( CNN ) -- Every day , you have a close personal encounter with methane , a key ingredient of something we do n't usually mention in polite company : farts . Perhaps that 's why methane is also called `` natural gas . '' Unfortunately , neither propriety nor intestinal discipline can suppress its unpleasantness lately , because now not just us , but the Earth itself is farting . Recently , three new craters , one of which measured approximately 100 feet wide and over 200 feet deep , were discovered in the Siberian permafrost . The explanation for them is even more alarming than asteroid strikes : Apparently , after two consecutive summers averaging 5 degrees Celsius hotter than normal , frozen methane is not merely thawing , it 's exploding . Scientists fear that , like chronic bad digestion , this phenomenon could be ongoing . Methane in the air surrounding these craters already measures 53,000 times the normal concentration . Then , just a week into a research trip , a team from Stockholm University found `` vast methane plumes '' shooting from the sea floor off the Siberian coast . Columns of gas bubbles , they reported , were surfacing around their icebreaker in waters saturated with 10 to 50 times more methane than usual . This was the marine equivalent of melting permafrost , the undoing of frozen crystals called methane hydrates , locked solid for millennia by the pressure and temperature of deep oceans . The U.S. Office of Naval Research calculates that methane hydrates hold trillions of tons of hydrocarbons , from two to 10 times the amount as all conventional deposits of fossil fuels , but they 're probably too costly or unsafe to harvest . Now , as ocean temperatures rise , they 've begun collapsing , spewing as much gas skyward as the thawing tundra . Airborne methane produces 86 times the heat-trapping greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide . Although CO2 remains in the atmosphere far longer , after 100 years methane is still 30 times more potent . With sea level increases from 3 to 6 feet already predicted by the century 's end , such stunning global flatulence is n't merely embarrassing , but devastating for civilization . So what do we do ? First , we recognize that the reason this is happening involves a misleading term : positive feedback loop . It 's misleading because for us there 's nothing positive about it . It means that as temperatures rise , warming land and seas fart ( belch , if you prefer ) more methane -- which then warms things further , so dangerous eruptions accelerate . Feeding back on itself , warming begets more warming . Second , we admit that this loop began with us . By now , the link between fuel that jet-propels our industrialized civilization and excess CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is challenged only by those who profit obscenely from it . Third , we stop compounding the problem by ceasing to pretend that energy derived by shattering our bedrock to squeeze even more natural gas from it is somehow `` clean . '' Not only does burning methane crank planetary heat higher , but fracking wells also inevitably leak . At least 2 % of their methane output , the EPA conservatively estimates , seeps into the atmosphere , thickening the gas layer that 's already turning Earth into a hothouse . Nor will the other 98 % go to heat our homes . Enormous pipelines are now proposed to transport fracked methane through New England 's conservation lands and orchards , through northern Minnesota 's prime tourism and wild rice lake districts , and across the Ogallala Aquifer-fed farms of our nation 's heartland . Each will terminate at a port , where its gas will be exported , not used domestically . What will remain is scarred land and the methane that escapes or explodes ( most recently on June 26 , in East Bernard , Texas , into 150-foot flames ) . Such pipelines will be subsidized by rate-payers , not by vastly wealthy corporations that own them -- unless we refuse to let them be built , and instead commit our energy funding henceforth to truly cleaner options , like wind and solar . The last time there was this much atmospheric CO2 was 3 million years ago , when seas were 80 to 100 feet higher . Since the Industrial Revolution , atmospheric methane has more than doubled , and the amount now gushing from the seas alone is 34 times what we thought just seven years ago . Until we stop putting more carbon dioxide and methane overhead , prepare for more rude farts to foul your air , and our future . With coastal cities , fertile deltas and much of the world 's rice crops threatened by floods or salination from encroaching seas -- and with grain harvests predicted to fall 10 % for each added 1 degree C of average temperature -- passing greenhouse gases is n't merely vulgar -- it 's deadly .
Recently , two mysterious craters were discovered in the Siberian permafrost . airborne methane : Hot summers caused New England 's to spew methane , resulting in explosions . He says Alan Weisman is more potent in producing greenhouse effect . Weisman : Such stunning global flatulence is deadly if we do n't embrace green energy .