complete seriousness an equally specious article found on the Oil Drum site, that claimed the seabed around the blown-out well was in imminent danger of collapse, or some such thing.

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

It is my understanding that it was a post made by a reader of the site, not an article put up by the site itself.

Yep, you’re correct.