Permafrost melting.
http://www.climatece...r-warming-17374
Methane from cattle (pdf file)
http://www.animal-sc...8/2483.full.pdf
Fracking emissions-
http://switchboard.n...methane_em.html
Just a small sampling to who and what are adding methane to the atmosphere.
And methane is just one of many greenhouse gases that are being released daily.
Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide are well known.
The complete list of ghg's here-
http://en.wikipedia....reenhouse_gases
And more info here but they don't seem to be doing much to curb emissions in the
states. Too much money is being shoved into the pockets of the politicians and
policymakers that are suppose to be working to lower the numbers.
http://www.epa.gov/c...ns/sources.html
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1
Methane emissions #ClimateChange
Started by Shortpoet-GTD, May 02 2014 12:55 PM
#fracking cattle cars
26 replies to this topic
#2
Posted 03 May 2014 - 10:01 AM
It is hard to understand their rationale for not stopping emissions enough in time. Their greed and denial must be very gross.
We will know from reports this month and on to fall, whether it is already too late or not. I keep up hope;
It’s Time To Double Down on Renewable Energy and Move Beyond Coal
Ian Somerhalder | May 2, 2014 3:54 pm | Comments
"I would never argue that we should ignore the problems being caused by climate disruptionaround the world—we need to acknowledge and take responsibility for them. But I believe it’s equally important to tell some other parts of the story: That we are not powerless and that we have solutions we can start using now.
The opportunity to do that is one reason why I was thrilled to participate in the Showtime documentary series Years of Living Dangerously. Although the program doesn’t shy away from the dangers we face if we don’t take action on climate disruption, it also introduces us to some of the inspiring people who are doing what only people can do: Making a dent in the universe."
Will the efforts of millions of educated people be ruined by the thousands of billionaires?
We will know from reports this month and on to fall, whether it is already too late or not. I keep up hope;
It’s Time To Double Down on Renewable Energy and Move Beyond Coal
Ian Somerhalder | May 2, 2014 3:54 pm | Comments
"I would never argue that we should ignore the problems being caused by climate disruptionaround the world—we need to acknowledge and take responsibility for them. But I believe it’s equally important to tell some other parts of the story: That we are not powerless and that we have solutions we can start using now.
The opportunity to do that is one reason why I was thrilled to participate in the Showtime documentary series Years of Living Dangerously. Although the program doesn’t shy away from the dangers we face if we don’t take action on climate disruption, it also introduces us to some of the inspiring people who are doing what only people can do: Making a dent in the universe."
Will the efforts of millions of educated people be ruined by the thousands of billionaires?
#3
Posted 06 May 2014 - 07:44 AM
Here is a quick video on the major headache, the Arctic Methane Time Bomb;
https://www.youtube....h?v=ILahdcT7Usw
https://www.youtube....h?v=ILahdcT7Usw
#4
Posted 04 June 2014 - 02:30 PM
So, there has been the Arctic Methane Emergency Group for 2 1/2 years+.
https://www.youtube....h?v=EY25uvjjRAE
https://www.facebook...eEmergencyGroup
AMEG’s Declaration
"Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.
The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely."
http://ameg.me/
The question that must be addressed is exactly how much reduction in HGHGs by what time? As far as I can tell it is 90% of 2000 level of HGHG emissions to be done by 2020 to have a better than 50% chance of stopping thermageddon. Or blow Yellowstone for a 100% chance of stopping the process, and another Toba-like bottleneck in human history.
https://www.youtube....h?v=EY25uvjjRAE
https://www.facebook...eEmergencyGroup
AMEG’s Declaration
"Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.
The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely."
http://ameg.me/
The question that must be addressed is exactly how much reduction in HGHGs by what time? As far as I can tell it is 90% of 2000 level of HGHG emissions to be done by 2020 to have a better than 50% chance of stopping thermageddon. Or blow Yellowstone for a 100% chance of stopping the process, and another Toba-like bottleneck in human history.
#5
Posted 10 June 2014 - 10:43 AM
The Arctic Atmospheric 'Methane Global Warming Veil'. Its Origin in the Arctic Subsea and Mantle
and the Timing of the Global Terminal Extinction Events by 2040 to 2050
Arctic News
By Malcolm P.R. Light, Harold Hensel and Sam Carana
June 8th, 2014 (Excerpts)
"If only a few percent of the subsea methane hydrate reserves in the Arctic Ocean
(some 1000 billion tons of Carbon) is dissociated and the methane is released into the atmosphere,
it will cause total deglaciation and a major extinction event (Light and Solana 2002).
The energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates is relatively small; it requires only about one thousandth of the heat energy input from the Gulf Stream to dissociate the methane hydrates (Figure 30).
Furthermore, the energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates represents less than one millionth of the global warming heat energy being added to the oceans, ice, land and atmosphere by human fossil fuel burning (Figure 30).
Unfortunately for us, global warming has heated up the oceanic currents fed by the Gulf Stream flowing into the Arctic, causing massive destabilization of the subsea methane hydrates and fault seals and releasing increasing volumes of methane directly into the atmosphere.
The total human induced global warming is equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating every second (Nuccitelli et al. 2012). Humanity has signed its death warrant and our final extinction will
be carried out by Mother Earth within the next 30 to 40 years unless
we immediately take extremely drastic action to entirely curb our carbon dioxide pollution, eliminate large quantities of methane from the subsea Arctic Ocean,
seawater and atmosphere (down to ca 673 - 700 ppm) and revert completely to renewable energy.....
The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since
the 1940s due to the rising
atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air
above North America and the marine Atlantic air.
The increasingly heated Gulf Stream, with its associated high winds and energy-rich weather
systems, flows NE to Europe where it recently pummelled Great Britain and Europe with
catastrophic storms.
Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and heat up the Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high-pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the
Eurasian Basin-Laptev Sea transition.
This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20°C above average.
Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide (Light 2012 - 2014; Carana 2012 - 2014).
The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States.
A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific,
which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere,
where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band
that is spreading into the Polar regions.
The spreading atmospheric methane global warming veil is raising the temperature of the lower atmosphere many times faster than carbon dioxide does, causing the extreme summer temperatures
in Australia and the United States. The front of the expanding 1850 ppb Arctic Atmospheric Mantle Methane Global Warming Veil has passed the northern border of the Gulf Coast and is moving
south at about 1 km a day and it should totally envelope the Earth by 2048 (Light 2014).
Much of this methane is coming from the subsea extreme methane emission zone (Enrico Anomaly) at the transition from the Eurasian Basin to the Laptev Sea which is sourced at an estimated depth of some 112 km in the upper asthenosphere in the Earths mantle (Light 2014).
The United States and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 80% to 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population.
Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very stupidly based by the present administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand mining and the return of widespread oil drilling to the Gulf Coast.
This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with United States citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.
The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050s"
There are numerous charts and graphs as you scroll down, in the link on top.
Arctic Methane Emergency Group - AMEG - Urgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG
Arctic Sea Ice - Methane Release - Planetary Emergency
Urgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG
AMEG’s Declaration (Excerpt)
Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.
The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely."
"Current situation and gross omissions from IPCC
The IPCC WG1, WG2 and WG3 assessment reports (AR5) make no mention of the downward trend in sea ice volume, and rely on models which fail to properly capture the processes of warming and melting. Furthermore they fail to mention the strong evidence that Arctic warming is already a driver of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere, compounding the effects of global warming.
Arctic warming and sea ice retreat is already having a serious impact on climate change across the Northern Hemisphere, which is affecting food production, food prices and food security.
The latest WG2 report claims that the Arctic sea ice will be subject to ‘very high risks with an additional warming of 2 degrees C’. In fact, the September sea ice volume is already down 75% with a trend to zero by September 2016, suggests that the Arctic is heading for complete meltdown, which would be a planetary catastrophe.
The loss of Arctic ecosystems and the climate implications of ice disappearance are in fact
acute risks NOW as both ice and ice-dependent species are set to disappear within a matter of years.
These are catastrophic omissions. AR5 is supposed to provide the best analysis of the state of the planet and its future climate, on which governments can base policy for protection of citizens. These omissions are leading governments into a false sense of security about the future of our planet.
The only clear policy deduction from AR5 concerns the reduction of CO2 emissions by keeping within a carbon budget. Reductions alone have no chance of preventing catastrophes arising from Arctic meltdown. Intervention to cool the Arctic is an absolute requirement to prevent such catastrophes. There is no realistic alternative.
