What are they to do? The major multi-national privately-owned oil companies have been funding "researchers" aimed at sowing confusion about the reality of global climate change due to the CO2 emissions from our fossil-fuel based economy. And fighting hard to prevent any significant governmental initiatives, in this or other countries, to limit emissions.
In spite of amplifying trends in things such as major floods, droughts, and wildfires. I thought this picture was particularly worth sharing, as it's imagery is very powerful.
This is from the 150,000 acre Station Fire just north of Los Angeles, last sunday, 30 AUG 09. Temperatures in the inland areas of Southern California have been over 100F for the past two weeks, leading to this spectacular fire behaviour, a fire plume crowned by a "pyrocumulus" These only develop when fires are burning every bit of fuel on the ground (crown-fires) in an intense conflagration, which is unstoppable by any form of suppression attempt. And, there has been very little wind. God help them around that fire if a Santa Ana wind event were to develop on it! Get used to scenes like this, there will be alot more of them in the coming years, and in places not necessarily used to it.
This is from the 150,000 acre Station Fire just north of Los Angeles, last sunday, 30 AUG 09. Temperatures in the inland areas of Southern California have been over 100F for the past two weeks, leading to this spectacular fire behaviour, a fire plume crowned by a "pyrocumulus" These only develop when fires are burning every bit of fuel on the ground (crown-fires) in an intense conflagration, which is unstoppable by any form of suppression attempt. And, there has been very little wind. God help them around that fire if a Santa Ana wind event were to develop on it! Get used to scenes like this, there will be alot more of them in the coming years, and in places not necessarily used to it. Unfortunately for our beloved oil companies, who experienced record profits over the past four years, (Exxon posted the greatest quarterly profits of any corporation in history last year!), reality has a way of intruding upon even the best set and funded of plans. This reality though is not just bad for the oil companies, but something that will affect us all, in very detrimental ways, unless rapid, concerted, global action is taken to limit CO2 and Methane emissions, as well as to stop tropical deforestation for unsustainable livestock ranches and biofuels plantations.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/31-9
Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by Associated Press
Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by Associated Press
Climate Trouble May Be Bubbling Up in Far North
MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories — Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world.
"On a calm day, you can see 20 or more `seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up besid
e one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze."It's essentially pure methane."
Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.
Is such an unlocking under way?
Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.
Is such an unlocking under way?
Researchers say air temperatures here in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) since 1970 — much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into frozen soil, at a rate of 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) a year, and a further 7 C (13 F) temperature rise is possible this century, says the authoritative, U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 2007, air monitors detected a rise in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, apparently from far northern sources. Russian researchers in Siberia expressed alarm, warning of a potential surge in the powerful greenhouse gas, additional warming of several degrees, and unpredictable consequences for Earth's climate.
Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries. But the Russian scenario is disturbing enough to have led six U.S. national laboratories last year to launch a joint investigation of rapid methane release. And IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri in July asked his scientific network to focus on "abrupt, irreversible climate change" from thawing permafrost.
The data will come from teams like one led by Scott Dallimore, who with Bowen and others pitched tents here on the remote, boggy fringe of North America, 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) from the North Pole, to learn more about seeps in the 25,000 lakes of this vast river delta.
A "puzzle," Dallimore calls it.
The data will come from teams like one led by Scott Dallimore, who with Bowen and others pitched tents here on the remote, boggy fringe of North America, 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) from the North Pole, to learn more about seeps in the 25,000 lakes of this vast river delta.
A "puzzle," Dallimore calls it.
"Many factors are poorly studied, so we're really doing frontier science here," the Geological Survey of Canada scientist said. "There is a very large storehouse of greenhouse gases within the permafrost, and if that storehouse of greenhouse gases is fluxing to the surface, that's important to know. And it's important to know if that flux will change with time."
Permafrost, tundra soil frozen year-round and covering almost one-fifth of Earth's land surface, runs anywhere from 50 to 600 meters (160 to 2,000 feet) deep in this region. Entombed in that freezer is carbon — plant and animal matter accumulated through millennia.
As the soil thaws, these ancient deposits finally decompose, attacked by microbes, producing carbon dioxide and — if in water — methane. Both are greenhouse gases, but methane is many times more powerful in warming the atmosphere.
Researchers led by the University of Florida's Ted Schuur last year calculated that the top 3 meters (10 feet) of permafrost alone contain more carbon than is currently in the atmosphere.
"It's safe to say the surface permafrost, 3 to 5 meters, is at risk of thawing in the next 100 years," Schuur said by telephone from an Alaska research site. "It can't stay intact."
Methane also is present in another form, as hydrates — ice-like formations deep underground and under the seabed in which methane molecules are trapped within crystals of frozen water. If warmed, the methane will escape.
Dallimore, who has long researched hydrates as energy sources, believes a breakdown of such huge undersea formations may have produced conical "hills" found offshore in the Beaufort Sea bed, some of them 40 meters (more than 100 feet) high.
With underwater robots, he detected methane gas leaking from these seabed features, which resemble the strange hills ashore here that the Inuvialuit, or Eskimos, call "pingos." And because the coastal plain is subsiding and seas are rising from warming, more permafrost is being inundated, exposed to water warmer than the air.
