Probably nobody will read this blog because it is far too long, far too horrifyingly detailed, and far too realistic for most tastes.
But I write it anyway, to fulfill a
promise I made.
Back in 2007 I read the book High Noon by J. F. Rischard (also available in German). Rischard’s information shattered my Box’s long-standing defenses against the outside world. In a state of shock, two friends and I tracked J. F. Rischard down in Paris and interviewed him for 2 days in 2008. What a kind and intelligent man he is. As a result of Rischard’s intense download I began studying up on several global situations, in particular methane clathrates and depleted uranium.
Back in 2007 I read the book High Noon by J. F. Rischard (also available in German). Rischard’s information shattered my Box’s long-standing defenses against the outside world. In a state of shock, two friends and I tracked J. F. Rischard down in Paris and interviewed him for 2 days in 2008. What a kind and intelligent man he is. As a result of Rischard’s intense download I began studying up on several global situations, in particular methane clathrates and depleted uranium.
 |
The year 2007 is interesting. According
to David Spratt’s September
2013 report, “Is Climate Already Dangerous?” we crossed the planetary Rubicon
in 2007 at about 0.76 degrees centigrade of global warming. Maybe I felt it… Maybe
you felt it too? At this point, not only had Arctic sea-ice passed its tipping
point, but the Greenland Ice Sheet was not far behind.
Adding to the mounting evidence behind 2007 as the point of no return, Malcolm Light concluded on 22 December 2013, “We have passed the methane hydrate tipping point and are now accelerating into extinction as the methane hydrate ‘Clathrate Gun’ has begun firing volleys of methane into the Arctic atmosphere.”
(Reference:
https://sites.google.com/site/runawayglobalwarming/the-non-disclosed-extreme-arctic-methane-threat)
According
to Light’s analysis, the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere will resemble that
of Venus before 2100. Two weeks later, in an essay stressing near-term human
extinction, Light concluded: “The Gulf Stream transport rate started the
methane hydrate (clathrate) gun firing in the Arctic in 2007 when its
energy/year exceeded 10 million times the amount of energy/year necessary to
dissociate subsea Arctic methane hydrates.”
(Reference:
Malcolm Light http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/01/global-warming-and-the-gulf-stream.html)
(Reference: Malcolm Light http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html)
The
clathrate gun began firing in 2007, the same year the extent of Arctic sea ice
reached a tipping point. But who knew it?
(Reference:
www.the-cryosphere.net/7/275/2013/tc-7-275-2013.html)
Because of my research, my new collaboration partners at www.planetaryculture.com asked me to submit a blog paragraph about what the United Nations needs to know about methane and global warming for a paper they will read at the United Nations’ Climate Summit set for 23 September 2014 in New York City.
(Reference: www.un.org/climatechange/climate-summit-2014)
I took Planetary Culture’ writing offer
seriously. Perhaps I was naïve. My commitment threw me hard down into a rabbit
hole in which I have not yet hit bottom. I quickly found intense new information
published since my 2008 research spree that pertained to the methane “clathrate
gun” (which I would now name the “clathrate cannon”).
Maddeningly, every shred of new evidence
only reveals that the situation we are in is far more menacing and frightening
than anyone anywhere ever suspected, even in their worst nightmares. We are
talking here, folks, about near-term human extinction due to global warming,
possibly as soon as 2050.
That’s probably why I recently posted
a cute little comic on my
facebook page with the caption: “My desire to be well-informed is currently
at odds with my desire to remain sane.” Anyone selling tickets to Mars?
Methane (CH4) is the most abundant organic molecule in the Earth’s atmosphere. (Brasseur et al., 1999). It’s presence was first noted in 1948 from features in the infrared absorption spectrum (Migeotte, 1948) and it is now routinely measured. CH4 is the third most important greenhouse gas after H2O (water) vapor and CO2 (carbon dioxide) and has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 25 times that of CO2 on a 100 year timescale (Forster et al., 2007) [but over 70 times the Global Warming Potential of CO2 on a 10 year timescale, which turns out to be extremely relevant, because recent evidence indicates that climate can shift far more suddenly than previously suspected, in decades. Not only that, but when CH4 degrades it does not vanish. It simply morphs into CO2 and then sticks around another 100 years continuing to warm the globe.]
