There are unfrozen lakes in the Arctic that have been frozen over for millions of years where the methane is now gushing out. The surface of the large lakes resemble that of an active gyser.

After methane levels in the atmosphere had leveled off for the last 8 years, suddenly there has been a surge...

Global carbon dioxide, methane up sharply in 2007
http://au.news.yahoo.com/080423/2/16lfb.html

Here I is. This is far, far more serious than most are aware, except for the choir at CD.

This article is a (two minute) read and written in 2004, by a world renouned Geologist. One of his comments concerning the methane gas, which has been frozen in the Arctic's perma-frost for the past five million years. ___"Once it starts, there is NO turning back, ___ NO do-overs. We are running out of time gang.

We either attempt to fight global warming on a "world wide" scale, beginning now, or we ignore it. __ Ignore it and die,__ that's everyone. Any who may not have read this article should read it __ and then talk to your elected about it. There is not one single issue of more importance. ___ NONE.

http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html

Sadly, this thread will be buried here in the archives in a few short hours and few will ever see it. Many who do, may not realize just how serious this issue actually is.

Perhaps the next POTUS well decide to solve the War on Terror with a massive nuclear attack (retaliation?). The ensuing nuclear Winter certainly might serve as an anodyne for the global warming crisis.

If not, the real final judgement the religious right has been awaiting will have arrived

I once saw where an associate administrator said, and I quote: "For man to survive, he must leave the planet."

Now that really says a lot from a Bush Administration employee. Maybe she should have said something like, "For man to survive, we must begin taking care of the only planet we have."

Unless of course they already have plans to head to the moon or Mars after they destroy Earth.

Does anyone really believe that the corporate nightmare will end? Does anyone think that that the profit motive as it is constituted in the "Free Market System" will somehow be modified by the need to save the planet? We are entering a phase of the final meltdown of the planet. The poles are beginning to break up but that has not deterred the oil market or has it lead to the kind of conservation necessary, at the speed necessary, in the face of this catastrophe.

There are still people out there like George Will and the Republican menace that will continue the objection to scientific reality, some of the scientists saying that we are already in feedback mode the above is clearly one of the examples.

James Lovelock says that there will be about 500 million left at the poles for a few hundred thousand years until the planet rights itself and begins to cool or it might continue to heat until all life is finished. This small period of time in Earth's evolution and geology is on the way to another life extinction episode. This time we are the catalyst for our own extinction. The Chinese example of producing coal plants that will substantially diminish their fresh water supplies is a grand example of this and the ethanal versus food production show us that the chance to change rapidly is out of our grasp.

We have all done it! Who has turned off their life style or their 401ks? Our selfish opportunism has turned love to stone? Will we spin to oblivion on a dead planet, probably? Where is the profit to be found here can someone from Wall Street explain this?

Their is a fundamental feedback problem between the economic style that Americans are trying to get the world to accept, a consumer disposable auto centered existence, and the its affect on continued life. Lester Brown has been saying this for to many years with no one really taking him seriously.

I have been fighting climate change in my work since my film, about Acid Rain I produced in 1980. its the same problem, for the same reasons that has now become the seeds of the destruction of the humanity. No one cares about anything else but money, it's all about greed and money, the future generations be damned!

Where's Kem?

This one is for you pal. Thanks for the heads up.

A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases is Opening in Siberia
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547976,00.html

There is certainly a positve correlation between the rapid indusrialization of the planet and shifts in the physical equilibriums of its surface systems. Of course, correlation is not causality. But, we have only one planet( I should say, the Earth has only one truly threatening species) with one curve of history drawn along time's axis. There is no time to retro-speculate on periodic climate shifts and their causes. That would be tantamount to counting on our luck holding to save our own asses(Xavier Onnassis). We must be radically conservative(not in the political sense) and assume our large-scale, energy-hogging culture is to blame. We've got to take a few steps backwards away from a reductionistic and materialistic worldview, and re-integrate the wisdom of the small-scale and non-abstract ways-of-being of our consanguinity.(Sorry for being pedantic, just learned this word from reading the poetry of Hart Crane and could not resist.)

