Prehistoric Methane Escaping:
Why You Should be Very Concerned
-- Lowell Rathbun August 3, 2021
As if we didn't already have enough to worry about. This alarming Washington Post article of August 2, 2021 is different however, and should get everyone's attention. Climate change is causing more severe heat waves in the far away land of Siberia. Climate change scientists poking around in Siberia studying the thawing permafrost there uncovered what may be a very dangerous phenomemon: prehistoric methane escaping from thawing limestone deposits.
Why is this so alarming, you ask? Think runaway climate change. Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times as potent carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere. Lots of it is already escaping as the Siberian permafrost melts. But scientists are discovering that methane is beginning to escape from prehistoric (Paleozoic) limestone as it thaws out also. There is a HUGE amount of this prehistoric methane trapped in this rock. If this prehistoric methane begins to escape in large quanties, it could trigger runaway climate change (climate change that we humans will be unable to control) much sooner than we thought. This is what is keeping those scientists up at night.
It may well be that the controlling climate change is much more urgent than we thought.
Why is this so alarming, you ask? Think runaway climate change. Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times as potent carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere. Lots of it is already escaping as the Siberian permafrost melts. But scientists are discovering that methane is beginning to escape from prehistoric (Paleozoic) limestone as it thaws out also. There is a HUGE amount of this prehistoric methane trapped in this rock. If this prehistoric methane begins to escape in large quanties, it could trigger runaway climate change (climate change that we humans will be unable to control) much sooner than we thought. This is what is keeping those scientists up at night.
It may well be that the controlling climate change is much more urgent than we thought.
Two Climate Change Stories and Short Commentary
--- written by Lowell Rathbun 2-14-21
Mother Earth is About to Become Our Enemy
In March 2021, The Atlantic published a significant article about climate change. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/
Climate change stories often come across as abstract and removed from one’s daily life, and thus are easily ignored. The point of this article was stark and disturbing. The simple point of this story is this: Earth is about to snap into a mode of existence that humans, in our million-year existence, have never known. To put it another way, we humans are the product of, and the offspring of, a climate system We are the children of the present climate system. Our mother that gave birth to us and takes care of us is about to go away. The planet is about to become our enemy. And there is a good chance that when the planet is done with us, we humans won’t exist anymore. We humans may just become another layer of strata in the ancient fossil record awaiting discovery by another intelligent life form in distant future, if ever.
In March 2021, The Atlantic published a significant article about climate change. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/
Climate change stories often come across as abstract and removed from one’s daily life, and thus are easily ignored. The point of this article was stark and disturbing. The simple point of this story is this: Earth is about to snap into a mode of existence that humans, in our million-year existence, have never known. To put it another way, we humans are the product of, and the offspring of, a climate system We are the children of the present climate system. Our mother that gave birth to us and takes care of us is about to go away. The planet is about to become our enemy. And there is a good chance that when the planet is done with us, we humans won’t exist anymore. We humans may just become another layer of strata in the ancient fossil record awaiting discovery by another intelligent life form in distant future, if ever.