The concept of a carbon budget, espoused in AR5, hides the short-term consequences of various powerful feedback processes which get zero or scant attention in AR5.
In particular, snow and sea ice albedo feedback seems to be totally ignored in the budget. And the mounting concentration of methane in the atmosphere is ignored.
The real truth is that the carbon budget has already been spent. WG3’s limit of 450 ppm for CO2 equivalent has already been passed, even without taking into account albedo loss.
Governments must also address ocean acidification, whose threat has also been ignored in AR5. There is no alternative but to start a major campaign for CO2 removal (CDR).
The latest WG3 assessment report suggests CDR as a possibility for offsetting emissions,
but only in so far as for keeping within their carbon budgets of 450ppm CO2e and above, which would have catastrophic consequences for humanity, even without all the other overlooked positive feedbacks described above.
CDR must be adopted, being the only possibility in order to stop the existing
contribution to global warming of CO2 and ocean acidification.
Meanwhile there is the threat of Arctic methane emissions to burst above the gigaton level, totally ignored in AR5. And the AR5 projections of sea level rise are hopelessly optimistic if the sea ice disappears as rapidly as the trend indicates."
"This is an unprecedented opportunity for international collaboration for common purpose.
1. The Arctic is rapidly heading for meltdown. As snow and sea ice retreat, exposing land and sea with lower albedo (i.e. less reflectiveness), more solar energy is absorbed, thus leading to further melting and retreat in a vicious cycle.
This cycle has been self-sustaining for many years – we are well past the tipping point.
There is no sign of any natural process to break the cycle.
2. As the extent of snow and sea ice has been plummeting, even while global warming has stalled, Arctic albedo loss has rapidly overtaken CO2 as the main driver of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere, as witness the escalation of weather extremes.
The Arctic has warmed well above global average, resulting in a reduction of the temperature gradient between tropics and pole, this in turn reducing the strength of the polar jet stream, with increased meandering and a tendency to get stuck in blocking patterns.
This explains the recent escalation of weather extremes in the form of long periods of weather of one kind such as the months of high rain the UK has experienced this past winter 2013-14, and the protracted extreme cold in the US over the same period, crop failures and an upward trend in the world food price index.
3. While land and subsea permafrost thaws ever faster, methane could become the dominant climate forcing agent.
Emissions threaten to break through the gigaton-per-year level within twenty years.
AMEG has been continuing its research into the situation.
A recent paper, co-authored by Peter Wadhams, a founder member of AMEG, has used the Stern Review economic model to show that the economic cost of 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”.
4. Therefore, urgent and strenuous efforts are needed ASAP to cool the Arctic, halt snow and sea ice decline, and suppress methane.
5. Techniques exist for cooling on the necessary scale. Both the brightening of low-level clouds and the production of a reflective haze in the stratosphere are techniques based on natural phenomena which have been studied extensively.
Various methane suppression techniques have been proposed. However, all these techniques require technology development and testing before deployment.
6. Existing cooling effects must be maintained, especially the cooling effect of SO2. SO2 from burning fossil fuels has negated between 2/3 and 3/4 CO2 global warming over the past 20-30 years; its global cooling effect must be allowed to continue until an alternative means of cooling can be deployed.
This should be achieved while improving air quality in centres of population.
7. Ocean acidification threatens to devastate the marine food chain. Atmospheric CO2 must be reduced to a safe level within twenty years or less.
8. Therefore, CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere faster than it is put in.
The rate of removal should be increased until it is around double the rate of emissions and the CO2 level has fallen sufficiently to avoid dangerous ocean acidification.
Funds could be raised by having a levy on carbon taken out of the ground, specifically to fund the return of carbon to the ground.
9. CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere utilising the photosynthesis of plants and certain algae to produce biomass.
The carbon of this biomass must then be kept from returning to the atmosphere, e.g. by pyrolytic conversion to biochar. This process of capture and sequestration has to be massively scaled in order for the CO2 removal rate to exceed CO2 emission rate.
10. The profound economic, social, security and political impacts of the abrupt climate change, being witnessed as an escalation of climate extremes and crop failures, must be addressed.
The underlying price of food as indicated by the food price index is already above the crisis level, leading to the food riots we have observed in several countries where income is insufficient to buy daily needs.