Hey, I can see my house in that pictue!!!

Yes everybody it IS serious and I've been saying so since I got my BS in wildlife...in '66. My geologist dad still refuses to believe there will be a price to pay...but the nonagenarians can safely be left alone now... We tried, right?

But listen! WE COULD STILL GET OUT OF THIS INCREDIBLE FIX: where is the technology that would chemically "fix" all this CO2 and NH4? What is the state of the art of survival on planet earth? Thought I'd just ask.
Email me any leads on this please: esteban@asis.com

elmysterio April 22nd, 2008 1:52 pm

The "price of land" quote was a "quote" from How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left?

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2008.

jposty said: "I hate to be the skeptic… we have very little evidence to compare this to climatic shifts over the last 3,000 years. This might very well be a natural cyclical event."

It may, but two points argue that it isn't:

1. It is coincident with a time in history when human activities have raised CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 50% over their natural historical average. Knowing the role CO2 plays in the greenhouse effect (which is uncontroversial), its impossible to imagine a 50% increase in this potent greenhouse gas NOT having effects such as these.

2. The Polar bear is absolutely dependent on continuous ice coverage in the Arctic, both in winter and summer. The loss of Arctic ice is being posited, with considerable evidence, as the CAUSE of the observed decline in polar bear populations. Consider how LONG it has taken to evolve the polar bear. Its taken maybe 200,000 years for this population to diverge from the grizzly bear population. So, its reasonable to expect that the Arctic has been ice-bound for at least 100,000 years. If the Arctic does as scientists predict, over the next 20-50 years, 200,000 years of polar bear evolution will probably come to a sudden end.

This doesn't appear to be a natural event.

Mr / Ms goe522

NO PROOF? where have you been hiding for the last 20 yrs?

there have been 2 sides to this debate for years, only last few years the climate change dissenters, have not had any (credible as in peer reviewed) counter science left to offer the debate.. so it only now seems one sided..except for the tiniest fraction of the worlds population, no one dis-agrees that the climate is changing for the worse, and at faster rates than ever before in history, what is still open to debate is the cause/es.

the whole average joe grasp of this situation, reminds me of the old "b" scifi movies, the ones where the world faces some overwhelming catastrophe , only to be saved at the last minute by some fair haired extra smart lad in some small out of the way backwater town... well there have been thousands of these fair haired extra smart kids YELLING for years about the solution, but they can't be heard over american idol , and the latest gossip about the latest "poor Hollywood star/lett" in the dry out center...if it wasn't so serious, i'd pee my pants laughing ...

geo522 - your name must refer to the ostrich-like GEOrge Bush because you certainly know nothing of GEOlogy. What is vague about thinning ice sheets, lost solar reflectance, and shrinking glaciers? It all has been measured. There is no opposing point of view save for ignorance or deliberate stupidity. It really doesn't matter if you can see the evidence in front of your nose or not, because it is too late already. Mother Nature waits for no man and no species. Maybe your ilk will be better off - you just won't see it coming. You can go on worrying about little problems like the price of oil, how your stocks are doing, and who'll win American Idol. The science is in - climate change is real, rapid, and catastrophic. Sayonara!

geo522, you have a surprise coming.

"...this is the end my friend, my only friend."

FREEHEELER:

Your on it. This climate change scenerio is the knock-out punch. We are already on the road to "the end of the world as we know it" without taking this climate disaster into account. Global extinctions due to invasive species, habitat loss, and things other than climate change will doom our way of life. We're looking at loosing up to 40% of species within 90 years! And its not just the species, it is entire ecosystems! And LARGE SYSTEMS such as the North Atlantic Ocean! Much less the possibility of an entire global marine ecosystem collapse. Its not just our oceans, it is everywhere, the forests, the deserts, our rivers, etc, etc. This extinction spasm will not rebound for millions and millions and millions of years.