Methane records, along with
paleo-temperature data, from both Antarctica (Petit, et al., 1999) and
Greenland (Chappellaz, et al., 1993) reveal the close correlation between
methane and millennial-scale warming and cooling. Indeed, CH4 more closely
parallels the rapid variations of polar temperature records than any other
measured gas (Chappellaz, et al., 1993). Humans have perturbed the atmospheric
methane budget to a remarkable extent. Ice core records have shown that the CH4
concentration had remained between 350 and 800 parts per billion (ppb) for the
past 650,000 years (Brook et al., 2000; Spahni et al., 2005); whereas in 2007
global mean CH4 concentration was 1775 ppb (Forster et al., 2007) [and now in 2014
it exceeds ~1820ppb (Morrison et al., 2014)]
The following is the paragraph (or
two) which I think the United Nations needs to know about methane. After that
comes the latest Earth-shattering data with references.
TOLERATING CARBON EMISSIONS IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
If coordinated international actions
are not immediately implemented to end fossil fuel burning, cut greenhouse gas
emissions, and sequester present atmospheric carbon and methane, new evidence
suggests that even if we could create
a post-carbon society, there won’t be humans alive to live in it.
The consensus findings among
authoritative scientific institutions (NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, Hadley-Met, Tyndale,
Potsdam, CSIRO, BOM, the world’s academies of science, IPCC and so on) indicate
beyond reasonable doubt that continuing open-ended emissions of greenhouse
gases incontestably leads to the demise of humans as well as most of life on
Earth in a frighteningly near term (by ~2050). Therefore, any governing body
that tolerates or promotes further greenhouse gas emissions through burning fossil
fuels or burning forests or fracking, etc., contravenes international laws, violates human and animal rights and national
sovereignty, and commits a monstrous crime against humanity and nature.
(Reference: private communication of
a work in progress by Andrew Glikson, The
Legal Dimension Of Overwhelming The Atmosphere With CO2 http://cci.anu.edu.au/researchers/view/andrew_glikson)
THE UNITED NATIONS MAY BE WORSE THAN USELESS
If the United Nations will do no more
than offer suggestions to member states and continues to refrain from enforcing
stringent restrictions, then humanity is wasting its time trying to reverse
climate change under the auspices of the United Nations. The UN should be immediately
dismantled and an action-oriented global survival agency should be activated,
more appropriately named United Peoples.
A war is required now if there is to
be a human presence on planet Earth in the next century: an urgent war against
the status quo and all its institutions and laws, a war that causes immediately
changed political and corporate behaviors, a war of action-oriented responsibility
for consequences, a war of instantaneously enforceable restrictions, a war of
internationally-coordinated engineering efforts to pull down atmospheric CO2
and methane (CH4) concentrations.
How ridiculous it would be to stand there
arguing with your neighbor about fairly consuming the last remaining minerals when
a piano is falling from above and will kill the both of you. The methane
“clathrate gun” has already been fired. Life on planet Earth is the victim.
The United Nations will either convert
scientifically founded imperatives into immediate and enforceable actions, or become
guilty by complicity of ending human civilization on Earth. Those individuals,
special interests and organizations spouting adolescent non-negotiable stances need
to be sent to their room without dinner by a United Peoples authority with more
“guns” than the teenagers have.
THE PHYSICS
A recent global warming denial
argument challenged that if greenhouse gases are trapping so much more heat,
why has the Earth’s average air temperature only risen 0.8 Centigrade? The answer
is: we have been putting the thermometers
in the wrong place! They should have been set in the depths of the oceans. 93.4%
of incoming solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans of the world, converting
water from its solid state as ice to its liquid state as water, called the latent heat of fusion (melting) or enthalpy of fusion. Only 2.3% of incoming heat is absorbed by
the air.
(Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_fusion)
(Chart Reference: Sam Carana http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2014/06/arctic-atmospheric-methane-global-warming-veil.html)
The sun’s energy is being absorbed on the Earth by the
ice in glaciers, methane-clathrates, and frozen tundra as it melts into water. It takes 80 calories of heat energy to change 1 cubic centimeter of ice at 0 degrees Centigrade into
a puddle of water at 0 degrees Centigrade. The remarkable thing is that the added heat is needed for the phase change, that is, to change the H2O from a solid to a liquid, from ice to water. But after absorbing the 80 calories of heat, the now melted water remains at 0 degrees Centigrade. It did not get warmer. However (and here is the shocker), if you add the same amount of heat energy, another 80 calories (just like the sun continues to add heat each day to the oceans) the little puddle of water that used to be ice now quickly jumps to 80 degrees C.
What does this mean? It means that
the vast majority of newly trapped solar energy has been absorbed by the oceans
to melt Arctic and Antarctic glaciers, permafrost, and methane clathrates. In
the moment they are melted enough the incoming heat shifts from melting the ice
into rapidly raising the water temperature. That is when you will see sudden
global air temperature increases. We are on the verge of this.
The Change in Earth’s Total Heat Content graph also underscores just
how much global warming the planet is experiencing. Since 1970, the Earth's
heat content has been rising at a rate of 6 x 10 to the 21st power Joules per
year. In more meaningful terms, the planet has been accumulating energy at a
rate of 190,260 gigawatts. Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an
output of 1 gigawatt, imagine 190,000 nuclear power plants pouring their energy
output directly into our oceans. Our climate is still accumulating heat. Global
warming is still happening.
THE INDICTMENT
Hallor Thorgeirsson, a senior
director with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said
on 17 September 2013: “We are failing as an international community. We are not
on track.” These are the people who know about, and presumably could do
something about, our ongoing race to disaster.
(Reference: Climate Change Summary and Update http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update)
We have already triggered 38 self-reinforcing feedback loops. 34 of those are irreversible. The most deadly is the arctic methane tipping point.
(Reference: Guy McPherson www.youtube.com/watch?v=odlReNpGQ7c )
“A 4 degrees C warmer world can, and
must be, avoided – we need to hold warming below 2 degrees C," said World
Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.
(Reference: www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/11/18/Climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-this-century)
The World Bank’s climate models do
not include any of the 38 self-reinforcing feedback loops.
(Reference: Guy McPherson www.youtube.com/watch?v=odlReNpGQ7c, and Climate Change Summary and Update http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update)
Globally in
2011 fossil fuel subsidies topped half a trillion dollars.
(Reference: Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies www.odi.org/subsidies-change-the-game)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits global warming is irreversible without geoengineering in a report released 27 September 2013.
(Reference: www.newscientist.com/article/dn24261-world-wont-cool-without-geoengineering-warns-report.html#.U7fo2LHABid)
As pointed out in the 5 December 2013
issue of Earth System Dynamics, known strategies for geoengineering are
unlikely to succeed: “climate geo-engineering cannot simply be used to undo
global warming”
Our path leads directly to the 4 degrees
C mark. The conservative International Energy Agency throws in the towel on
avoiding 4 degrees C in this video from June 2014.
(Reference: World Energy Investment
Outlook – especially at the 25-minute mark www.youtube.com/watch?v=awwVbAG0eig)
The 19th Conference of the Parties of
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 19) held in November 2013 in
Warsaw, Poland, was warned by professor of climatology Mark Maslin: “We are
already planning for a 4degrees C world because that is where we are heading. I
do not know of any scientists who do not believe that.”
There is a paper in the 16 December
2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluding that 4 degrees C terminates the ability
of Earth’s vegetation to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide.