These are unprecedented opportunities for international collaboration in the interests of every country, every section of the community, rich and poor alike.
The necessary actions of cooling the Arctic, suppressing methane and CO2 removal present enormous engineering and logistical challenges.
The objectives should be achievable without any revolution or radical change in the way we live. In fact the solutions to the challenges are not only affordable but can be
of great economic benefit in the long run.
There is no excuse for procrastination. We must see action now"
actually, we should have seen action 20 years ago!
*Mod edit for readability; no text was deleted or changed.
and the Timing of the Global Terminal Extinction Events by 2040 to 2050
Arctic News
By Malcolm P.R. Light, Harold Hensel and Sam Carana
June 8th, 2014 (Excerpts)
"If only a few percent of the subsea methane hydrate reserves in the Arctic Ocean
(some 1000 billion tons of Carbon) is dissociated and the methane is released into the atmosphere,
it will cause total deglaciation and a major extinction event (Light and Solana 2002).
The energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates is relatively small; it requires only about one thousandth of the heat energy input from the Gulf Stream to dissociate the methane hydrates (Figure 30).
Furthermore, the energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates represents less than one millionth of the global warming heat energy being added to the oceans, ice, land and atmosphere by human fossil fuel burning (Figure 30).
Unfortunately for us, global warming has heated up the oceanic currents fed by the Gulf Stream flowing into the Arctic, causing massive destabilization of the subsea methane hydrates and fault seals and releasing increasing volumes of methane directly into the atmosphere.
The total human induced global warming is equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating every second (Nuccitelli et al. 2012). Humanity has signed its death warrant and our final extinction will
be carried out by Mother Earth within the next 30 to 40 years unless
we immediately take extremely drastic action to entirely curb our carbon dioxide pollution, eliminate large quantities of methane from the subsea Arctic Ocean,
seawater and atmosphere (down to ca 673 - 700 ppm) and revert completely to renewable energy.....
The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since
the 1940s due to the rising
atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air
above North America and the marine Atlantic air.
The increasingly heated Gulf Stream, with its associated high winds and energy-rich weather
systems, flows NE to Europe where it recently pummelled Great Britain and Europe with
catastrophic storms.
Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and heat up the Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high-pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the
Eurasian Basin-Laptev Sea transition.
This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20°C above average.
Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide (Light 2012 - 2014; Carana 2012 - 2014).
The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States.
A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific,
which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere,
where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band
that is spreading into the Polar regions.
The spreading atmospheric methane global warming veil is raising the temperature of the lower atmosphere many times faster than carbon dioxide does, causing the extreme summer temperatures
in Australia and the United States. The front of the expanding 1850 ppb Arctic Atmospheric Mantle Methane Global Warming Veil has passed the northern border of the Gulf Coast and is moving
south at about 1 km a day and it should totally envelope the Earth by 2048 (Light 2014).
Much of this methane is coming from the subsea extreme methane emission zone (Enrico Anomaly) at the transition from the Eurasian Basin to the Laptev Sea which is sourced at an estimated depth of some 112 km in the upper asthenosphere in the Earths mantle (Light 2014).
The United States and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 80% to 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population.
Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very stupidly based by the present administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand mining and the return of widespread oil drilling to the Gulf Coast.
This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with United States citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.
The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050s"
There are numerous charts and graphs as you scroll down, in the link on top.
Arctic Methane Emergency Group - AMEG - Urgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG
Arctic Sea Ice - Methane Release - Planetary Emergency
Urgent Message to Governments from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG
AMEG’s Declaration (Excerpt)
Governments must get a grip on a situation which IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ignored. A strategy of mitigation and adaptation is doomed to fail. It will be impossible to adapt to the worst consequences of global warming, as IPCC suggests.
The Arctic must be cooled, ASAP, to prevent the sea ice disappearing with disastrous global consequences. Rapid warming in the Arctic, as sea ice retreats, has already disrupted the jet stream. The resulting escalation in weather extremes is causing a food crisis which must be addressed before the existing conflicts in Asia and Africa spread more widely."
"Current situation and gross omissions from IPCC
The IPCC WG1, WG2 and WG3 assessment reports (AR5) make no mention of the downward trend in sea ice volume, and rely on models which fail to properly capture the processes of warming and melting. Furthermore they fail to mention the strong evidence that Arctic warming is already a driver of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere, compounding the effects of global warming.