40% extinction of life does not include climate change! Worst case climate scenerios are calling for 70% extinction of life. That adds up to 110%! Don't forget: worst case scenerio is a present scenerio! Throw India, China and at least 3 billion more people in the mix!

The extinction scenerio plays a little like this climate scenerio with a type of feedback "extinction" loops where a particular "keystone" species is lost and a major part of the ecosystem (if not the whole thing) goes with it. And lose major ecosystems, we'll call the "keystone" ecosystems, and you run the risk of collapsing others, and round and round we go!

Some people post that they hate all the negative talk and it makes them feel hopeless and causing them to do nothing. What are you going to tell your children when the shiznit REALLY hits the fan.

Also, GALEN:

On Dec. 12, 2006, the BBC reported that climate models suggest an ice-free summer Arctic somewhere around 2060.

Get this everyone, revised predictions one year later:

NASA: Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Scientist Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. states "From what we know of how Arctic sea ice behaves after nearly 30 years of continuous satellite observations, this kind of drop in sea ice usually takes more than three years to happen. The rapid trend of the perennial ice previously reported in 2002 appears now to be in an accelerated mode,". NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said after review these findings "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer 2012, much faster that previous predictions…. The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coalmine for climate warming. Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070927090341.htm

Head for high ground and learn to grow your own food.

www.oneplanetonelife.com

The real question here is - can they take back Al Gore's Nobel Prize now that his movie has been totally discredited?

Ask yourself, why are these global warming stories always so vague, how much has the temperature gone up? How much have the oceans risen? The answers are zero and zero by the way.

Why do we never see the opposing point of view, I thought this was supposed to be science, dealing with facts... but I guess when you have no facts to back up your
theory you have to rely on vague stories like this...

When are we going to get over this and start worrying about things that really matter??!

We haven't even taken serious steps towards getting our own population growth under control. I don't hold out much hope for us taking the initiative to mitigate climate change.

Climate change is but one aspect of global environmental change. I am a plant ecologist. I study invasive and threatened and endangered plants. We've paved over or plowed up whole ecosystems. Plants like cheatgrass are displacing native species and causing precipitous drops in native species diversity and cover. We're changing nutrient cycles. Most of the worlds rivers have been damned or diverted.

Sooner or later we'll have to pay the piper.

The melting of the Arctic ice cap is both an indicator of the seriousness of what is happening and the speed with which it is happening, and a threat in itself. The change to global weather patterns, and the circulation of ocean currents are both going to be massively affected by an ice free Arctic. Melting of land based ice will affect sea levels, but I suspect this may almost be the least of our problems (though is is going to cause massive population shifts, since a large proportion of the population of the Earth lives close to coasts and relies on shallow water sea foods - hard to know whether the rise will be slow enough to allow some ecostem adjustment, or so fast that it will wipe out both shallow water and coastal land ecology). And yes, James, we do know a great deal about climates in the last 3000 years, and indeed the last 300,000 years, and we are pretty good on climates going back millions of years. It is clear that the speed of this change is unprecedented, and this is because humans are stoking the fires, and it is also clear that whenever climate has changed by the amount we are now faced with there has been massive extinctions of all kinds of life forms, and a very slow recovery.

Also bear in mind that we are facing a change unprecedented while humans have been on Earth, and that trying to save 6 billion people, on a world already devastated by the effects of capitalism and stupidity on the environment, when the planet rapidly heats up, is not going to be possible. A few hunter gatherers made it through the climatic cycles of the Pleistocene period, changes much less severe than we are faced with now, six billion city-based Humans are not going to make it through this change. Is it really possible for a President of the US to be so dumb that he doesn't get any of this? Doesn't he read The Watermelon Blog (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/). Is it possible that Clinton, Obama, and McCain are also too dumb to understand?

wcdevins, If you have an essay that you want published on the web, please send to info@freepublictransit.org.

http://frepubtra.blogspot.com

.