Human fossil bones -- picture credit: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-triple-burial-of-Dolni-Vestonice-Moravia-dated-to-around-31-000-years-before_fig4_308891809
Another Warning from Mother Earth
The planet keeps warning us that things are not normal anymore. The latest warning comes to us from the Midwest, which includes Texas. The bottom line is this: The Arctic ice cap has been melting and disappearing. This ice cap used to be the home of the Polar Vortex. Nowadays, the Polar Vortex has become like the Boll Weevil in Brook Benton’s song, just “lookin for a home”. Well, this edition of the Polar Vortex was born in Siberia, got really cold, migrated over the top of the world and came down and found a home in the American Midwest, breaking hundred-year records in the process. 7 below zero in Oklahoma City, 4 above in Dallas and 12 above in Houston, on the Gulf Coast!? https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/14/arctic-outbreak-south-cold-snow
The planet keeps warning us that things are not normal anymore. The latest warning comes to us from the Midwest, which includes Texas. The bottom line is this: The Arctic ice cap has been melting and disappearing. This ice cap used to be the home of the Polar Vortex. Nowadays, the Polar Vortex has become like the Boll Weevil in Brook Benton’s song, just “lookin for a home”. Well, this edition of the Polar Vortex was born in Siberia, got really cold, migrated over the top of the world and came down and found a home in the American Midwest, breaking hundred-year records in the process. 7 below zero in Oklahoma City, 4 above in Dallas and 12 above in Houston, on the Gulf Coast!? https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/14/arctic-outbreak-south-cold-snow
Record-breaking Midwest deep freeze -- picture credit: screenshot from Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/14/arctic-outbreak-south-cold-snow/
Short Commentary
Human beings are not hardwired to react to climate change. Stories about our changing climate are abstract, hard to understand, remote from daily life and therefore, do not arouse existential anxiety in human beings. Sure, a raging forest fire, or a whole week of sub-zero weather, or a roaring hurricane flooding one’s house with water stimulates intense existential fear and humans do react to those crisis situations, often heroically. But once the crisis has dissipated, life gets back to normal. The Californian whose home burned out decides to move north to Washington State. When spring returns to the Midwest, folks clean up their yards, farmers start their spring planting and life resumes as normal. After the hurricane goes away and the streets and houses are cleaned up, life at the beach becomes attractive again.
The human species has known about the climate emergency for over 50 years. The species has not responded well. As of late 2019, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/782586224/greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-still-rising-u-n-report-says
In the book, Limits to Growth, first published just about 50 years ago by the Club of Rome, a number of growth scenarios were put forth, varying from “business as usual” to “taking action right away”. Of all the scenarios put forth in the book, the worst case is the one that has taken place: “business as usual”. In fact, during the Trump years, the United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. Human civilization is now in the stage of “overshoot” – wild, uncontrolled growth that will level off and eventually crash before stabilizing at a much lower level. In his book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock predicted that humans may end up as a roving band of hunter-gatherers scrounging for food on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Right now, the prognosis does not look good.
Human beings are not hardwired to react to climate change. Stories about our changing climate are abstract, hard to understand, remote from daily life and therefore, do not arouse existential anxiety in human beings. Sure, a raging forest fire, or a whole week of sub-zero weather, or a roaring hurricane flooding one’s house with water stimulates intense existential fear and humans do react to those crisis situations, often heroically. But once the crisis has dissipated, life gets back to normal. The Californian whose home burned out decides to move north to Washington State. When spring returns to the Midwest, folks clean up their yards, farmers start their spring planting and life resumes as normal. After the hurricane goes away and the streets and houses are cleaned up, life at the beach becomes attractive again.
The human species has known about the climate emergency for over 50 years. The species has not responded well. As of late 2019, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/782586224/greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-still-rising-u-n-report-says
In the book, Limits to Growth, first published just about 50 years ago by the Club of Rome, a number of growth scenarios were put forth, varying from “business as usual” to “taking action right away”. Of all the scenarios put forth in the book, the worst case is the one that has taken place: “business as usual”. In fact, during the Trump years, the United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. Human civilization is now in the stage of “overshoot” – wild, uncontrolled growth that will level off and eventually crash before stabilizing at a much lower level. In his book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock predicted that humans may end up as a roving band of hunter-gatherers scrounging for food on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
Right now, the prognosis does not look good.
A Beautiful Summer Day!
Not everything has to be politics. I just happened to glance at the South Pole web cam. Have a look at a gorgeous summer day at the South Pole. It's so strikingly beautiful and serene, Mother Nature at her finest! The sun will be up until March 21.
Two Major Antarctic Glaciers Are Tearing Loose
News Digest submitted by Lowell Rathbun 10-25-2020
Enormous curved crevasses near the Pine Island Glacier shear margin. (Brooke Medley/NASA) (Washington Post 9-14-20)
The relentless advance of climate change has taken another toll on the planet's landscape. This time the scene is in the frozen landscape of Antarctica. Two huge glaciers, the Pine Island glacier and the enormous Thwaites glacier are ripping free of their restraints that keep them from sliding into the Southern Ocean and raising global sea levels. Simply put, these two huge Antarctic glaciers are two massive huge masses of ice sitting up on "dry land", in this case the Antarctic continent. For tens of thousands of years, these two huge masses of ice would like to slide down off of the "dry land" and into the ocean and melt. These glaciers have been blocked by floating ice shelves and barriers called "shear margins". They were blocked until now. New research show that these barriers are beginning to give way and the glaciers are beginning to speed up their slide into the sea. Read the complete article here in the Washington Post.