Arctic warming and sea ice retreat is already having a serious impact on climate change across the Northern Hemisphere, which is affecting food production, food prices and food security.
The latest WG2 report claims that the Arctic sea ice will be subject to ‘very high risks with an additional warming of 2 degrees C’. In fact, the September sea ice volume is already down 75% with a trend to zero by September 2016, suggests that the Arctic is heading for complete meltdown, which would be a planetary catastrophe.
The loss of Arctic ecosystems and the climate implications of ice disappearance are in fact
acute risks NOW as both ice and ice-dependent species are set to disappear within a matter of years.
These are catastrophic omissions. AR5 is supposed to provide the best analysis of the state of the planet and its future climate, on which governments can base policy for protection of citizens. These omissions are leading governments into a false sense of security about the future of our planet.
The only clear policy deduction from AR5 concerns the reduction of CO2 emissions by keeping within a carbon budget. Reductions alone have no chance of preventing catastrophes arising from Arctic meltdown. Intervention to cool the Arctic is an absolute requirement to prevent such catastrophes. There is no realistic alternative.
The concept of a carbon budget, espoused in AR5, hides the short-term consequences of various powerful feedback processes which get zero or scant attention in AR5.
In particular, snow and sea ice albedo feedback seems to be totally ignored in the budget. And the mounting concentration of methane in the atmosphere is ignored.
The real truth is that the carbon budget has already been spent. WG3’s limit of 450 ppm for CO2 equivalent has already been passed, even without taking into account albedo loss.
Governments must also address ocean acidification, whose threat has also been ignored in AR5. There is no alternative but to start a major campaign for CO2 removal (CDR).
The latest WG3 assessment report suggests CDR as a possibility for offsetting emissions,
but only in so far as for keeping within their carbon budgets of 450ppm CO2e and above, which would have catastrophic consequences for humanity, even without all the other overlooked positive feedbacks described above.
CDR must be adopted, being the only possibility in order to stop the existing
contribution to global warming of CO2 and ocean acidification.
Meanwhile there is the threat of Arctic methane emissions to burst above the gigaton level, totally ignored in AR5. And the AR5 projections of sea level rise are hopelessly optimistic if the sea ice disappears as rapidly as the trend indicates."
"This is an unprecedented opportunity for international collaboration for common purpose.
1. The Arctic is rapidly heading for meltdown. As snow and sea ice retreat, exposing land and sea with lower albedo (i.e. less reflectiveness), more solar energy is absorbed, thus leading to further melting and retreat in a vicious cycle.
This cycle has been self-sustaining for many years – we are well past the tipping point.
There is no sign of any natural process to break the cycle.
2. As the extent of snow and sea ice has been plummeting, even while global warming has stalled, Arctic albedo loss has rapidly overtaken CO2 as the main driver of climate change in the Northern Hemisphere, as witness the escalation of weather extremes.
The Arctic has warmed well above global average, resulting in a reduction of the temperature gradient between tropics and pole, this in turn reducing the strength of the polar jet stream, with increased meandering and a tendency to get stuck in blocking patterns.
This explains the recent escalation of weather extremes in the form of long periods of weather of one kind such as the months of high rain the UK has experienced this past winter 2013-14, and the protracted extreme cold in the US over the same period, crop failures and an upward trend in the world food price index.
3. While land and subsea permafrost thaws ever faster, methane could become the dominant climate forcing agent.
Emissions threaten to break through the gigaton-per-year level within twenty years.
AMEG has been continuing its research into the situation.
A recent paper, co-authored by Peter Wadhams, a founder member of AMEG, has used the Stern Review economic model to show that the economic cost of 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”.
4. Therefore, urgent and strenuous efforts are needed ASAP to cool the Arctic, halt snow and sea ice decline, and suppress methane.
5. Techniques exist for cooling on the necessary scale. Both the brightening of low-level clouds and the production of a reflective haze in the stratosphere are techniques based on natural phenomena which have been studied extensively.
Various methane suppression techniques have been proposed. However, all these techniques require technology development and testing before deployment.
6. Existing cooling effects must be maintained, especially the cooling effect of SO2. SO2 from burning fossil fuels has negated between 2/3 and 3/4 CO2 global warming over the past 20-30 years; its global cooling effect must be allowed to continue until an alternative means of cooling can be deployed.