...and the frogs boiling slowly looked around them seeing bubbles lifting off the bottom of the pot, and the biggest ones said: "Nah - 's prob'ly nuthin' - 's bin known t'appen now 'n then. Not to worry. Keep still. Don't rock the pot. Jumpin' up 'n down will probl'ly jus' cause more bubbles. Remember the wise old saying: no troubles, no bubbles."...

simonhhh said: "What happens to the price of land in the interior, if vast numbers are forced inland?….."

The price of land??? Are you serious? The ENTIRE global economic system will collapse and there will be no more money. Private land ownership will be a thing of the past as communities will have to band together in order to survive... The biggest threat will come from "outsiders" into the community and roving bands of scavengers. Think Mad Max.

Well, let's put something into perspective...

The big debate about whether or not climate change is caused by man-made greenhouse gases or is a normal climate change cycles is really irrelevant. At this point in time, climate change is obvious. It's happening. It's happening fast. So let's assume that this is man-made climate change... even if we stopped ALL CO2 emissions today, it wouldn't stop climate change... ok... so lets assume that it's a natural climate change cycle... that's actually worse for us because global climate shifts are usually quite catastrophic. We'd be hard pressed as a species to survive that.

So either way, It's my opinion that we're already totally screwed, but we just don't know know screwed yet. The sad part is that we're so short sighted that we're still all obsessed with money... money aint gonna save yer ass, that's for sure.

How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left?

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2008.

Lester Brown, author of Plan B 3.0, shows us how we can change in enough time to save life on earth, as we know it.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/83032/
"...The climate change threat is enormous. Last August an area of Arctic sea ice twice the size of Britain melted in one week. Scientists have never seen anything like this before.

Greenland has an ice sheet a mile thick or more, covering almost the entire island, which is three times the size of Texas. The rate at which it's melting now is extraordinary. There's a large glacier on the west coast, where the ice sheet flows into the sea, 3 miles wide and a mile deep, and it's flowing at 2 meters an hour. Glaciers normally flow at 80-100 meters per year. This is 2 meters per hour!..... In parts of Alaska, Northern Canada, Siberia and areas around the Arctic Circle including Greenland, temperatures have already gone up 3 to 7 degrees....If Greenland melts entirely, that adds 23 feet to the sea. The west Antarctic ice sheet adds 16 feet -- so together almost 40 feet. If that happens, many of the world's coastal cities would be under water. This is not going to happen in years or decades, but will be spread out over we hope at least a century or two. But still the rate becomes alarming. Even a one-meter rise in sea level threatens a lot of cities.

A large share of the world's population lives pretty close to the coast. If sea level were to rise 39 feet, there would be at least 600 million rising sea refugees. What happens to the price of land in the interior, if vast numbers are forced inland?....."

One hell of a 'hoax' isn't it.

Inkless memos drifting in shoals
Toys, toupees and all that money
Clotting streams that once were streets
Tumbling flotsam and bones to the asphalt beach

Aquarium views into second floor windows
TV blind tenants melted to soap stars
Or made into gulls and fish by the sea
Home again now in a finny new sitcom
Or soaring high over the steaming city

Nothing lives on the beach in the heat of this new sun
Surf breaks on skyscrapers enveloped in vines
Balconies fill and cascade with each sea surge
Barnacles build and the slick bull kelp shines

Parliament reef is a good place for crabbing
At low tide there's clams on the steps where we spoke
All the speeches and promises, lies lost in echoes
Money moves to high ground and to hell with the folk!

Now forests are burning and virus are rampant
Wealthy white children are dying in droves
It's a hundred and twenty degrees on the mountain
And even the richfilth are losing their loves

Galen--The ice floating on the Actic Ocean will not raise sea levels when it melts. Some sealevel rise will occur through thermal expansion, but not enough for "hip waders." Land-based ice is of course entirely different and will contribute to sealevel rise. Do, please, get these differences straightened out. Thanks.

