Last week, the journal Nature published a new paper warning of a $60 trillion price tag for a potential 50 Gigatonne methane pulse from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) over 10-50 years this century. The paper, however, prompted many to suggest that its core scenario – as Arctic permafrost thaws it could increasingly unleash dangerous quantities of methane from sub-ice methane hydrates in as quick as a decade – is implausible. The Washington Post’s Jason Samenow argued that “almost everything known and published about methane indicates this scenario is very unlikely.” Andrew Revkin of the New York Times (NYT) liberally quoted Samenow among others on “the lack of evidence that such an outburst is plausible.” Similarly, Carbon Brief concluded: “The scientists we spoke to suggested the authors have chosen a scenario that’s either implausible, or very much at the upper limit of what we can reasonably expect.”