This should be achieved while improving air quality in centres of population.
7. Ocean acidification threatens to devastate the marine food chain. Atmospheric CO2 must be reduced to a safe level within twenty years or less.
8. Therefore, CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere faster than it is put in.
The rate of removal should be increased until it is around double the rate of emissions and the CO2 level has fallen sufficiently to avoid dangerous ocean acidification.
Funds could be raised by having a levy on carbon taken out of the ground, specifically to fund the return of carbon to the ground.
9. CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere utilising the photosynthesis of plants and certain algae to produce biomass.
The carbon of this biomass must then be kept from returning to the atmosphere, e.g. by pyrolytic conversion to biochar. This process of capture and sequestration has to be massively scaled in order for the CO2 removal rate to exceed CO2 emission rate.
10. The profound economic, social, security and political impacts of the abrupt climate change, being witnessed as an escalation of climate extremes and crop failures, must be addressed.
The underlying price of food as indicated by the food price index is already above the crisis level, leading to the food riots we have observed in several countries where income is insufficient to buy daily needs.
These are unprecedented opportunities for international collaboration in the interests of every country, every section of the community, rich and poor alike.
The necessary actions of cooling the Arctic, suppressing methane and CO2 removal present enormous engineering and logistical challenges.
The objectives should be achievable without any revolution or radical change in the way we live. In fact the solutions to the challenges are not only affordable but can be
of great economic benefit in the long run.
There is no excuse for procrastination. We must see action now"
actually, we should have seen action 20 years ago!
*Mod edit for readability; no text was deleted or changed.
#6
Posted 07 July 2014 - 02:32 PM
It's possible that there will soon be a major addition to the understanding of Earth's natural methane cycle because of a recent discovery that there's a really abundant methanogenic bacteria in the world's surface oceans. The world's surface oceans are saturated with methane (can't add more without it bubbling out of solution), while at the same time there's abundant dissolved oxygen, kind of contradictory, given what was known about methanogens and methanotrophs and methane cycling generally. Apparent contradiction figured out, it seems. Headline of an article reads: "SAR11, oceans’ most abundant organism, has ability to create methane." See http://oregonstate.e...-create-methane (Never heard of SAR11 either? (I hadn't) See http://giovannonilab...es-double-helix ) also http://en.wikipedia....iki/SAR11_clade even see http://ncmir.ucsd.ed...2013_SAR11.shtm
#7
Posted 07 July 2014 - 09:46 PM
I read about both methane producing and methane metabolizing organisms. The methane fizzing out slowly at +1*F down to 1200 meters is dissolving, and releasing to the atmosphere. Overlapping the tundra methane releases.
The biggest factor is AGW, by starting a natural positive feedback known as methane turnover to thermal maximum. The methane releases are all fossil frozen hydrates. The amount of unstable frozen methane is more than at any point in Earth history.
The biggest factor is AGW, by starting a natural positive feedback known as methane turnover to thermal maximum. The methane releases are all fossil frozen hydrates. The amount of unstable frozen methane is more than at any point in Earth history.
#8
Posted 08 July 2014 - 04:25 AM
still learning, on 07 July 2014 - 02:32 PM, said:
It's possible that there will soon be a major addition to the understanding of Earth's natural methane cycle because of a recent discovery that there's a really abundant methanogenic bacteria in the world's surface oceans. The world's surface oceans are saturated with methane (can't add more without it bubbling out of solution), while at the same time there's abundant dissolved oxygen, kind of contradictory, given what was known about methanogens and methanotrophs and methane cycling generally. Apparent contradiction figured out, it seems. Headline of an article reads: "SAR11, oceans’ most abundant organism, has ability to create methane." See http://oregonstate.e...-create-methane (Never heard of SAR11 either? (I hadn't) See http://giovannonilab...es-double-helix ) also http://en.wikipedia....iki/SAR11_clade even see http://ncmir.ucsd.ed...2013_SAR11.shtm
Thanks for the links. Interesting info.
#9
Posted 08 July 2014 - 05:06 AM
Dustoffer, on 03 May 2014 - 10:01 AM, said:
It is hard to understand their rationale for not stopping emissions enough in time. Their greed and denial must be very gross.
If we, the punters, keep buying their products they will keep producing them.