(Chart Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#mediaviewer/File:Atmospheric_CO2_CH4_Degrees_Centigrade_Over_Time_by_Reg_Morrison.jpg)
In the above chart, Reg Morrison, a
climate scientist in Australia, compares three sets of data on one time scale
of 420,000 years:
1.
atmospheric carbon dioxide
(CO2) concentrations
2.
atmospheric methane (CH4)
concentrations
3.
global average temperature
variation from the present in degrees C.
[As you can see, CO2, CH4 and Earth’s
temperature follow a nearly identical path. The shock comes from noticing that the
current 400ppm (and quickly rising) concentration of CO2 indicates we have
already arranged for a minimum increase of global temperatures of 4 degrees C
above normal.]
CO2 has hovered around 280ppm for the past 12,000 years, and has not been over 400ppm for 15 million years, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher, temperatures were at least 3 degrees C warmer, and there was no arctic sea ice.
(Reference: http://phys.org/news174234562.html)
At no time in the last 20 million
years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present. In
addition to that, the current 1820ppb (and quickly rising) concentration of CH4
(methane) indicates we are rapidly on our way to an increase of over 16 degrees
C which is consistent with climate disruptions during the Permian Mass Extinction
event 250 million years ago.
By the end of the Permian Mass
Extinction 95% of all life on planet Earth was dead. It took 10 million years
for life to come back. This is referred to as “the Great Dying.” We are already
well into Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, and species are dying at an
unprecedented rate of 200 species per day.
A typical species will live for 10
million years. On Earth now, amphibians are going extinct at a rate of 45,000
times the ordinary background extinction rate.
The Gulf Stream has sped up three times since 1940, and then in 2010 the Gulf Stream melted through the Arctic ice wall and began carrying gigajoules of heat along the Gakkel ridge onto the East Siberian Shelf and the Laptev Sea.
(Reference: Gulf Stream Heating
Siberian Sea http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2014/06/arctic-atmospheric-methane-global-warming-veil.html)
There are over 2,200 gigatons of
methane frozen under Siberian tundra and the Laptev Sea. Easily 50 gigatons
could be released. There are only about 5 gigatons methane present in the
global atmosphere now. Methane is 70-80 times stronger than CO2 as a greenhouse
gas when compared over a 10 year span. The methane does not then become
harmless. It oxidizes into CO2.
(Reference: Natalia Shakhova via Sam
Carana http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2013/11/horrific-amounts-of-methane-over-laptev-sea.html)
Global
temperature can jump up 5 degrees C in as little as 13 years.
(Reference: Morgan Schaller &
James Wright http://news.rutgers.edu/research-news/new-finding-shows-climate-change-can-happen-geological-instant/20131003#.%20Ux4PccdYFGm)
387 ppm CO2 is already catastrophic.
The world has to be taken back to the 280 ppm of the pre-industrial era if
global calamities are to be avoided.
(Reference: James Hanson and
colleagues www.juancole.com/2009/10/modern-day-levels-of-carbon-dioxide.html)
A 50 megaton release of methane from
the Arctic Ocean seabed will cost $60 trillion. Research in the East Siberian
Arctic Shelf has suggested that such a vast release of methane was possible,
and continued exponential increase of methane could, within 20 years, reach a
level where methane dominated over CO2 in global warming. Some researchers warn
of a 50 gigaton burst being possible “at any time”.
(Reference: www.ameg.me/index.php)
(Chart Reference: http://climatestate.com/2013/06/21/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats/)
“In a very small area, less than
10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like
structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the
atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about
115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think
on a scale not seen before. Some of the plumes were a kilometre or more wide
and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a
hundred times higher than normal,” he said.
(Reference: http://climatestate.com/2013/06/21/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats/)
Vast amounts of methane are held in
sediments under the Arctic Ocean. The Laptev Sea is part of the Eastern
Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS). Shakhova et al. (2010) estimate the accumulated
methane potential for the ESAS alone as follows:
-
organic carbon in permafrost of
about 500 Gt
-
about 1000 Gt in hydrate
deposits
-
about 700 Gt in free gas
beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.
Shakhova et al. in 2008 considered
release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly
possible for abrupt release at any time. By comparison, the total amount of
methane currently in the atmosphere is about 5 Gt.