The methane seeps that the Canadians were studying in the Mackenzie Delta, amid grassy islands, steel-gray lakes and summertime temperatures well above freezing, are saucer-like indentations just 10 meters (30 feet) or so down on the lake bed.
The ultimate source of that gas — hydrates, decomposition or older natural gas deposits — is unclear, but Dallimore's immediate goal is quantifying the known emissions and finding the unknown.
With tent-like, instrument-laden enclosures they positioned over two seeps, each several meters (yards) wide, the researchers have determined they are emitting methane at a rate of up to 0.6 cubic meters (almost 1 cubic yard) per minute.
Dallimore's team is also monitoring the seeps with underwater listening devices, to assess whether seasonal change — warming — affects the emissions rate.
Even if the lake seeps are centuries old, Bowen said, the question is, "Will they be accelerated by recent changes?"
A second question: Are more seeps developing?
To begin answering that, Dallimore is working with German and Canadian specialists in aerial surveying, teams that will fly over swaths of Arctic terrain to detect methane "hot spots" via spectrometric imagery, instruments identifying chemicals by their signatures on the light spectrum.
Research crews are hard at work elsewhere, too, to get a handle on this possible planetary threat.
"I and others are trying to take field observations and get it scaled up to global models," said Alaska researcher Schuur. From some 400 boreholes drilled deep into the tundra worldwide, "we see historic warming of permafrost. Much of it is now around 2 below zero (28 F)," Schuur said.
A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is overflying Alaska this summer with instruments sampling the air for methane and carbon dioxide. In parts of Alaska, scientists believe the number of "thermokarst" lakes — formed when terrain collapses over thawing permafrost and fills with meltwater — may have doubled in the past three decades. Those lakes then expand, thawing more permafrost on their edges, exposing more carbon.
Off Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard last September, British scientists reported finding 250 methane plumes rising from the shallow seabed. They're probably old, scientists said, but only further research can assess whether they're stable. In March, Norwegian officials did say methane levels had risen on Svalbard.
Afloat above the huge, shallow continental shelf north of Siberia, Russian researchers have detected seabed "methane chimneys" sending gas bubbling up to the surface, possibly from hydrates.
Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited "extreme" saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said up to 10 percent of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was "highly possible" that this would open the way to abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane.
Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause "catastrophic greenhouse warming," as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane.
Some might label that alarmism. And Stockholm University researcher Orjan Gustafsson, a partner in the Russians' field work, acknowledged that "the scientific community is quite split on how fast the permafrost can thaw."
But there's no doubt the north contains enough potential methane and carbon dioxide to cause abrupt climate change, Gustafsson said by telephone from Sweden.
Canada's pre-eminent permafrost expert, Chris Burn, has trekked to lonely locations in these high latitudes for almost three decades, meticulously chronicling the changes in the tundra.
On a stopover at the Aurora Research Institute in the Mackenzie Delta town of Inuvik, the Carleton University scientist agreed "we need many, many more field observations." But his teams have found the frozen ground warming down to about 80 meters, and he believes the world is courting disaster in failing to curb warming by curbing greenhouse emissions.
"If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we'd be close to a year's contributions from industrial sources," he said. "I don't think policymakers have woken up to this. It's not in their risk assessments."
How likely is a major release?
"I don't think it's a case of likelihood," he said. "I think we are playing with fire."
Copyright 2009 Associated Press
"I don't think it's a case of likelihood," he said. "I think we are playing with fire."
Copyright 2009 Associated Press
So folks, there you have it. As you know, methane is 22 times more efficient of a greenhouse gas than CO2. Uncontrolled vast releases of it from our melting Arctic permafrost and undersea hydrate deposits will create rapid warming of a scale that could lead to melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and around the coastal margins of Antarctica. Which would create rapid sea-level rises of 20-40 feet in a decade. Not only would low-lying coastal countries like Bangladesh be inundated, but so would all the global industrial infra-structure for energy and food distribution. What kind of global effects would that have? I'm sure you can think of some pretty apocalyptic scenarios, many people have. How long do we have, before this occurs, if nothing is done? 10 to 20 years, at best.
Can anything be done, in the next 10 to 20 years, or sooner? Yes. Here are some promising ideas, which if implemented rapidly, globally, along with conservation measures, would buy us needed time, to transition to a low-carbon industrial base.
Can anything be done, in the next 10 to 20 years, or sooner? Yes. Here are some promising ideas, which if implemented rapidly, globally, along with conservation measures, would buy us needed time, to transition to a low-carbon industrial base.
Forests of Artificial Trees Could Slow Global Warming
August 28th, 2009 by Lin Edwards
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study on how technology could help to regulate climate change has studied hundreds of ideas, and selected three considered practical and able to be implemented quickly. The report's authors propose the construction of forests of artificial trees and installing tubes of algae on the sides of buildings to absorb carbon dioxide. They also proposed painting the roofs of buildings white to keep the Earth cool by reducing the amount of solar radiation absorbed.