To expect them, the producers to act in a unilateral and altruistic manner is unrealistic.
If we stopped buying, they would stop producing. No customers, no business.
The how to make that happen is the real question.
#10
Posted 08 July 2014 - 04:02 PM
An Indian gentleman says Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment
No demand, no consumption = no pollution, no more depletion.
How to make that happen is rapid depopulation, which would also accompany rapid decarbonization.
A Toba type event would be needed.
Then long term, through the bottleneck and on to sustainable harmony during the NEXT interglacial epoch.
No demand, no consumption = no pollution, no more depletion.
How to make that happen is rapid depopulation, which would also accompany rapid decarbonization.
A Toba type event would be needed.
Then long term, through the bottleneck and on to sustainable harmony during the NEXT interglacial epoch.
#11
Posted 09 July 2014 - 04:38 PM
Here is the latest June, 2014 interview with Dr.Natalia Shakhova, on the current state of the methane from the Arctic, with links to the other two parts and other related video presentations.
https://www.youtube....h?v=dQDVr1eMLK8
https://www.youtube....h?v=dQDVr1eMLK8
#12
Posted 12 July 2014 - 09:43 AM
For further education;
http://www.killerino...e and MHs2.html
from SKS;
“The world has committed to limit warming to below 2 degrees C, but it has not committed to the practical ways to achieve that goal,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the SDSN and of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “This report is all about the practicalities. Success will be tough – the needed transformation is enormous – but is feasible, and is needed to keep the world safe for us and for future generations. One key message is to invest in developing the low-carbon technologies that can make a difference.”
Despite the global pledge to keep warming below 2 degrees, the world is currently on a trajectory to an increase of 4 degrees or more."
http://www.skeptical...rim-Report.html
http://www.killerino...e and MHs2.html
from SKS;
“The world has committed to limit warming to below 2 degrees C, but it has not committed to the practical ways to achieve that goal,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the SDSN and of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “This report is all about the practicalities. Success will be tough – the needed transformation is enormous – but is feasible, and is needed to keep the world safe for us and for future generations. One key message is to invest in developing the low-carbon technologies that can make a difference.”
Despite the global pledge to keep warming below 2 degrees, the world is currently on a trajectory to an increase of 4 degrees or more."
http://www.skeptical...rim-Report.html
#13
Posted 13 July 2014 - 03:48 AM
Wait.........what?
"Data from the satellite helped Harvard University researchers determine that livestock emitted
more methane
than oil and gas did in 2004, according to a new study — the first to use high-resolution satellite data
to study methane emissions in the U.S.
Methane emissions from livestock production in the U.S. were
40 percent higher
than federal government estimates and
70 percent higher
than methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in 2004, according to the study."
http://www.climatece...llite-co2-17749
"Data from the satellite helped Harvard University researchers determine that livestock emitted
more methane
than oil and gas did in 2004, according to a new study — the first to use high-resolution satellite data
to study methane emissions in the U.S.
Methane emissions from livestock production in the U.S. were
40 percent higher
than federal government estimates and
70 percent higher
than methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in 2004, according to the study."
http://www.climatece...llite-co2-17749
#14
Posted 13 July 2014 - 09:08 AM
The vast majority of methane is being released from the tundras and oceans as a result of AGW. The demands of overpopulation far into overshoot has also led to too many cows and too many oil and gas wells, by a large factor. The excessive burning of both forests and fossil fuels led to the AGW that is releasing a geometrically increasing amount of methane.
It won't be long until it overcomes the human element, and is driven by its own strong greenhouse effect, stronger in the Arctic, at first.
It won't be long until it overcomes the human element, and is driven by its own strong greenhouse effect, stronger in the Arctic, at first.
#15
Posted 15 August 2014 - 11:49 AM
I was going to post this in another thread in response to still learning's interpretation of H2O as a CAGW (not just GW) major player.
It used to be thought that increased water vapor would decrease albedo and temperature, but several years ago it was found to be a net warmer, but far below CO2, or other HGHGs. The balance before was its help in trapping heat along with the 230ppm average CO2. With driving CAGW, CO2 has been the big one. Completing the methane positive feedback loop will be far greater until it all breaks down into CO2 and H2O and the planet's oceans have boiled away and rock heated to 1000' deep. Then it will return to the water vapor holding the heat, even though 400+*F.