(Reference: http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2013/11/horrific-amounts-of-methane-over-laptev-sea.html)
(Chart Reference: http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2013/11/horrific-amounts-of-methane-over-laptev-sea.html)
An uncomfortably high proportion of
current estimated arctic methane releases come from a source which is very
poorly understood, and that could conceivably change considerably in the very
near future. Both the HIPPO program and researchers at the Wegener Institute
have estimated emissions from an unexpected source – the ocean surface itself –
which demands far more scrutiny in predicting near-term evolution of arctic
conditions. This is the opposite of discussing the drama of methane hydrate –
it is a very mild source of methane emission, and is very diffuse. However, it
is deeply dependent upon sea surface conditions, which are rapidly changing
with changes in summer sea ice cover, and thus has a potential for very large
changes in its emissions rate in the very near future. The estimates of current
emissions make this source currently about the same as the total combined
emissions from subsea permafrost, free gas and some hydrate which have,
cumulatively, been widely discussed in the media, stemming from the research of
Natalia Shakhova, Igor Semiletov and others, and usually attributed in the
media to methane hydrates. The hypothesized but somewhat mysterious
biochemistry of this surface production is based on the assumption that shifts
in the N:P (nitrogen to phosphorous) ratio (one of the so-called Redfield
ratios), make aerobic methanogenesis possible in arctic surface waters, and the
estimates are that this is probably releasing about 8Tg methane annually now. Could
these emissions suddenly increase? If losses of sea ice induce further
emissions from this source, then increases could be very considerable.
(Reference: http://1250now.org/near-future-arctic-methane/)
A 2014 paper has found strong
evidence for a bacterial source of the carbon-cycle disruption: the
methanogenic archaeal genus Methanosarcina. Three lines of chronology
converge at 250 mya, supporting a scenario in which a single-gene transfer created
a metabolic pathway for efficient methane production in these archaea,
nourished by volcanic nickel. According to the theory, the resultant
super-exponential bacterial bloom suddenly freed carbon from ocean-bottom
organic sediments into the water and air [contributing the Permian Mass
Extinction].
(Chart Reference: http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2013/11/horrific-amounts-of-methane-over-laptev-sea.html)
One thousandth of the thermal energy presently
transported in the Gulf Stream is enough to trigger Arctic methane release.
Only a few percent of the 1000 gigatons is enough to complete the methane
greenhouse veil already blanketing Earth. By comparison, the industrial
revolution has until now only emitted 250 gigatons of carbon equivalent.
(Reference: http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2014/06/arctic-atmospheric-methane-global-warming-veil.html)
(Red color indicates >1950ppb methane concentrations. Graph Reference: http://arctic-news.blogspot.de/2013/11/horrific-amounts-of-methane-over-laptev-sea.html)
[Taking CO2 concentrations back to
280ppm and methane (CH4) concentrations back to 1250ppb (www.1250now.org) involves illegalizing profit-driven
corporations, illegalizing stock and currency exchanges, and illegalizing land
and mineral-rights ownership, because these social structures have already
proven to be suicidal at a global level. Taking CO2 concentrations back to
280ppm involves collapsing civilization intentionally and immediately. Could we
do this? Yes. Will we do this?]
Only a few hundred people in the
world are actually discussing these ideas. More than 200,000 people would have
to understand these ideas each day for us just to keep up with population
growth.
(Reference: Guy McPherson www.youtube.com/watch?v=odlReNpGQ7c)
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Question: Did you read this whole blog?
If so, you might want to join the Near Term Human Extinction Evidence and
Support Group. (Not kidding… about it being perhaps a good idea to join… I
did.)
(Reference: www.facebook.com/pages/Near-Term-Human-Extinction-Evidence-and-Support-Group/170787913129107)
For love of the living Earth,
Clinton
(still in the rabbit hole, tunneling
sideways at a furious rate, seeking other dimensions, and perhaps some friends
on the same journey…)
