Tags
Biomethanation, Extinction of Man, Fairfax Climate Watch, Floods of Far East Russia, Increased Hydrological Cycle, Methane Time Bomb, Methanogenesis
Although it’s my downtime right now before I go on another blogging binge, I could not resist posting about a particular article on methane(CH4) since it represents a large hole in current climate change scenarios — the ones which are essentially ignored by governments and their cadre of neoclassical economists. Thanks to ‘ulvfugl’ for alerting me to the Fairfax Climate Watch where this particular methane article was published.
Methane is being released into the atmosphere by various means such as through permafrost thawing and methane hydrate melting/venting, but this article zeroes in on a process called microbial methanogenesis or biomethanation which is the formation of methane by microbes known as methanogens.
The author deduces from ice-core paleorecords that rising CH4 levels are highly correlated with rising CO2 and temperature levels, and that CH4 rises exponentially in relation to the other two aforementioned factors. Favorable conditions are now in place for CH4 levels to continue climbing upward:
1.) Rising Temperatures
2.) Rising CO2 levels
3.) Increased Biomass Accumulation from elevated CO2 (CO2 fertilisation creates more organic matter which eventually decays to produce more methane.)
4.) Accelerated Hydrological Cycle (heavy rainfall and torrential flooding erode soil which sets the stage for methanogenesis). An interesting example is rice paddies: “Methane is just a natural byproduct of flooded rice fields—underwater microbes produce the global warming gas as they break down organic matter in the water—and a recent study published in Nature Climate Change found that as carbon dioxide levels and temperatures rise, rice fields emit more methane.” Unless you’ve been asleep for the past few months, you are aware of all the flooding going on around the world such as in the Far East of Russia.
Thus the insidious methane time bomb appears to be quietly going off without the human species taking notice of their own demise. Industrial civilization is adrift in hallucinatory technology masking the deterioration of that other world outside all our windows. A large and sudden methane pulse is not required for our extinction, but rather the slow and steady increase of methanogenesis.
The article:
Methane blind spot – could be much bigger than we think
“The potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) is given short shrift in climate science, and that’s not even considering the methane hydrate or permafrost thaw issues. In fact, sustained methane levels from microbe-generated methane (microbial methanogenesis) could dwarf an Arctic methane hydrate pulse from the East Siberian Shelf.
Current climate models ignore this issue. They use a set of prescribed greenhouse gas levels to run their simulations, and they generally follow the same standardized prescriptions, the RCP scenarios. These RCP scenarios assume that today’s atmospheric methane level rises and falls only as a result of direct human activity. This activity is mostly things like methane-producing farming practices and methane releases from burning fossil-fuels.
But looking at the paleoclimate data for the past 800,000 years (when Earth fluctuated between a climate like today’s and a colder one that featured large continental ice sheets) shows that methane is closely tied to carbon dioxide levels and temperature…” Read the rest
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
HISTORIC KILLER METHANE COULD ERUPT FROM ARCTIC:
The Severity of the Threat and the Tragic Moral Failure to Address It
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/historic-killer-methane-could-erupt-from-arctic.html
Watching the madness…
SkyTruth is teaming up with Space for All for a skytruthing mission over the massive Bakken shale oil and gas fields in western North Dakota. We’re planning to launch a sensor package from the ground to the edge of space tethered to a high altitude balloon rig, courtesy of Space for All. We will combine on the ground observations with detections from the balloon rig and measurements we are making from space to measure the amount of natural gas flaring there. This will help us test the accuracy of our satellite-based flaring detections so we can do a better job of monitoring and reporting on the amount of environmentally damaging (and unnecessary and wasteful) flaring that happens in the Bakken and elsewhere in the world.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skytruth-the-bakken
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H. Roberts, completely out of his depth…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/08/unforced-variations-august-2013/comment-page-9/#comment-404865
I posted this weeks ago
Click to access Chapter_027.pdf
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Is there any hope?
Here is one view:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/hope-and-fellowship/?utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&sub_email=pfgetty@gmail.com
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Hope is cheap and easy. Action requires self-sacrifice and global cooperation. Humans have always chosen hope and empty rhetoric over meaningful action when it comes to AGW. Crisis management by the barrel of a gun is how the elite of society will handle the unfolding eco-apocalypse right down to the last harvest of wheat and reservoir of water.
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And hence the beefing up of security forces and military forces all over the world, ostensibly to fight terrorism. False flag attacks, like 9/11, enable this and will continue to occur.