Water vapor IS the main GHG during stable phases. Right now, it barely is more than a positive weak feedback loop, due to albedo change less than the net AGW. The loss of sea ice and glaciers is changing the albedo to more total heat gain, and the methane is already 'burping' very large holes in Siberia, going toward the worst possible positive feedback.
It used to be thought that increased water vapor would decrease albedo and temperature, but several years ago it was found to be a net warmer, but far below CO2, or other HGHGs. The balance before was its help in trapping heat along with the 230ppm average CO2. With driving CAGW, CO2 has been the big one. Completing the methane positive feedback loop will be far greater until it all breaks down into CO2 and H2O and the planet's oceans have boiled away and rock heated to 1000' deep. Then it will return to the water vapor holding the heat, even though 400+*F.
Water vapor IS the main GHG during stable phases. Right now, it barely is more than a positive weak feedback loop, due to albedo change less than the net AGW. The loss of sea ice and glaciers is changing the albedo to more total heat gain, and the methane is already 'burping' very large holes in Siberia, going toward the worst possible positive feedback.
#16
Posted 15 August 2014 - 12:24 PM
Dustoffer, on 15 August 2014 - 11:49 AM, said:
Completing the methane positive feedback loop will be far greater until it all breaks down into CO2 and H2O and the planet's oceans have boiled away and rock heated to 1000' deep.
#17
Posted 15 August 2014 - 07:35 PM
Shortpoet-GTD, on 15 August 2014 - 12:24 PM, said:
Yeah but what? Several hundred years from now. Waters boiling point is 212.
#18
Posted 16 August 2014 - 09:18 AM
The Arctic Methane Emergency is very real, but not really looked at by the majority of climate scientists, because it is something that last happened in a 40 times smaller way with PETM 55M years ago. Contemplating it is too mind boggling, I guess.
Sure, there is the good possibility that a 90% reduction in emissions within 8 1/2 years could eventually reverse it. Some think 80% reduction in 15 years and the IPCC the 80% reduction in 35 years, or 25 years in some articles.
The last report, the Arctic scientists did not want to say when except within 30 years, while others say we are already too late to stop it.
I think the 350.org figures are best. Certainly better than the IPCC.
The people below 50 or so, will see the geometric increase in all aspects of CAGW, the population crash after world depression. Those who survive would have to face ever hotter unadaptable temperatures by the end of this century. The completion of the present 'Sixth Great Extinction Event' over the course of a few centuries, followed by more and deeper methane releases.
What happens in the next few years is critical. 2013 methane releases were equivalent to 18GT of CO2 while humans put out twice that. When the methane releases make up more than human CO2, we will be in the positive feedback loop with no way out.
Sure, there is the good possibility that a 90% reduction in emissions within 8 1/2 years could eventually reverse it. Some think 80% reduction in 15 years and the IPCC the 80% reduction in 35 years, or 25 years in some articles.
The last report, the Arctic scientists did not want to say when except within 30 years, while others say we are already too late to stop it.
I think the 350.org figures are best. Certainly better than the IPCC.
The people below 50 or so, will see the geometric increase in all aspects of CAGW, the population crash after world depression. Those who survive would have to face ever hotter unadaptable temperatures by the end of this century. The completion of the present 'Sixth Great Extinction Event' over the course of a few centuries, followed by more and deeper methane releases.
What happens in the next few years is critical. 2013 methane releases were equivalent to 18GT of CO2 while humans put out twice that. When the methane releases make up more than human CO2, we will be in the positive feedback loop with no way out.
#19
Posted 25 August 2014 - 01:13 PM
Previously undiscovered methane leaks found off the East coast.
They have found 570 "seeps" along the coast between the Carolina's and Massachusetts.
Whether these new finds lead scientists to connect them with climate change is still up for debate.
Via BBC news-
http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-28898223
They have found 570 "seeps" along the coast between the Carolina's and Massachusetts.
Whether these new finds lead scientists to connect them with climate change is still up for debate.
Via BBC news-
http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-28898223
#20
Posted 25 August 2014 - 05:36 PM
Shortpoet-GTD, on 25 August 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:
.....Previously undiscovered methane leaks found off the East coast......
...http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-28898223
...http://www.bbc.com/n...onment-28898223
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