Runaway Global Heating HAS BEGUN - updated version

Runaway Global Heating
HAS BEGUN!

by Anthony Marr

The most alarming phenomenon occurring in the world today is not skyrocketing fuel or food prices, not looming terrorism, not even precipitous deforestation, alarming as these may be. It is something more dangerous than all the nuclear weapons in the world combined. It is almost unnoticeable – silent, stealthy, patient, remote, almost picturesque and poetic to the untrained eye. It is lethal without seeming lethal until it has killed you. And it is emerging from the underworld as we speak. It is called methane.

Globally, we are talking about permafrost methane release (see www.HOPE-CARE.org, global warming section, Arctic subsection) as well as oceanic methane release. Once these releases have started, global warming will in short order take a quantum leap and become RUNAWAY GLOBAL HEATING. It will be inexorable, relentless, merciless, exponential, unsurvivable. When it is all said and done, almost all life on Earth will have been extinguished.

Oceanic methane release is currently mainly a matter of projection, but permafrost methane release is not. Permafrost melting has begun (see the numerous pictures of permafrost melting in www.HOPE-CARE.org, global warming section, Artic subsection), and therefore, so has Runaway Global Heating.

Let me explain why this is an inescapable conclusion. It is very simple really. You don't need to be an Einstein to understand it.

· The Earth has warmed up less than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Age began in 1880, and this has been enough to begin melting the permafrost.

· The permafrost contains frozen methane to the tune of about 1,000 billion tons, or 1 trillion tons, which will gradually be released into the atmosphere in gaseous form as the permafrost melts.

· As a greenhouse gas, methane is 75 times more potent than carbon dioxide within 10 years of release, and 25 times within a few decades.

· The Earth will certainly continue warming up (by 6 or more degrees Celsius by 2100) from the existing and projected carbon dioxide alone – currently about 700 billion tons in the atmosphere, 385 parts per million (ppm) in concentration, and increasing by 8.5 billion tons per year from human activities.

· As carbon dioxide and methane concentrations increase in the atmosphere, a positive feedback loop will result where the atmosphere will warm up more, which will melt more permafrost, releasing more methane, which will warm up the atmosphere even more, which will melt more permafrost, releasing even more methane... This is not a cycle, but a spiral, a spiral towards oblivion.

· This warming can certainly bring about a complete permafrost meltdown within decades, releasing all 1 trillion tons of methane-based carbon into the atmosphere, totaling over 1800 billion tons, or over 950 ppm in concentration. This will certainly drive the global temperature well over the 6oC/10oF threshold where 85% of species will be driven to extinction, to perhaps higher than 10oC/16oF. This will be more than enough to warm the oceans sufficiently to begin releasing their methane from thawing marine methane clathrate deposits.

· The Earth has undergone five major mass extinction bouts. Of the five, only the fifth – the End Cretaceous 64 million years ago – the one that eradicated all dinosaurs - was caused by anything other than climate change. The third, the End-Permian 251 million years ago, experienced a global warming of 10oC/16oF, resulting in the extinction of 75% of all land species and 95% of all marine species. Today, we are in the 6th, the Anthropocene Mass Extinction, which promises to be worse than even the End-Permian, because there is an extra factor in play today not there before - anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

· Here is the most frightening part: The amount of submarine methane clathrate far out-weighs permafrost methane clathrate – by a factor of 10. The submarine methane currently locked up in ocean trenches and continental shelves totals some 10,000 billion tons, or 10 trillion tons. If even a small percentage of this submarine methane is released, the entire biosphere will be toast. Although various deposits are stable to various extends, there are continental sill methane clathrate deposits that can be destabilized by an ocean warming of no more than 5oC/8oF.

The one big question. WHAT IS THERE TO STOP IT?!

Corn/soy/cane/palm-derived ethanol won't do it, since it still releases carbon dioxide (CO2), besides destroying tropical rainforest to accommodate ever expanding soy plantations.

Conservation won't do it. Even if we have cars running on 300 miles per gallon, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will still increase, and the temperature will still rise. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels altogether, the temperature will still keep on rising, albeit at a slower rate.

Clean energy – solar, wind, geothermal, wave and tidal – can help reduce CO2 emissions, and can even eventually reduce CO2 emissions to zero, but cannot decrease the atmospheric carbon concentration, and therefore cannot stop, much less reverse, runaway global heating.

The only technology that can deal with runaway global heating is Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), which by definition absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and actually reduces the carbon concentration.

We are not talking about those small, auxiliary CCS systems attached to coal-fired plants. We are talking about gigantic free-standing CCS systems actively gobbling up carbon by the ton out of the atmosphere every day – on a global scale.