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HI there,
I don’t purport to understand the science behind your blog but I have only relatively recently (I’m afraid to say) woken up to the aerosol spraying (of heavy metals) happening, not just in the US, but globally. (I live in the UK). This is seen as the chemtrails that ‘adorn’ our skies and with years of manipulative brainwashing, including subliminal techniques, folk now perceive these skies as ‘normal’.
My point, however, is that the huge upsurge in methane can be traced back to this so-called geo-engineering. Want to know why the polar ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate, why our bees are dying, why Alzheimer’s has sky-rocketed, why we now have solar dimming, why crops are failing, why we have extremes of weather, why…., why…??? Every goddam why can be traced back to geo-engineering. It’s been going on for years… and has reached such a peak that ‘they’ now own and control our weather. Heard of H.A.A.R.P.?
I am not some crazy person, just a middle-aged woman who cares deeply for the planet we live in and if I can raise awareness of this issue and rally the troops, so to speak, then that’s what I’ll do. I urge anyone reading this, to research this for themselves… and look up at the sky sometime. Be amazed but don’t be afraid. THIS IS HUGE and we all need to work together to infiltrate the system and put a stop to it.
I’ll post this video link but there’s lots of info online…
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Conspiracy theory mixed with facts???
From Wiki…
“…HAARP has been blamed by conspiracy theorists for a range of events, including numerous natural disasters, outbreaks, global warming, global cooling, volcanoes, even assassinations of individuals. Commentators and scientists say that proponents of these theories are “uninformed” as most theories put forward fall well outside of the abilities or the facility and often outside the scope of natural science and defy physics.[3][4]…”
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Well Wiki is always at the top of the search engine so can be written in such a way to put people off the scent. ‘They’ don’t want folk putting two and two together and many more people ARE joining the dots of an incredible picture. It’s like waking from a nightmare but finding you’re still in it.
There is an element of disbelief in all this but many things are undisputed like the things I listed and tie in with geo-engineering. A strange coincidence that our soon-to-be depleted soils, toxic with Aluminium (Aluminum as you know it), will be able to planted with the Aluminium resistant Monsanto seeds, patented I don’t know how long ago. I sense a master plan behind all this.
I would also advise anyone to scroll down through several pages if necessary to put the facts in better perspective. Search YouTube as well. Listen to lectures.
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No need to get tied up into strange conspiracy theories. The facts are pretty simple:
Man discovered fossil fuels – a great energy-dense source of power with which to build an industrialized civilization. Fossil fuels had a very bad downside to them – CO2 emissions which would throw out of balance the Earth’s delicate biosphere, primarily creating the greenhouse effect altering the Earth’s temperature and climate systems as well as acidifying the oceans. Man denies the problem for decades until it’s essentially too late. Man comes up with the only solution he is willing to consider – geoengineering. Geoengineering did not cause the problem, but it may make the situation much worse. I don’t know if the government is carrying out large scale geoengineering fixes, but if they were, it would be nearly impossible to keep secret. Ask Snowden and all the whistleblowers about secrecy. These are the facts and there is no reason to twist them into strange conspiracy theories which would discredit this site. The facts are frightening enough.
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I don’t deny the facts about CO2 emissions but this geo-engineering is accelerating everything at such an alarming rate. I will mention that patents for the aerosol equipment go back to the 70’s so this was planned decades ago. On that note then, I think nufff said. Thank you for replying.
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Please don’t get caught by these silly conspiracy theories. It would be absolutely impossible to control such a great experiment without pilots and everyone in the aviation system knowing about it. Think about it. This is just as likely as all of the worlds scientists, geologists and biologists collaborating about climate science to deceive the public (and state) – as parts of the denier blogosphere want us to believe.
As xraymike say here, there is no need in being caught up in these conspiracies. The problem of the CO2 emissions alone is enough to wreck the planet if we choose to. Its plain simple physics and the fact that so many are in denial about this should really be your main focus of “fear”. The point is that very few in the common public has accepted that humanity indeed has the ability to change the biosphere in an alarming rate. For example ocean acidification is rising at a rate of 10 times that of the past mass extinction event. As the Marcott et al paper indicates, humanity has alone been able to warm the planet by adding CO2 forcing, and will by the end of this century in a 200 years ratrace of burning fossil fuels have “undone” 5000 years of cooling by natural cycles (Milankovich cycles) – thats close to 50 times the rate of change in the opposite direction of what it should.
Its ironic that the planet has had just enough time to form enough fossil fuels for one species to pump and dig it out in a short time span and then burn it with such vigor that we trigger our own extinction. I would almost compare humanity with a force of nature similar to meteor impacts or the siberian traps incident… unless we choose to act that is. In the face of this, there really is no room for conspiracy… the facts are really staring us straight in the eyes.