Greenland Ice Cap May Have Passed the Point of No Return
News Digest submitted by Lowell Rathbun -- September 13, 2020
(Picture taken from Business Insider) Ice melted during a heat wave in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland on August 1, 2019. Caspar Haarloev from "Into the Ice" documentary via Reuters
Greenland's melting ice sheet has 'passed the point of no return,' scientists say, dooming it to disappearThis is the title of an article that appeared in the Business Insider for August 15, 2020. The ice cap atop the Greenland subcontinent appears to be doomed by climate change. This is according to a study published in the respected scientific journal Nature just recently. In short, the amount of ice that is lost each summer now exceeds the amount of ice generated by snowfall each winter. Don't expect the ice sheet to disappear anytime soon. At the current melt rate, sea levels are expected to rise 2.75 inches in the next 80 years. But what is happening appears to be irreversible with present rate of climate change and will permanently change the earth's landscape. At first glance, this ice melt might not seem so bad, but if we regard this ice as "fossil ice" that is hundreds or thousands of years old, then we get an idea of how long it took to form this ice and how long it will take to replace it, once climate change is ended, whenever that happens.
Read the article in Business Insider here.
Read the original article in Nature here.
Read the article in Business Insider here.
Read the original article in Nature here.
WEST COAST WILDFIRES ARE UNPRECEDENTED
--- 9-10-2020
The national news has been filled with stories about the massive outbreak of wildfires all up and down the West Coast. A recent GOES satellite image of the vast bank of smoke covering Oregon, California and the Pacific Ocean is stunning. https://twitter.com/i/status/1303751556983001088. I have never seen this much smoke in a satellite image before.
The San Francisco Bay Bridge and city skyline are obscured in orange smoke and haze.
(Brittany Hosea-Small / AFP-Getty Images)
This story in the Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/10/western-fires-fatalities-homes/ , is typical of the news stories that have appeared lately about these Western wildfires. What should be noticed is the unprecedented size and spread of these fires. An event of this magnitude has never happened before. Gov. Kate Brown, at her news conference, said that “we have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across the state.” She also made it clear that these fires are “the bellwether of the future. We are feeling the acute impacts of climate change.”
More than 3.1 million acres, the largest amount of land on record, has been burned up in California, just this year, and the Southern California fire season is still to come. The article mentions that 6 of the largest wildfires in California history have occurred this year. A meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID claimed that “no one I have talked to can remember anything like” the sheer amount of fire on the landscape. These record-breaking fires follow a record-shattering heat wave across the West Coast.
This record-shattering fire season is most likely a preview of coming attractions for the Western United States as climate change continues its unremitting advance across the planet.
More than 3.1 million acres, the largest amount of land on record, has been burned up in California, just this year, and the Southern California fire season is still to come. The article mentions that 6 of the largest wildfires in California history have occurred this year. A meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID claimed that “no one I have talked to can remember anything like” the sheer amount of fire on the landscape. These record-breaking fires follow a record-shattering heat wave across the West Coast.
This record-shattering fire season is most likely a preview of coming attractions for the Western United States as climate change continues its unremitting advance across the planet.
Giant Gaping Void Emerges in Siberia
--- 9-10-2020
Notice human walking next to crater at upper right of crater. Photo credit: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EglAxwfUwAED06_?format=jpg&name=900x900
As the earth's climate warms, the Arctic climate is heating up much more rapidly than other parts of the planet. Many of these rapid warming effects are showing up in Siberia. There is a lot of methane gas that is trapped beneath the arctic permafrost, including Siberia. As the tundra warms up, the ground is thawing out and large bubbles of methane are beginning to make their way to the surface and escape into the planet's atmosphere, exacerbating the rate of climate change. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Picture of a giant methane bubble in the tundra getting ready to explode. Photo credit: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EglA2DMU8AEDjsb?format=jpg&name=900x900
This story was first encountered in Science alert.com, which found the story in the Siberian Times.