The engineers from Britain's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) have asked their government for an investment of 10 million pounds (around 16.3 million dollars) in these ideas to counter the threat to Britain posed by global warming.
One of the authors of the report, Dr Tim Fox, said geo-engineering techniques could buy us a few extra years' breathing space while we transition to a low-carbon world, and may help ward off the climate change scenarios we fear. The report claimed global temperatures could rise by as much as 6°C in the next 90 years if we don't act soon, and the results would include major refugee movements as well as food and water shortages.
One proposal was the building of forests of artificial trees. Each synthetic tree could capture up to 10 tons of CO2 a day, which is thousands of times more than a real tree. Each tree would cost around $24,400, and a forest of 100,000 of them could be constructed within the next couple of decades using existing technologies. A forest that size would be able to remove 60% of the UK's total CO2 emissions. Globally, forests of five to ten million trees could absorb all the CO2 from sources other than power plants.
The trees would have a special synthetic filter that absorbs carbon dioxide. When the filters had absorbed their load of CO2 they would be replaced with new filters and the old ones would be stored in empty gas and oil reservoirs, such as depleted oil wells in the North Sea. The trees are already at the prototype stage and their design is well-advanced. The prototype is the size
of an average shipping container.Another proposal put forward by the study was to install transparent tubes filled with algae on the outside of buildings. The "algae based photobioreactors", as they call them, would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and could later be turned into charcoal, which could then be buried to trap the carbon dioxide.
The third idea proposed by the IME was to paint city roofs white to reflect sunlight back into space and prevent it warming the Earth. Cities can be up to 4°C hotter than suburban areas, and reflective roofs could reduce the need for cooling and save up to 60% of a building's energy use.
Dr Fox warned that geo-engineering ideas such as those proposed are not a silver bullet that will solve all the problems, and they would need to be used in conjunction with other measures such as reducing our emissions and adapting to changes in the climate.
More information: Read the full Institution of Mechanical Engineers report
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Another important thing that can be done is for governments World-wide to fund focused research into developing fuels from algae cultures. It has already been demonstrated that certain types of algae when grown in concentrated "farms" will produce an oil that can be easily refined into diesel and even kerosene for jet engines. In fact, an Air New Zealand 767 took a test flight this year using a 50-50 mix of this algae-based fuel and conventional kerosene. If enough research/development funding could be given, "carbon-neutral" transportation fuel could be mass-produced on a scale to displace the bulk of what is currently extracted from fossil fuels.
OK, we know what needs to be done, and how urgently and quickly. But how to pay for it? The US government is running huge deficits, in the trillions of dollars. How can it undertake large scale projects, similar to the NASA space program in the 1960s, to mass-produce and deploy artificial tree systems, sponsor energy conservation programs, design and deploy things like the building algae systems, and crash-develop alternative energy/fuel resources?
Well, this article by Shamus Cooke, in yesterday's Counterpunch web-site, gave some very good ideas: http://counterpunch.org/cooke09022009.html
"Make no mistake, the corporate elite want the U.S. deficit taken care of and they don’t want to pay higher taxes to do it. They rightfully fear that foreign investors — most notably China and Japan — will quit feeding the American debt machine unless the deficit is drastically reduced.
Instead of making workers pay off the deficit, the corporate elite should be forced to. A plan of action to accomplish this might look something like this:
1) Pass REAL health reform: nationalized, single-payer health care without the insurance companies, eliminate the Medicare windfall profits for the pharmaceutical companies by operating these companies as public utilities and have the government set affordable prices for all medications. Over the years, this will save billions of dollars.
2) Pass the Employee Free Choice Act: unionized workers make more money, and will thus pay more in taxes to help reduce the deficit.
3) A massive jobs creation program: masses of unemployed workers cost the government billions of dollars in unemployment benefits. Creating living-wage jobs while rebuilding the U.S. failing infrastructure is a very logical alternative.
4) Tax the rich: The top tax bracket should pay what they paid pre-Reagan, which was 70 percent of their income. (If necessary, tax them what they paid under Truman, which was 91 percent.)
5) End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
6) Drastically reduce the military budget.
7) No more bailouts: Make public all the bailout spending, and make all those who received money return it. If the banks cannot pay back the money, take over their assets, i.e., nationalize them.
8) Require that the rich pay the same percentage of their salary into Social Security as the rest of us. This involves removing a cap on salaries over $102,000 which eliminates payment into Social Security on salaries over that amount."
The savings from implementing policies like this could easily pay for the necessary measures to reduce CO2 and methane emissions, as well as gradually start to bring the federal budget back toward the black. Unfortunately, as long as the corporate media, defense, and fossil fuel/transportation industries maintain control of our legislators, these ideas are totally utopian.
Another consideration is the extreme militarism of the U.S. How many millions of barrels of oil a year go to support all the military operations this country undertakes? And how much of a contribution is this to the total global CO2 emissions? Just ending the illegal, immoral, and corporate-profit driven wars the US is involved in, and reducing it's global military footprint, will also help in the fight to prevent runaway warming from developing. Can we do it?
Cheers.
