Permafrost Loss Greater Threat Than Deforestation

You see... I willing to bet the last 650,000 years didn't see an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico either.

You might lose that bet. A LOT of oil spills into the gulf every year naturally, and it wouldn't be surprising if there were a rupture after an earthquake that released a lot of oil at the same time.......at least once in the last 650,000 years.

First, the below is not to say that I accept the lack of evidence as a rebuttal of the "clathrate gun hypothesis"

Then let's evaluate the chances of me loosing the bet.

First at all - just to know what you should google for, the terminology one uses spills vs seepage. In this regards, a quote from here [theoildrum.com]:

The Deepwater Horizon site releases 3 to 12 times the oil per day compared to that released by natural seeps across the entire Gulf of Mexico. [...]
Natural seeps are not constantly active; the volume of oil released can vary considerably throughout the day and from day to day. As a result, only a small area around the source is actually exposed to "fresh" non-degraded oil, which is its most toxic state.[...] Their research suggests that oil from natural seeps normally stays in the water for between ten hours to five days.[...]
A sudden, concentrated and massive pulse of oil from an event such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster presents a fundamentally more acute stress to marine and coastal systems

Seismicity in the Gulf of Mexico [ufl.edu] - just as an estimate for chances of major spills from earth-quakes.

Hmmm... I might loose the bet, as there might have been major earthquakes... but somehow I'm more afraid

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/IsRqs6F3hUA/permafrost-loss-greater-threat-than-deforestation

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