Here is another scary part: Billionaire Richard Branson has offered $25 million as a reward for a real-world-viable CCS system, but so far, no one as yet claimed it. What does this tell us?

It tells me that much more than $25 million is needed to research and develop this technology, as well as billions of dollars’ worth of other needed environmental projects such as habitat protection, anti-poaching, anti-wildlife-trade and species preservation.

There is a problem. Money. These are by and large not commercial enterprises, since there is usually no product to be produced (except perhaps algae-based Soylent Green in the case of CCS), and no money to be made. This will have to be an altruistic nonprofit endeavor. World experts agree on about $130 billion per annum as a bare bone start-up budget to begin the planet-healing process.

Ahem, will the environmental non-profit organizations with multi-billion-dollar budgets form a queue down the block to the left please? C'mon, don't be afraid to be first.

Well, how about the governments? Sure, some have trillions of dollars. Please form a line to the right. No? Have to cut taxes to win votes and so that people will consume more to "stimulate the economy"? Looming economic recession? Expensive social programs? Heavy military expenditure?

Speaking of which, the total global military expenditure stands at about $1.3 trillion per year. And to what end but to increase the total destructive power of our destructive species?

Somewhat of a coincidence, it seems to me, that $130 billion equals 10% of $1.3 trillion, or is it preordained?

If each nation donates 10% of its military budget to a United Nations-administered Global Green Fund, there will be no relative loss of military strength, the world will be 10% safer, the planet will be 100% greener, and the future of our children will be infinitely brighter. Infinitely because the alternative could be no future for our children at all, zero.

Nations can contribute their military to perform environmental projects in lieu of funds. Soldiers would welcome such safe, benign, benevolent, meaningful and sophisticated projects; no counseling can be better than this for morale.

From this Global Green Fund will come the money for saving the Amazon rainforest, for creating gene banks for endangered species (basically all advanced species), and, case in point, for building worldwide CCS systems.

Please go to the following link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/to-un-secretary-general-for-creating-the-120-byr-global-green-fund-for-combatting-global-warming-and

and sign the Global Green Fund Petition, add your comment (each worth hundreds of mere signatures), then pass it on far and wide.

We need the whole world to work together on this one. Thank you.


Anthony Marr, founder and president
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Global Emergency Operation (GEO)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.myspace.com/AnthonyMarr
www.ARConference.org

so we may be able to avert disaster for another year, at least. As much as I hate the cold and gray, it is more like the "old days."

I'm by no means denying global warming -- I'm just saying this year is cold, and the last two have been chillier than they were for a while, so maybe Mother Nature is up to something to restore the balance, which would be fine with me.

Enjoy it while it lasts because there's gonna be a lot of lost ground made up after that. :(

We'll probably all suffocate up here once that methane kicks in.

Like sweat on the forehead, evaporating and giving a temporary cooling.

The difference is, so long as we live and are dehydrated, our sweat is inexhaustible.

The Arctic Ice, the "sweat" on the forehead of the earth, to take a bad analogy and make it worse, is finite.

But still, it is a tremendous issue that need desperate attention. Observations are more in line with Hansen's predictions than the International Global Warming meeting consensus, and so we must adjust ourselves faster and stop playing with this as a political football.

Mother Nature does have a few tricks and the costs for them are high (massive algal blooms would help with the CO2...but will kill fish), but I am afraid that humans are going to optimistically think themselves into a global bottlenecking event if we do not get deathly serious about it, now.

Plant a tree, everyone. Better yet, plant a couple of thousand.

it'll take a few million years of course.

Unfortunately this 6th great extinction event will not be over until human civilization is gone.

Conservation and alternative energy and sequestration fantasies are all well and good and necessary, but we need to start thinking about how we can live on a hot planet all shot to hell.

We need 100- and 200-year plans to handle the radical changes we are going to need to deal with hundreds of millions of environmental refugees and chronic food shortages. We need to generate ideas and plans about how we can phase in a tolerable response to an unimaginably intolerable situation.

Governments need to take the lead in resettling populations away from the coast (New New Orleans?) We need to subsidize new agricultural methods and food consumption patterns to transition to the new normal. The longer we wait the more desperate and panicked and violent the response will be.

Petroleum is the greatest, most efficient energy source. We need to stop squandering it NOW because we may need its energy some day in the future when someone discovers an energy-intensive use that can save humanity, instead of foolishly wasting it in millions of gas-guzzling autos and billions of pieces of disposable shrink wrap.

The clarion call has been heard. The steps we must take have to be much bolder than any that are being bandied about right now. We need to design a new Earth, a new civilization.

indigestion, ripped a huge fart, thus solving it's problems.