James - You are correct, this may be a natural event. Being a skeptic about the cause is natural. However, it will be a disaster for humanity regardless, and my point is that wasting time waiting to see what the cause is before we react is dooming humanity.

Rapid climate shifts are often postulated as the cause of most of the great die-offs in evolutionary history. Often cataclysmic events like massive volcanic eruptions and/or asteroid strikes are associated with these periods. Arguments arose because it was difficult for many scientists to believe in such rapid paleontological climate changes. Now we are witnessing the (melting) snowball effect first-hand, and it is occurring with astonishing speed, geologically speaking. We are probably going to be able to do nothing but watch and wade [cap doff to Galen].

Wcdevins- Most climatologists now admit that their worst case scenarios are hopelessly optimistic...

The prediction for an ICE FREE Arctic is now 2012-2013.

Got you hip waders?

I hate to be the skeptic... we have very little evidence to compare this to climatic shifts over the last 3,000 years. This might very well be a natural cyclical event. Although, i'd rather not take chances with humanity's survival.

-James
www.thepoliticus.org

Done, done and done. Sorry, but it's already too late. When lack of solar reflectance from lost glacial ice allows the sun to heat the planet and melt even more ice, the process is irreversible. As the earth warms, methane trapped in frozen tundra is released by the additional thaw; those millions of tons of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere hold in yet more solar heat and accelerate the melting, accelerating the greenhouse effect - you get the idea.

A few years ago idiots like our idiot-in-chief questioned the dire predictions of climate scientists and poo-pooed the idea of sea level rise in the next 100 years. It was considered a political agenda by those in power and their brigades of dimwit talking heads, largely because that lying Clintonite Al Gore was involved. Plenty of time for market forces to fix it was their mantra. What's a degree or two every hundred years? I didn't notice any change; besides, a few more summer days mean I can leave my yatch out an extra week.

Now it's clear that the most dire predictions don't come near to matching the mounting evidence which indicates a global disaster in our lifetimes. While politicians and corporations are arguing over what's responsible for the changes, natural processes or human interference, the change is coming like an asteroid in a B movie, but this time it's for real. It truly is the end of the world as we know it. Take to the high ground!

"Greenland's glaciers losing ice at faster rate
Satellite observations add new factor to global-warming debate"
By Alan Boyle Science editor
"...."The evolution of the ice sheet, in the context of climate warming, is more rapid than has been predicted by models," one of the researchers, Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory"

How much, and how fast?
"...Virtually everyone agrees that the complete disappearance of the 2-mile-thick (3-kilometer-thick) Greenland Ice Sheet would cause an estimated 23-foot (7-meter) rise in global sea levels. That would inundate coastal regions around the world. At the same time, virtually everyone also agrees that even under the worst-case scenario, it would take centuries of warmer weather for Greenland's ice to disappear completely.

It's the rate of change in the ice sheet, and its variability over time, that is at issue.

Rignot and Kanagaratnam say their calculations indicate that the Greenland melt currently contributes about two-hundredths of an inch (0.5 millimeters) to the annual 0.12-inch (3-millimeter) rise in global sea levels. The glacier speed-up is responsible for more than two-thirds of that contribution...."

Past Tipping point...correct
Scary...correct
Most corporatised kleptocratic politicians will be dead when the real shit hits the fan...

Since Greenland is in the Artic, and possesses inland glaciers, the reality of no summer ice means the advance of those glaciers, much faster, into the Atlantic.

Scary.

Can you say 'tipping point' boys and girls?

I knew you could.

This is EXACTLY the event that climatologists have predicted. They have pointed out repeatedly what it would do. Collapse the North Atlantic current. Increase the desertification of Asia and North America. Alter weather patterns and growing seasons on a millennial scale. RAISE THE SEA LEVELS!

And here we are, quibbling over which corporate talking head will take over (HAH!) from Bushco.