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Correction, that should be: We have already undone the past 5000 years of cooling in 100 years time. But another 80 years of burning fossil fuels and we have risen the temperatures by more than what the planet goes through in warming by moving out of an ice age. Remember its only -6C difference between our climate and an ice age – one can really wonder what +6C would feel like. If you read this blog, more than a few predict mass methane emissions and a real game changer for life on the planet. Some predictions are as extreme as 2030-2040 timeframe – although personally I have doubts about that, perhaps because I have a sliver of hope still.
No doubt the Arctic is on a death spiral, and the summer ice will be gone in the next 10 years. And this will add a lot of extra heat to the oceans where the sun was previously reflected (and remember the Arctic has constant sun during the summer). And no doubt this will start a disintegration of the methane clathrates – as well as further speed up the thawing of the permafrost. The rate of release is really what defines how quickly the extinction event will pan out. A slow trickle, and we might have time to change some things. Huge “burps” and we are basically toast.
If anything, this is what you should fear.
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Thumbs up! 😀
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There are an amazing number of people who believe in chemtrails. Not all of them, but many, believe in a conspiracy because they can plainly see that trees and other vegetation are dying off, and they don’t understand why. Climate change (although it is going to cause mass extinctions) does not explain the symptoms that are currently visible on foliage and needles of discoloration, chlorosis, spotting and necrotic lesions that precede decline and death.
It would be wonderful if these people were receptive to the fact that no conspiracy is necessary to explain what is happening to forests and agricultural crops too, since we are openly spewing toxins into the atmosphere every time we use electricity or travel or purchase something that was manufactured and transported. But pollution is a dirty word and for most people it is too uncomfortable to acknowledge that their own modern lifestyle is destroying the ecosystem, it’s much safer to blame an evil cabal.
See links to research at: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/29/whispers-from-the-ghosting-trees/
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I’m reminded of the recent coup in the Maldives to remove democratically elected Mohamed Nasheed whose views on climate change were considered too radical, but were more closer to reality than anyone else’s.
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None of this stuff is new.
In 2007 the NZ government put on a Ministry of the Environment climate road show. Its main purpose was to persuade the general populace that:
a) CO2 was not too much of a problem because ‘carbon trading’ was being implemented
b) NZ needed to fund research into the genetic engineering if ruminant animals, with a view to reducing intestinal emissions of methane.
When I pointed out that CO2 would not be brought under control by carbon trading and that other sources of methane were much more significant I was ignored.
More importantly, I asked the presenter, one of the ‘big chiefs’ from the Ministry of the Environment (can’t remember the tittle, but the name, Brash, was particularly appropriate) what the CO2 level of the atmosphere was and how much it was rising: he did not know. Nor did he know the level of CH4 or how much that was rising..
It turned out the whole road show was sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Development, which rules the roost in government and always gets its own way. The Ministry of the Environment exists to rubber stamp ineptitude, lies and dysfunction.
Since 2007 the CH4 level has increased somewhat and the CO2 level has risen disturbingly, largely as a consequence of ‘economic development’.
Needless to say, 99.99% of the populace are oblivious because the corporate press continually promotes business-as-usual, refuses to address any of the real issues, and fails to report anything that challenges the narrative of the omnipotence of industrial empire.
I used to talk to people about all this stuff, but gave up when I discovered ‘no one’ was taking any notice.
Everything that matters gets worse by the second, and ‘nobody’ knows or cares (for the moment).
Those of us who have been awake for a while have been waiting for economic collapse to bring the madness to an end. Unfortunately, money printing, ZIRP, and propaganda seem to be all that are needed to keep the monster alive in the short term.
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Nothing changes but the names.
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As Mike Ruppert noted several years ago, nothing can change until the money system (Fractional Reserve Banking and interest on loans) is changed. And those who control the world and profit from present arrangements will not allow change.
Therefore, the system of looting and polluting will continue until:
fiat money systems collapse
or world war erupts
or environmental collapse occurs
or energy depletion starves the system.
The big questions are: which first? how long have we got?
There is one thing we do know: the future will be sacrificed in order to maintain present, dysfunctional arrangements.
And, unfortunately, we seem destined to endure a period of overt fascism or despotism along the route to collapse.
I have been waiting for well over a decade for public debate on the crucial issues of our times to commence. We are approaching yet another round of elections in which real the issues hardly ever get mentioned and there is no public debate..
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